Ecocriticism explores the way in which artists interact with, interpret and represent the natural world. The concept of “nature,” according to ecocriticism, goes beyond simply flora and fauna, extending to human nature as well. In Shakespeare's England, a person's nature was determined by his bodily humors, so the melancholy humor particularly lends itself to an ecocritical approach because it is inextricably linked to the natural world. Transcending genre, melancholy is not limited to the green world of comedy but rather appears in tragedy as well. In As You Like It, the melancholy Jaques offers a foil for the forest teeming with sanguine lovers. In Hamlet, however, melancholy becomes a much more bleak and ambiguous quality, raising questions concerning the nature of acting and suicide. In the study of melancholy within As You Like It and Hamlet, an ecocritical perspective offers a unique insight into the way Shakespeare experiences and interacts with the natural world.

This study concentrates on the disease and treatment cases of women in the Hippocratic texts, to identify and describe the Hippocratic medical style as one that, through its mode of practice, represents a significant departure in making the human body observable. As an antidote to a bias in the literature that has always made the male more visible, we chose to view Hippocrates&rsquo / s novel way of making the woman visible since, producing a new entity for observation, this style of practice led to the emergence of a new profession of medicine, gynecology. In this way, the &ldquo / white-armed&rdquo / women of ancient times were brought into the realm of the visible. Examination of the case histories in the corpus revealed that the observational style was used in light of two principles, that of nature as an active force, generally for healing, and water as a function and humor / both the nature and water concepts uniting the analytical and the metaphorical in a holistic way. The nature inspiration enables an ecological view of Hippocratic practice in such a way that later categories described by Kuhn as incommensurable are seen to function in interrelation. The theoretical trajectory therefore, involves a short survey which starts with Popper and follows through Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, and finally Crombie, with the latter&rsquo / s concept of &ldquo / styles of thinking&rdquo / which accounts for how habits of thought inform specific practices like Hippocratic gynecology.

This study concentrates on the disease and treatment cases of women in the Hippocratic texts, to identify and describe the Hippocratic medical style as one that, through its mode of practice, represents a significant departure in making the human body observable. As an antidote to a bias in the literature that has always made the male more visible, we chose to view Hippocrates&rsquo / s novel way of making the woman visible since, producing a new entity for observation, this style of practice led to the emergence of a new profession of medicine, gynecology. In this way, the &ldquo / white-armed&rdquo / women of ancient times were brought into the realm of the visible. Examination of the case histories in the corpus revealed that the observational style was used in light of two principles, that of nature as an active force, generally for healing, and water as a function and humor / both the nature and water concepts uniting the analytical and the metaphorical in a holistic way. The nature inspiration enables an ecological view of Hippocratic practice in such a way that later categories described by Kuhn as incommensurable are seen to function in interrelation. The theoretical trajectory therefore, involves a short survey which starts with Popper and follows through Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, and finally Crombie, with the latter&rsquo / s concept of &ldquo / styles of thinking&rdquo / which accounts for how habits of thought inform specific practices like Hippocratic gynecology.

This study concentrates on the disease and treatment cases of women in the Hippocratic texts, to identify and describe the Hippocratic medical style as one that, through its mode of practice, represents a significant departure in making the human body observable. As an antidote to a bias in the literature that has always made the male more visible, we chose to view Hippocrates&rsquo / s novel way of making the woman visible since, producing a new entity for observation, this style of practice led to the emergence of a new profession of medicine, gynecology. In this way, the &ldquo / white-armed&rdquo / women of ancient times were brought into the realm of the visible. Examination of the case histories in the corpus revealed that the observational style was used in light of two principles, that of nature as an active force, generally for healing, and water as a function and humor / both the nature and water concepts uniting the analytical and the metaphorical in a holistic way. The nature inspiration enables an ecological view of Hippocratic practice in such a way that later categories described by Kuhn as incommensurable are seen to function in interrelation. The theoretical trajectory therefore, involves a short survey which starts with Popper and follows through Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, and finally Crombie, with the latter&rsquo / s concept of &ldquo / styles of thinking&rdquo / which accounts for how habits of thought inform specific practices like Hippocratic gynecology.

The aim of this thesis is to provide a close reading and a philosophical and anthropological interpretation of Burton's understanding of the concept of melancholy (as well as the concept of the human being and the world) as it is presented in his work ​The Anatomy of Melancholy​. The primary objective will be gradually to respond to the following questions: How did Burton perceive the concept of melancholy? How did he make use of it within his notion of ​the melancholic world​? Based on this, his vision of a remedy to the melancholic disease afflicting the whole world, together with the form of this treatment presented in The Anatomy of Melancholy will be thereafter shown and explained. This task will be preceded by an analysis situated on the edge between the history of ideas and intellectual history, cultural history, and philosophical anthropology with a small overlap with the history of mentalities. This analysis will firstly reveal the diversity and rich history of the concept of melancholy and, subsequently, open up the intellectual milieu and ideas which form the basis of Burton's notion of the problem of the melancholic world and its treatment. This thesis, especially in its final part, will rely on a contextual reading of ​The Anatomy of Melancholy​. In order to acquire an overall...

This thesis focuses on the significance of blood and the perception of the body in both learned and popular culture in order to investigate problems of identity and social exclusion in early modern Europe. Starting from the view of blood as a liminal matter, manifesting fertile, positive aspects in conjunction with dangerous, negative ones, I show how it was believed to attract supernatural forces within the natural world. It could empower or pollute, restore health or waste corporeal and spiritual existence. While this theme has been studied in a medieval religious context and by anthropologists, its relevance during the early modern period has not been explored. I argue that, considering the impact of the Reformation on people’s mentalities, studying the way in which ideas regarding blood and the body changed from late medieval times to the eighteenth century can provide new insights about patterns of social and religious tensions, such as the witch-trials and persecutions. In this regard the thesis engages with anthropological theories, comparing the dialectic between blood and body with that between identity and society, demonstrating that they both spread from the conflict of life with death, leading to the social embodiment or to the rejection of an individual. A comparative approach is also employed to analyze blood symbolism in Protestant and Catholic countries, and to discuss how beliefs were influenced by both cultural similarities and religious differences. Combining historical sources, such as witches’ confessions, with appropriate examples from anthropology I also examine a corpus of popular ideas, which resisted to theological and learned notions or slowly merged with them. Blood had different meanings for different sections of society, embodying both the physical struggle for life and the spiritual value of the Christian soul. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 develop the dualism of the fluid in late medieval and early modern ritual murder accusations against Jews, European witchcraft and supernatural beliefs and in the medical and philosophical knowledge, while chapters 5 and 6 focus on blood themes in Protestant England and in Counter-Reformation Italy. Through the examination of blood in these contexts I hope to demonstrate that contrasting feelings, fears and beliefs related to dangerous or extraordinary individuals, such as Jews, witches, and Catholic saints, but also superhuman beings such as fairies, vampires and werewolves, were rooted in the perception of the body as an unstable substance, that was at the base of ethnic, religious and gender stereotypes.