HILLMAN, David (A.)

PERSONAL:

Male. Education: Harvard University, Ph.D., 1997.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Cambridge, Faculty of English, 9 West Rd., Cambridge CB3 9DP, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, professor of English.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Beatrice White Prize, English Association, 1999, for The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Robert Weimann, Authority and Representation in Early Modern Discourse, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1996.

(Editor, with Carla Mazzio) The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe, Routledge (New York, NY), 1997.

Also editor with Robert Weimann and Douglas Bruster, Shakespeare and the Power of Performing: Authority and Representation in the Elizabethan Theater; and editor with Adam Phillips, On Interruption. Contributor of numerous articles on psychoanalysis, the history of the body, and philosophical approaches to literature.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Shakespeare's Entrails: Belief, Scepticism, and the Interior of the Body.

SIDELIGHTS:

David Hillman, a professor of English at the University of Cambridge, is the coeditor of The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe, a collection of essays that "demonstrate the ways in which various parts of the body are endowed with particular qualities in literary and scientific texts and how this could influence attitudes towards the image of the body as a whole," wrote Mary Hewlett in Sixteenth Century Journal. More specifically, Hillman and Carla Mazzio present essays "on body parts and the fascination with dismemberment, medical anatomy, and the logic of fragmentation in the literary and cultural texts of sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe," in the words of Canadian Literature contributor Charmaine Eddy.

Among the essays in The Body in Parts are Stephen Greenblatt's "Mutilation and Meaning,"which examines ritual scarification practices, and Mazzio's "Sins of the Tongue," which focuses on that organ's image as a source of language and speech. The Body in Parts was deemed a "wonderfully holistic" anthology by Los Angeles Times critic Thomas Lynch, who praised the efforts of the contributing writers. "These are wordsmiths and notion-mongers," Lynch stated, "each of whom has taken a part—the belly, the brain, clitoris and tongue, rectum, breast, viscera, and more—and allowed their considerable scholarship to roam in all directions." Peter J. Smith, reviewing the work in Early Modern Literary Studies, remarked that "many of the essays offer fascinating accounts of the meaning ascribed to disparate physical organs as well as the means by which their theorisation and subjection by philosophers, medical pioneers, anatomists, and religious authorities provides evidence of their cultural—and sometimes even political—significance."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Afterimage, January, 1998, review of The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe, p. 22.

Canadian Literature, autumn, 2001, Charmaine Eddy, review of The Body in Parts, p. 213.

Early Modern Literary Studies, January, 2000, Peter J. Smith, review of The Body in Parts.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, spring, 2000, Sarah R. Cohen, review of The Body in Parts, p. 462.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 25, 1998, Thomas Lynch, review of The Body in Parts, p. 3.

Modern Language Notes, December, 1998, D. N. Deluna, review of Authority and Representation in Early Modern Discourse, p. 1183.

Modern Philology, February, 1999, Timothy Hampton, review of Authority and Representation in Early Modern Discourse, p. 377.

Renaissance Quarterly, summer, 1998, review of The Body in Parts, pp. 728-729.

Shakespeare Studies, summer, 1998, Richard Strier, review of Authority and Representation in Early Modern Discourse, p. 238; annual, 1999, Graham Hammill, review of The Body in Parts, p. 248.

Sixteenth Century Journal, fall, 1998, James P. Bednarz, review of Authority and Representation in Early Modern Discourse, p. 866, and Mary Hewlett, review of The Body in Parts, pp. 897-899.*