TY - JOUR

T1 - “Yet not past sense”: Walter Ralegh, Mary Wroth and the pleasure principles of the body

AU - Hiscock, Andrew

N1 - This research held at the Institut de Recherche pour la Renaissance, l'Âge Classique et les Lumières, Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3 has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement N°702104.

PY - 2019/2/8

Y1 - 2019/2/8

N2 - This discussion considers both the poetic and prose writings of Walter Ralegh and Mary Wroth with specific reference to the figuration of the body and the deployment of the senses in their narratives. Initially, late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century views are reviewed concerning the senses and the extent to which these are developments of ideas inherited from antiquity. Subsequently, attention is paid to the evocations of sensory perceptions in Ralegh’s and Wroth’s writing with reference to accounts of rapture, seduction, illness and near-death experiences, querying whether the interrogation of early modern epistemological and senseate expectations are inevitably linked to specificities of gendered experience and writing. Indeed, in the findings ranged during the course of this discussion, it becomes increasingly apparent that even in writings with marked gendered perspectives, the relation of human experience regarding the senses and knowledge acquisition may return to strikingly analogous enquiries. The final phase of discussion reflects upon how Ralegh’s and Wroth’s accounts of the senses contribute to an ongoing early modern debate on the human condition.

AB - This discussion considers both the poetic and prose writings of Walter Ralegh and Mary Wroth with specific reference to the figuration of the body and the deployment of the senses in their narratives. Initially, late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century views are reviewed concerning the senses and the extent to which these are developments of ideas inherited from antiquity. Subsequently, attention is paid to the evocations of sensory perceptions in Ralegh’s and Wroth’s writing with reference to accounts of rapture, seduction, illness and near-death experiences, querying whether the interrogation of early modern epistemological and senseate expectations are inevitably linked to specificities of gendered experience and writing. Indeed, in the findings ranged during the course of this discussion, it becomes increasingly apparent that even in writings with marked gendered perspectives, the relation of human experience regarding the senses and knowledge acquisition may return to strikingly analogous enquiries. The final phase of discussion reflects upon how Ralegh’s and Wroth’s accounts of the senses contribute to an ongoing early modern debate on the human condition.

KW - Wroth

KW - Ralegh

KW - senses

M3 - Article

VL - 34

JO - Etudes-Episteme

JF - Etudes-Episteme

SN - 1634-0450

ER -