Humankinds: The Renaissance and Its Anthropologies

Published by De Gruyter 2011

Humankinds

The Renaissance and Its Anthropologies

Edited by: Andreas Höfele and Stephan Laqué

Volume 25 in the series Pluralisierung & Autorität

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110258318

Overview
Contents

About this book

Anthropology is a notoriously polysemous term. Within a continental European academic context, it is usually employed in the sense of philosophical anthropology, and mainly concerned with exploring concepts of a universal human nature. By contrast, Anglo-American scholarship almost exclusively associates anthropology with the investigation of cultural and ethnic differences (cultural anthropology). How these two main traditions (and their ‘derivations’ such as literary anthropology, historical anthropology, ethnology, ethnography, intercultural studies) relate to each other is a matter of debate. Both, however, have their roots in the path-breaking changes that occurred within sixteenth and early seventeenth-century culture and scientific discourse. It was in fact during this period that the term anthropology first acquired the meanings on which its current usage is based. The Renaissance did not ‘invent’ the human. But the period that gave rise to ‘humanism’ witnessed an unprecedented diversification of the concept that was at its very core. The question of what defines the human became increasingly contested as new developments like the emergence of the natural sciences, religious pluralisation, as well as colonial expansion, were undermining old certainties. The proliferation of doctrines of the human in the early modern age bears out the assumption that anthropology is a discipline of crisis, seeking to establish sets of common values and discursive norms in situations when authority finds itself under pressure.

Author / Editor information

Andreas Höfele and Stephan Laqué, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany.

Topics

Frontmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	I
Contents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	V
Introduction Andreas Höfele and Stephan Laqué Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Literary Sites of the Human
Liminal Anthropology in Shakespeare’s Plays Aleida Assmann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
The Space of the Human and the Place of the Poet: Excursions into English Topographical Poetry Verena Olejniczak Lobsien Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
Religious Beings
Among the Fairies: Religion and the Anthropology of Ritual in Shakespeare Brian Cummings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
Golding’s Metamorphoses, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Puritan Anthropology Enno Ruge Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
Negotiating the Foreign
When Golden times convents: Shakespeare’s Eastern Promise Richard Wilson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	109
“Cony Caught by Walking Mort”: Indigenous Exoticism in the Literature of Roguery Bettina Boecker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
Renaissance Anthropologies of Security: Shipwreck, Barbary fear and the Meaning of ‘Insurance’ Cornel Zwierlein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
Human and Non-Human
Shakespeare’s Public Animals Paul Yachnin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
“Fellow-brethren and compeers”: Montaigne’s Rapprochement Between Man and Animal Markus Wild Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
Animal Art /Human Art: Imagined Borderlines in the Renaissance Ulrich Pfisterer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
Thinking the Human
“Now they’re substances and men”: The Masque of Lethe and the Recovery of Humankind Tobias Döring Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
Shakespeare Ever After: Posthumanism and Shakespeare Stefan Herbrechter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Academics, Institutes, Libraries
Pages
- Front matter: 6
- Main content: 280
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 9
Keywords: Anthropology in Literature (Early Modern Age)

eBook

Published: May 4, 2011
ISBN: 9783110258318

Hardcover

Published: April 19, 2011
ISBN: 9783110258301