Healing, Performance and Ceremony in the Writings of Three Early Modern Physicians: Hippolytus Guarinonius and the Brothers Felix and Thomas Platter

ISBN-13: 9781138254114 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 466 str.

M. A. Katritzky

Opis

Exploring the interfaces between healing and performance in early modern Europe, this study focuses on three physicians, the Swiss Platter brothers and their Austrian colleague Guarinonius. Providing the first English language assessment of their substantial theatrical writings, the volume contextualizes these within an overview of the three physicians' medical practice, careers and publications, and of the role of performance in the early modern healthcare economy. Substantial translations of key passages from these physicians' writings, are considered in the light of a wide selection of early modern images and texts relating to healers and performers, many previously disregarded in this context. This allows the volume to locate these theatrical writings in their rightful place in the mainstream of medical and theatre history, thus broadening our knowledge of the interface between healing and performance.

Recenzje

'Katritzky’s great care in curating this wealth of material make this book a well-organized trove of useful data for any scholar of early modern history and culture.' Renaissance Quarterly '... Healing, Perfor­mance and Ceremony offers an inventive and insightful synthesis of medical and theatre history that will undoubtedly be of great interest to generalists and specialists alike. [Katritzky’s] engaging and highly detailed assessments of the socio-religious dimensions of physicians’ career ambitions and interactions with the prevailing culture of performance, moreover, opens an important new window into the shaping of early modern medical identities that has long been overlooked by scholars of medical history.' The Seventeenth-Century News 'The book convincingly argues that the intertwinement of medicine, performance, and festivity is a fertile field of study that has the potential to act as a bridge between the burgeoning literature on theatre studies and the history of medicine. Katritzky demonstrates that original findings are to be made by focusing on the crossover between the two disciplines. Certainly, Healing, Performance and Ceremony will introduce many readers to the three physicians for the first time but it will do so in a way that makes a compelling case for their relevance to a wide readership.' Journal of the Northern Renaissance '... provides valuable insights into the flexible boundaries between performance and healing in the early modern period. Katrizky's deft analyses of the writings of the three physicians significantly inform our understanding of the intersections between early modern theatrical and medical culture. She firmly establishes the invaluable contribution of life and travel writing to the history of theatre. Above all, Katrizky explores a neglected area of medical history with her thorough and engaging investigation of the way physicians interacted with the prevailing theatrical culture.' Parergon

Spis treści

Contents: Part I Introduction: Healing performance and ceremony in the writings of three physicians; The brothers Felix Platter (1536-1614) and Thomas Platter (1574-1628); Hippolytus Guarinonius (1571-1654). Part II Ceremony and Festival: 'Christian fools with varnish'd faces'; Jewish traditions and ceremonies in Montpellier and Avignon; Physicians at court festivals; Commedia dell'arte costumes at a German court wedding of 1598. Part III Healers and Performers: Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare and English actors in Europe; Marketplace healers and performers; Medicine, magic and superstition; Performing monsters. Part IV Performing Healing: Commedia dell'Arte Quack Troupes: A new identification for 'Zan Bragetta': Giovanni Paulo Alfieri; Quack performances in Guarinonius's Grewel; Marketing medicine, exemplifying folly: lazzi and the deadly sins; Physical, mental and spiritual; health: stage fools in a medical treatise. Part V Source Texts: Felix Platter: the 1598 wedding of Johann Georg, Count of Hohenzollern and Franziska, Countess of Salm; Thomas Platter in Avignon: Jewish life and a performing quack troup in 1598; Hippolytus Guarinonius's Grewel: 35 commedia dell'arte lazzi; Bibliography; Index.

O autorze

M.A. Katritzky is the Barbara Wilkes Research Fellow in Theatre Studies in the English Department of The Open University, UK, and author of The Art of Commedia: A study in the commedia dell'arte 1560-1620 with special reference to the visual records (2006) and Women, Medicine and Theatre 1500-1750: Literary Mountebanks and Performing Quacks (2007).