The anatomy theater

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] During the Renaissance, anatomical theaters cropped up in cities all over Europe, anatomists performed dissections open to the general public, and they circulated illustrations which had a remarkable resemblance to the pornography of the period. I wrote the first section of The Anatomy Theater in response to these images, hoping to enter the images from multiple perspectives, aligning the poems' voices variously, with the anatomist, the artist, the viewer, or the dissected. The illustrations are complex, contradictory and stirring, because the issues they touch on are so central to us: death, salvation, decomposition, transience, gender, love, healing, sexuality, violence, knowledge, science, power and beauty, to name those that come to mind. As the book progressed, and I left the Renaissance anatomists, the subjects of poems in the subsequent three sections of the book varied widely, from issues of my own health, to meditations on paintings from different time periods, to poems imagining the death of Renaissance poet, John Donne. I found, nonetheless, that similar preoccupations rose through the poems, issues of how, through various practices, we glean information of the body. I think of the book's title, The Anatomy Theater, as pointing not only, as it does in the first section, to the literal site of Renaissance anatomical learning, but also to the many anatomical theaters: the many theaters of the body, those structures of thought -- religious, artistic, medical -- through which we understand the body.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English (MU)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Missouri--Columbia

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Meyer, Nadine Sabra

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• McMahon, Lynne

Statement dc:rights

• Access to files is limited to the University of Missouri--Columbia with SSO login.

Language dc:language.iso

eng, English

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32469/10355/5950

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/5950