Margaret Healy – författare

‘Prosthesis’ denotes a rhetorical ‘addition’ to a pre-existing ‘beginning’, a ‘replacement’ for that which is ‘defective or absent’, a technological mode of ‘correction’ that reveals a history of corporeal and psychic discontent. Recent scholarship has given weight to these multiple meanings of ‘prosthesis’ as tools of analysis for literary and cultural criticism. The study of pre-modern prosthesis, however, often registers as an absence in contemporary critical discourse. This collection seeks to redress this omission, reconsidering the history of prosthesis and its implications for contemporary critical responses to, and uses of, it. The book demonstrates the significance of notions of prosthesis in medieval and early modern theological debate, Reformation controversy, and medical discourse and practice. It also tracks its importance for imaginings of community and of the relationship of self and other, as performed on the stage, expressed in poetry, charms, exemplary and devotional literature, and as fought over in the documents of religious and cultural change. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book engages with contemporary critical and cultural theory and philosophy, genre theory, literary history, disability studies, and medical humanities, establishing prosthesis as a richly productive analytical tool in the pre-modern, as well as the modern, context. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Textual Practice journal.

The intellectual culture of the English country house is a ground-breaking collection of essays by leading and emerging scholars, which uncovers the vibrant intellectual life of early modern provincial England. The essays in the volume explore architectural planning; libraries and book collecting; landscape gardening; interior design; the history of science and scientific experimentation; and the collection of portraits and paintings. The essays demonstrate the significance of the English country house (e.g. Knole House, Castle Howard, Penshurst Place) and its place within larger local cultures that it helped to create and shape. They provide a substantial overview of the country house culture of early modern England and the complicated relationship between the provinces and the national, the country and the city, in a period of rapid social, intellectual and economic transformation. It will appeal to anyone interested in the culture of the country house and its place in early modern England.

Deeply immersed in the politics of kingship, Richard II was undoubtedly one of the most controversial plays to be staged in the 1050s. This book locates Richard II firmly amidst the late-sixteenth-century heated debates between champions of absolute monarchy and advocates of a more limited, democratic style of government; debates which culminated in the 1640s in the deposition and killing of an actual monarch – Charles I. Outlining both conservative and more recent radical approaches, the political impact of the play at the time of the Essex rebellion through to the 1680s is considered. Analysis of the complex language, symbolism, and dramatic sign-systems of the play, emphasise Richard II as a play which confounds single, straightforward viewpoints. Political and gender instability go hand-in-hand in Richard II and an introduction of feminist perspectives, furthers the book’s thesis that the troubling distance between signs and what they represent is the central preoccupation of the play. Finally, the author reflects on critical and stage appropriations of the Shakespearian text since 1680, discussing important productions of Richard II over the centuries, including – in particular depth – John Barton’s for the RSC in 1973 and Deborah Warner’s 1995 production for the Royal National Theatre at The Cottesloe.

Shakespeare's sonnets and A Lover's Complaint constitute a rich tapestry of rhetorical play about Renaissance love in all its guises. A significant strand of this spiritual alchemy is working the 'metal' of the mind through meditation on love, memory work and intense imagination. Healy demonstrates how this process of anguished soul work - construed as essential to inspired poetic making - is woven into these poems, accounting for their most enigmatic imagery and urgency of tone. The esoteric philosophy of late Renaissance Neoplatonic alchemy, which embraced bawdy sexual symbolism and was highly fashionable in European intellectual circles, facilitated Shakespeare's poetry. Arguing that Shakespeare's incorporation of alchemical textures throughout his late works is indicative of an artistic stance promoting religious toleration and unity, this book sets out a crucial new framework for interpreting the 1609 poems and transforms our understanding of Shakespeare's art.

Shakespeare's sonnets and A Lover's Complaint constitute a rich tapestry of rhetorical play about Renaissance love in all its guises. A significant strand of this spiritual alchemy is working the 'metal' of the mind through meditation on love, memory work and intense imagination. Healy demonstrates how this process of anguished soul work - construed as essential to inspired poetic making - is woven into these poems, accounting for their most enigmatic imagery and urgency of tone. The esoteric philosophy of late Renaissance Neoplatonic alchemy, which embraced bawdy sexual symbolism and was highly fashionable in European intellectual circles, facilitated Shakespeare's poetry. Arguing that Shakespeare's incorporation of alchemical textures throughout his late works is indicative of an artistic stance promoting religious toleration and unity, this book sets out a crucial new framework for interpreting the 1609 poems and transforms our understanding of Shakespeare's art.

‘Prosthesis’ denotes a rhetorical ‘addition’ to a pre-existing ‘beginning’, a ‘replacement’ for that which is ‘defective or absent’, a technological mode of ‘correction’ that reveals a history of corporeal and psychic discontent. Recent scholarship has given weight to these multiple meanings of ‘prosthesis’ as tools of analysis for literary and cultural criticism. The study of pre-modern prosthesis, however, often registers as an absence in contemporary critical discourse. This collection seeks to redress this omission, reconsidering the history of prosthesis and its implications for contemporary critical responses to, and uses of, it. The book demonstrates the significance of notions of prosthesis in medieval and early modern theological debate, Reformation controversy, and medical discourse and practice. It also tracks its importance for imaginings of community and of the relationship of self and other, as performed on the stage, expressed in poetry, charms, exemplary and devotional literature, and as fought over in the documents of religious and cultural change. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book engages with contemporary critical and cultural theory and philosophy, genre theory, literary history, disability studies, and medical humanities, establishing prosthesis as a richly productive analytical tool in the pre-modern, as well as the modern, context. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Textual Practice journal.