Spa Culture and Literature in England, 1500-1800 (Early Modern Literature in History)

This edited collection aims at highlighting the various uses of water in sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth-century England, while exploring the tensions between those who praised the curative virtues of waters and those who rejected them for their supposedly harmful effects. Divided into three balanced sections, the collection includes contributions from renowned specialists of early modern culture and literature as well as rising young scholars as it seeks to establish a dialogue between different methodologies, and explain why the spa-related issues examined still resonate in today’s society. Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 8 Contents 24 Editors and Contributors 27 List of Figures 33 Part I Generic Explorations: Baths and Waters in Poetry, Drama and Prose 35 1 ‘Bathing [...] in Origane and Thyme’: Baths in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene 36 1 From Therapeutic to Erotic Waters 37 2 Threatening Transgressions 39 3 The Shiftiness of Spenser’s Waters 43 4 Conclusion: Liquid Poetics 47 Works Cited 48 2 Fountain, Waters and Spas in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi: From Blood Baths to ‘Turkish Delights’ 50 1 Historical Precedents 51 2 The Role of Wells and Water 53 3 The Baths as a Means of Female Emancipation and Autonomous Pleasure 57 4 Conclusion: Dirty Waters 60 Works Cited 61 3 Taking the Cure: Mineral Waters and Love’s Folly in Lady Mary Wroth’s The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania 63 1 Literary Contexts for Taking the Waters 65 2 Historical Interloquators: Aqueous Mineral Genesis, Medical Practice, and Religious Belief 73 3 Conclusion: Literary Prolepsis of an Emergent Spa Culture 80 Works Cited 82 4 Bristol and Bath in Frances Burney’s Evelina 84 1 Bristol Hotwells, Between Permanence and Transience 86 2 Bristol, a Literary Place 87 3 Bath, Genre and Gender in Evelina 90 4 Conclusion: From Fiction to Life 93 Works Cited 94 5 ‘Oh! Who Can Ever Be Tired of Bath?’ The Sense of Place in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion 96 1 ‘Examining Some of These Putrifying Houses’ 99 2 Northanger Abbey: Bath as a Place of Adventures 103 3 Persuasion: Between Ironic Dislocation and Blissful Reunion 108 4 Conclusion: Opening up New Vistas 114 Works Cited 116 Part II Taking the Waters: Myth, Recreation and Satire 117 6 Bath and Bladud: The Progress of a Wayward Myth 118 1 The Bladud Myth 119 Bladud’s Myth in Time 119 2 Bath’s History and Bladud 130 3 Conclusion: The Bladud Myth Now 140 Works Cited 142 7 Creatures of the Bath: Transformations at the Early Modern British Spa 146 1 Sight 148 2 Sound 149 3 Smell 150 4 Taste 151 5 Touch 153 6 Humans or Creatures? 157 7 Conclusion: Discomfort at the Spa 159 Works Cited 160 8 Bathing in Verse: Christopher Anstey’s The New Bath Guide and Georgian Resort Satire 164 1 Satire and Sociability: The New Bath Guide 167 2 Anapests and Advertisements: Ansteyan Resort Satire 170 3 Blundering Northwards: Versifying Harrogate 176 4 Conclusion: The Anstey Effect 181 Works Cited 184 9 ‘For Music Is Wholesome the Doctors All Think’: The Curative and Restorative Function of Music in Eighteenth-Century English Spas 187 1 The Omnipresence of Music 189 2 Mixed Attitudes 192 3 The Healing Power of Music 193 4 Conclusion: Further Investigations 196 Works Cited 197 Part III Emerging Science: The Therapeutic Uses of Waters 200 10 ‘Water of Paradise’: The Role and Function of Balneology in Bacon’s New Atlantis, De vijs mortis and Historia vitae et mortis 201 1 Taking the Waters in Bacon’s New Atlantis 203 2 The Function of Baths in Bacon’s Medical Thinking 206 3 ‘So Shall Nature Be Cherished’: Bacon’s Voluptuous Philosophy 211 4 Conclusion: Reconciling Pleasure, Health and Longevity 213 Works Cited 214 11 ‘Minerals in Winter’: Robert Wittie’s Cold Treatment 216 1 Frost’s Impressions, or, Preparing the Palate 218 2 ‘Minerals in Winter’, or, a Cool Draught 222 3 Feeling ‘Exquisete’ in the ‘Extream’ 227 4 Conclusion: Soaking with the Trouble 231 Works Cited 233 12 Mineral Waters as a Treatment for Barrenness in Eighteenth-Century Britain 235 1 The Mineral Water Cure in Popular Medical Treatises 238 2 Royal Visits 240 3 The Example of Scarborough in Literary Miscellanies 243 4 The Adulterous Woman Trope 246 5 Conclusion: The Persistence of Hope 250 Works Cited 250 13 Drowning in Health: Murky Perceptions of Mineral Water and Alcohol in Eighteenth-Century Medical Literature and Social Mores 254 1 Intoxicating Brews 257 2 Mineral Water: A Medicine (in Moderation) 262 3 Alcohol’s Adversaries... and Adherents 266 4 Intoxicating Spaces 272 5 Conclusion: Through a Glass Darkly 277 Works Cited 278 Part IV Coda. New Ecocritical Perspectives 283 14 All Is Deep: All Is Shallow—Literary Springs, Wells and Depths, from Shakespeare to Ecocriticism 284 1 Enchanted Springs in Petrarchan Sonnets 285 2 Biblical Springs and Allegorical Landscapes 286 3 Restorative Springs and the Romantic Sublime 287 4 J. H. Prynne: Taking Knowledge ‘Back to the Springs’ 293 5 Ecocriticism and the Meaning of Watery Depths 297 Works Cited 303 Index 305 This edited collection aims at highlighting the various uses of water in sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth-century England, while studying the tensions between those who praised the curative virtues of waters and those who rejected them for their supposedly harmful effects. Through a variety of critical approaches, the book addresses changing social attitudes towards mineral waters and examines spas both as sites of healing and as places of sexual and physical danger. It also explores the highly sensory experience of "taking the waters". Including contributions from renowned specialists of early modern culture and literature as well as rising scholars, this volume establishes a dialogue between different methodologies to explain why the spa-related issues examined still resonate in today's society