Sense Perception and the Early Modern Social World
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Date
2023-03-24
Authors
Johnson, Abigail
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
In this dissertation, I analyze representations of the intersections between sense perception and sociality in early modern English literature. Literary texts from the late sixteenth through mid-seventeenth centuries illustrate the diverse modes through which early modern writers engage the complexly interrelated categories of sense perception and social life. Building on early modern scholarship’s increasing investment in the senses, my project shows the period’s interest in the limits of sense perception through depictions of extreme sensory overstimulation and deprivation. I show that Marlowe, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton represent individuals’ sensory perceptions as enabling or threatening their relationship to the broader social world. These representations reveal the phenomenological ties between ideas of community and isolation and the functions and capabilities of the senses. I argue that, in early modern literature, encounters with sensory excess and deprivation manifest as larger social catalysts, propelling individual acts of social retreat, action, or implosion which, in turn, alter the wider social landscape.
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Keywords
Perception, Relationships, Sensation, Senses, Social life, Society