Sacrifice and Sense in the Early Modern Anatomical

225 Pages·2014·3.84 MB·English

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
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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
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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

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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

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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.
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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.
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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
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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, performative human dissection, including medieval displays of saintly relics and
incorruptible bodies (Chapter 1), the sacrificial rites of the early modern anatomical theatres and
their relationship to the drama of the period (Chapter 2), a seventeenth century farce condemning
the growing lust of the era’s anatomists (Chapter 3), nineteenth century monstrous bodies
displayed and dissected to validate normal human bodies (Chapter 4), and, finally, twenty-first
century exhibitions of plastinated corpses and the public autopsies of Gunther von Hagens
(Chapter 5). This dissertation argues that an audience’s encounter with the opened corpse always
poses a particular threat to the integrity of both psychic and somatic boundaries—an aspect of
the anatomical ritual that medico-scientific discourse seeks to repress. In these moments of social
crisis, the anatomical theatre plays a critical role in conceptualizing, and immortalizing, the
nature of death for a given community.
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