Discovering the Subject in Renaissance England

by Elizabeth Hanson

Overview

When Hamlet complains that Guildenstern "would pluck out the heart of my mystery," he imagines an encounter that recurs insistently in the discourses of early modern England: the struggle by one man to discover the secrets in another's heart. Elizabeth Hanson examines the records of state torture, plays by Shakespeare and Jonson, "cony-catching" pamphlets and Francis Bacon's philosophical writing to demonstrate a reconceptualizing of the "subject" in both the political and philosophical sense of the term.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521090711
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/27/2008
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture , #24
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Torture and truth; 2. Brothers of the state; 3. Authors and others; 4. Francis Bacon and the discovering subject; Notes.

Editorial Reviews

"Elizabeth Hanson's compelling study provides that intellectual fascination characteristic of deconstructive tactics adroitly executed, particularly those of the 'metaphysical' stamp which yoke through rhetorical violenc what habits of categorical logic keep distinct and may render as contraries." Michael Dixon, Letters in Canada

From the Publisher