The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton

The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton explores how stones, rocks, and the broader mineral realm play a vital role in early modern England’s religious and cultural systems that in turn informs the period’s poetic and visual imagination. The twin buttresses of a human lifespan and the gyre-like t...

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Main Author: Werth, Tiffany Jo
Format: Online
Language:English
Published: Oxford University Press 2024
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Online Access:https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/93754
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author Werth, Tiffany Jo
author_browse Werth, Tiffany Jo
author_facet Werth, Tiffany Jo
author_sort Werth, Tiffany Jo
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton explores how stones, rocks, and the broader mineral realm play a vital role in early modern England’s religious and cultural systems that in turn informs the period’s poetic and visual imagination. The twin buttresses of a human lifespan and the gyre-like turns of England’s long Reformation provide a broad dome under which to locate the many textual and visual archives this book studies. These texts and images participate in specifically English histories (literary, artistic, political, religious), although Continental influences are frequently in dialogue. The religious orbit tracks the rivalries firstly between Jewish and Christian culture, touches on Christianity’s tension with Islam, but most intently follows the antagonisms of Catholic and variants of Reformed or Protestant belief. The bibliography features canonical names such as Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne, Wroth, Herbert, Milton, and Pulter, but puts them in company with lesser-known religious polemicists, alchemists, anatomists, painters, mothers, and stonemasons. The visual archive attends to biblical illustration, tapestries, church furniture, and paintings, anatomical drawings, as well as statues to form a multimedia archive. Similarly, the lithic embraces a wide continuum of mineral forms from bodily encrustations like the kidney and bezoar stone, to salt, iron, limestone, marble, flint, and silicon. The assemblage of materials speaks to aspirational imperial fantasies, looming colonial conquests, syncretism, and supersession, as well as issues of gender and the race-making category of hue, alongside elitist ideologies of an elect, chosen people. All connect via the storied pathways of stone as densely material and a foundation for the abstract imaginary along the scala naturae. Across these human–stone encounters, stone fascinates and betrays and is equal parts damnation and salvation.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1463502024-10-23T04:01:06Z The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton Werth, Tiffany Jo Renaissance, Reformation, stones, minerals, religion, ecocriticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSB Literary studies: general::DSBC Literary studies: c 1400 to c 1600 thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSB Literary studies: general::DSBD Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800 thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history::NHDL European history: Renaissance thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history::NHDN European history: Reformation thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QR Religion and beliefs::QRA Religion: general::QRAX History of religion The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton explores how stones, rocks, and the broader mineral realm play a vital role in early modern England’s religious and cultural systems that in turn informs the period’s poetic and visual imagination. The twin buttresses of a human lifespan and the gyre-like turns of England’s long Reformation provide a broad dome under which to locate the many textual and visual archives this book studies. These texts and images participate in specifically English histories (literary, artistic, political, religious), although Continental influences are frequently in dialogue. The religious orbit tracks the rivalries firstly between Jewish and Christian culture, touches on Christianity’s tension with Islam, but most intently follows the antagonisms of Catholic and variants of Reformed or Protestant belief. The bibliography features canonical names such as Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne, Wroth, Herbert, Milton, and Pulter, but puts them in company with lesser-known religious polemicists, alchemists, anatomists, painters, mothers, and stonemasons. The visual archive attends to biblical illustration, tapestries, church furniture, and paintings, anatomical drawings, as well as statues to form a multimedia archive. Similarly, the lithic embraces a wide continuum of mineral forms from bodily encrustations like the kidney and bezoar stone, to salt, iron, limestone, marble, flint, and silicon. The assemblage of materials speaks to aspirational imperial fantasies, looming colonial conquests, syncretism, and supersession, as well as issues of gender and the race-making category of hue, alongside elitist ideologies of an elect, chosen people. All connect via the storied pathways of stone as densely material and a foundation for the abstract imaginary along the scala naturae. Across these human–stone encounters, stone fascinates and betrays and is equal parts damnation and salvation. 2024-10-23T04:01:05Z 2024-10-23T04:01:05Z 2024-10-21T10:12:41Z 2024 book https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/93754 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/146350 eng Early Modern Literary Geographies open access image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/93754/1/9780198903963.pdf Oxford University Press 10.1093/oso/9780198903963.001.0001 10.1093/oso/9780198903963.001.0001 db4e319f-ca9f-449a-bcf2-37d7c6f885b1 84e1a153-bf69-4864-9268-634661c28ef5 44086db6-ca10-450b-bb6a-95d1f4ef48e7 449 Oxford University of California, Davis UC Davis 10.13039/100007707 open access
spellingShingle Renaissance, Reformation, stones, minerals, religion, ecocriticism
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSB Literary studies: general::DSBC Literary studies: c 1400 to c 1600
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSB Literary studies: general::DSBD Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history::NHDL European history: Renaissance
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history::NHDN European history: Reformation
thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QR Religion and beliefs::QRA Religion: general::QRAX History of religion
Werth, Tiffany Jo
The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton
title The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton
title_full The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton
title_fullStr The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton
title_full_unstemmed The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton
title_short The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton
title_sort lithic imagination from more to milton
topic Renaissance, Reformation, stones, minerals, religion, ecocriticism
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSB Literary studies: general::DSBC Literary studies: c 1400 to c 1600
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSB Literary studies: general::DSBD Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history::NHDL European history: Renaissance
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history::NHDN European history: Reformation
thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QR Religion and beliefs::QRA Religion: general::QRAX History of religion
topic_facet Renaissance, Reformation, stones, minerals, religion, ecocriticism
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSB Literary studies: general::DSBC Literary studies: c 1400 to c 1600
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism::DSB Literary studies: general::DSBD Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history::NHDL European history: Renaissance
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history::NHDN European history: Reformation
thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QR Religion and beliefs::QRA Religion: general::QRAX History of religion
url https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/93754
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