Texts and bodies under the scalpel. Practices of mutiiation in Early Modern France (1500-1800)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Daniele Maira
• Subject Area: German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature)
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 553362452

Our anthology represents a pioneering research project that analyzes for the first time the phenomena of mutilation as a bodily as well as textual paradigm in the Early modern Period. From the perspective of literary and cultural studies, the volume adopts a rich interdisciplinary approach that draws on the most active of nowadays theoretical research in the field of arts and humanities. Thus, the studies contained in this collection are stimulated by and contribute to the fields of Disability Studies, Womens Studies, as well as Book Studies, history of ideas and mentalities. The historical approach is all the more beneficial, since our focus lies on the Early modern period which, despite the temporal distance, prefigures some of the most burning challenges that present societies have to face, like disability and the sexual violence against women. The contributions in our volume pursue the analysis of mutilation as a double paradigm, focusing on the various analogies between ¡ts textual and bodily signifiers: the mutilated body as a subject of premodern texts, the body as a text which tells a story, the text as a body suffering from the effects of mutilation and so forth. Consequently, our volume is divided into three parts that build upon each other and are thematically interwoven. The first part, Mutilations créatives [Creative Mutilations], brings out the new agencies and creative capacities that can be achieved by some of the mutilated body parts. The second part, Mutilations (re)moralisées [Moralised Mutilations], highlights the moral questions that were inherent in some of the mutilating acts. The third part, Mutilations sexuelles et cutanées [Sexual Mutilations and Muti/ations of the Skin], deals with the consequences of the mutilating actions which, besides resulting from an act of sexual violence, could also have an aesthetic relevance. The fourth part, Mutiler, censurer et transformer le corps des œuvres [Mutilation and censorship], considers mutilation as a practice of material impairment (voluntary or accidental) to either manuscripts, prints or books. The interventions are often explained by censorship but can also reveal possible innovating effects on the texts they were applied to. The primary texts combine canonical and previously unknown texts. Overall, our book aims at showing that practices of mutilation are based on highly complex, sometimes contradictory systems of meaning. ln this regard, the present volume makes a contribution to the cultural history of the mutilated body, which is at the interface of diverse discourses and still shapes our understanding of the body today. The volume brings together for the first time 14 unpublished contributions by international researchers from Europe (Germany, France, Switzerland) and the USA.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants