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Article ID: CBB001213308

Historicising Early Modern Literature and Science: Recent Topics, Trends, and Problems (2012)

Journal of Literature and Science
Volume: 5, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 56-60
Publication date: 2012
Language: English

Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Lead article in a roundtable discussion, “Historicism in Literature and Science”

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How to historicise early modern literature and science? The question has been answered occasionally, if only by example, since at least the nineteenth century, when it was generally (if tacitly) answered: read Shakespeare, quote all things science-y or some declared subset, and discuss them as sprigs on a larger cultural wallpaper of scientific ideas, many now quaintly wrong. Publish. Now the question of how to historicise these materials is answered more variously, not least because the scope of historicisation is more particular, pinpointing local cultural variants with an ever pointier pin, if often with a concomitantly narrower sense of the cultural point of such studies. Given the predilection in early modern scholarship for the local, the fragment, and the curious survival over the system or master narrative -- and based on my selective engagement with the scientific and literary culture of a vast period identified not only as early modern but as late medieval, or post-medieval, or `the' (but which?) Renaissance -- I will offer some observations on recent happenings with historicism in the period. After a whirlwind literature review that identifies stand-out themes and approaches, I will outline half a dozen wider habits likely to resonate with work in later periods. This compressed topical literature review appears sans citations with the exception of noting two excellent reviews of the state of the art of literature and science studies in relation to early modern England: Carla Mazzio's recent introduction to the latest ways with Shakespeare and Science and Howard Marchitello's slightly earlier essay on Science Studies and English Renaissance Literature.

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Includes Series Articles

Article Shuttleworth, Sally (2012) Historicism, Science and the Dangers of Being Useful. Journal of Literature and Science (pp. 61-66). unapi

Article Middleton, Peter (2012) Dark Matters: Historicising Science and Poetry since 1950. Journal of Literature and Science (pp. 77-82). unapi

Article Holmes, John (2012) Literature and Science vs History of Science. Journal of Literature and Science (pp. 67-71). unapi

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