1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910978249503321

Titolo

Dynamic Matter : Transforming Renaissance Objects / / ed. by Jennifer Linhart Wood

Pubbl/distr/stampa

University Park, PA : , : Penn State University Press, , [2022]

©2022

ISBN

9780271094113

0271094117

9780271094120

0271094125

Edizione

[1ST ED.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (290 p.)

Collana

Cultural Inquiries in English Literature, 1400–1700

Disciplina

820.9/003

Soggetti

English literature - Early modern, 1500-1700 - History and criticism

Material culture in literature

Material culture - England - History

Materialism in literature

LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Transformative Materiality and Renaissance Dynamics -- Part I Objects Within / Without the Body -- Chapter 1 “Farre Fetched and Deare Bought” The Global Cosmetic Exchange Between Elizabeth I, Melike Safiye Sultan, and the Kira Esperanza Malchi -- Chapter 2 Comb Poems -- Chapter 3 Variable Vestments and Clothing Conversions: Piecing Out the Past in Tudor Exeter -- Part II Networking Objects -- Chapter 4 Bird- People, Utopias, Arte Plumaria: The Influence of Native American Feathers on Renaissance Literature and Culture -- Chapter 5 Needlework Patterns on the Move: Traveling Toward (Re)incarnation -- Chapter 6 “Whose Least Part Crackt, the Whole Does Fly” The Explosive Case of Prince Rupert’s Drops -- Part III Staging Properties -- Chapter 7 Traveling Music and Theatrics: Jemmy LaRoche’s “Raree Show” -- Chapter 8 Protean Objects in William Percy’s The Aphrodysial or Sea-Feast -- Chapter 9 “I’ll Drown My Book” Prospero’s Grimoire, Adrift --



Selected Bibliography -- Contributors -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Dynamic Matter investigates the life histories of Renaissance objects. Eschewing the critical tendency to study how objects relate to human needs and desires, this work foregrounds the objects themselves, demonstrating their potential to transform their environments as they travel across time and space.Integrating early modern material theories with recent critical approaches in Actor-Network Theory and object-oriented ontology, this volume extends Aristotle’s theory of dynameos—which conceptualizes matter as potentiality—and applies it to objects featured in early modern texts such as Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Individual chapters explore the dynameos of matter by examining its manifestations in particular forms: combs are inscribed with words and brushed through human hair; feathers are incorporated into garments and artwork; Prince Rupert’s glasswork drops explode; a whale becomes animated by the power of a magical bracelet; and books are drowned. These case studies highlight the potentiality matter itself possesses and that which it activates in other matter. A theorization of objects grounded in Renaissance materialist thought, Dynamic Matter examines the richness of things themselves; the larger, multiple, and changing networks in which things circulate; and the networks created by these transformative objects.In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include Anna Riehl Bertolet, Erika Mary Boeckeler, Naomi Howell, Emily E. F. Philbrick, Josie Schoel, Maria Shmygol, Edward McLean Test, Abbie Weinberg, and Sarah F. Williams.