June 2, 2009

Google Books Mutilates the Printed Past

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Mutilation is a hot topic among us medievalists nowadays. We study the disfiguration, dismemberment, and torment of the human body and its image in theater, literature, criminal law, and the biographies and paintings of saints and martyrs. That may come as no surprise to most people —after all, it was the Middle Ages. But for medievalists it's a sea change from battle and diplomacy, archival registers of tax rolls, agricultural accounts, and last wills and testaments.

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