<P> No evaluation of the Renaissance-its culture and texts-is complete
without understanding early modem imagination. Yet many modem critics have
understated or misunderstood the imagination's importance to the English
Renaissance. Misconceptions arise, in part, because our current understanding of
imagination has been influenced by Romantic theorists, whose definitions of
imagination differ radically from early modem beliefs about the functions and
capabilities of the faculty. A comprehensive study of early modem imagination is
therefore essential. This thesis undertakes the timely task of analyzing the
significance of Renaissance definitions and characteristics of imagination as they are
posited in early modem philosophical and medical texts. To early modem English
theorists such as Francis Bacon, Robert Burton, and Margaret Cavendish, the
physical location of imagination determines its function and significance, its
potentially dangerous autonomy is a constant threat, the imagination can
disastrously or advantageously influence the body, and it can justify textual novelty
and creativity. Studying imagination is incomplete without understanding its
expansion in literary texts, for in poetry, drama, and fictional narratives, authors
self-consciously employ and debate the characteristics of imagination philosophers,
physicians, and theologians were earnestly debating. In The Temple, George Herbert
crafts his poetry and his text to metaphorically display and debate the physical
position of imagination in the brain. Richard Brome's play, The Antipodes,
questions the autonomy of imagination. Can the imagination be controlled, Brome
asks, and by what? The Unfortunate Traveller, Thomas Nashe's prose narrative,
fleshes out early modem considerations of the imagination's impact on the body of
the imaginant and others. Francis Quarles's Emblemes illustrates-literallyRenaissance
debates about imagination's influence on originality and creativity. For,
in their literary texts, early modem authors use their contemporaries' theories of
imagination to justify and test their relationship with, and responsibility to, God,
their readers, and themselves. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/19198 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Smid, Deanna |
| Contributors | Silcox, Mary, English and Cultural Studies |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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