Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Mary Vallo

  • Resounding silence: The trouble with Hamlet’s body and soul

    Mary ValloGlastonbury, Connecticut, United States Central to medieval and Renaissance thought was the divide between the carnal body and the transcendent soul. As the only earthly beings to possess a soul, humans integrated the animal and the spiritual—a unique status that was both a blessing and a source of intense inner conflict.1 Shakespeare’s Hamlet addresses…