Signing the Body: Marks on Skin in Early Modern France

Description

The first major scholarly investigation into the rich history of the marked body in the early modern period, this interdisciplinary study examines multiple forms, uses, and meanings of corporeal inscription and impression in France and the French Atlantic colonies from the late sixteenth through early eighteenth centuries. Placing into dialogue a broad range of textual and visual sources drawn from areas as diverse as demonology, jurisprudence, mysticism, medi- cine, pilgrimage, commerce, travel, and colonial conquest that have formerly been examined largely in isolation, Katherine Dauge-Roth demonstrates that emerging theories and practices of signing the body must be understood in relationship to each other and to the development of other material marking practices that rose to prominence in the early modern period. While each chapter brings to light the particular histories and meanings of a distinct set of cutaneous marks—devil’s marks on witches, demon’s marks upon the pos- sessed, devotional wounds, Amerindian and Holy Land pilgrim tattoos, and criminal brands—each also reveals connections between these various types of stigmata, links that were obvious to the early modern thinkers who theorized and deployed them. Moreover, the five chapters bring to the fore ways in which corporeal marking of all kinds interacted dynamically with practices of writing on, imprinting, and engraving paper, parchment, fabric, and metal that flour- ished in the period, together signaling important changes taking place in early modern society. Examining the marked body as a material object replete with varied meanings and uses, Signing the Body: Marks on Skin in Early Modern France shows how the skin itself became the register of the profound cultural and social transformations that characterized this era. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of figures Acknowledgments Introduction: the impressionable body Stigmata, marks, characters, and signs An impressionable surface From the devil’s mark to the judicial brand Final notes Notes 1. Seals of Satan: demonologists and the devil’s mark Marks of identity and authority Pacts, seals, signatures, and skin The body as evidence The vanishing mark Notes 2. Demonic marks, divine stigmata: the female body inscribed Impressionable women A new hybrid sign From skin to page Identity on the line “Set me as a seal upon thy heart” Inscribing the body, fashioning the self Leaving one’s mark Notes 3. The Amerindian tattoo: signs of identity in New France The mark of the other Amerindians in art Amerindians on display Making meaning of marking New World tattoo meets Old World tattoo Incorporating the other: coureurs de bois Hybrid identities Notes 4. Jerusalem arms: the European pilgrim tattoo Sacred signs as souvenirs Pilgrim flash and custom designs Corporeal signs of identity Tattoos as passports Signs of devotion Marks of distinction The well-traveled tattoo Notes 5. Stigma and state control: branding the deviant body A sign of the times Branding the body, imprinting the state Marks of identification and control Notes Conclusion: lasting impressions Notes Bibliography Index