Questioning Bodies in Shakespeare's Rome, Interfacing Science, Literature, and the Humanities /ACUME 2

Ancient Rome has always been considered a compendium of City and World. In the Renaissance, an era of epistemic fractures, when the clash between the 'new science' (Copernicus, Galileo, Vesalius, Bacon, etcetera) and the authority of ancient texts produced the very notion of modernity, the extended and expanding geography of ancient Rome becomes, for Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, a privileged arena in which to question the nature of bodies and the place they hold in a changing order of the universe. Drawing on the rich scenario provided by Shakespeare's Rome, and adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, the authors of this volume address the way in which the different bodies of the earthly and heavenly spheres are re-mapped in Shakespeare's time and in early modern European culture. More precisely, they investigate the way bodies are fashioned to suit or deconstruct a culturally articulated system of analogies between earth and heaven, microcosm and macrocosm. As a whole, this collection brings to the fore a wide range of issues connected to the Renaissance re-mapping of the world and the human. It should interest not only Shakespeare scholars but all those working on the interaction between sciences and humanities.Table of contents: List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Maria Del Sapio Garbero, Introduction: Shakespeare’s Rome and Renaissance Anthropographie’ Maddalena Pennacchia, A Map of the Essays Part I Human Bodies Maria Del Sapio Garbero, Anatomy, Knowledge, and Conspiracy : in Shakespeare’s Arena with the Words of Cassius Claudia Corti, The Iconic Body : Coriolanus and Renaissance Corporeality Maurizio Calbi, States of Exception: Auto-immunity and the Body Politic in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus Ute Berns, Performing Anatomy in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Mariangela Tempera, Titus Andronicus: Staging the Mutilated Roman Body Antonella Piazza, Volumnia, the Roman Patroness Iolanda Plescia, “From me was Posthumus ript”: Cymbeline and the Extraordinary Birth Barbara Antonucci, Blood in Language: the Galenic Paradigm of Humours in The Rape of Lucrece and Titus Andronicus Paola Faini, Cleopatra’s Corporeal Language Simona Corso, What Calphurnia knew. Julius Caesar and the Language of Dreams Viola Papetti, Under the sign of Ovid. Motion and Instance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream Michele Marrapodi, Mens sana in corpore sano: the Rhetoric of the Body in Shakespeare’sRoman and Late Plays Alessandro Serpieri, Body and History in the Political Rhetoric of Julius Caesar Part II Earthly and Heavenly Bodies Manfred Pfister, “Rome and her rats”: Coriolanus and the Early Modern Crisis of Distinction between Man, Beast and Monster John Gillies, “Mighty Space”: the Ordinate and Exorbitant in two Shakespeare Plays Gilberta Golinelli, Floating Borders: (Dis)-locating Otherness in the Female Body, and the Question of Miscegenation in Titus Andronicus Andrea Bellelli, Where do diseases come from? Reflections on Shakespeare’s “contagion of the south” Giovanni Antonini and Gloria Grazia Rosa, Shakespeare and Mandragora Maddalena Pennacchia, The Stones of Rome. Early Earth Sciences in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus Gilberto Sacerdoti, Spontaneous Generation and New Astronomy in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra Nancy Isenberg, Dancing with the Stars in Antony and Cleopatra Nancy Isenberg, Afterword: “A Space for Farther Travel