Description
Book SynopsisThis lively and accessible collection of essays explores the ways Shakespeare and his contemporaries imagined literature's impact on audiences' bodies, minds and emotions. Readers and theatregoers have always sought out literature for its emotional power, and this book shows how seriously early modern writers took their relationships with their audiences.
Trade Review'The volume's contributors engage in meaningful dialogues with drama, poetry, and primary sources; with a growing body of secondary materials; and above all with one another. Both uninitiated readers and long-time students of embodiment in literature will find much to deepen their understanding of the physiological impacts of reading and playgoing … Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.' P. D. Collington, Choice
'… while each chapter offers a fascinating series of close readings in its own right, as a whole the book reminds us of the importance of thinking about theatre and reading as transitive acts - that is, things that impact upon something else.' Erin Sullivan, Cahiers Élisabéthains
'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
Table of ContentsIntroduction: 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.
