Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England
The book delves into the perceptions of the body, illness, and social dynamics during Tudor and early Stuart England. It explores how societal attitudes influenced medical practices and the understanding of health, shedding light on the interplay between culture and the human experience of disease in this historical period.
Discussing the work of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Helene Cixous, Shakespeare and Literary Theory argues that literary theory is less an external set of ideas anachronistically imposed on Shakespeare's texts than a mode - or several modes - of critical reflection inspired by, and emerging from, his writing.
Jonathan Gil Harris challenges the way we conventionally understand physical objects. Turning to Renaissance theories of matter, he considers the profound untimeliness of things, focusing particularly on Shakespeare's stage materials.