• DOI:10.1086/375037
• Corpus ID: 144687005

Divining an Author: The Idea of Authorship in an Indian Religious Tradition

@article{Novetzke2003DiviningAA,
  title={Divining an Author: The Idea of Authorship in an Indian Religious Tradition},
  author={Christian Lee Novetzke},
  journal={History of Religions},
  year={2003},
  volume={42},
  pages={213 - 242}
}

• Christian Lee Novetzke
• Published 1 February 2003
• Art
• History of Religions

No one quite understands why Jeremy Bentham, the British radical philosopher and mentor to eminent Orientalist James Mill, would choose a closet in a hall of University College, London, to be his tomb. The spectacle of the “auto-icon,” as he named the morbid installation prescribed in his will, puzzles almost anyone who sees it. His cadaver, as per his directions, was dissected and embalmed; his organs were donated to science. His vacated body was clad in his favorite suit and placed in a chair, with a wax replica of his head set atop his remains and finished with glass eyes. There is a legend that he carried those ocular marbles around with him in his pockets in the years before his death in 1832. 2 All that remains now of the auto-icon is Bentham’s skeleton, padded with straw,