The Winter's Tale - Imagery of Sickness and the Body
- Created by: Harleym7000
- Created on: 28-05-18 15:42
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- Sickness and the body – Leontes’ early ‘tremor cordis’ or heart murmur is a sign of how viscerally disturbed he is by what he thinks he sees.
- He looks to his son’s ‘smutched’ nose for reassurance that he is, in fact, Mamillius’ father (I.2.121) while Paulina uses similar bodily evidence to ‘prove’ the new baby his (II.3.52-56) and Leontes later notes Florizel’s resemblance to his father, crediting the prince’s mother thus: ‘she did print your royal father off,/ Conceiving you’ (V.1.124-5).
- Polixenes is so horrified by the swift deterioration of his dearest friendship that he employs an image of ‘best blood’ turned into an ‘infected jelly’ (I.2.417-8).
- Mamillius’ illness and subsequent death occur as a result of how he ‘threw…
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