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1 results

  • Chapter 4 - Acting the Part: Prosthetic Limbs

  • Alanna Skuse, University of Reading
  • Book:
    Surgery and Selfhood in Early Modern England
    Published online:
    11 February 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021, pp 81-108
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  • Summary

    In Chapter 4, I argue that prosthetic arms and legs were ideally imagined as articulate and mobile. They were strongly linked to a narrative of rehabilitation in which the amputee regained the ability to walk, ride, and in general to ‘perform’ able-bodiedness. This trend at once indexed a person’s character to their bodily abilities and suggested similarities between the prostheticised human body and a machine or automaton. This reading of prosthetics informs a detailed analysis of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. Focussing on Lavinia’s plight after her hands and tongue are amputated, I argue that her use of a staff to write the names of her attackers is, pragmatically speaking, unnecessary. What is necessary, however, is that Lavinia utilises objects in order to resist her own objectification. By making signs, she resists others’ reading of her mutilated body as a passive sign, and regains a degree of agency. As ever, however, objects have meaning as well as people. Lavinia’s staff may allow her to reclaim her subjectivity, but it can as easily recast her as the perpetual rape victim or freakish supercrip.