Rethinking the Early Modern
Recent theoretical and methodological innovations in the humanities, from queer theory to ecocriticism, have opened numerous new venues for a reexamination of the literatures and cultures of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Indeed they invite us to re-think early modernity. With a focus on the English and French traditions, the books in this series address the question of what early modernity is by pursuing an original approach to early modern literature and culture, putting them into a theoretically informed, productive dialogue with current concerns of humanistic inquiry.
Series editors: Marcus Keller, Ellen McClure and Feisal Mohamed
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Economies of Praise
Reevaluates early modern poems of praise as, paradoxically, challenging an artistic economy that values exchange and productivity
The Poem, the Garden, and the World
The Poem, the Garden, and the World traces the Renaissance-era relationship of place and movement from garden to poetry to a confluence of the two.
Queer Velocities
This book explores the sensations of haste and delay as represented in seventeenth-century French theater. Jennifer Eun-Jung Row proposes that these disruptive velocities—occasions when the tempos of desire subverted society's rhythms and norms—sparked new queer attachments and intimacies.
The Philosopher's Toothache
Informed by work in both classical philosophy and performance studies, this book argues that Stoicism infused the theatrical culture of early modern England. Plays written during this period instruct audiences to cultivate their virtue, self-awareness, and creativity in keeping with Stoic practice.
Subjects of Affection
This book reappraises early modern French tragedy to provide a corrective to accounts of human rights that begin with the French Revolution. The study explores previously unrecognized models for collective action that emerge during the sixteenth century religious wars.
Political Aesthetics in the Era of Shakespeare
This book examines the relationship between art and politics in Shakespeare and the early modern era, with a focus on the relation between aesthetics and sensory experience.
Absolutist Attachments
In Absolutist Attachments, Chloé Hogg uncovers the affective and media connections that shaped Louis XIV’s absolutism. This book offers a view of another kind of absolutism—not the spectacular absolutism of an unbound king but the binding connections of his subjects.
Sacred and Secular Transactions in the Age of Shakespeare
Sacred and Secular Transactions in the Age of Shakespeare is a collection of essays that argue that Shakespeare’s plays present “secularization” not only as a historical narrative of progress but also as a hermeneutic process that unleashes complex and often problematic transactions between sacred and secular.
Feeling Faint
Feeling Faint is a book about human consciousness in its most basic sense: the awareness, at any given moment, that we live and feel. Such awareness, it argues, is distinct from the categories of selfhood to which it is often assimilated, and can only be uncovered at the margins of first-person experience. What would it mean to be conscious without being a first person—to be conscious in the absence of a self?
The Written World
In The Written World, Jeffrey N. Peters argues that geographic space may be understood as a foundational, originating principle of literary creation. By way of an innovative reading of the Platonic concept of chora, Peters shows that canonical literary works of the French seventeenth century are guided by what he calls a “chorological” approach to poetic invention.
Economies of Praise
Reevaluates early modern poems of praise as, paradoxically, challenging an artistic economy that values exchange and productivity
The Poem, the Garden, and the World
The Poem, the Garden, and the World traces the Renaissance-era relationship of place and movement from garden to poetry to a confluence of the two.
Queer Velocities
This book explores the sensations of haste and delay as represented in seventeenth-century French theater. Jennifer Eun-Jung Row proposes that these disruptive velocities—occasions when the tempos of desire subverted society's rhythms and norms—sparked new queer attachments and intimacies.
The Philosopher's Toothache
Informed by work in both classical philosophy and performance studies, this book argues that Stoicism infused the theatrical culture of early modern England. Plays written during this period instruct audiences to cultivate their virtue, self-awareness, and creativity in keeping with Stoic practice.
Subjects of Affection
This book reappraises early modern French tragedy to provide a corrective to accounts of human rights that begin with the French Revolution. The study explores previously unrecognized models for collective action that emerge during the sixteenth century religious wars.
Political Aesthetics in the Era of Shakespeare
This book examines the relationship between art and politics in Shakespeare and the early modern era, with a focus on the relation between aesthetics and sensory experience.
Absolutist Attachments
In Absolutist Attachments, Chloé Hogg uncovers the affective and media connections that shaped Louis XIV’s absolutism. This book offers a view of another kind of absolutism—not the spectacular absolutism of an unbound king but the binding connections of his subjects.
Sacred and Secular Transactions in the Age of Shakespeare
Sacred and Secular Transactions in the Age of Shakespeare is a collection of essays that argue that Shakespeare’s plays present “secularization” not only as a historical narrative of progress but also as a hermeneutic process that unleashes complex and often problematic transactions between sacred and secular.
Feeling Faint
Feeling Faint is a book about human consciousness in its most basic sense: the awareness, at any given moment, that we live and feel. Such awareness, it argues, is distinct from the categories of selfhood to which it is often assimilated, and can only be uncovered at the margins of first-person experience. What would it mean to be conscious without being a first person—to be conscious in the absence of a self?
The Written World
In The Written World, Jeffrey N. Peters argues that geographic space may be understood as a foundational, originating principle of literary creation. By way of an innovative reading of the Platonic concept of chora, Peters shows that canonical literary works of the French seventeenth century are guided by what he calls a “chorological” approach to poetic invention.