Conceiving Desire in Lyly and Shakespeare

Gillian Knoll is Assistant Professor in English at Western Kentucky University. Her publications include “‘Binding the Void’: The Erotics of Place in Antony and Cleopatra.” Criticism 58.2 (Forthcoming, 2017) and “How to Make Love to the Moon: Intimacy and Erotic Distance in John Lyly’s Endymion.” Shakespeare Quarterly 65.2 (2014): 164-79.

The first book to pair Shakespeare and Lyly, Gillian Knoll’s Conceiving Desire in Lyly and Shakespeare is a brilliant, wide-ranging application of cognitive and conceptual metaphor theory to show how cognition and eros come together – thrillingly, threateningly, creatively – in the experience of dramatic characters such as Lyly’s Endymion and Campaspe, or Shakespeare’s Othello, Kate and Petruchio, and Antony and Cleopatra. Using three domain metaphors of motion, space and creativity, and the insights of philosophers from Aristotle to Mark Lakoff and Gaston Bachelard, Knoll explores the capacity of erotic experience to "make love" for the cognitively aware selves caught in its toils. Reading Knoll is to find oneself in the presence of genuinely new interpretations not only of little-known plays like Lyly’s Endymion but also Shakespeare’s best-known comedies and tragedies. I will not soon forget Knoll’s dazzling exposition of Endymion’s undying love for the immensity of the moon.

• Acknowledgments Series Editor’s Preface Introduction Part I. Motion Introduction. The Physics and Metaphysics of Metaphor Chapter 1. The Erotic Potential of Idleness in Lyly’s Drama Chapter 2. The ‘Raging Motions’ of Eros on Shakespeare’s Stage Part II. Space Introduction. ‘In love.’ Chapter 3. ‘A petty world of myself’: Intimacy and Erotic Distance in Endymion Chapter 4. Binding the void: The Erotics of Place in Antony and Cleopatra Part III. CreativityIntroduction. Erotic Subject, Object, Instrument Chapter 5. Love’s Use in Campaspe Chapter 6. ‘You lie, in faith’: Making Marriage in The Taming of the Shrew Conclusion. Metaphorical Constraints: Making ‘frenzy… fine’Bibliography