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

by Michael C. Schoenfeldt

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521669023
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/13/2000
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture , #34
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.51(d)

Table of Contents

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.

Editorial Reviews

"Including extensive notes in lieu of a separate bibliography, this rich and rewarding book is very highly recommended for all academic libraries..." Choice

"Including extensive notes in lieu of a separate bibliography, this rich and rewarding book is very highly recommended for all academic libraries..." Choice

"...a useful addition to the growing body of studies addressing the complexity of the early modern self...this is a book to read, mark, and inwardly digest." Sixteenth Century Journal

"But food and appetite may, indeed, have been as important as sex, if not more so, and Schoenfeldt's Bodies and Selves takes a critical step in defining the scope and significance of that consuming obsession." Modern Philology

From the Publisher