Time, Narrative, and Emotion in Early Modern England (Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity)

Exploiting a link between early modern concepts of the medical and the literary, David Houston Wood suggests that the recent critical attention to the gendered, classed, and raced elements of the embodied early modern subject has been hampered by its failure to acknowledge the role time and temporality play within the scope of these admittedly crucial concerns. Wood examines the ways that depictions of time expressed in early modern medical texts reveal themselves in contemporary literary works, demonstrating that the early modern recognition of the self as a palpably volatile entity, viewed within the tenets of contemporary medical treatises, facilitated the realistic portrayal of literary characters and served as a structuring principle for narrative experimentation. The study centers on four canonical, early modern texts notorious among scholars for their structural- that is, narrative, or temporal- difficulties. Wood displays the cogency of such analysis by working across a range of generic boundaries: from the prose romance of Philip Sidney's Arcadia, to the staged plays of William Shakespeare's Othello and The Winter's Tale, to John Milton's stubborn reliance upon humoral theory in shaping his brief epic (or closet drama), Samson Agonistes. As well as adding a new dimension to the study of authors and texts that remain central to early modern English literary culture, the author proposes a new method for analyzing the conjunction of character emotion and narrative structure that will serve as a model for future scholarship in the areas of historicist, formalist, and critical temporal studies. Unequal Cures illuminates the connections between public health and political change in Bolivia from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the country was a political oligarchy, until the eve of the 1952 national revolution that ushered in universal suffrage, agrarian reform, and the nationalization of Bolivia's tin mines. Ann Zulawski examines both how the period's major ideological and social transformations changed medical thinking and how ideas of public health figured in debates about what kind of country Bolivia should become. Zulawski argues that the emerging populist politics of the 1930s and 1940s helped consolidate Bolivia's medical profession and that improved public health was essential to the creation of a modern state. Yet she finds that at mid-century, women, indigenous Bolivians, and the poor were still considered inferior and consequently received often inadequate medical treatment and lower levels of medical care.Drawing on hospital and cemetery records, censuses, diagnoses, newspaper accounts, and interviews, Zulawski describes the major medical problems that Bolivia faced during the first half of the twentieth century, their social and economic causes, and efforts at their amelioration. Her analysis encompasses the Rockefeller Foundation's campaign against yellow fever, the almost total collapse of Bolivia's health care system during the disastrous Chaco War with Paraguay (1932-35), an assessment of women's health in light of their socioeconomic realities, and a look at Manicomio Pacheco, the national mental hospital "Wood examines the ways that depictions of time expressed in early modern medical texts reveal themselves in contemporary literary works, demonstrating that the early modern recognition of the self as a palpably volatile entity, viewed within the tenets of contemporary medical treatises, facilitated the realistic portrayal of literary characters and served as a structuring principle for narrative experimentation. The study centers on four canonical, early modern texts notorious among scholars for their structural - that is, narrative, or temporal - difficulties. Wood displays the cogency of such analysis by working across a range of generic boundaries: from the prose romance of Philip Sidney's 'Arcadia', to the staged plays of William Shakespeare's 'Othello' and 'The Winter's Tale', to John Milton's stubborn reliance upon humoral theory in shaping his brief epic (or closet drama), 'Samson Agonistes'." --book jacket Cover 1 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 1 “Divers paces with divers persons” : Timing the Self in Early Modern England 12 2 “The accident of an instant” : Passions, Potions, and Poisons in Sidney’s Old Arcadia 58 3 “Very Now” : Time and the Intersubjective in Othello 88 4 “Not a jar o’ th’ clock” : Time and Narrative in The Winter’s Tale 114 5 “Spirit of phrenzie” : Narrative Temporality in Samson Agonistes 150 Conclusion 182 Bibliography 192 Index 206 "Divers paced with divers persons" : timing the self in early modern England " The accident of an instant" : passions, potions, and poisons in Sidney's Old Arcadia "Very now" : time and the intersubjective in Othello "Not a jar o' the clock" : time and narrative in The wsinter's tale "Spirit of phrenzie" : narrative temporality in Samson Agonistes. Divers pace with divers persons: timing the self in early modern England Accident of an instant: passions, potions, and poisons in Sidney's Old Arcadia Very now: time and the intersubjective in Othello Not a jar of the clock: time and narrative in the Winter's tale Spirit of phrenzie: narrative temporality in Samson Agonistes.