The senses in early modern England : 1558-1660

This book attempts to interrogate the literary, artistic and cultural output of early modern England. Following Constance Classen's view that understandings of the senses, and sensory experience itself, are culturally and historically contingent; it explores the culturally specific role of the senses in textual and aesthetic encounters in England. The book follows Joachim-Ernst Berendt's call for 'a democracy of the senses' in preference to the various sensory hierarchies that have often shaped theory and criticism. It argues that the playhouse itself challenged its audiences' reliance on the evidence of their own eyes, teaching early modern playgoers how to see and how to interpret the validity of the visual. The book offers an essay on each of the five senses, beginning and ending with two senses, taste and smell, that are often overlooked in studies of early modern culture. It investigates Robert Herrick's accounts in "Hesperides" of how the senses function during sexual pleasure and contact. The book also explores sensory experiences, interrogating textual accounts of the senses at night in writings from the English Renaissance. It offers a picture of early modern thought in which sensory encounters are unstable, suggesting ways in which the senses are influenced by the contexts in which they are experienced: at night, in states of sexual excitement, or even when melancholic. The book looks at the works of art themselves and considers the significance of the senses for early modern subjects attending a play, regarding a painting, and reading a printed volume. This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Considering a wide range of early modern texts, performances and artworks, the essays in this collection demonstrate how attention to the senses illuminates the literature, art and culture of early modern England. Examining canonical and less familiar literary works alongside early modern texts ranging from medical treatises to conduct manuals via puritan polemic and popular ballads, the collection offers a new view of the senses in early modern England. The volume offers dedicated essays on each of the five senses, each relating works of art to their cultural moments, whilst elsewhere the volume considers the senses collectively in particular cultural contexts. It also pursues the sensory experiences that early modern subjects encountered through the very acts of engaging with texts, performances and artworks. This book will appeal to scholars of early modern literature and culture, to those working in sensory studies, and to anyone interested in the art and life of early modern England. Front matter Contents List of illustrations Contributors Note on the text Acknowledgements Introduction Part I Tracing a sense Staging taste ‘Dove-like looks’ and ‘serpents eyes’: staging visual clues ‘Filthie groping and uncleane handlings’: an examination of touching moments in dance of court and courtship ‘Thou art like a punie-Barber (new come to the trade) thou pick’st our eares too deepe’: barbery, earwax and snip-snaps Seeing smell Part II The senses in context Robert Herrick and the five (or six) senses ‘Did we lie downe, because ’twas night?’: John Donne, George Chapman and the senses of night in the 1590s Love melancholy and the senses in Mary Wroth’s works Part III Aesthetic sensory experiences ‘I see no instruments, nor hands that play’: Antony and Cleopatra and visual musical experience ‘Gazing in hir glasse of vaineglorie’: negotiating vanity ‘Tickling the senses with sinful delight’: the pleasure of reading comedies in early modern England Afterword Select bibliography Index