SUMMARY
Humanity has always shown a keen interest in the pathological, ranging from a morbid fascination with ‘monsters’ and deformities to a genuine compassion for the ill and suffering. Medieval and early modern people were no exception, expressing their emotional response to disease in both literary works and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in the plastic arts. Consequently, it becomes necessary to ask what motivated writers and artists to choose an illness or a disability and its physical and social consequences as subjects of aesthetic or intellectual expression. Were these works the result of an intrusion in their intent to faithfully reproduce nature, or do they reflect an intentional contrast against the pre-modern portrayal of spiritual ideals and, later, through the influence of the classics, the rediscovered importance and beauty of the human body?
The essays contained in this volume address these questions, albeit not always directly but, rather, through an analysis of the societal reactions to the threats and challenges that essentially unopposed disease and physical impairment presented. They cover a wide range of responses, variable, of course, according to the period under scrutiny, its technological moment, and the usually fruitless attempts at treatment.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction and Epidemiological Perspective
Rinaldo F. Canalis and Massimo Ciavolella
Part I. Medieval and Transitional Periods
The Art of Medicine in Byzantium: Disease and Disability in Byzantine Manuscripts
Alain Touwaide
Miracle and the Monstrous: Disability and Deviant Bodies in the Late Middle Ages
Jenni Kuuliala.
Leprosy, Melancholy, Folly and their Representations in French Medieval Literature
Gaia Gubini
Malady in Literary Texts from the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. Some Hypotheses on a Paradoxical Constellation
Joachim Küpper
Fevers, Botches and Carbuncles: Describing the Plague in Late Medieval and Early Modern Medical Treatises
Lori Jones
Part II. The Early Modern Period
The Role of Architecture and the Decorative Arts in Renaissance Medicine
Francis Wells
Art in Disease and Disease in Art: Reflections on Two Early Modern Paradigmatic Examples
Manuela Gallerani.
The Mal Franzoso: Between Art, History and Literature: Paracelso and Della Porta
Alfonso Paolella
The Ailing Artist
Roberto Fedi
Nicolas Poussin`s The Plague at Ashdod and the French Disease
Efrain Kristal
‘Yet have I in me something dangerous’: On the Interplay of Medicine and Maleficence in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Sara Frances Burdorff
Textures of Lesions – Textures of Prints
Domenico Bertoloni Meli
Index
