Vital strife : sleep, insomnia, and the early modern ethics of care

__Vital Strife__ examines the close yet puzzling relationship between sleep and ethical care in early modernity. The plays, poems, and philosophical essays at the heart of this book—by Jasper Heywood, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish—explore the unconscious motions of corporeal life and the drowsy forms of sentience at the boundaries of human thought and intentionality. Benjamin Parris shows how these writers, although trained under the Renaissance humanist paradigm of attentive care, begin to dissolve the humanist coupling of virtue with vigilance by giving credence to the vital power of sleep. In contrast to humanist thinkers who equated sleep with carelessness, these writers draw on the ancient Stoic principle of __oikeiôsis__—the process of orienting the self toward its proper objects of care, beginning with the self—in asserting the value of sleep, while underscoring insomnia's threat to the ethical flourishing of persons and polity alike. Parris offers an important revaluation of Stoic philosophy, which has too often been misconstrued as renunciating feeling and sympathetic connection with others. With its striking new account of the reception of Stoicism and attitudes toward sleep and sleeplessness in early modern thought, __Vital Strife__ reveals the period's mounting concern with the regenerative nature of physical life and its elaboration of a newfound ethics of care. Vital Strife examines the close yet puzzling relationship between sleep and ethical care in early modernity. The plays, poems, and philosophical essays at the heart of this book—by Jasper Heywood, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish—explore the unconscious motions of corporeal life and the drowsy forms of sentience at the boundaries of human thought and intentionality. Benjamin Parris shows how these writers, although trained under the Renaissance humanist paradigm of attentive care, begin to dissolve the humanist coupling of virtue with vigilance by giving credence to the vital power of sleep. In contrast to humanist thinkers who equated sleep with carelessness, these writers draw on the ancient Stoic principle of oikeiôsis —the process of orienting the living being toward its proper objects of care, beginning with itself—in asserting the value of sleep, while underscoring insomnia's threat to the ethical flourishing of persons and polity alike. Parris offers an important revaluation of Stoic philosophy, which has too often been misconstrued as renouncing feeling and sympathetic connection with others. With its striking new account of the reception of Stoicism and attitudes toward sleep and sleeplessness in early modern thought, Vital Strife reveals the period's mounting concern with the regenerative nature of physical life and its elaboration of a newfound ethics of care. Vital Strife examines the close yet puzzling relationship between sleep and ethical care in early modernity. The plays, poems, and philosophical essays at the heart of this book—by Jasper Heywood, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish—explore the unconscious motions of corporeal life and the drowsy forms of sentience at the boundaries of human thought and intentionality. Benjamin Parris shows how these writers, although trained under the Renaissance humanist paradigm of attentive care, begin to dissolve the humanist coupling of virtue with vigilance by giving credence to the vital power of sleep. In contrast to humanist thinkers who equated sleep with carelessness, these writers draw on the ancient Stoic principle of oikeiôsis —the process of orienting the self toward its proper objects of care, beginning with the self—in asserting the value of sleep, while underscoring insomnia's threat to the ethical flourishing of persons and polity alike. Parris offers an important revaluation of Stoic philosophy, which has too often been misconstrued as renunciating feeling and sympathetic connection with others. With its striking new account of the reception of Stoicism and attitudes toward sleep and sleeplessness in early modern thought, Vital Strife reveals the period's mounting concern with the regenerative nature of physical life and its elaboration of a newfound ethics of care. Vital Strife examines the close yet puzzling relationship between sleep and ethical care in early modernity. The plays, poems, and philosophical essays at the heart of this book?by Jasper Heywood, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish?explore the unconscious motions of corporeal life and the drowsy forms of sentience at the boundaries of human thought and intentionality. Benjamin Parris shows how these writers, although trained under the Renaissance humanist paradigm of attentive care, begin to dissolve the humanist coupling of virtue with vigilance by giving credence to the vital power of sleep. 0In contrast to humanist thinkers who equated sleep with carelessness, these writers draw on the ancient Stoic principle of oikeiôsis?the process of orienting the living being toward its proper objects of care, beginning with itself?in asserting the value of sleep, while underscoring insomnia's threat to the ethical flourishing of persons and polity alike. Parris offers an important revaluation of Stoic philosophy, which has too often been misconstrued as renouncing feeling and sympathetic connection with others. With its striking new account of the reception of Stoicism and attitudes toward sleep and sleeplessness in early modern thought, Vital Strife reveals the period's mounting concern with the regenerative nature of physical life and its elaboration of a newfound ethics of care Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Vital Strife 1. Heavy with Care: Sleep and Ethical Life from Ancient Greece to Early Modern England 2. Hercules Asleep: Stoic Oikeiôsis in Jasper Heywood’s Hercules Furens 3. “The Body Is with the King, but the King Is Not with the Body”: Sovereign Sleep in the Tragedies of Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear 4. “Watching to Banish Care”: Sleep and Insomnia in The Faerie Queene 5. “Inhabit Lax”: Insomniac Care and the Vital Virtue of Sleep in Paradise Lost Coda: A Vital Rationality Notes Bibliography Index "Vital Strife is about the close yet puzzling relationship between sleep and the early modern ethics of care in works of 16th and 17th-century drama, poetry, and philosophy."-- Provided by publisher