The senses in early modern England, 1558-1660 / edited by Simon Smith, Jackie Watson and Amy Kenny.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Watson, Jackie., Editor.

Contributor:

Smith, Simon, 1984- editor.

Watson, Jacqueline, editor.

Kenny, Amy, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

Senses and sensation in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 243 pages) : digital file(s).

Place of Publication:

Manchester, UK : Manchester University Press, 2015.

Manchester, UK : Manchester University Press, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

System Details:

data file

Summary:

This book attempts to interrogate the literary, artistic and cultural output of early modern England. Following Constance Classen's view that understandings of the senses, and sensory experience itself, are culturally and historically contingent; it explores the culturally specific role of the senses in textual and aesthetic encounters in England. The book follows Joachim-Ernst Berendt's call for 'a democracy of the senses' in preference to the various sensory hierarchies that have often shaped theory and criticism. It argues that the playhouse itself challenged its audiences' reliance on the evidence of their own eyes, teaching early modern playgoers how to see and how to interpret the validity of the visual. The book offers an essay on each of the five senses, beginning and ending with two senses, taste and smell, that are often overlooked in studies of early modern culture. It investigates Robert Herrick's accounts in Hesperides of how the senses function during sexual pleasure and contact. The book also explores sensory experiences, interrogating textual accounts of the senses at night in writings from the English Renaissance. It offers a picture of early modern thought in which sensory encounters are unstable, suggesting ways in which the senses are influenced by the contexts in which they are experienced: at night, in states of sexual excitement, or even when melancholic. The book looks at the works of art themselves and considers the significance of the senses for early modern subjects attending a play, regarding a painting, and reading a printed volume.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

List of illustrations

Contributors

Note on the text

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I Tracing a sense

1 Staging taste

2 'Dove-like looks' and 'serpents eyes'

3 'Filthie groping and uncleane handlings'

4 'Thou art like a punie-Barber (new come to the trade) thou pick'st our eares too deepe'

5 Seeing smell

Part II The senses in context

6 Robert Herrick and the five (or six) senses

7 'Did we lie downe, because 'twas night?'

8 Love melancholy and the senses in Mary Wroth's works

Part III Aesthetic sensory experiences

9 'I see no instruments, nor hands that play'

10 'Gazing in hir glasse of vaineglorie'

11 'Tickling the senses with sinful delight'

Afterword

Select bibliography

Index

Notes:

Images are not available in this digital edition due to restrictions from the rights holder.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

CC BY-NC-ND

Description based on print record and e-Publication, viewed on March 10, 2021.

ISBN:

9781526146465

1526146460

OCLC:

1163840310

Access Restriction:

Unrestricted online access