(Ne) Habeas corpus: The Body and the Body Politic in the Figures of the Ambassador and the Courtesan in Renaissance Italy

Abstract

This dissertation offers a comparative study of two key figures of the Italian Renaissance, the ambassador and the courtesan, and the place of their bodies in relation to the Renaissance body politic. In studying myriad textual spaces of the body natural within writings by and about these two seemingly opposite figures, I find that these spaces range from the material to the metaphorical. In the Renaissance material spaces were increasingly allocated to both figures, urban confinement for the prostitute, and the establishment of the embassy for the ambassador. Metaphorically, the prostitute becomes the "body" of the state, while the ambassador personifies its "mind". My dissertation proves that by allocating such material and metaphorical spaces to these figures, the early modern state effectively denies them the possibility of ownership over their own bodies. This ownership, however, is rhetorically reclaimed, I argue, through the bodies of their own texts.