Shakespeare studies & criticism

The Renaissance of emotion

Understanding affect in Shakespeare and his contemporaries

Edited by Richard Meek, Erin Sullivan

Description

This collection of essays offers a major reassessment of the meaning and significance of emotional experience in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Recent scholarship on early modern emotion has relied on a medical-historical approach, resulting in a picture of emotional experience that stresses the dominance of the material, humoral body. The Renaissance of emotion seeks to redress this balance by examining the ways in which early modern texts explore emotional experience from perspectives other than humoral medicine. The chapters in the book seek to demonstrate how open, creative and agency-ridden the experience and interpretation of emotion could be. Taken individually, the chapters offer much-needed investigations into previously overlooked areas of emotional experience and signification; taken together, they offer a thorough re-evaluation of the cultural priorities and phenomenological principles that shaped the understanding of the emotive self in this period.

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Author Biography

Richard Meek is Lecturer in English at the University of Hull Erin Sullivan is Lecturer and Fellow in the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date May 2017
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781526116918 / 152611691X
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatPaperback
  • Primary Price 16.98 GBP
  • Pages288
  • ReadershipGeneral
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions216 x 138 mm
  • Biblio NotesIntroduction - Richard Meek and Erin Sullivan Part I: The theology and philosophy of emotion 1: The passions of Thomas Wright: Renaissance emotion across body and soul - Erin Sullivan 2: 'The scripture moveth us in sundry places': framing biblical emotions in the Book of Common Prayer and the Homilies - David Bagchi 3: 'This was a way to thrive': Christian and Jewish eudaimonism in The Merchant of Venice - Sara Coodin 4: Robert Burton, perfect happiness and the visio dei - Mary Ann Lund Part II: Shakespeare and the language of emotion 5: Spleen in Shakespeare's comedies - Nigel Wood 6: 'Rue even for ruth': Richard II and the imitation of sympathy - Richard Meek 7: What's happiness in Hamlet? - Richard Chamberlain Part III: The performance of emotion 8: 'They that tread in a maze': movement as emotion in John Lyly - Andy Kesson 9: (S)wept from power: two versions of tyrannicide in Richard III - Ann Kaegi 10: The affective scripts of early modern execution and murder - Frederika Bain 11: Discrepant emotional awareness in Shakespeare - R. S. White and Ciara Rawnsley Afterword - Peter Holbrook Index

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