Shakespearean Sensations
Experiencing Literature in Early Modern England

Shakespearean Sensations explores the ways Shakespeare and his contemporaries imagined literature affecting audiences' bodies, minds and emotions.

Katharine A. Craik (Edited by), Tanya Pollard (Edited by)

9781107028005, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 February 2013

256 pages, 1 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.51 kg

'Scholars and students alike will benefit from the lucid writing and strong, productive reinterpretations to be found in these essays - and in many other arguments throughout the collection as well. Together, the essays demonstrate that early modern conceptions of the body as a porous, volatile, affectible organism have surprising continuities as well as discontinuities with our own.' Jeremy Lopez, Sharp News

This strong and timely collection provides fresh insights into how Shakespeare's plays and poems were understood to affect bodies, minds and emotions. Contemporary criticism has had surprisingly little to say about the early modern period's investment in imagining literature's impact on feeling. Shakespearean Sensations brings together scholarship from a range of well-known and new voices to address this fundamental gap. The book includes a comprehensive introduction by Katharine A. Craik and Tanya Pollard and comprises three sections focusing on sensations aroused in the plays; sensations evoked in the playhouse; and sensations found in the imaginative space of the poems. With dedicated essays on Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and Twelfth Night, the collection explores how seriously early modern writers took their relationship with their audiences and reveals new connections between early modern literary texts and the emotional and physiological experiences of theatregoers.

Introduction: imagining audiences Katharine A. Craik and Tanya Pollard
Part I. Plays: 1. Feeling fear in Macbeth Allison P. Hobgood
2. Hearing Iago's withheld confession Allison Deutermann
3. Self-love, spirituality, and the senses in Twelfth Night Douglas Trevor
Part II. Playhouses: 4. Conceiving tragedy Tanya Pollard
5. Playing with appetite in early modern comedy Hillary Nunn
6. Notes towards an analysis of early modern applause Matthew Steggle
7. Catharsis as 'purgation' in Shakespearean drama Thomas Rist
Part III. Poems: 8. Epigrammatic commotions William Kerwin
9. Poetic 'making' and moving the soul Margaret Healy
10. Shakespearean pain Michael Schoenfeldt
Afterword: senses of an ending Bruce R. Smith.

Subject Areas: Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]