The Virtue of Sympathy: Magic, Philosophy, and Literature in Seventeenth-Century England

by Seth Lobis

Overview

Beginning with an analysis of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and building to a new reading of Milton’s Paradise Lost, author Seth Lobis charts a profound change in the cultural meaning of sympathy during the seventeenth century. Having long referred to magical affinities in the universe, sympathy was increasingly understood to be a force of connection between people. By examining sympathy in literary and philosophical writing of the period, Lobis illuminates an extraordinary shift in human understanding.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300210415
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	01/06/2015
Series:	Yale Studies in English
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
File size:	851 KB

About the Author

Seth Lobis teaches in the Literature Department at Claremont McKenna College, focusing on British literature from 1500 to 1800.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Toward a New History of Sympathy 1

1 Sir Kenelm Digby and the Matter of Sympathy 36

2 The "Self-Themes" of Margaret Cavendish and Thomas Hobbes 69

3 Milton and the Link of Nature 110

4 Paradise Lost and the Human Face of Sympathy 156

5 "Moral Magick": Cambridge Platonism and the Third Earl of Shaftesbury 198

6 The Future of Sympathy I: The Poetry of the World 256

7 The Future of Sympathy II: Hume and the Afterlife of Shaftesburianism 289

Coda: Hawthorne's Digby and Mary Shelley's Milton 313

Notes 327

Bibliography 367

Index 407

Editorial Reviews

[A]n erudite and insightful volume that . . . demonstrates how closely intertwined were natural and moral conceptions of sympathy during the seventeenth and indeed far into the nineteenth century.”—Anne-Julia Zwierlein, Milton Quarterly


“Rich in close attention to text, the book is in many ways a browser’s paradise, replete with minute observations, luxuriant quotations, and revelatory anecdotes.”—Sarah Hutton, Renaissance Quarterly


“Fascinating. . . . [Lobis] challenge[s] the lingering contention that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a univocal transition from the communal and sensual to the private and rational.”—Katherine Eggert, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900

“Lobis offers a wide-ranging intellectual and literary history of sympathy in seventeenth-century England, demonstrating how it becomes a key subject of philosophical debate and literary representation.  His discussion of the sources and complexities of sympathy brings an important new lens to bear on major literary authors such as John Milton and Margaret Cavendish, with equally insightful readings of such later authors as James Thomson, Mary Shelley, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.”—Laura Knoppers, University of Notre Dame

From the Publisher

Lobis offers a wide-ranging intellectual and literary history of sympathy in seventeenth-century England, demonstrating how it becomes a key subject of philosophical debate and literary representation.  His discussion of the sources and complexities of sympathy brings an important new lens to bear on major literary authors such as John Milton and Margaret Cavendish, with equally insightful readings of such later authors as James Thomson, Mary Shelley, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.”—Laura Knoppers, University of Notre Dame

Laura Knoppers