This edited collection explores the image of the wound as a ‘cultural symptom’ and a literary-visual trope at the core of representations of a new concept of selfhood in Early Modern Italian and English cultures, as expressed in the two complementary poles of poetry and theatre. The semantic field of the wounded body concerns both the image of the wound as a traumatic event, which leaves a mark on someone’s body and soul (and prompts one to investigate its causes and potential solutions), and the motif of the scar, which draws attention to the fact that time has passed and urges those who look at it to engage in an introspective and analytical process. By studying and describing the transmission of this metaphoric paradigm through the literary tradition, the contributors show how the image of the bodily wound—from Petrarch’s representation of the Self to the overt crisis that affects the heroes and the poetic worlds created by Ariosto and Tasso, Spenser and Shakespeare—could respond tothe emergence of Modernity as a new cultural feature.

Fabrizio Bondi is Lecturer in Italian Literature at Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples, Italy.

Massimo Stella is Lecturer in Comparative Literatures and Theory of Literature at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy.

Andrea Torre is Associate Professor of Italian Literature at Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy.