Overview

Refusing to Behave in Early Modern Literature explores texts shaped by collisions between the idiosyncrasies of individual bodyminds and the values of small communities such as religion, sect, social milieu, congregation and family. The book encompasses the period from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century, examining early modern shrew and devil plays, picaresque and rogue literature, and Quaker life-writing. Refusing to Behave examines the ways in which Thomas Dekker, Thomas Ellwood, Mateo Alemn and his translator James Mabbe, and the anonymous author of Grim the Collier of Croydon use textual tricks to provoke bodily responses in readers, and also draw on readers' bodily experiences to enrich their textual descriptions. This study broadens the scope of current understandings of early modern literature by identifying and analysing the significance of genre to representations of resistance to behavioural norms.

Full Product Details

Author:   Laura Seymour (Lecturer in English, The Queen's College, University of Oxford)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:  

9781474491808

ISBN 10:   1474491804
Pages:   128
Publication Date:   29 November 2022
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction: The Body At Play in Early Modern Texts Chapter 1: Ungracious Grace: Proprioception and Staging Taste in Thomas Dekker’s If This Be Not a Good Play The Devil is In It The Devil Saying Grace: Folklore and Oxymoron A Gust of Wind that Fans the Fire: Monks Hotting Up Mistrusting the Self Conclusion Chapter 2: Walking without God — (mis)learning through the gait in Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache (1599 and 1604) and James Mabbe’s The Rogue (1622) Guzmán’s Pedagogical Texts: God and the Beggar’s Book Conclusion: Against Learning – Guzmán and the Widow Chapter 3: Plain Plasticity— Thomas Ellwood’s The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood (1714) Masculinity and Self-Shaping: A Simple Perspective? Conclusion Chapter 4: Chaste and Silent – Again. Vitality and the bound and loosed body in I.T.’s Grim the Collier of Croydon; or, The Devil and His Dame (c.1600) Tyed Tongues Vitality: Outside of Language Conclusion

Reviews

""Seymour's brilliant book exfoliates texts to show how the kinaesthetic experience of the characters can be written to evoke the reader's kinaesthetic experience. Reading her reading makes us aware of the ways our body is involved in making meaning while we read. Her book is a model of how to incorporate research on embodied cognition into literary studies."" -Amy Cook, Stony Brook University

"""Seymour's brilliant book exfoliates texts to show how the kinaesthetic experience of the characters can be written to evoke the reader's kinaesthetic experience. Reading her reading makes us aware of the ways our body is involved in making meaning while we read. Her book is a model of how to incorporate research on embodied cognition into literary studies."" -Amy Cook, Stony Brook University"

Seymour’s brilliant book exfoliates texts to show how the kinaesthetic experience of the characters can be written to evoke the reader’s kinaesthetic experience. Reading her reading makes us aware of the ways our body is involved in making meaning while we read. Her book is a model of how to incorporate research on embodied cognition into literary studies. -- Amy Cook, Stony Brook University

Author Information

Laura Seymour is Lecturer in English at The Queen’s College, Oxford. She researches neurodiversity, Shakespeare, and early modern literature. She is the author of Refusing to Behave in Early Modern Literature (EUP, 2022) and Shakespeare and Neurodiversity (2024). Her work on neurodivergence, cognition, and early modern literature have appeared most recently in journals like Shakespeare, Renaissance Studies, Bunyan Studies, Marvell Studies, and Studies in English Literature as well as in edited volumes. With Professor Siân Grønlie, she founded and co-leads the project Neurodiversity at Oxford which aims to connect, celebrate, and empower Oxford University’s neurodiverse community of staff and students https://neurodiversityoxford.web.ox.ac.uk . Her current project, “New Understandings of Hamlet”, centers lived experience of neurodivergence, suicidal ideation, and mental illness in reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and is funded by the British Academy.

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