Contents
List of Illustrations ... iv
Acknowledgments ... v
Abbreviations ... vi
Editoral Notes ... vii
Introduction: Discovering Poison ... 1
One Visible Proofs and Works of Darkness: Poison and the Desire for
Certainty ... 67
Two Speaking for the Corpse: Physicians, Autopsies, and the
Unknowing Dead... 141
Three Narratives of History and the Virtues of Poison ... 221
Four Watching Flesh: Poison and the Fantasy of Temporal Control ...
279
Epilogue ... 330
Bibliography ... 335
About the Author ... 376
Index ... 377
Miranda Wilson is assistant professor of English at the University of Delaware.
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*
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