In this dissertation I examine the gendering of cannibalistic consumption in early modern literature by analyzing literary moments in which a woman is a cannibal or victim of cannibalistic consumption in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, John Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s The Sea Voyage and Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Bloody Banquet. I show that colonial and medical discourse intersect in these moments that figure the female body as hungry cannibal or desirable flesh commodity. I argue that these texts respond to and critique what I term the “gendered hierarchies of consumption” that both the colonial and medical tradition relied on specifically through their use of the female body either as victim of cannibalistic consumption or as cannibalistic consumer. These texts are particularly interested in evoking the meanings associated with the female body as a product to be consumed for its healing properties, which was particularly relevant given the practice of corpse pharmacology, in which human flesh was ingested for medicinal purposes. As I show, men consumed the female body in this way even while women themselves also consumed the male body as participants in the corpse pharmacological market. Likewise, colonial discourse figured the land as female to justify male control and domination. Medical and colonial discourse figured the female body as target of male consumption, yet the female cannibal threatens those hierarchies of consumption to instead critique both colonial and ideology and practice. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2019. / February 13, 2019. / Fletcher, Medicine, Middleton, Post-Colonial, Spenser / Includes bibliographical references. / Bruce Boehrer, Professor Directing Dissertation; Svetoslava Slaveva-Griffin, University Representative; Gary Taylor, Committee Member; Jamie Fumo, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_709064 |
| Contributors | Bailey, Heather (author), Boehrer, Bruce Thomas (Professor Directing Dissertation), Slaveva-Griffin, Svetla (University Representative), Taylor, Gary (Committee Member), Fumo, Jamie Claire (Committee Member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college), Department of English (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (190 pages), computer, application/pdf |
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