Table of Contents

Introduction
—Bonnie Lander Johnson and Eleanor Decamp
I. CIRCULATION
Chapter 1. Was the Heart "Dethroned"?: Harvey's Discoveries and the Politics of Blood, Heart, and Circulation
—Margaret Healy
Chapter 2. "The Lake of my Heart": Blood, Containment, and the Boundaries of the Person in the Writing of Dante and Catherine of Siena
—Heather Webb
Chapter 3. Sorting Pistol's Blood: Social Class and the Circulation of Character in Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV and Henry V
—Katharine Craik
II. WOUNDS
Chapter 4. Mantled in Blood: Shakespeare's Bloodstains and Early Modern Textile Culture
—Hester Lees-Jeffries
Chapter 5. Rethinking Nosebleeds: Gendering Spontaneous Bleedings in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine
—Gabriella Zuccolin and Helen King
Chapter 6. Screaming Bleeding Trees: Textual Wounding and the Epic Tradition
—Joe Moshenska
III. CORRUPTION
Chapter 7. Corruption, Generation, and the Problem of Menstrua in Early Modern Alchemy
—Tara Nummedal
Chapter 8. Bloody Students: Youth, Corruption, and Discipline in the Medieval Classroom
—Ben Parsons
Chapter 9. Blood, Milk, Poison: Romeo and Juliet's Tragedy of "Green" Desire and Corrupted Blood
—Bonnie Lander Johnson
IV. PROOF
Chapter 10. "In Every Wound there is a Bloody Tongue": Cruentation in Early Modern Literature and Psychology
—Lesel Dawson
Chapter 11. "In such abundance … that it fill a Bason": Early Modern Bleeding Bowls
—Eleanor Decamp
Chapter 12. Macbeth and the Croxton Play of the Sacrament: Blood and Belief in Early English Stagecraft
—Elisabeth Dutton
Chapter 13. Simular Proof, Tragicomic Turns, and Cymbeline's Bloody Cloth
—Patricia Parker
V. SIGNS AND SUBSTANCE
Chapter 14. Blood of the Grape
—Frances E. Dolan
Chapter 15. Blood on the Butcher's Knife: Images of Pig Slaughter in Late Medieval Illustrated Calendars
—Dolly Jørgensen
Chapter 16. Queer Blood
—Helen Barr
Notes
Bibliography
Index
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments

Promotional Information

Blood Matters explores blood as a distinct category of inquiry in medieval and early modern Europe and draws together scholars who might not otherwise be in conversation.

About the Author

Bonnie Lander Johnson is Fellow, Lecturer, and Director of Studies at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge and author of Chastity in Early Stuart Literature and Culture. Eleanor Decamp is author of Civic and Medical Worlds: Performing Barbery and Surgery.

Reviews

"The ambitious edited collection Blood Matters takes on a complicated task:mapping the conceptual terrain of blood (both as material and metaphor) in late medieval and early modern Europe . . . Reading the essays together offers an illuminating glimpse into the densely interlocking regimes of blood in medieval and early modern European culture."
*Modern Philology*

"A powerful and coherent collection of essays that illuminates the various facets of a fascinating subject. It greatly enriches our sense of the meanings of blood and will have a major impact in medieval and Renaissance studies."
*Michael Schoenfeldt, University of Michigan*