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Examines literary engagement with immateriality since the 'material turn' in early modern studies Immateriality and Early Modern English Literature explores how early modern writers responded to rapidly shifting ideas about the interrelation of their natural and spiritual worlds. It provides six case studies of works by Shakespeare, Donne and Herbert, offering new readings of important literary texts of the English Renaissance alongside detailed chapters outlining attitudes towards immateriality in works of natural philosophy, medicine and theology. Building on the importance of addressing material culture in order to understand early modern literature, Knapp demonstrates how the literary imagination was shaped by changing attitudes toward the immaterial realm. James A. Knapp is Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in the English Department at Loyola University Chicago.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Shakespeare's Naught
1. Immateriality and the Language of Things
Part One: Being
2. 'There are more things in heaven and earth': Material and Immaterial Substance and Early Modern Ontology
3. 'For I must nothing be':
Richard II and the Immateriality of Self
4. ''Tis insensible then?': Concept and Action in
1 Henry IV
Part Two: Believing
5. The Visible and the Invisible: Seeing the Earthly-Believing the Spiritual
6. 'When though knowest this, thou knowest': Intention, Intuition, and Temporality in Donne's
Anatomy of the World
7. 'a brittle crazy glass': George Herbert and the Experience of the Divine
Part Three: Thinking
8. Cognition and its Objects, or Ideas and the Substance of Spirit(s)
9. 'Thinking makes it so': Mind, Body, and Spirit in
The Rape of Lucrece,
Hamlet, and
Much Ado About Nothing
10. 'Neither Fish nor Flesh, nor Good Red Herring': Phenomenality, Representation, and Experience in
The Tempest
Coda
About the author
James A. Knapp is Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in the English Department at Loyola University Chicago. His work focuses on the intersections of philosophy, literature, and visual culture in early modern Britain. He is the author of
Illustrating the Past in Early Modern England (2003) and
Image Ethics in Shakespeare and Spenser (2011), and his essays on early modern literature and culture have appeared in
Shakespeare Quarterly,
ELH,
Criticism, and numerous essay collections.
Summary
Immateriality and Early Modern English Literature explores how early modern writers responded to rapidly shifting ideas about the interrelation of their natural and spiritual worlds.
