The Prince's Body: Vincenzo Gonzaga and Renaissance Medicine

Valeria Finucci

Published by Harvard University Press 2015

The Prince's Body

Vincenzo Gonzaga and Renaissance Medicine

Valeria Finucci

In the series I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674735668

Overview
Contents

About this book

Using four notorious moments in the life of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, Valeria Finucci explores changing early modern concepts of sexuality, reproduction, beauty, and aging. She deftly marries salacious tales with historical analysis to tell a broader story of Italian Renaissance cultural adjustments and obsessions.

Author / Editor information

Finucci Valeria :

Valeria Finucci is Professor of Italian and Theater Studies and Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Duke University.

Reviews

A complex and nuanced interpretation of the rise of medical science in late Renaissance Italy. Finucci uses the life and experiences of Vincenzo Gonzaga as a connecting thread to allow her to weave together histories of early modern medicine, sexuality, and culture. In four elegantly written chapters, she explores how the drive toward pleasure, beauty, and perfection, as well as the desire for collecting and understanding the new and the ‘exotic,’ inspired both famous and lesser-known doctors, academics, pharmacists, and nobles to explore the body and search for new knowledge.
-- Giovanna Benadusi, author of A Provincial Elite in Early Modern Tuscany

It is no longer news that the body has a history. What Finucci offers, however, in this fascinating account of one prince’s body and its diseases, is a revealing microhistory of the noted early modern Italian would-be warrior, lover, and obsessive collector Vincenzo Gonzaga. Chronicling his exploits and his suffering, his illnesses and his diseases, Finucci opens a window on a physical and mental world that is both almost forgotten and yet somehow still with us. Informed by theory, not driven by it, this is a book than swings from the arcane to the profound and to the quotidian with the sure hand of a master storyteller and scholar.
-- Guido Ruggiero, author of The Renaissance in Italy

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	v
Illustrations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Introduction. Staging the Body Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Virgin Cure Manual Exams and Early Modern Surgeons Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	28
2. The Aesthetic Cure Skin Disease, Noses, and the Invention of Plastic Surgery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	62
3. The Comfort Cure Managing Pain and Catarrh at the Spa Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
4. The Sexual Cure Searching for a Viagra in the New World Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
Epilogue Unwrapping the Body Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
Selected Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 260
Illustrations
- Other: 17 halftones

eBook

Published: February 10, 2015
ISBN: 9780674735668