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

Explores the close relationship between inner psychology and bodily processes as represented in English Renaissance poetry.

Michael C. Schoenfeldt (Author)

9780521669023, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 January 2000

220 pages, 4 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.4 x 1.3 cm, 0.31 kg

'… this study offers resourceful and inspired readings of central texts in English poetry, presented in elegant style and including some rather memorable witticisms.' Anglia

Michael Schoenfeldt's fascinating study explores the close relationship between selves and bodies, psychological inwardness and corporeal processes, as they are represented in early modern English 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 behavioural phenomena, giving the poets of the period a vital and compelling vocabulary for describing the ways in which selves inhabit and experience bodies. In contrast to much work on the body which has emphasized its exuberant 'leakiness' as a principal of social liberation amid oppressive regimes, Schoenfeldt establishes the emancipatory value that the Renaissance frequently located not in moments of festive release, but in the exercise of regulation, temperance and self-control.

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.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC]