University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press
Pages: 258
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-61148-538-7 • Hardback • December 2013 • $114.00 • (£88.00)
978-1-61148-817-3 • Paperback • February 2017 • $56.99 • (£44.00)
978-1-61148-539-4 • eBook • December 2013 • $54.00 • (£42.00)
Miranda Wilson is assistant professor of English at the University of Delaware.
Contents
List of Illustrations ... iv
Acknowledgments ... v
Abbreviations ... vi
Editoral Notes ... vii
Introduction: Discovering Poison ... 1
OneVisible Proofs and Works of Darkness: Poison and the Desire for Certainty ... 67
TwoSpeaking for the Corpse: Physicians, Autopsies, and the Unknowing Dead... 141ThreeNarratives of History and the Virtues of Poison ... 221
FourWatching Flesh: Poison and the Fantasy of Temporal Control ... 279
Epilogue ... 330
Bibliography ... 335
About the Author ... 376
Index ... 377
Wilson is quite effective on how poison serves the culture as a way to think through sin and error, on the one hand, and to confront the limits to knowledge, on the other.
— American Behavioral Scientist
This book convincingly argues that a 'preoccupation' with poison unifies texts across 'a variety of discourses' (xx).
— Modern Philology
If identifying social flashpoints around poison is shooting fish in a barrel, the fish are worth the shooting and Wilson is a skilled marksman. Drawing lucidly on a wide range of early modern sources, Wilson shows that poisoning obsessed the early modern imagination largely because it seemed so difficult to detect and to prevent. . . .As a final note, I must commend the author for her choices of absorbing illustrations from Renaissance books; they enhance the present volume immensely. In all, this book is fascinating in its subject matter, articulate in its presentation, and admirable in its scholarship. It will, no doubt, provoke much thought in students and scholars of the Renaissance.
— Renaissance Quarterly