The Indistinct Human in Renaissance Literature (Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500–1700)

"This volume argues for the necessaity of a re-articulation of the differences that separated man from other forms of life. Building on the increased attention paid in recent criticism to both plant and animal life in the Renaissance, as well as the instability of categories such as "human" and "animal," the essays in this collection argue for recognition of the persistently indistinct nature of humans, who cannot be finally divided ontologically or epistemologically from other forms of matter"-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-12 Front Matter....Pages 13-13 The Eight Animals in Shakespeare; or, Before the Human....Pages 15-25 Front Matter....Pages 27-27 “Half-Fish, Half-Flesh”: Dolphins, the Ocean, and Early Modern Humans....Pages 29-46 Royal Fish: Shakespeare’s Princely Whales....Pages 47-65 You Are What You Eat: Cooking and Writing Across the Species Barrier in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair ....Pages 67-84 “A Bett’ring of Nature”: Grafting and Embryonic Development in The Duchess of Malfi ....Pages 85-99 Bastard Grafts, Crafted Fruits: Shakespeare’s Planted Families....Pages 101-117 The Wooden Matter of Human Bodies: Prosthesis and Stump in A Larum for London....Pages 119-136 Front Matter....Pages 137-137 Vegetable Love: Botany and Sexuality in Seventeenth-Century England....Pages 139-158 On Vegetating Virgins: Greensickness and the Plant Realm in Early Modern Literature....Pages 159-177 A Heart of Stone: The Ungodly in Early Modern England....Pages 179-203 Of Stones and Stony Hearts: Desdemona, Hermione, and Post-Reformation Theater....Pages 205-227 Groveling with Earth in Kyd and Shakespeare’s Historical Tragedies....Pages 229-252 The Politic Worm: Invertebrate Life in the Early Modern English Body....Pages 253-273 Back Matter....Pages 275-292