Instinct, Knowledge and Occult Science on the Early Modern English Stage

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

Del i serien Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture

1 204 kr

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Beskrivning

In Instinct, Knowledge and Occult Science on the Early Modern English Stage, Katherine Walker focuses on embodied experiences in the theater and the debates within the sciences that eventually fell out of favor but interlaced “gut feelings” with observational practice. She examines understudied occult sciences, looking to genres such as almanacs, witchcraft pamphlets and demonologies. As Walker argues, the early modern discourse of instinct registers shifting appraisals of the body’s role in making new knowledge. Unlike reason, instinct allowed anyone—a witch, an animal or a queen—to interpret a complex, animate environment. This knowledge was not only a seductive idea, but also opened up a range of debates on the limits of human cognition, the rights of marginalised individuals to offer new understanding, and the contours of what we can know about the environment.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2026-07-31
Mått:156 x 234 x undefined mm
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture
Antal sidor:244
Förlag:Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:9781399548120

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Mer om författaren

Katherine Walker is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is the author of Shakespeare and Science: A Dictionary and co-editor of the forthcoming The Handbook to Christopher Marlowe. Her work appears in journals such as English Literary History, Shakespeare and English Literary Renaissance, among others.

Recensioner i media

This deeply researched book explores how instinct provided vital embodied knowledge in early modernity. Reading a range of sources and centring the perspectives of marginalised figures, Walker recovers the epistemological force of nonrational, somatic experience. This important contribution to the history of knowledge reframes the ‘pricks’ of instinct as a rich method for understanding a complex world.

Innehållsförteckning

List of FiguresSeries Editors’ PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Innate Instincts, Embodied Knowledge1. Instinctive Cunning: Divination and Dreams in Wise Women Comedies2. Let Dog be Dog: Animal Instincts, Witchcraft, and Exorcising the Creaturely3. Dekker and Jonson’s Contagious Criminality4. Sidereal Revision in All’s Well That Ends Well5. The Devil’s Apprentice: Clowns and Demonology in Doctor Faustus6. Instinctive Angels and Infinity in Antony and CleopatraCodaBibliographyIndex

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