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UC Irvine UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Performative Corpse: Anatomy Theatres from the Medieval Era to the Virtual Age Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9th868k6 Author Keating, Kristin Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE The Performative Corpse: Anatomy Theatres from the Medieval Era to the Virtual Age DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Drama and Theatre by Kristin Michelle Keating Dissertation Committee: Professor Anthony Kubiak, Chair Professor Stephen Barker Professor Emily Roxworthy Professor Bryan Reynolds Professor Lyle Massey 2014 © 2014 Kristin Michelle Keating DEDICATION To my mother whose tireless determination in the face of life’s obstacles exemplifies the strength and endurance of the human body, spirit, and mind ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................. v CURRICULUM VITAE ................................................................................................................ vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ..................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: The Incorrupt and the Corrupt: Consecrating the Performative Corpse ................ 20 CHAPTER 2: Reading the Entrails: Sacrifice and Sense in the Early Modern Anatomical ........ 52 Theatres CHAPTER 3: “They Carry Our Bodies Away”: Presenting Anatomical Lust and the Absent .... 94 Corpse in Edward Ravenscroft's The Anatomist CHAPTER 4: Necro-women: The Monstrous Performative Corpse in Nineteenth Century ..... 120 Freak Shows CHAPTER 5: Opening the Performative Posthuman Corpse: Body Worlds and ...................... 151 Twenty-First Century Anatomical Theatre CONCLUSION: “Death Has Always Been With Me”: The Future of the Performative ........... 184 Corpse BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 192 iii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1 The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt (1631) ............................. 19 Figure 2 Variation on the “Three Living and the Three Dead” (fifteenth century) .................. 49 Figure 3 La Danse Macabre by Guy Marchant (1486): The Pilgrim and the Shepherd .......... 50 Figure 4 The incorruptible body of St. Zita .............................................................................. 51 Figure 5 The incorruptible body of St. John Vianney .............................................................. 51 Figure 6 The frontispiece of De humani corporis fabrica by Andreas Vesalius (1543) .......... 87 Figure 7 Author portrait of Andreas Vesalius from De humani corporis fabrica (1543) ....... 88 Figure 8 Dissected human body from De humani corporis fabrica (1543) ............................. 89 Figure 9 Anatomia del corpo humano by Juan Valverde de Amusco (1559) ........................... 90 Figure 10 Image of torso muscles from Anatomia Carpi by Berengario da Carpi (1535) ......... 91 Figure 11 Frontispiece from John Banister's Anatomical Tables (c. 1580) ................................ 92 Figure 12 The anatomical theatre at Leiden, etching by Jan Cornelis Woudanus ...................... 93 Figure 13 Thomas Rowlandson's The Anatomist (1811) .......................................................... 118 Figure 14 The Fourth Stage of Cruelty, William Hogarth's The Reward of Cruelty (1751) .... 119 Figure 15 “Love and Beauty - Sartjee the Hottentot Venus," by Charles Williams (1822) ..... 148 Figure 16 “Les Curieux en extase, ou les cordons de souliers” (c. 1815) ................................ 149 Figure 17 Copy of a nineteenth century lithograph of Julia Pastrana by Vinzenz Katzler ....... 150 Figure 18 The "Skin Man” from Body Worlds ......................................................................... 181 Figure 19 The "Flamenco Female" from Body Worlds ............................................................ 182 Figure 20 Visitors observe a Body Worlds Exhibit .................................................................. 183 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest and sincerest appreciation to my committee chair and advisor, Professor Anthony Kubiak, whose immense wisdom and expert guidance not only helped me fully envision this project, but also inspired me to expand my perspective on the world and push my ideas beyond their natural limits. I would also like to humbly thank each of my committee members, Professor Stephen Barker, Professor Emily Roxworthy, Professor Bryan Reynolds, and Professor Lyle Massey for helping me bring this project to fruition with their sage advice and gracious dedication of time and energy. I would like to thank my doctoral student colleagues and all of the faculty in the Drama and Theatre Departments at the University of California, Irvine and the University of California, San Diego who have given me the most supportive and inspiring community I could have asked for. I would also like to thank my MA advisor, Professor Patrick Tuite in the Drama Department at the Catholic University of America, and my mentor in life, Dr. Kathleen O’Connor, both of whom encouraged my pursuit of a doctoral degree. I would also like to express my gratitude to my mother, Rosemarie Keating, and my brothers, Colin and Jason, as well as my close friends, without whose love, interest, and reassurance this dissertation would not have been possible. In particular, I would like to thank Tony Fracchia for the insights that helped spark this project and the endless support that gave me the strength to see it through, as well as the entire Fracchia family for their enthusiasm and encouragement. I would like to thank The British Museum, The University of Glasgow Library, and The Institute for Plastination for permission to include their images in this dissertation. I would like to also express my appreciation to the University of California, Irvine Drama Department and the Claire Trevor School of the Arts for financial support in my doctoral studies and the University of California, Irvine Chancellor’s Club for providing fellowship support for my dissertation. v CURRICULUM VITAE Kristin Michelle Keating 2001 Banneker/Key Full Academic Scholarship, University of Maryland, College Park 2005 B.A. in English Literature, University of Maryland, College Park 2005 B.A. in Secondary Education-English, University of Maryland, College Park 2007 School of Arts and Sciences Academic Scholarship, The Catholic University of America 2008-09 Teaching Assistant, Department of Drama, The Catholic University of America 2009 M.A. in Theatre History, Criticism, and Dramaturgy, The Catholic University of America 2009 Claire Trevor School of the Arts Fellowship, University of California, Irvine 2010-14 Teaching Assistant, Drama Department, University of California, Irvine 2012-13 University Pedagogical Fellow, University of California, Irvine 2014 Chancellor’s Club Fellowship, University of California, Irvine 2014 Ph.D. in Drama and Theatre, University of California, Irvine FIELDS OF STUDY Anatomical Theatres, Body in Performance, Performance in Digital Culture PUBLICATIONS Keating, Kristin and Bryan Reynolds. “A World of (No) Wonder, or No Wonder-wounded Hearers Here: Toward Theory on the Vanishing Mediation of ‘No Wonder’ in Shakespeare’s Theater.” Wonder in Shakespeare. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Performative Corpse: Anatomy Theatres from the Medieval Era to the Virtual Age By Kristin Michelle Keating Doctor of Philosophy in Drama and Theatre University of California, Irvine, 2014 Professor Anthony Kubiak, Chair The Performative Corpse: Anatomy Theatres from the Medieval Era to the Virtual Age examines the various ways in which the human corpse has been displayed, dissected, and consumed by and for a public audience. To date, performative moments of human dissection have received little scholarly attention beyond work done on the anatomical theatres of the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, in which criminal or unclaimed bodies were dissected for the edification of the academic community and the general public. Traditionally, the events of the anatomical theatre have been framed in Foucaudian terms: developing a hierarchical relationship of power between medico-judicial authority and the dissected body, which is objectified and commoditized. While this dissertation does not take issue with this line of analysis, it aims to open up other dimensions of the anatomy theatre by broadening its scope. It argues that, when placed in a privileged position on a theatrical stage, the dissected body becomes a “performative corpse.” In this theatrical space of transubstantiation, confronting death always turns into constructing death; in its dismemberment, the performative corpse reveals the vii ways in which Western societies, in moments of ontological crisis, have fictionalized death to avoid its dreaded unknowability. This dissertation interrogates several historical moments of public,