ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on questions of incorporation, ingestion and re-appropriation. It is concerned with the discursive suggestions of this engraving, which is considered in connection to cannibalism and its implications. Early modern gender politics and a cultural-historical analysis of the ‘witch craze’ constitute the main backdrop of the author's thinking. The main subject of Lo Stregozzo – the cannibalistic woman, old but sexually charged, both feared and ridiculed – is not an original invention of the engraving’s author, but originates from the vast early modern literature about witchcraft. Through the lens of ingestion and incorporation, the chapter addresses emerging ideas of bodily integrity and permeability, as well as anxieties related to the rise of human dissection. The cannibalistic connotations of witchcraft refer more to its socially disruptive potential than to actual fears of physical dismemberment and ingestion.
