Words in the world: The place of literature in Early Modern England

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorHanan, Rachel Ann, 1978-
dc.date.accessioned2011-05-09T18:00:42Z
dc.date.available2011-05-09T18:00:42Z
dc.date.issued2010-09
dc.descriptionix, 268 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.en_US
dc.description.abstract"Words in the World" details the ways that the place of rhetoric and literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries changes in response to the transition from natural philosophy to Cartesian mechanism. In so doing, it also offers a constructive challenge to today's environmental literary criticism, challenging environmental literary critics' preoccupation with themes of nature and, by extension, with representational language. Reading authors from Thomas More to Philip Sidney and Ben Jonson through changes in physics, cartography, botany, and zoology, "Words in the World" argues that literature occupies an increasingly separate place from the real world. "Place" in this context refers to spatiotemporal dimensions, taxonomic affiliations, and the relationships between literature and the physical world. George Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie (1589), for instance, limits the way that rhetoric is part of the world to the ways that it can be numbered (meter, rhyme scheme, and so forth); metaphor and other tropes, however, are duplicitous. In contrast, for an earlier era of natural philosophers, tropes were the grammar of the universe. "Words in the World" culminates with Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621/1651), in which the product of literature's split from the physical world is literary melancholy. Turning to today's environmental literary criticism, the dissertation thus historicizes ecocriticism's nostalgic melancholy for the extratextual physical world. Indeed, Early Modern authors' inquiries into the place of literature and the relationships between that place and the physical world in terms of literary forms and structures, suggests the importance of ecoformalism to Early Modern scholarship. In particular, this dissertation argues that Early Modern authors treat literary structures as types of performative language. This dissertation revises the standard histories of Early Modern developments in rhetoric and of the literary text, and it provides new insight into the materiality of literary form.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipCommittee in charge: Lisa Freinkel, Chairperson, English; William Rossi, Member, English; George Rowe, Member, English; Ted Toadvine, Outside Member, Philosophyen_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1794/11156
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Oregonen_US
dc.relation.ispartofseriesUniversity of Oregon theses, Dept. of English, Ph. D., 2010;
dc.subjectRenaissanceen_US
dc.subjectNatural philosophyen_US
dc.subjectLiteratureen_US
dc.subjectRhetoricen_US
dc.subjectEarly modernen_US
dc.subjectEnglanden_US
dc.subjectBritish and Irish literatureen_US
dc.subjectEnglish literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism
dc.titleWords in the world: The place of literature in Early Modern Englanden_US
dc.title.alternativePlace of literature in Early Modern Englanden_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Hanan_Rachel_Ann_phd2010su.pdf
Size:
3.78 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Name:
license.txt
Size:
2.13 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description:
Download
Name:
Hanan_Rachel.pdf
Size:
33.74 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
author's permission
Download

Collections

Theses and Dissertations
English Theses and Dissertations