Kristof Smeyers

Supernatural bodies (eBook, ePUB)

Stigmata in modern Britain and Ireland

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Experiencing extraordinary religious phenomena on one's body, from ecstasy to bearing the Wounds of Christ, has often been described as an intimate, innermost bond with the divine. But supernatural bodies were not private affairs. They affected families, communities, as well as a burgeoning public opinion. This book offers the first account of such bodies in the public sphere in modern Britain and Ireland.
Supernatural bodies were manipulated into parables and symbols, and became hotly contested in an outpouring of polemical print. The book argues it is precisely their physicality that sets them apart from many other extraordinary phenomena that were also prolific in this period. Building on the observation that supernatural bodies occupied a potent if marginal space in a wide range of public discussions, the book revisits some of the most pivotal cultural moments and developments of the period: resurging anti-Catholicism and Protestant evangelicalism, the idea of 'rational' national and confessional identities, as well as the contested interest of natural and other - mental, psychical, occult - sciences in the supernatural. In doing so, Supernatural bodies also provides new insights into how the public sphere changed in this period, and into the production of new ideas about topics such as bodily autonomy, gendered religion, the nature of evidence, and the limits of what could be known.
Presenting many telling cases of stigmata, this volume shows how publicly debated topics of religion and science, belief and doubt, (dis)enchantment and modernity met around supernatural bodies in modern Britain and Ireland.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bonnier Books UK
• Erscheinungstermin: 24. September 2024
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781526177223
• Artikelnr.: 72293581

Autorenporträt

Kristof Smeyers is a Research Fellow at the University of Louvain