Denmark's rotting reconsidered.(Critical essay)

Leprosy functioned as an exemplary disease in medieval English culture. To quote Susan Sontag, the leper was a social text in which corruption was made visible; an exemplum, an emblem of decay. What leprosy emblematized was the inevitable connection of inside and outside, of spiritual and somatic. L...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philological quarterly 2012-06, Vol.91 (3), p.393
Main Author: Vanhoutte, Jacqueline
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Cancer
Corruption
Disease
Embodiment
English
Judgment
Language history
Leprosy
Metaphor
Portrayals
Self
Self (Psychology)
Shakespeare, William (English playwright)
Sin
Soul
Spirituality
Syphilis
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Summary:Leprosy functioned as an exemplary disease in medieval English culture. To quote Susan Sontag, the leper was a social text in which corruption was made visible; an exemplum, an emblem of decay. What leprosy emblematized was the inevitable connection of inside and outside, of spiritual and somatic. Long after leprosy ceased to be a health concern, Elizabethan playwrights and pamphleteers continued to find the disease a convenient device for exploring the relationships between mind and body, self and community and soul and God. Leprosy disappeared from London right around the time that the professional drama appeared. And yet Hamlet remains haunted by this disease. Rotting, foulness, poison, contagion, corruption, melancholy, judgment, embodiment, inwardness, usurpation, alienation, and impersonation -- the themes of Hamlet are the themes of leprosy. All Elizabethan uses of leprous metaphors involve some revision, given the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century.
ISSN:0031-7977
2169-5342