A Grammar of the Corpse: Necroepistemology in the Early Modern Mediterranean

The presence of dead bodies in historical narratives serves as a tangible evidence of the narrators reliability and provokes an affective response in the audience. A Grammar of the Corpse argues that corpses are used as a source of narrative authority to generate social and political meaning and knowledge. It analyzes the literary, semiotic, and epistemological function of these bodies and their fraught relationship to their narrators own bodies. The book complements recent work in medieval and early modern Iberian and Mediterranean studies to account for the region's confessional, ethnic, linguistic, and political diversity.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 06 June 2023
Publisher: Fordham University Press

No matter when or where one begins to recount the tale of the Battle of al-Qasr al-Kabir (August 4, 1578), the pivotal event that led to the formation of the Iberian Union, one invariably encounters lifeless bodies—rotting in the sun on abandoned battlefields, openly displayed in marketplaces, exhumed and transported for political purposes.

A Grammar of the Corpse: Necroepistemology in the Early Modern Mediterranean offers a novel approach to comprehending how the presence of dead bodies played a crucial role in shaping knowledge production within early modern Mediterranean historiography.

A Grammar of the Corpse contends that the inclusion of the corpse in historical narratives is far from incidental. Rather, it fills a critical void in testimonial storytelling, offering tangible evidence of the narrator's reliability while eliciting an emotional response from the audience. The deployment of corpses as a source of narrative authority harnesses the inherent power of the dead to generate social and political meaning and knowledge, a notion that cultural historians, philosophers, and social anthropologists have previously identified.

A Grammar of the Corpse scrutinizes the literary, semiotic, and epistemological functions that these bodies fulfill within texts and through language. It reveals that corpses are indexically present yet disturbingly absent, a tension that informs their fraught relationship with their narrators' own bodies and renders them valuable yet subversive tools of communication and knowledge.

A Grammar of the Corpse complements recent work in medieval and early modern Iberian and Mediterranean studies by accounting for the region's confessional, ethnic, linguistic, and political diversity. By juxtaposing Arabic texts alongside Portuguese and Spanish accounts of this pivotal event, the book responds to the fundamental challenge posed by the Mediterranean region.

Weight: 368g
Dimension: 228 x 152 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781531501570