The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies Tarrying with the Subjunctive

by Cefalu, Paul; Reynolds, Bryan

• ISBN13: 9780230235496
• ISBN10: 0230235492
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-03-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This collection looks at the growingrapprochementbetween contemporary theory and early modern English literary-cultural studies. With sections on posthumanism and cognitive science, political theology, and rematerialism and performance, the essays incorporate recent theoretical inquiries into new readings of early modern texts.

Author Biography

Paul Cefalu is Associate Professor of English at Lafayette College, Easton, USA. He is the author of Moral Identity in Early Modern English Literature, Revisionist Shakespeare: Transitional Ideologies in Texts and Contexts and English Renaissance Literature and Contemporary Theory: Sublime Objects of Theology. His essays have appeared in PMLA, ELH, Milton Studies, and The Journal of the Medical Humanities. He is an Associate Editor of Literature and Theology. Bryan Reynolds is Professor of Drama at the University of California, Irvine, USA, and Artistic Director of the Amsterdam-based Transversal Theater Company. He is the author of Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze after Derrida (2009), Transversal Enterprises in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: Fugitive Explorations (2006), Performing Transversally: Reimagining Shakespeare and the Critical Future (2003), and Becoming Criminal: Transversal Performance and Cultural Dissidence in Early Modern England (2002). He is co-editor of Critical Responses to Kiran Desai (2009), Rematerializing Shakespeare: Authority and Representation on the Early Modern English Stage (2005), and Shakespeare Without Class: Misappropriations of Cultural Capital (2000).

Table of Contents

Tarrying with the Subjunctive, an Introduction; P.Cefalu & B.Reynolds
PART I: NEW FORMALISMS AND COGNITIVISM
A Paltry 'Hoop of Gold': Semantics and Systematicity in Early Modern Studies; F.E.Hart
If: Lear's Feather and the Staging of Science; A.Cook
Ghosting the Subjunctive: Perceptual Technics in Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year and Transversal (New) Media; J.Boyle
What was Pastoral (Again)? More Versions; J.Yates
PART I: POLITICAL THEOLOGY AND THE RELIGIOUS TURN
Introduction to a Totem Meal: Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt and Political Theology; J.Reinhard Lupton
The Marlovian Sublime: Imagination and the Problem of Political Theology; G.Hammill
Humanism and the Resistance to Theology; W.West
'Grace to Boot': St. Paul, Messianic Time, and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale; K.Jackson
'Love's Best Habit': Eros, Agape and the Psychotheology of Shakespeare's Sonnets; G.Kuchar
PART III: REMATERIALISMS
Against Materialism in Literary Theory; D.Hawkes
Performativity of the Court: Stuart Masque as Postdramatic Theatre; J.Limon
'Shakespeare, Idealism, and Universals: The Significance of Recent work on the Mind'; G.Egan
Theater and the Scriptural Economy in Doctor Faustus; I.Munro
Index