Violating the Body of the Law: Cannibalism in Jacobean Political Discourse

Cannibalism remains one of society’s last taboos. Historiographical trends tend to focus on how cannibalism in the early modern period signified the supreme case of otherness projected upon a community, used by Europeans to justify budding imperialistic aspirations after the discovery of America. However, depictions of Europeans eating one another introduce a different dimension. Whereas scholarship generally considers acts of cannibalism performed by individuals and groups on the fringes of society, this article examines the cannibal metaphor that infused a variety of discourses at the heart of Jacobean political debate. It suggests that far from emphasising cultural superiority, authors including James I used cannibalism to address current anxieties, framing the violence seen to characterise cannibal behaviour as consciously subversive acts that threatened to destabilise the body politic