Touch, Hands, Kiss, Skin: Tactility in Early Modern Europe
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TOUCH, HANDS, KISS, SKIN: TACTILITY IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE Pablo Maurette A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2013 Approved by: Jessica Wolfe Reid Barbour Eric Downing Mary Floyd-Wilson Brendan Boyle © 2013 Pablo Maurette ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT PABLO MAURETTE: Touch, Hands, Kiss, Skin: Tactility in Early Modern Europe (Under the direction of Jessica Wolfe) The revaluation of the sense of touch is one of the most revealing intellectual phenomena of the early modern period. After over a millennium of neglect, accorded the last place in the hierarchy of the senses, touch acquires substantive epistemological, aesthetic, ontological, and moral prevalence in early modern discourse. It does so, I argue, to the extent that it becomes one of the foundations of a new cultural paradigm. Whereas the history of the “lower sensorium” has been the object of close attention lately, what has not yet received proper scrutiny are the negotiations between early modern authors and their classical sources that initiated such radical changes in the intellectual mindset of the period. It is only through a comprehensive study of the vindication of touch that we can understand the shift from authority to experience, the new conception of the human body and its place in the universe, and the aesthetic sensibilities that make this period exceptional in its provocative amalgam of literature, philosophy, science and religion. iii To the memory of my grandmother, Rosalía Fernández de Signorini (1913-2003) iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I feel tempted to make sense of the circumstances that brought me to UNC in the fall of 2007 – a convenient succession of opportunities and coincidences – by regarding them as a happy instance of the atomic swerve. Whatever it was, I can say that I came to the right place. During that first semester I met Jessica Wolfe, and immediately decided I wanted to extend my stay – originally meant to last one academic year – and work with her. Her intelligence, her generosity, and her erudition have contributed to making this a truly transforming experience for me. Soon after, I met Reid Barbour, whose passion and dedication inspire me, and will continue to inspire me as long as I am a scholar and a teacher. Working with Wolfe and Barbour has been an absolute privilege and to them I extend my most heartfelt gratitude. No less fortunate I feel for having met and studied under Eric Downing, a fantastic teacher and a wonderful writer with whom I share more than one interest, and whose support and insightful feedback has guided me along the winding road of the dissertation. I must also thank the people who believed in my potential as a teacher. Some of them are Marsha Collins, Inger Brodey, Jane Danielwicz, and Gregory Flaxman, as well as Glynis Cowell and William Maisch in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. I thank Mary-Floyd Wilson and the whole of the Department of English and Comparative Literature for their constant support and encouragement. I cannot thank enough William Race and Brendan Boyle, who have helped me stay in tune with the Classics, and who have been so helpful and supportive of my early modern dabbling in their own turf. I should also thanks MEMS for three generous grants that allowed me to conduct research and present it in the US, England, and France. And, last but not least, v my gratitude goes to Michael Silk and Rosa Mucignat at King’s College London, for allowing me to share my research with them and with their students. Down in Buenos Aires, I would like to thank my mother and father who raised me in a sea of books, music, and films making me the person that I am today, for better or for worse. Their unconditional support, encouragement, and love have been the most important ingredients in this as in all other aspects of my life. As for my late grandmother, to whom I dedicate this dissertation, I consider her responsible for it since it was in her house and under her loving care that I became a scholar. Finally, I thank Erin Lodeesen. Throughout these past two years she has challenged me to think harder, to write better, and to be truer. Her love and her support were main protagonists in the writing of this dissertation. But they must be much more than that, for when I think of touch I first and foremost think of her. