scholarly journals The Gatekeeper within: Early Modern English Architectural Tropes of Female Consent

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Elisa Oh
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Consent ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Extramarital Sex ◽  
Sexual Harrassment ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Feminine Virtue

This essay maps out a constellation of early modern English feminine gatekeeper tropes that represent female sexual consent and imagine a gendered Cartesian dualism. This trope’s inherent mind–body divide grants the female subject’s mind a greater measure of rationality and autonomy from the body than other early modern discourses of feminine virtue, such as humoralism. However, it can also undercut feminine agency in self-regulation by placing all the responsibility and blame on the woman’s mind in cases of sexual harrassment and assault. Hadrian Dorrell’s Avisa, Shakespeare’s Lucrece, Thomas Heywood’s Jane Shore, and Christopher Marlowe’s Hero represent a spectrum of feminine mental complicity in extramarital sex, yet their mental “gatekeepers” are all suspected of failure. Shakespeare’s Juliet and Cressida literalize this gatekeeper trope and render it a material allegory when they negotiate with male suitors at literal portals on stage, a window and a chamber door. Examining the extraordinary pressures put on feminine “gatekeeper” minds in early modern texts allows us to discern contemporary willingness to blame the victims of sexual assault.

Clean Bodies

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-112
Author(s):  
Susan North
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Medical Books

Early modern English medical books are full of advice about cleanliness of the skin, the subject of Chapter 4. It was considered vital for the survival of infants and insisted upon in books dedicated to childcare. Babies needed washing and/or bathing with every change of their nappy/diaper. Surgeons, responsible for the external health of the body, also recommended regular washing of the skin. Washing performed the necessary function of removing sweat, a form of excretion, as well as preventing and treating skin ailments such as the itch, morphew, and scabies. Bathing was considered a particularly effective method of cleaning the skin and the literature on this subject is examined and reassessed.

scholarly journals Paradoxical Desire in the Poetry of Sidney, Spenser, Donne, and Herbert

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Qiwei He
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Edmund Spenser ◽  
John Donne ◽  
The Body ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Temple

<p>Inspired by conventional Petrarchism, early modern English poets adopted the concept and rhetoric of paradox in their articulations of desire while revealing significant progression and innovation. Desires expressed by the poet-lovers in the poems of Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and George Herbert are the culmination of attempts to coordinate incongruent and contrasting extremes. This thesis examines how desire operates as paradox in Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, Philip and Mary Sidney’s Psalms, Spenser’s Amoretti and Epithalamion, Donne’s amorous and religious poems, and Herbert’s poems.   Chapter One discusses Astrophil’s desire in Astrophil and Stella as demonstrating the Petrarchan lover enfolded in Neoplatonism. It also explores Donne’s amorous poems, which apply religious vocabularies to communicate sexual love, filling the gap between the distant extremes, establishing a paradoxical unity. In Chapter Two, the thesis compares Spenser’s speakers in Amoretti and Epithalamion and the Sidneys’ Psalmist as Neoplatonic lovers, both of whom search within the physical realms—nature and the body—to express the desire for their divine beloved. In Chapter Three, I compare Donne’s religious poems and selected lyrics from George Herbert’s The Temple. I argue that in Donne’s religious poems, spiritual love is mediated through fleshly desire in a sacramental poetics. The relationship between physical desire and spiritual love is comprehended through sacramental analogy. Comparably, in Herbert’s The Temple, the internal and external components of religious desire reflect the Sacramental theories in which Eucharistic elements communicate their divine referents. The effective way to express love for God, paradoxically, is to establish a spiritual justification for an affirmative embrace of sexuality, making fleshly desire serve as a vehicle of Divine grace.   As Donne asserts in his Paradoxes and Problems, “by Discord things increase”. The poet-lovers in the works this thesis explores constantly yearn to imitate and represent their beloved by means of “Discord” and the performance of paradoxical unity. Accordingly, paradoxical desire becomes the inevitable consequence of the poet-lover as a desiring subject who approaches a supposedly insuperable obstacle when he correlates with the beloved obj</p>

‘My Hand Would Dissolve, Or Seem to Melt’

2020 ◽  
pp. 152-176
Author(s):  
Kristen Poole
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Body ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Antony And Cleopatra ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Material Physics ◽  
Relationship Of

Early modern English literary texts resound with references to ‘melting’ and ‘dissolving’—persons, the earthly environment, and the larger cosmos are associated with dissolution. This concern with melting and dissolving originates in Stoic physics: as with Galen’s model of the humoral body, Stoics understood the material universe to be composed of a fiery liquid known as pneuma. The inheritance of Stoic theories of cosmology and material physics provided early moderns with a vibrant and dynamic way of understanding matter; this material understanding inflected the experience of the body as well as expectations for the behaviour of the earthly environment and the wider cosmos. Stoic physics thus influenced not only the particular idea of the humoral body, but the very relationship of human and environment and corresponding affective states. This influence is exemplified in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.

scholarly journals Paradoxical Desire in the Poetry of Sidney, Spenser, Donne, and Herbert

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Qiwei He
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Edmund Spenser ◽  
John Donne ◽  
The Body ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Temple

<p>Inspired by conventional Petrarchism, early modern English poets adopted the concept and rhetoric of paradox in their articulations of desire while revealing significant progression and innovation. Desires expressed by the poet-lovers in the poems of Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and George Herbert are the culmination of attempts to coordinate incongruent and contrasting extremes. This thesis examines how desire operates as paradox in Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, Philip and Mary Sidney’s Psalms, Spenser’s Amoretti and Epithalamion, Donne’s amorous and religious poems, and Herbert’s poems.   Chapter One discusses Astrophil’s desire in Astrophil and Stella as demonstrating the Petrarchan lover enfolded in Neoplatonism. It also explores Donne’s amorous poems, which apply religious vocabularies to communicate sexual love, filling the gap between the distant extremes, establishing a paradoxical unity. In Chapter Two, the thesis compares Spenser’s speakers in Amoretti and Epithalamion and the Sidneys’ Psalmist as Neoplatonic lovers, both of whom search within the physical realms—nature and the body—to express the desire for their divine beloved. In Chapter Three, I compare Donne’s religious poems and selected lyrics from George Herbert’s The Temple. I argue that in Donne’s religious poems, spiritual love is mediated through fleshly desire in a sacramental poetics. The relationship between physical desire and spiritual love is comprehended through sacramental analogy. Comparably, in Herbert’s The Temple, the internal and external components of religious desire reflect the Sacramental theories in which Eucharistic elements communicate their divine referents. The effective way to express love for God, paradoxically, is to establish a spiritual justification for an affirmative embrace of sexuality, making fleshly desire serve as a vehicle of Divine grace.   As Donne asserts in his Paradoxes and Problems, “by Discord things increase”. The poet-lovers in the works this thesis explores constantly yearn to imitate and represent their beloved by means of “Discord” and the performance of paradoxical unity. Accordingly, paradoxical desire becomes the inevitable consequence of the poet-lover as a desiring subject who approaches a supposedly insuperable obstacle when he correlates with the beloved obj</p>

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