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The decapitation motif recurs in nearly all medieval and early modern genres, from saints' lives and epics to comedies and romances, yet decollation is often little regarded, save as a marker of humanity (that is, as the moment mortality exits) or inhumanity (that is, as the moment the supernatural enters). However, as a seat of reason, wisdom, and even the soul, the head has long been afforded a special place in the body politic, even when separated from its body proper. Capitalizing upon the enduring fascination with decapitation in European culture, this collection examines--through a variety of critical lenses--the recurring 'roles/rolls' of severed human heads in the medieval and early modern imagination. Contributors are Nicola Masciandaro, Mark Faulkner, Jay Paul Gates, Christine Cooper-Rompato, Dwayne Coleman, Mary Leech, Tina Boyer, Renée Ward, Andrew Fleck, Thomas Herron, Thea Cervone, and Asa Simon Mittman. Preface by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen.

Beheading. --- Beheading in literature.

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What is the fascination that decollation holds for us, as individuals and as a culture? Why does the idea make us laugh and the act make us close our eyes? Losing Our Heads explores in both artistic and cultural contexts the role of the chopped-off head. It asks why the practice of decapitation was once so widespread, why it has diminished—but not, as scenes from contemporary Iraq show, completely disappeared—and why we find it so peculiarly repulsive that we use it as a principal marker to separate ourselves from a more “barbaric”or “primitive” past? Although the topic is grim, Regina Janes’s treatment and conclusions are neither grisly nor gruesome, but continuously instructive about the ironies of humanity’s cultural nature. Bringing to bear an array of evidence, the book argues that the human ability to create meaning from the body motivates the practice of decapitation, its diminution, the impossibility of its extirpation, and its continuing fascination. Ranging from antiquity to the late nineteenth-century passion for Salomé and John the Baptist, and from the enlightenment to postcolonial Africa’s challenge to the severed head as sign of barbarism, Losing Our Heads opens new areas of investigation, enabling readers to understand the shock of decapitation and to see the value in moving past shock to analysis. Written with penetrating wit and featuring striking illustrations, it is sure to captivate anyone interested in his or her head.

Executions and executioners in art. --- Beheading in literature. --- Beheading --- Decapitation --- Executions and executioners --- History.

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"This book considers the production of collective identity in Venice (Christian, civic-minded, anti-tyrannical), which turned on distinctions drawn in various fields of representation from painting, sculpture, print, and performance to classified correspondence. Dismemberment and decapitation bore a heavy burden in this regard, given as indices of an arbitrary violence ascribed to Venice's long-time adversary, 'the infidel Turk.' The book also addresses the recuperation of violence in Venetian discourse about maintaining civic order and waging crusade. Finally, it examines mobile populations operating in the porous limits between Venetian Dalmatia and Ottoman Bosnia and the distinctions they disrupted between 'Venetian' and 'Turk' until their settlement on state-owned land. This occurred in the eighteenth century with the closing of the borderlands, thresholds of difference against which early modern 'Venetian-ness' was repeatedly measured and affirmed"--Provided by publisher.

History of Italy --- Thematology --- Iconography --- Beheading in art. --- Beheading in literature. --- Beheading --- Difference (Philosophy) --- Group identity --- History --- Social aspects --- Bosnia and Herzegovina --- Dalmatia (Croatia) --- Turkey --- Venice (Italy) --- Relations --- Social conditions

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Philosophical anthropology --- Anthropologie dans la litérature --- Anthropology in literature --- Antropologie in de literatuur --- Beheadings --- Décapitations --- Onthoofdingen --- Head --- Beheading in literature. --- Beheading --- Beheading in art. --- Beheading in motion pictures --- Tête --- Décapitation dans la littérature --- Décapitation --- Décapitation dans l'art --- Décapitation au cinéma --- Symbolic aspects --- History. --- Aspect symbolique. --- Histoire --- Tête --- Décapitation dans la littérature --- Décapitation --- Décapitation dans l'art --- Décapitation au cinéma --- Symbolic aspects.