The Corpse as Text

Disinterment and Antiquarian Enquiry, 1700–1900

In the 18th and 19th century, antiquarian investigators unearthed a number of mediæval graves. In some cases, the goal was to move the body to a new location; in others, the grave was revealed during construction or renovation. In all cases, Thea Tomaini argues, these disinterments were a way in which antiquarians “read” their own stories about the Middle Ages onto mediæval bodies.

Tomaini covers nine bodies in seven examples in this book: King John, Katherine de Valois, Thomas Becket, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Katherine Parr, William Shakespeare and the rival bodies of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell. Each case begins with a summary of the burial and the circumstances of the disinterment and broadens into an analysis of contemporary views of the Middle Ages. Each of the burials plays a role in reinforcing and creating those views, which tied in to contemporary ideas about British society.

For example, Tomaini talks about the ways in which different writers have described the corpse of King John, which was disinterred and examined several times over the centuries, and compares their varying accounts to the way in which John’s posthumous reputation changed over the same period. Controversies over the details of the burial play into changing perceptions of John’s character, from the English Reformation to the popularity of Robin Hood stories. John becomes “a figure of frustrating elasticity” whose body becomes an integral part, not merely a passive symbol, of the debate about the meaning of his life and reign.

These studies form a fascinating guide to the ways in which antiquarian study and disinterment played into the formation of British identity, as well as a particularly ghoulish case study of how past lives and events are interpreted, reinterpreted and used (though Tomaini believes that antiquarians were motivated by more than simple ghoulishness).

Tomaini doesn’t spend much time on specifically supernatural readings of the past, which are among the many ways people express and construct views of history. She does discuss ghost stories related to Cromwell and Charles I, though I was sad not to see the story that Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge is haunted by the ghost of Cromwell’s severed head.

The Corpse as Text is an interesting look at the ways in which people in the 18th and 19th centuries not only perceived the past but wrote their own narratives on it. It is definitely an academic rather than a generalist text, but it does provide most of the background a lay reader will need.

If you’re interested in how people relate to the bodies of the dead, it’s an excellent addition to your library.