I am interested to explore the relation between the blazons and anatomy poems of the early modern era, which fragmented the body, to more recent sci-fi and cyberpunk novels, which fragment the body of the text. Pynchon’s Gravity Rainbow and Gibson’s Neuromancer include very poetic passages, blurring the lines between fiction writing and poetry. Pynchon inserts lyrics written in verses, which fragments the text. Burroughs’s cutouts and his extensive use of dashes visually fragment the narrative. While the narrative subversions in the works of Burroughs and Pynchon elicit a political reading, suggesting a rejection of the normative system of language, the anatomization of body parts in the Renaissance poems reflects the growing interest in anatomical dissections for conquering the body interior. I believe that both the cyberpunk and the early modern textual explorations of fragmentation reflect an anxiety about contemporary scientific discoveries about the body. In the Renaissance, the dissection of the brain has challenged the dominant religious believes, making it more difficult to locate the physical site of the soul. The popularity of the blazon, suggests an interest at seeing the self as a sum of body parts. Recent discoveries encourage a similar conception of the body. Cybernetics constructed humans as information processing systems, nanotechnology gave the possibility to reorganize nature and eventually the cells at the atomic level, genetic engineering offers an avenue to create mutations, and recent discoveries about drugs give the possibility to control our mood. Also reflecting a questioning of the conception of the self, the sci-fi and cyberpunk novels referred to express an anxiety about loosing mental control, being molecularly dismantled, and being physically and mentally controlled by technology.

Anatomy poem:

John Donne

Knowst thou but how the stone doth enter in

The bladers cave, and never breake the skinne ?

Know’st thou how blood, which to the heart doth flow,

Doth from one ventricle to th’other goe?

And for the putrid stuffe, which thou dost spit,

Know’st thou how thy lungs have attracted it?

There are no passages, so that there is

(For ought thou know’st) piercing of substances.

And of those many opinions which men raise

Of Nailes and Haires, dost thou kno which to praise?

Blazons:

Sonnet 20 is addressed to a male.

Sonnet 20

by Shakespeare

    A woman's face, with Nature's own hand painted,

    Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;

    A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted

    With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;

    An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

    Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

    A man in hue all hues in his controlling,

    Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.

    And for a woman wert thou first created

    Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,

    And by addition me of thee defeated,

    By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

    But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,

    Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.

    

Sonnet 130 is addressed to a woman, sometimes called "the Dark Lady."

Sonnet 130

by Shakespeare

    My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

    Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

    If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

    If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

    I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

    But no such roses see I in her cheeks,

    And in some perfumes is there more delight

    Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

    I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

    That music hath a far more pleasing sound.

    I grant I never saw a goddess go;

    My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

    And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

    As any she belied with false compare