Medieval Bodies
Life, death and art in the Middle Ages
Medieval Bodies
Life, death and art in the Middle Ages
Sorry, this item is out of print.
Hardcover
£25.00
Publisher: Wellcome Collection/Profile
ISBN: 9781781256794
Number of Pages: 352
Published: 29/03/2018
Width: 16.5 cm
Height: 24 cm
In Medieval Bodies, art historian Jack Hartnell uncovers the complex and fascinating ways in which the people of the Middle Ages thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves. In paintings and reliquaries that celebrated the - sometimes bizarre - martyrdoms of saints, the sacred dimension of the physical left its mark on their environment. In literature and politics, hearts and heads became powerful metaphors that shaped governance and society in ways that are still visible today. And doctors and natural philosophers were at the centre of a collision between centuries of sophisticated medical knowledge, and an ignorance of physiology as profound as its results were gruesome.
A brilliant book ... beautifully illustrated ... A triumphant piece of historical writing -- Kathryn Hughes * Mail on Sunday * An extraordinary story and a wonderfully rich study of the Middle Ages ... Hartnell's idea of approaching the medieval worldview through the body is inspired ... This beautifully illustrated book succeeds brilliantly in bringing this much maligned period to life ... A triumph of scholarship. -- PD Smith * Guardian * One of the achievements of this splendid book is to make our world view seem more narrow and fragmented than that of the extensive period we place somewhere between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance ... at every point you'll encounter wit, learning and riveting stories. A wonderful read. -- Melanie McDonagh * Evening Standard * An erudite, wide-ranging, thoughtfully illustrated book -- Laura Freeman * Times * An ambitiously interdisciplinary study ... extravagantly illustrated ... full of lively information -- Dr G. R. Evans * Church Times * A dazzling tour through physiognomy and across time, medieval bodies are a route into understanding a richly imaginative and curious age ... is capacious and entertaining ... marvellously detailed ... Medieval Bodies lets its readers see through medieval eyes. Guided by Hartnell's expertise, we gaze upon a long-ago world. -- Rachel Moss * Times Higher * Medieval Bodies will make you smile and squirm in equal measure... This is a book about the body, but in some ways it is an exploration of the recesses of the medieval mind. -- Mary Wellesley * TLS * A thick, spicy plum pudding of a book * London Review of Books * A Sunday Times History Book of the Year 2018 * Sunday Times * Elegantly combining strands from the histories of medicine, art, and religion, this study explores how the medieval world understood and treated the human body * New Yorker *
