Monteverdi’s unruly women and their Amazonian sisters

Abstract

Lévi-Strauss argues that Amazonian mythology reveals a moral philosophy concerned with control of entries and exits to the tubes and apertures of the body. But which body? Following clues from attitudes to female singers in renaissance Italy, this essay suggests that this Amerindian body is not the one we take for granted but rather one very similar to the body that figures in the writings of Galen and other classical authors. This insight sheds new light on Amerindian mythology, where tubes and apertures are a dominant theme, and on ritual where music and tobacco smoke lend substance and fertility to life-giving breath and control of body orifices is emphasised. Such ideas, rooted in a common-sense anatomy and physiology, are also familiar in the modern West but have been submerged in Elias' civilizing process.

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