Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse

© 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. This is an open access book distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, to view a copy of the license, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse

This open access book is the culmination of many years of research on what happened to the bodies of executed criminals in the past. Focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it looks at the consequences of the 1752 Murder Act. These criminal bodies had a crucial role in the history of medicine, and the history of crime, and great symbolic resonance in literature and popular culture. Starting with a consideration of the criminal corpse in the medieval and early modern periods, chapters go on to review the histories of criminal justice, of medical history and of gibbeting under the Murder Act, and ends with some discussion of the afterlives of the corpse, in literature, folklore and in contemporary medical ethics. Using sophisticated insights from cultural history, archaeology, literature, philosophy and ethics as well as medical and crime history, this book is a uniquely interdisciplinary take on a fascinating historical phenomenon

Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse

This open access book is the culmination of many years of research on what happened to the bodies of executed criminals in the past. Focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it looks at the consequences of the 1752 Murder Act. These criminal bodies had a crucial role in the history of medicine, and the history of crime, and great symbolic resonance in literature and popular culture. Starting with a consideration of the criminal corpse in the medieval and early modern periods, chapters go on to review the histories of criminal justice, of medical history and of gibbeting under the Murder Act, and ends with some discussion of the afterlives of the corpse, in literature, folklore and in contemporary medical ethics. Using sophisticated insights from cultural history, archaeology, literature, philosophy and ethics as well as medical and crime history, this book is a uniquely interdisciplinary take on a fascinating historical phenomenon

(Re)lecture archéologique de la justice en Europe médiévale et moderne

La justice médiévale et moderne fait depuis quelques années l'objet d'une lecture voire d'une relecture archéologique en Europe. Encore inédite en France, cette analyse ne se veut pas une démarche annexe de l'histoire de la justice par les textes et les images. Au contraire, elle souligne les apports des sciences archéologiques dans la façon d'évaluer et de penser la pratique judiciaire, la matérialité du droit de punir et de la contrainte pénale. Dans une réflexion liant perception de l'espace, signification et représentation sociale des vestiges, les articles que contient ce livre mettent en lumière l'architecture des lieux de jugement, d'exécution et d'emprisonnement, mais aussi les outils du bourreau et le sort des corps manipulés en justice à travers les inhumations qualifiées d'infamantes