Author Description
Understanding The Early-modern Subject To Be Constituted, As Shakespeare's Ulysses Explains, By Its Communications With Others, This Study Considers What Happens When These Conceptions Of Compassionate Communication And Sympathetic Exchange Are Comprehensively Undermined By Period Anxieties Concerning Contagion And The Transmission Of Disease. Allowing That 'no Man Is... Any Thing' Until He Has 'communicate[d] His Parts To Others', Can These Formative Communications Still Be Risked In A World Preoccupied By Communicable Sickness, Where Every Contact Risks Contraction, Where Every Touch Could Be The Touch Of Plague, Where Kind Interaction Could Facilitate Cruel Infection, And Where To Commiserate Is To Risk 'miserable Dependence'? Counting The Cost Of Compassion, This Study Of Shakespeare's Plays And Poetry Analyses How Medical Explanations Of Disease Impact Upon Philosophical Conceptions And Literary Depictions Of His Characters Who Find Themselves Precariously Implicated Within A World Of Ill Communications. It Examines The Influence Of Scientific Thought Upon The History Of The Subject, And Explores How Shakespeare—alive To Both The Importance And Dangers Of Sympathetic Communication—articulates An Increasing Sense Of Both The Pragmatic Benefits Of Monadic Thought, Emotional Isolation, And Subjective Quarantine, While Offering His Account Of The Considerable Loss Involved When We Lose Faith In Vulnerable, Tender, And Open Existence.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This study investigates how early modern anxieties regarding contagion and disease transmission fundamentally challenged contemporary philosophical conceptions of sympathetic human communication and social identity. Eric Langley, a scholar of early modern literature, utilizes a framework that bridges medical history and literary analysis to examine the tension between the necessity of social interaction and the physical risks of infection. He argues that Shakespeare’s works reflect a profound struggle between the desire for human connection and the pragmatic impulse toward emotional isolation and subjective quarantine in a world defined by the threat of plague.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- Analysis of Shakespearean plays and poetry through the lens of early modern medical theory.
- Exploration of the philosophical shift from communal identity to monadic thought.
- Examination of the linguistic and metaphorical links between communication and contagion.
Scope Limits
- The study does not provide a comprehensive history of early modern medicine, focusing instead on its intersection with literary characterization.
- It does not attempt to diagnose historical figures but rather analyzes the cultural and literary representation of disease.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Scholars in the field of Shakespearean studies frequently cite this work for its rigorous integration of medical history with close textual analysis. It is regarded as a significant contribution to the understanding of how early modern subjects negotiated the dangers of social vulnerability.
Page Count:
336
Publication Date:
2018-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0192554913
ISBN-13:
9780192554918
Philosophy
History - Modern
Shakespeare Studies
Literary Criticism