Description
Book SynopsisExplores the prominence of insects in the literal and symbolic economies of early modern England. Examines concepts cutting across species (insect and otherwise) and draws attention to the work of early modern natural historians.
Trade Review“Lesser Living Creatures of the Renaissance brings a welcome and timely focus on early modern understandings of insect life, ideas, and work that stood, as the authors convincingly argue, in the midst of the transformation of natural history ‘as literary authority’ to embodying the new scientific ideas and observational methods of the era. This two-volume work makes a significant scholarly contribution to literary studies and history by bringing insects and insect life into these conversations.”
—Martha Few,author of Baptism Through Incision: The Postmortem Cesarean Operation in the Spanish Empire
“There has not previously been such a wide-ranging collection as this. Lesser Living Creatures of the Renaissance is a vital new contribution to not only early modern studies, not only animal studies and ecocriticism, but also the history of science, the history of medicine, and current debates about the environment.”
—Erica Fudge,author of Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes: People and Their Animals in Early Modern England
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction Creatures
Joseph Campana
1. Silkworm Thomas Moffett, Silkworm Laureate
Bruce Boehrer
2. Ants Go to the Pismire
Shannon Kelley
3. Flea Annihilating the Copulative Conceit: John Donne’s Conversion of the “son of dust” into Uncertain Sacrilege
Gary M. Bouchard
4. Fly Of Flyes: The Insect Mind of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
Perry Guevara
5. Gnat The Clamor of Things: Moffett’s Gnats, Spenser’s Complaints
Steven Swarbrick
6. Maggot Mutable Maggots: Corruption, Generation, and Literary Legacy
Emily L. King
7. Bee “Some say the bee stings”: Toward an Apian Poetics
Keith Botelho and Joseph Campana
8. Wasp What Is It Like to Be Like a Wasp?
Donovan Sherman
9. Butterflies and Moths Volatile Creatures and Elaborate Work
Chris Barrett
10. Grasshopper and Locust Antimonarchal Locusts: Translating the Grasshopper in the Aftermath of the English Civil Wars
Kathryn Vomero Santos
11. Beetle Sycorax’s Beetles: Legacies of Science, the Occult, and Blackness
Roya Biggie
12. Spider The Renaissance of Spiders: Ambivalence, Beauty, Terror, Art
Mary Baine Campbell
13. Water Bugs Bugs Aquatic: Water Striders from Moffett to Marine Science
Dan Brayton
14. Worms Worms of Conscience
Karen Raber
15. Scorpions Flame of Fire Beaten: Scorpions in and out of Mind
Eric C. Brown
Epilogue Creatures
Keith Botelho
List of Contributors
Index
