"And Make Two Pasties of Your Shameful Heads": Medicinal Cannibalism and Healing the Body Politic in Titus Andronicus

Abstract

Early modern European corpse pharmacology, the medical ingestion of human body parts and excretions, involves a gruesome process of bodily violations made possible by a brutal judicial system. This essay argues that the figurative language of medicine in Titus Andronicus, where human bodies are savagely deployed and eaten as powerful pollutants in an escalating therapeutics of revenge justice, interrogates the cultural paradox evident when cannibalism is considered as both barbaric and taboo, and civilized and beneficial, depending on the circumstances.