• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Fabricating the Martial Body: Anatomy, Affect, and Armor in Early Modern England and Italy A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Amanda Dawn Taylor IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dr. John Watkins and Dr. Shirley Nelson Garner, co-advisers May 2017 © Amanda Dawn Taylor 2017 i Acknowledgements The roots of this dissertation run deep, all the way back to when 11-year-old me found a series of books in the middle school library by Tamora Pierce. The Song of the Lioness quartet tells the story of a girl named Alanna who disguises herself as a boy to go to the palace and train to become a knight. She lives in a faux-medieval world, and I link my research interests and time period specialization to my juvenile fascination with her and her world. When I met Alanna’s sisters Britomart, Bradamante, Marfisa, and Clorinda in the pages of late medieval and early modern romances, it felt like going home. In college I had two mentors who helped me begin to build an expertise in late medieval and early modern British literature and history, Jeff Morris and Ron Stottlemyer. I thank them for helping lay the foundation for my research projects. Thanks also to my MA adviser Richard Strier who helped me think more creatively and nuanced about early modern poetry and culture. Here at the University of Minnesota, I have been fortunate to have a veritable army of supporters. John Watkins and Shirley Garner have been my co-advisers, and they have both significantly influenced the development of my project and myself as a scholar. Thanks to John I learned Italian and got to spend a significant chunk of my six years in Italy. There is no way to repay that kind of gift. Richard Graff’s nurturing of my interest in rhetoric, combat, and the passions has been essential. Becky Krug has read so many versions of this dissertation and my article projects that I am constantly astounded by how generous she is with her time, feedback, and attention. She has been a constant source of encouragement over the last six years, and my emotional health and the ii completion of the dissertation owe much to her. Jole Shackelford was my Interdisciplinary Fellowship mentor, and while he is not officially on my committee, he has carefully read the entire project and I will be forever grateful for the profound impact he had on the formation of the dissertation. The research centers and workshops have fostered my work and provided opportunities for me to present and develop my work based on feedback from the vibrant community of scholars at the University of Minnesota. The Center for Early Modern History served as my sponsor for my IDF year. I want to thank CEMH and JB Shank in particular for providing opportunities to present as well as financial support in terms of research grants to supplement the IDF and two Union Pacific grants that funded archival research. The consortium relationship between CEMH and the Newberry Library in Chicago provided a grant that enabled me to participate in a seminar on the history of emotions with Barbara Rosenwein. I am grateful for that opportunity not only because it helped me think through methodology in the early stages of the project, but also because it gave me the opportunity to work with Barbara, whose support for my project and me has been unflagging. The Consortium for the Study of the Premodern World, the Center for Medieval Studies, Ye Olde Workshoppe, the Medieval and Early Modern Research Group, and the English department’s medieval and early modern workshop run by Becky Krug have all supported my work as well. I thank all the graduate students and professors who have listened to presentations or read parts of this dissertation and gave incredibly useful and constructive criticism. I also want to thank the Graduate School for generous support of my dissertation in the form of the IDF, a Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, and iii a Thesis Research Grant. I would have been unable to complete this project without that funding. The Center for German and European Studies awarded me a Hella Mears Fellowship that helped fund archival work and provided summer support. Thank you also to the English department who provided summer funding to aid in the completion of this dissertation. Finally, thank you to the Literacy and Rhetorical Studies minor that provided a summer fellowship, conference travel funding, and several opportunities to present my work. I have presented parts of this dissertation at the International Medieval Congress and a conference on armor and masculinity at the Musée de l’Armée in Paris, and I want to thank the audiences for their questions and suggestions. To complete this project, I did research at several museums and libraries. First and foremost, thank you to Lois Hendrickson, curator of the Wangensteen Bio-Medical Library here at the University of Minnesota. She helped me learn how to do archival research, and she constantly kept an eye out for materials that would be useful. My first chapter especially owes a lot to her. I also want to thank Jeffrey Forgeng, curator for the Higgins collections of arms and armor at the Worcester Art Museum. I will forever appreciate his patience with me during my first research trip working with armor. Karen Watts and other staff at the Royal Armouries in Leeds and Donald LaRocca at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City were similarly generous with their time and helping me conduct research on armor and fencing texts. I also want to thank the staff at the Wallace Museum in London, the University of Bologna library, and the Este library in Modena who helped me conduct research. Visits to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Bargello and Stibbert iv Museum in Florence, the Musée de l’Armée in Paris, the Tower of London, Palazzo Ducale in Venice, Philadelphia Art Museum, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts all helped my research, and I thank the public commitment to art and history that these museums represent. To my friends and family. Thank you to my cohort: Michael, Laura, Bomi, Kate, Leslie, David, Kristin, and Anna. Whether we were together for only a year or through this whole six years, I appreciate the time we spent together. I know you all are doing and will continue to do great things. To my fellow medievalists and early modernists in the department, especially Ben, Katie R., Caitlin, Katie S., Jeff, Asa, Marc, Amy, Katie M., and Emily (who isn’t in the department but has always made me feel welcome in History of Medicine), it’s been an honor getting to know you and learn about your work. I consider myself lucky to call you all friends. My brother, Steve, has always had my back, and few things make me happier than knowing that he is proud of me. Thanks for being the best big brother a sister could ask for. Thank you also to my sister-in-law, Nina, and to my nieces and nephews for their love and support: Preston, Jared, Amiah, Marina, Sierra, and Asia. Harriet, my mother-in-law, has been one of my biggest fans, and I can never thank her enough for her ongoing support of my work and me. Lastly, my husband, Geno, and my dogs, Sidney and Lily, have been my rock over the last six years. Most of the research and writing of this dissertation was done with Sidney snuggled next to me or precariously perched on my lap in the midst of books and a laptop. When things were tough, the unconditional love of Sidney and Lily always helped me feel better, and they are always happy to remind me that simple things like walks and treats can improve any v day. Geno, there aren’t words to express the depth of my gratitude and love for you. You are my Artegall, my Ruggiero, and I look forward to facing whatever the future holds with you at my side. vi Abstract This project investigates the physical nature of what I call the martial body—most prominently represented as the armored knight—in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English and Italian culture. Earlier studies assume that there is an innate link between elite masculinity, combat, and armor during this period. In contrast, I identify the martial body as a means by which some women and lower status men could occupy positions, express opinions, and exert influence in ways traditionally limited to the masculine martial elite. Marginalized individuals and groups used the trope of the martial body to justify rhetoric and actions that transgressed codes enforced by the hierarchical and patriarchal social structure. Incorporating methodologies from the history of medicine and warfare that derive from work with medical texts and the study of material objects like armor, my dissertation traces the construction of the martial body and its uses as physical construct and rhetorical trope in the Italian epic romances Orlando innamorato by Matteo Boiardo, Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, and Gerusalemme liberata by Torquato Tasso and the English Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. The literary sources are complemented by inclusion of English and Italian anatomical and surgical texts, fencing treatises, and armor. Because of transmission patterns from Italy to England for medical knowledge, armor design, fencing technique, and literary genre, an attempt to study the martial body in England presupposes inclusion of Italian materials. The dissertation is structured so as to define the martial body moving progressively outward, so it begins by asking what the body is made of and then moves to an examination of the body’s surface before turning to the chief marker of the martial vii body, armor, and ends with a consideration of the martial body in combat.

Load more

  370

Copy Link