Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton

ISBN-13: 9780521669023 / Angielski / Miękka / 2000 / 220 str.

Michael C. Schoenfeldt; Stephen Orgel; Anne Barton

Opis

Michael Schoenfeldt's fascinating study explores the close relationship between selves and bodies, psychological inwardness and corporeal processes, as they are represented in English Renaissance literature. After Galen, the predominant medical paradigm of the period envisaged a self governed by humors, literally embodying inner emotion by locating and explaining human passion within a taxonomy of internal organs and fluids. It thus gave a profoundly material emphasis to behavioral phenomena, giving the poets of the period a vital and compelling vocabulary for describing the ways in which selves inhabit and experience bodies.

Recenzje

'… this study offers resourceful and inspired readings of central texts in English poetry, presented in elegant style and including some rather memorable witticisms.' Anglia

Spis treści

List of illustrations; Preface; 1. Bodies of rule: embodiment and interiority in early modern England; 2. Fortifying inwardness: Spenser's castle of moral health; 3. The matter of inwardness: Shakespeare's Sonnets; 4. Devotion and digestion: George Herbert's consuming subject; 5. Temperance and temptation: the alimental vision in Paradise Lost; Afterword; Notes; Index.