Dead hands: fictions of agency, Renaissance to modern

Abstract

List of illustrations Preface Introduction: essentialism, agency and the exemplary hand 1. Divine complicity: God's handy worke and the anatomist's touch 2. Effectless use: dismembering and forgetting in Titus Andronicus 3. That curious engine: action at a distance in The Duchess of Malfi 4. The beast with five fingers: gothic labor relations in Victorian ghost stories 5. Involuntary confession: Pudd'nhead Wilson and law-enforcement mythology Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index.