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..2 Chapter One: Touch……………………………………………………………………...31 Tactus…………………………………………………………………………….34 Touch as Sense and the Sense of Touch………………………………………….47 De rerum textura…………………………………………………………………58 The Seeds of Lucretius…………………………………………………………...66 Chapter Two: Hands……………………………………………………………………..87 Hands that Cut…………………………………………………………………...88 Hands that Think………………………………………………………………..109 Hands that Heal………………………………………………………………...124 Chapter Three: Kiss…………………………………………………………………….143 Basia……………………………………………………………………………146 Diotima versus the Androgyne………………………………………………….166 A Natural History of the Kiss…………………………………………………...184 Chapter Four: Skin……………………………………………………………………...197 Pox……………………………………………………………………………...200 Before Skin……………………………………………………………………...216 Quincunx………………………………………………………………………..230 Bibliography and Works Consulted…………………………………………………….253 vii I suppose touching something confirms its presence. Its presence to us, but also our presence to it. Gabriel Josipovici, Touch1 1 Josipovici 59 INTRODUCTION In Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts, Viennese art historian Aloïs Riegl makes a powerful case for tactility, as he establishes that “the sense of touch alone offers unmediated confirmation”2 of the fact that all existing things extend themselves in three dimensions. In other words: only touch gives us reality as it really is. Sight, on the other hand, deceives us by merely showing us two dimensions. Riegl then juxtaposes haptic cultures that tend to produce artifacts meant to be appreciated by their textures, from a closer range, to visual cultures, that privilege a more distant vantage point, and thus the effect of bidimensionality. Dated as Riegl’s art historiography might sound to us, it is fair to say that in the past ten to fifteen years the interest on tactility has grown immensely, deserving it a privileged position as object of attention. Some of the most compelling examples of this are the ever-improving touch screen technologies,3 a growing trend of museum exhibits catered to tactility,4 a progressively more mainstream obsession with 2 Riegl 187 3 As I write this introduction Tactus Technology, in California, and Senseg, a Finnish firm, are elaborating new touch screens that produce feedback to the sense of touch, instead of to the sight: An actual haptic interface between screen and user. 4 In the summer of 2012 the Caravaggio exhibit at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier (France) included a tactile version of “Le Nouveau Née” (1648) a work by French caravaggista Georges De La Tour. It consisted of a plastic relief of the scene and a caption in Braille. This responds to an ever-growing trend to include touch, as well as smell and hearing, into the experience of art appreciation that started around the late nineties (Jütte 1). Recently, Lisa J. Murphy, a photographer who specializes in tactile images, conceived Tactile Mind, an erotic book for the blind. It is a “handmade thermoform book consisting of 17, 3-D tactile photographs on white thermoform plastic pages with the visual image and descriptive Braille accompaniment.” (www.tactilemindbook.com) Who knows if she got the idea from Woody Allen’s old joke in Bananas (1971): “I once stole a pornographic book that was printed in Braille. I used to rub the dirty parts”. skin,5 and, last but not least, a remarkable surge in the number of publications dedicated to the matter.6 As intellectual historians, historians of science, art and literary critics make their contributions to the topic early modern scholars seem to be among the most prolific ones. The past decade and a half has produced an incredible amount of new studies on the body and the role of the “lower senses,” especially touch, in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.7 These studies have focused on aspects of human culture as 5 Tattoos and plastic surgery grow more popular by the day, as made evident by the success of reality television shows like L.A. Ink, Ink Master, and Extreme Makeover. In the artistic sphere, a conspicuous example is Ella Clocksin, a British artist who experiments with visual and tactile perception, uses drawing, mark-making, texture, light and shadow, performative action and digital media to create works such as Touch Together, “a fabric that looks like skin but it is plastic, nylon and polyester thread.” According to Clocksin, “skin’s tactile intelligence provides a highly sensitive interface for non-verbal communication” (Bacci-Melcher, 3). Anish Kapoor, one of the most important contemporary sculptors, considers tactility, and the synesthetic effect of sight and touch, the main inspiration for most of his monumental creations. Finally, H]uman Leather Products, a company based in the UK offers a line of products made of human skin provided by voluntary donors. A wallet can cost up to $14,000, a belt, $16,000, and a pair of shoes $27,000. 6 Some examples are Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Kathryn E. Barnard and T. Berry Brazelton’s Touch: The Foundation of Experience (1990), Helen E. Ross and David J. Murray’s new edition and translation of E.H. Weber’s classic On the Tactile Senses (1997), Gabriel Josipovici’s Touch (1998), Yvette Hatwell, Arlette Streri and Edouard Gentaz’s collection of essays Touching for Knowing: Cognitive Psychology of Haptic Manual Perception (2000), Claudia Benthien’s Skin: On the Cultural Border Between Self and the World (2002), Steven Connor’s The Book of Skin (2004), Constance Classen’s The Book of Touch (2005), Robert Jütte’s A History of the Senses (2005), David Howe’s selection of essays on the history of the senses Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader (2005), Nina G.