Sympathy in Early Modern Literature and Culture

The first comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of sympathy in early modern Anglophone literature and culture.

Richard Meek (Author)

9781009280266, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 April 2023

304 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

'... [this book] stands as a remarkable achievement that demonstrates why all readers of early modern literature should pay attention to the workings of emotion. … In my estimation, one of the highest compliments you can give an academic book is to say that you instantly see how its insights will shed light on material beyond what is covered in the text properly: this is certainly the case with Meek's scholarship. His book is a shining example of why the literary history of emotion is such an exciting area of inquiry - and it will also richly reward those with investments in other fields.' Bradley J. Irish, The Review of English Studies

This is the first comprehensive study of sympathy in the early modern period, providing a deeply researched and interdisciplinary examination of its development in Anglophone literature and culture. It argues that the term sympathy was used to refer to an active and imaginative sharing of affect considerably earlier than previous critical and historical accounts have suggested. Investigating a wide range of texts and genres, including prose fiction, sermons, poetic complaint, drama, political tracts, and scientific treatises, Richard Meek demonstrates the ways in which sympathy in the period is bound up with larger debates about society, religion, and identity. He also reveals the extent to which early modern emotions were not simply humoral or grounded in the body, but rather relational, comparative, and intertextual. This volume will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Renaissance literature and history, the history of emotions, and the history and philosophy of science.

Introduction: 'Solemn sympathy'
1. 'A sympathy of affections': sympathy, love and friendship in Elizabethan prose fiction
2. 'Compassion and mercie draw teares from the godlyfull often': the rhetoric of sympathy in the early modern sermon
3. 'Grief best is pleased with grief's society': female complaint and the transmission of sympathy
4. 'O, what a sympathy of woe is this': passionate sympathy in late Elizabethan drama
5. 'Soveraignes have a sympathie with subjects': the politics of sympathy in Jacobean England
6. 'As God loves sympathy, God loves symphony': sympathy at a distance in Caroline England Coda.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]