A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Renaissance

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The Renaissance was a time of immense change in the social, political, economic, intellectual, and artistic arenas of the Western world. The cultural construction of the human body occupied a pivotal role in those transformations. The social and cultural meanings of embodiment revolutionized the intellectual, political, and emotional ideologies of the period. Covering the period from 1400 to 1650, this volume examines the flexible and shifting categories of the body at an unparalleled time of growth in geographical exploration, science, technology, and commerce. A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Renaissance presents an overview of the period with essays on the centrality of the human body in birth and death, health and disease, sexuality, beauty and concepts of the ideal, bodies marked by gender, race, class and disease, cultural representations and popular beliefs, and self and society.

Author Bio

Linda Kalof is Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University, USA and author of Looking at Animals in Human History and series editor of A Cultural History of Animals. William Bynum is Emeritus Professor of the History of Medicine at University College London, UK and author of many books, including Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century and History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction.