The Hurt(ful) Body: Performing and Beholding Pain, 1600-1800

Tomas Macsotay, Cornelis van der Haven, Karel Vanhaesebrouck

Manchester University Press, Aug 15, 2017 - Art - 368 pages

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 to 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.

About the author

Tomas Macsotay is Research Lecturer in Art History at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona Cornelis van der Haven is Lecturer in Dutch Literature at Ghent University Karel Vanhaesebrouck is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the Université Libre de Bruxelles

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Hurt(ful) Body: Performing and Beholding Pain, 1600-1800
• Editors: Tomas Macsotay, Cornelis van der Haven, Karel Vanhaesebrouck
• Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2017
• ISBN: 152611352X, 9781526113528
• Length: 368 pages
• Subjects: Art / Performance; History / Europe / General; History / Social History