Anthropophagy and Early Modern Psychophysiology: Cannibalism and Theories of Digestion

• In Event: Bodies, Flesh, Eugenics

Abstract

I examine depictions of consumption of human flesh in early modern literature, drawing upon a range of texts, primarily (though not solely) from English literature, considering, for example, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour, and Fletcher’s Sea Voyage, alongside medical texts, religious tracts, and treatises on the passions. I will demonstrate how references to cannibalism in these texts engage with theories of digestion and of the mind-body relationship in interesting and often conflicting ways. There were in fact conflicting theories of digestion since the early moderns inherited the ancient humoral theory from the Galenic medical model but also experienced new interpretations and experimentation by such figures as Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and Sanctorius, Read in the context of changing digestive theory, these examples of the self-other/eater-eaten relationship offer insight into understandings of the nature of selfhood.

Author

• Jan Katherine Purnis, University of Regina, Campion College