Chapter 1 - Guts, Hollows, and Coils

Summary

In this chapter I shall explore the significance of the inner organs of the human and animal body as poetic expedient and literary motif in a number of examples from ancient literature, both medical and non-technical. The guts, in fact, variously described and conceptualized, play a variety of roles, concrete and symbolic: they evoke vulnerability, but also strength; nutrition, fullness, and security but also the perpetual state of neediness that qualifies human mortality. I explore, first, the ‘poetic belly’ with its emphasis on vulnerability, nutrition, and life; then, I turn to the natural-philosophical account of guts: nutrition and digestion are centred here, as well as the belly not so much as ensemble of discrete (organic) entities but primarily in terms of volumes – empty containers, ‘pouches’ variously connected. I finally look at the cosmic and cosmogonic extensions in the way the belly and its contents are understood in ancient literatures. With its connection with vitality and survival, the storage of resources and their consummation, then, the belly works thus as a meeting point between medical beliefs and larger culture.