This course will explore early modern scientific models of bodies’ relationships with their environments, with attention to theories about the sympathies sparked by correlations between human, animal, and inanimate bodies, and the potent consequences of manipulating these sympathies. Critical approaches will include history of the body, environmental and ecocritical readings, animal studies, and approaches to the supernatural.

Date

Reading

1

8-28

Introduction and overview

2

9-4

Thomas Elyot, The Castel of Helth (1539); John Davies, Microcosmos (1605); Helkiah Crooke, Microcosmographia (1615) (excerpts); Mary Floyd-Wilson, “Introduction: Secret Sympathies,” in Occult Knowledge, Science and Gender on the Shakespearean Stage (Cambridge, 2013); Gail Kern Paster, “Introduction,” in Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (Chicago, 2004).

3

9-11

Marlowe, Tamburlaine (1587); Matthew Greenfield, “Christopher Marlowe’s Wound Knowledge,” PMLA, 119:2 (2004); Timothy Francisco, “Marlowe’s War-Horses,” in Violent Masculinities: Male Aggression in Early Modern Texts and Culture, ed. Jennifer Feather, Catherine E. Thomas (Palgrave, 2013).

4

9-18

Marlowe, Faustus (1592); Kristen Poole, “The Devil's in the Archive: Doctor Faustus and Ovidian Physics,” Renaissance Drama 35 (2006); Andrew Sofer, “How to Do Things with Demons: Conjuring Performatives in Doctor Faustus,” Theatre Journal 61:1 (2009).

5

9-25

No class

6

10-2

Arden of Faversham (1592); Mary Floyd-Wilson, “Arden of Faversham: Tragic Action at a Distance,” in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Tragedy, ed. Emma Smith and Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr. (Cambridge, 2010); Alan Dessen, “Mist and Fog on the Elizabethan and Jacobean Stage,” in Speaking Pictures: The Visual/Verbal Nexus of Dramatic Performance (Fairleigh Dickinson, 2010).

7

10-9

Shakespeare, Macbeth (ca 1606); Steve Mentz, “Shakespeare’s Beach House, or The Green and the Blue in Macbeth,” Shakespeare Studies 39 (2011); Vin Nardizzi, “Shakespeare’s Globe and England’s Woods,” Shakespeare Studies 39 (2011).

8

10-16

Beaumont, Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607), Wendy Wall, “Tending to Bodies and Boys: Queer Physic in The Knight of the Burning Pestle,” in Staging Domesticity: Household Work and English Identity in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge, 2002); Hristomir A. Stanev, “The City Out of Breath: Jacobean City Comedy and the Odors of Restraint,” Postmedieval 3:4 (2012).

9

10-23

Jonson, The Alchemist (1610); John Shanahan, “Ben Jonson’s Alchemist and Early Modern Laboratory Space,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 8:1 (2008); Andrew Moran, “The Apotropaic and Sanctified Marriage of Sulfur and Mercury in The Alchemist,” Ben Jonson Journal 20:1 (2013).

10

10-30

Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale (1610-11); Maurice Hunt, “‘Bearing Hence: Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale,” SEL 44:2 (2004); Amy Tigner, “The Winter’s Tale: Gardens and the Marvels of Transformation,” English Literary Renaissance (2006).

11

11-6

Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1612-13); Lynn Maxwell, “Wax Magic and The Duchess of Malfi,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 14:3 (2014); Marion Wells, “Full of Rapture: Maternal Vocality and Melancholy in Webster's Duchess of Malfi,” in Blood, Sweat and Tears: The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity, ed. Manfred Horstmanshoff, Helen King, and Claus Zittel (Brill, 2012).

12

11-13

Middleton, The Witch (1609-16); Linda Phyllis Austern, “‘Art to Enchant’: Musical Magic and Its Practitioners in English Renaissance Drama,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 115:2 (1990); Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge, “Introduction: The Witch," Three Jacobean Witchcraft Plays (1986).

13

11-20

Middleton, The Changeling (1622); Patricia Cahill, “The Play of Skin in The Changeling,” Postmedieval 3: 4 (2012); Mary Floyd-Wilson, “Tragic Antipathies in The Changeling,” Occult Knowledge (Cambridge, 2013).

14

11-27

No class

15

12-4

Presentations of final essay research

16

12-13

Final essay drafts due in class; peer-revision workshop

17

12-19

Revised versions of final essays due