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Offering an innovative perspective on debates concerning embodiment ~in the early modern period, Alanna Skuse examines diverse ~kinds of surgical alteration, from mastectomy to castration, and ~amputation to facial reconstruction. Body-altering surgeries had profound ~socio-economic and philosophical consequences. They reached ~beyond the physical self, and prompted early modern authors to ~develop searching questions about the nature of body integrity and ~its relationship to the soul: was the body a part of one’s identity, or a ~mere ‘prison’ for the mind? How was the body connected to personal ~morality? What happened to the altered body after death? Drawing ~on a wide variety of texts including medical treatises, plays, poems, ~newspaper reports, and travel writings, this volume will argue that the ~answers to these questions were flexible, divergent, and often surprising, ~and helped to shape early modern thoughts on philosophy, ~literature, and the natural sciences. This title is also available as ~Open Access on Cambridge Core.