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Reviewed by:
  • Corps sanglants, souffrants et macabres, XVIe–XVIIe siècle
  • Emma Herdman
Corps sanglants, souffrants et macabres, XVIe–XVIIe siècle. Edited by Charlotte Bouteille-Meister and Kjerstin Aukrust. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2010. 380 pp., ill. Pb €29.00.

This intelligently structured collection of conference proceedings concentrates on the representation and symbolism of the wounded human bodies that feature so prominently in baroque literature and art. A thoughtful Introduction carefully sets out a range of ethical, philosophical, and moral questions concerning the infliction, witnessing, and portrayal of suffering — questions that this well-illustrated volume addresses through case studies analysing historical and literary material drawn from across Europe as well as from France. The first section explores the aesthetics of the violence that accompanies scientific interest in, and curiosity about, the human body, as portraits of martyrs and cabinets of curiosities reflect the lessons of dissection and anatomical research in their combined educational and aesthetic concerns. The ideological aims and dangers of such representation, especially in an age of iconoclasm, are then analysed: while the spectator may find religious redemption through contemplation of the literal or metaphorical suffering of martyrs, the artist behind such scenes risks being seen as complicit in both the pleasure and the pain he depicts. The second section develops the metaphor of bodily suffering as a manifestation of the pain of an incorporated soul. Astute readings of d’Aubigné, Drayton, and Malherbe concentrate on how the literary images of pain, illness, and decay that, in the context of the religious wars, represent physically the emotional pain of love, mortality, or grief come to influence their whole poetics. The metaphorical reflection of the soul in the body is then inverted through examples of spiritual penance conducted through bodily mortifications such as self-flagellation, both in poetic description and in practice. An excellent history of the ethics of corporal punishment, examining the legal and ideological status of the judge and executioner as well as of the victim, introduces the third section, on the staging of bodily suffering. The reactions of audiences and characters are assessed in studies of the moral impact of spectacular histoires tragiques and of the pragmatics of staging mutilated body parts, while reception studies of Shakespeare’s bloodier tragedies in seventeenth-century Germany and of Spanish hagiographical theatre, enacting a tortured suffering elevated by a context of martyrdom, demonstrate the acceptability and even appeal of horror on stage. The final section considers the theological and political ends that images of murdered bodies may serve, with analysis of the paradoxical attitudes of Jesuit missionaries towards their own martyrdom complementing a comparison of New World cannibalism with the metaphorical cannibalism of the conquistadors. The political propaganda behind graphic and theatrical representations of the assassinations of the Guise brothers, Henri III, and, through analogy with the royal corpses on Hardy’s tragic stage, Henri IV is explored, with a reception history of Caron finally inverting this trend by emphasizing his avoidance of political analogy in favour of the spectacle of massacre instead. Overall, this [End Page 241] well-researched volume goes some way towards testing where the limits of taste and tolerance in different periods lie; it also succeeds in making its exquisitely painful subject matter both attractive and engaging, truly reflecting the macabre aesthetics it dissects.

Emma Herdman
University of St Andrews
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