Hurt Feelings

Wounding Oneself in Early Modern Literature
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-3-032-04564-5
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 246 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 451 g

Reihe: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine

This open access book offers the first full study of the phenomenon of self-wounding as it is represented in early modern literature. It looks at depictions of self-injury in ballads, plays, medical texts and histories from the 1580s to the turn of the eighteenth century. In this period, it argues, self-injury was not necessarily viewed as indicative of psychological distress, as it is in modern discourses of ‘self-harm’. Rather, self-wounding might work as a form of protest, a persuasive tactic, a means of self-regulation or an assertion of agency over one’s own body. This book blends traditional literary studies methodologies with insights from sociology, emotion studies, cognitive psychology and practice-led research to shed new light on early modern ideas about rhetoric, authenticity, emotion, and the relationship between body and identity. The book also confronts the difficulties of examining such ‘topical’ phenomena. Can the anachronism of comparisons between modern and historical self-injury be made productive, rather than reductive? What does it mean to talk about ‘self-injury’ in a period which did not have a distinct word for these practices? In so doing, it suggests new directions for literary-historical studies of the body and its practices, arguing that in such cases, we should seek not to familiarise the past but to defamiliarize the present.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Skuse, Alanna

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Kognitionspsychologie Emotion, Motivation, Handlung
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1 Introduction.- 2. Persuasion: Self-Wounding as 'strong proof' in  and 3. Protest: Autoglossotomy and Biopolitics in  4. Violent Lament in  and Various Plays and Poems by Shakespeare.- 5. Self-Wounding in Medical and Historical Texts.- 6. Self-Determination and Self-Annihilation.- 7. Early Modern Narratives and the Present Day.

Über Autor(innen)

Alanna Skuse is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Reading, UK. She is the author of two monographs, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and (CUP, 2021), as well as articles on various aspects of early modern embodiment. She also leads public history projects and writes for the popular history press, including her debut trade book (OneWorld, 2025).