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At the Borders of the Human

Beasts, Bodies and Natural Philosophy in the Early Modern Period

  • Book
  • © 1999

Overview

Editors:
  1. Erica Fudge

    1. School of Historical and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Bath Spa University College, UK

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  2. Ruth Gilbert

    1. School of Cultural Studies, King Alfred’s College, Winchester, UK

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  3. Susan Wiseman

    1. School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

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Table of contents (13 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
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  2. Introduction: the Dislocation of the Human

    • Erica Fudge, Ruth Gilbert, Susan Wiseman
    Pages 1-8

  3. Humanity at a Price: Erasmus, Budé, and the Poverty of Philology

    • Alan Stewart
    Pages 9-25

  4. Animal Passions and Human Sciences: Shame, Blushing and Nakedness in Early Modern Europe and the New World

    • Brian Cummings
    Pages 26-50

  5. Bodily Regimen and Fear of the Beast: ‘Plausibility’ in Renaissance Domestic Tragedy

    • Margaret Healy
    Pages 51-73

  6. Midwifery and the New Science in the Seventeenth Century: Language, Print and the Theatre

    • Julie Sanders
    Pages 74-90

  7. Calling Creatures by their True Names: Bacon, the New Science and the Beast in Man

    • Erica Fudge
    Pages 91-109

  8. Cartographic Arrest: Harvey, Raleigh, Drayton and the Mapping of Sense

    • Stephen Speed
    Pages 110-127

  9. ‘The Doubtful Traveller’: Mathematics, Metaphor, and the Cartographic Origins of the American Frontier

    • Jess Edwards
    Pages 128-149

  10. Seeing and Knowing: Science, Pornography and Early Modern Hermaphrodites

    • Ruth Gilbert
    Pages 150-170

  11. ‘Forms Such as Never Were in Nature’: the Renaissance Cyborg

    • Jonathan Sawday
    Pages 171-195

  12. Bodies without Souls: the Case of Peter the Wild Boy

    • Michael Newton
    Pages 196-214

  13. Monstrous Perfectibility: Ape-Human Transformations in Hobbes, Bulwer, Tyson

    • Susan Wiseman
    Pages 215-238

  14. The Economy of Nymphomania: Luxury, Virtue, Sentiment and Desire in Mid-Eighteenth Century Medical Discourse

    • Mary Peace
    Pages 239-258

  15. Back Matter

    Pages 259-269
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Keywords

About this book

What is, what was the human? This book argues that the making of the human as it is now understood implies a renegotiation of the relationship between the self and the world. The development of Renaissance technologies of difference such as mapping, colonialism and anatomy paradoxically also illuminated the similarities between human and non-human. This collection considers the borders between humans and their imagined others: animals, women, native subjects, machines. It examines border creatures (hermaphrodites, wildmen and cyborgs) and border practices (science, surveying and pornography).

Reviews

'all [the essays] are lively and original, and offer new perspectives on a provocative and... inexhaustible subject' - Eileen Reeves, Renaissance Quarterly

'The essays...open up [a] neglected aspect of our cultural history' - David Salter, Cahiers Elizabéthains

Editors and Affiliations

  • School of Historical and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Bath Spa University College, UK

    Erica Fudge

  • School of Cultural Studies, King Alfred’s College, Winchester, UK

    Ruth Gilbert

  • School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

    Susan Wiseman

About the editors

BRIAN CUMMINGS Lecturer in English in the School of European Studies, University of Essex JESS EDWARDS University of North London MARGARET HEALY Lecturer in the School of English and American Studies, University of Sussex MICHAEL NEWTON Author and Editor MARY PEACE co-editor with Vincent Quinn of a Textual Practice special edition entitled Luxurious Sexualities and The Body Politic in Eighteenth-Century Britain JULIE SANDERS Reader in English, Keele University JONATHAN SAWDAY Professor of English Studies, University of Strathclyde STEPHEN SPEED Buckinghamshire University College ALAN STEWART Reader in Renaissance Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: At the Borders of the Human

  • Book Subtitle: Beasts, Bodies and Natural Philosophy in the Early Modern Period

  • Editors: Erica Fudge, Ruth Gilbert, Susan Wiseman

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27729-2

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 1999

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-0-333-97384-4Published: 05 September 1999

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-349-27729-2Published: 27 July 2016

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XII, 269

  • Topics: Early Modern/Renaissance Literature

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