Book details

The hurt(ful) body

The hurt(ful) body

Performing and beholding pain, 1600-1800

by Tomas Macsotay, Cornelis van der Haven, Karel Vanhaesebrouck

48 black & white illustrations

  • Paperback
  • 9781526143587
  • Published: October 2019

£30.00

BUY
  • eBook
  • 9781526113528
  • Published: July 2017

£26.00

BUY
  • Hardcover
  • 9781784995164
  • Published: July 2017

£90.00

BUY

This book offers a cross-disciplinary approach to pain and suffering in the early modern period, based on research in the fields of literary studies, art history, theatre studies, cultural history and the study of emotions. The volume's two-fold approach to the hurt body, defining 'hurt' from the perspectives of both victim and beholder - as well as their combined creation of a gaze - is unique. It establishes a double perspective about the riddle of 'cruel' viewing by tracking the shifting cultural meanings of victims' bodies and confronting them with the values of audiences, religious and popular institutional settings and practices of punishment. It encompasses both the victim's presence as an image or performed event of pain and the conundrum of the look - the transmitted 'pain' experienced by the watching audience.