Corpse as Text: Disinterment and Antiquarian Enquiry, 1700-1900
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€97.99
A01=Thea Tomaini
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
antiquarianism
archaeology
Author_Thea Tomaini
automatic-update
Burial
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBLL
Category=HBTB
Category=JHBZ
Category=NHTB
Charles I
COP=United Kingdom
Corpse
Death
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
English history
English literature
English Protestantism
Epitaph
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Exhumatio
Henry VIII
isinterment
Language_English
material culture
Oliver Cromwell
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
Seventeenth century
Shakespeare
Sixteenth century
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781783271948
- Weight: 668g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 21 Apr 2017
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Between 1700 and 1900, the subject of disinterment (exhumation) attracted the attention of antiquaries, who constructed a comprehensive memory of the past by 'reading' corpses as documents describing an idealised past.
Between 1700 and 1900, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were stereotyped, idealised, and held as a standard by which the present time could be measured. Various figures in politics, academia, and the church pointed to historical persons such as Henry VIII, Shakespeare, Charles I, and Oliver Cromwell as icons whose lives, deaths and corpses illustrated the victories of English Protestantism, the values of Monarchism (or Republicanism), and the superiority of the English culture and its language. In particular, the subject of disinterment (exhumation) attracted the attention of antiquaries. They constructed a comprehensive memory of the past by 'reading' corpses as documents describing an idealised past. These 'texts' accompanied and enhanced the traditional texts of chronicle, literature, and epitaph.
This study explores the cooperation of ideology and aesthetic, the paradox of allure and revulsion, and the uncanny attraction to death. In each case there is a desire for the dead to speak in a contemporary voice; each historical personage becomes symbolic of larger aspects of the contemporary culture. The discourse of the noble body in death is reconfigured to validate English nationalist ideals and to establish the past as a Golden Era of unimpeachable superiority. It was not enough simply to study the lives and deaths of historical figures. Itwas necessary to disinter the corpses, engage physically with the dead, and experience the discourse of validation.
THEA TOMAINI is Associate Professor of English (Teaching) at the University of Southern California.
