Bodies & Selves Early Mod England (Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture)

Michael Schoenfeldt's fascinating study explores the close relationship between selves and bodies, psychological inwardness and corporeal processes, as they are represented in English Renaissance literature. After Galen, the predominant medical paradigm of the period envisaged a self governed by humors, literally embodying inner emotion by locating and explaining human passion within a taxonomy of internal organs and fluids. It thus gave a profoundly material emphasis to behavioral phenomena, giving the poets of the period a vital and compelling vocabulary for describing the ways in which selves inhabit and experience bodies.

• Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage
• The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe (Winner, Beatrice White Book Prize, English Association 1999)
• Cruel Optimism