Fallen Bodies - (Middle Age Series) by Dyan Elliott (Paperback)

About the Book

"That rare conjunction of impeccable scholarship, brilliant synthesis, and innovative intellectual insight. It is a far-ranging work."--Mathew Kuefler, San Diego State University

Book Synopsis

"Lyrical in parts, this is a deep and reflective reading of those clusters of contradictory images which attempted to make sense of the exultant and the vulnerable in medieval bodies. Dyan Elliott offers a potent combination of the rigor of textual analys

Review Quotes

"In this provocative and, at times, disturbing book, Elliott explores issues of anti-Semitism, ritual purity, and clerical misogyny within the larger historical framework of the Gregorian Reform movement of the high and later Middle Ages."--Religious Studies Review

"Lyrical in parts, this is a deep and reflective reading of those clusters of contradictory images which attempted to make sense of the exultant and the vulnerable in medieval bodies. Dyan Elliott offers a potent combination of the rigor of textual analysis, the passion of feminism, and the insights of psychoanalysis, as she juxtaposes texts in sequences never before conceived. This will be a treat for all medievalists, a demanding and amply rewarding intellectual journey."--Miri Rubin, Queen Mary, University of London

"This elegantly written book reveals and explores a set of profound if elusive connections that made the materialization of the witch in the early modern period, in Dyan Elliott's closing words, 'virtually irresistable.'. . . A dazzling recreation of pre-Enlightenment thinking about the overlapping configurations of pollution, this important book will be essential reading for premodern and early modern scholars of gender, sexuality, and the body."--Medium Aevum

About the Author

Dyan Elliott is Associate Professor of History and Adjunct of Religious Studies and Women's Studies at Indiana University.