The project The «Civilization of Anatomy»: The Genre of Literary Anatomies in Seventeenth-Century Italy explores how anatomy – especially from Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica onwards – permeates the cultural imagination of the early modern period, evolving into a distinct mode of thought reflected in the conception and structure of literary texts and their components.
The research focuses on a series of Italian works, titled and methodologically inspired by anatomy, cataloged here for the first time and brought together in a comprehensive collection of Literary Anatomies. These works form an expansive and encyclopedic textual corpus, where spiritual anatomies coexist with celestial anatomies, anatomies of love, rhetorical and grammatical anatomies, anatomies of the ingenuity, and more.
The thematic digital library Biblioteca Anatomica serves as a research platform where the texts in the collection, available in digital format, are structured into curated pathways enriched with detailed scholarly entries and an iconographic apparatus. Currently in development, this platform will be regularly updated with new content and enhanced with semantic indexes and cross-references through the collaboration of a team of scholars.
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Related resources
- Linda Bisello, Immacolata Iaccarino, Margherita Schellino, La ‘Biblioteca anatomica’ (1552-1699): consistenza e ragioni di un corpus (2023).
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