Possible Knowledge : The Literary Forms of Early Modern Science / Debapriya Sarkar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sarkar, Debapriya, author.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania. Press, publisher.

Folger Shakespeare Library, publisher.

Series:

Published in Cooperation with the Folger Shakespeare Library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

English literature.

Knowledge, Theory of, in literature.

Literature and science--England--History.

Literature and science.

Knowledge, Theory of--England--History.

Knowledge, Theory of.

Imagination in literature.

Literary form--History.

Literary form.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (265 pages, 11 unnumbered pages) : illustrations, facsimiles

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2023]

Summary:

"The Renaissance, scholars have long argued, was a period beset by the loss of philosophical certainty. In Possible Knowledge, Debapriya Sarkar argues for the pivotal role of literature--what early moderns termed poesie--in the dynamic intellectual culture of this era of profound incertitude. Revealing how problems of epistemology are inextricable from questions of literary form, Sarkar offers a defense of poiesis, or literary making, as a vital philosophical endeavor. Working across a range of genres, Sarkar theorizes "possible knowledge" as an intellectual paradigm crafted in and through literary form. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers such as Spenser, Bacon, Shakespeare, Cavendish, and Milton marshalled the capacious concept of the "possible," defined by Philip Sidney as what "may be and should be," to construct new theories of physical and metaphysical reality. These early modern thinkers mobilized the imaginative habits of thought constitutive to major genres of literary writing--including epic, tragedy, romance, lyric, and utopia--in order to produce knowledge divorced from historical truth and empirical fact by envisioning states of being untethered from "nature" or reality." -- Title details screen.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. Edmund Spenser's Speculative Method

Chapter 2. William Shakespeare's Prophetic Recipes

Chapter 3. Francis Bacon's "Endlesse Worke"

Chapter 4. Margaret Cavendish's Physical Poetics

Chapter 5. John Milton's Evental Poetics

Coda. The Ethics of Poiesis

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

"Published in cooperation with Folger Shakespeare Library".

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource (viewed 20 June 2023), publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Sarkar, Debapriya Possible Knowledge

ISBN:

9781512823363

1512823368

OCLC:

1365063923