The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies, Volume II

This companion volume to The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies: Tarrying with the Subjunctive exemplifies the new directions in which the field is going as well as the value of crossing disciplinary boundaries within and beyond the humanities. Topics studied include posthumanism, ecological studies, and historical phenomenology.

Volume II's outliers make clear the most important point of contention in our return to theory: anti-dualism and what this means for human agency as well as for our understandings of the political and the economic, which also might be to say, of the historical. For this reason, all of us should read The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies, Volume II. (Sharon O'Dair, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 69, 2014)

"For a bracing survey of theoretical developments in the field something one would need if she or he had been absorbed in some particular project for five or ten years without minding the critical discourse of the moment nothing is more economical than the second volume of The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies, edited by Paul Cefalu, Gary Kuchar, and Bryan Reynolds, the successor to a similar book edited by Cefalu and Reynolds in 2010. The challenge of such a collection, of course, is that the contributors must produce an essay of literary analysis while discussing the theory it adapts, without reifying the latter too much or lapsing into predictability (because after all, 'theory' in a title like this usually means 'theory with which the reader is already familiar'). I am glad to report that the thirteen chapters here mostly avoid these dangers, led by Julia Reinhard Lupton's luminous essay that brings 'affordance theory, scenography, and architecture and urbanism' into conversation with 'the spaces traveled and tested by Shakespearean drama' (p. 146) and Drew Daniel's turn to Empedocles as an alternative model to the Lucretian Renaissance described in much recent work." Roland Greene, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

Auteur

Julian Yates, University of Delaware, USA Dan Mills, Clayton State University, USA Joseph Campana, Rice University, USA Ken Hiltner, University of California, USA Edward Geisweidt, University of New Haven, USA Douglas Trevor, University of Michigan, USA Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, USA Matthew J. Smith, Azusa Pacific University, USA James A. Knapp, Loyola University of Chicago, USA Christopher Stokes, National University of Ireland, Ireland James Kuzner, Brown University, USA Kenneth Graham, University of Waterloo, Canada Drew Daniel, The Johns Hopkins University, USA

Contenu
Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors Introduction PART I: POSTHUMANISM 1. It's (for) you; or, the tele-t/r/opical post-human; Julian Yates 2. Margaret Cavendish and the Creation, Publishing, and Empowering of Subjectivity in the Blazing World; Dan Mills 3. The Bee and the Sovereign (II): Segments, Swarms, and the Early Modern Multitude, Joseph Campana PART II: ECOCRITICISM 4. Early Modern Ecocriticism; Ken Hiltner 5. Horticulture of the Head: The Vegetable Life of Hair in Early Modern English Thought; Edward Geisweidt 6. The Private Lives of Trees and Flowers; Douglas Trevor PART III: HISTORICAL PHENOMENOLOGY 7. Shakespearean Softscapes: Hospitality, Phenomenology, Design; Julia Reinhard Lupton 8. Describing the Sense of Confession in Hamlet; Matthew J. Smith 9. '''Tis insensible, then?': Language and Action in 1 Henry IV'; James A. Knapp 10. ''We Prove Mysterious by This Love': John Donne and the Intimacy of Flesh; Christopher Stokes PART IV: HISTORICISM NOW 11. Milton, Habermas, and the Dynamics of Debate; James Kuzner 12. 'Copious Measures': The Sidney Psalms and the Meaning of Abundance; Kenneth Graham 13. The Empedoclean Renaissance; Drew Daniel Index