Early Modern Bodies is a wide-ranging and detailed introduction to a variety of different approaches to and perspectives on bodies in the early modern period, circa 1500–1750. The collection guides readers through an examination of bodies at every stage of life, from birth to death and the afterlife, as they are situated in different social, cultural, and geographical contexts. It considers the bodies of numerous potential identities, such as criminals, prostitutes, witches, soldiers, and non-conforming sexualities.

Though its focus is primarily Western Europe, the volume also pays attention to the wider world, especially with respect to developing ideas about race and ‘other’ bodies in what has been dubbed an ‘age of exploration’. Chapters are also dedicated to analysing what it was to be human, how humankind was considered in relation to the natural world, and how those adhering to non-Christian faiths were thought about. This book is an accessible, essential text for students and established scholars alike who are interested in the history of the body, early modern history, and gender and sexuality.

Contents

Introduction: Early Modern Bodies – Approaches and Contexts – Sarah Toulalan

I. Introduction: Bodies and the Stages of Life – Sarah Toulalan

1. Birth, Infancy, and Childhood – Hannah Newton

2. The Perils and Promise of Puberty – Jennifer Evans and Victoria Sparey

3. Adulthood: Marriage, Reproduction, and Family – Elizabeth Foyster

4. Adulthood: Single Lives – Tim Reinke-Williams

5. Old Age – Amie Bolissian

6. Death – Philip Schwyzer

II. Introduction: Environments – Sarah Toulalan

7. Humankind and the Natural Environment – Sara Miglietti

8. The Court – Jonathan Dewald

9. The City – Jane Stevens Crawshaw

10. Country Bodies, or Peeking into The Tax Collector’s Office – Amanda L. Capern

11. Distant Bodies: Depicting Europeans in Early Modern China – Yutong Li and He Bian

III. Introduction: Contexts – Sarah Toulalan

12. Confusions and Conflations: Sex, Gender, and Changing Notions of the Body – Katherine B. Crawford

13. Social Rank: Plain Russet Coated Captains – The Social Semiotics of Rural Workers’ Clothing, c.1500–1700 – Andrew Wood

14. Race: The Early Modern English Case – Mark S. Dawson

15. Religion – Anna French

16. Politics – Benjamin Steiner

17. Medicine – Alanna Skuse

IV. Introduction: Identities – Sarah Toulalan

18. Humans – Andrew Wells

19. Non-Christian ‘Others’ – Jacob Selwood

20. Criminals – Marianna Muravyeva

21. Prostitutes: Identifying the Whore – Kathryn Norberg        

22. Witches – Jan Machielsen

23. Rogues and Vagabonds – David Hitchcock

24. Soldiers and Women Warriors – Julia Osman

25. Sodomites and Mollies – David L. Orvis

26. Sapphists and Tribades – Fernanda Molina, translated by Nick Rider

Source: https://www.routledge.com/Early-Modern-Bodies/Toulalan/p/book/9780815347545