Senses in Early Modern England, 1558–1660

Simon Smith is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Faculty of English, University of Oxford, and Junior Research Fellow of The Queen's College, OxfordJackie Watson has been an Associate Tutor at Birkbeck, University of LondonAmy Kenny is a Lecturer at University of California, Riverside

• Introduction – Simon Smith, Jackie Watson and Amy KennyPart I: Tracing a sense1. Staging taste – Lucy Munro2. ‘Dove like looks’ and ‘serpents eyes’: staging visual clues and early modern aspiration – Jackie Watson3. ‘Filthy groping and unclean handlings’: an examination of touching moments in dance of court and courtship – Darren Royston4. ‘Thou art like a punie-Barber (new come to the trade) thou pick'st our eares too deepe’: barbery, ear-wax and snip-snaps – Eleanor Decamp5. Seeing smell – Holly DuganPart II: The senses in context6. Robert Herrick and the five (or six) senses – Natalie K. Eschenbaum7. ‘Did we lie down because it was night?’: the senses of night in the 1590s – Susan Wiseman8. Love melancholy and the senses in Mary Wroth’s work – Aurélie GriffinPart III: Aesthetic sensory experiences9. ‘I see no instruments, nor hands that play’: Antony and Cleopatra and visual musical experience – Simon Smith10. ‘Gazing in hir glasse of vaineglorie’: negotiating vanity – Faye Tudor11. ‘Tickling the senses with sinful delight’: the pleasure of reading comedies in early modern England – Hannah AugustAfterword – Farah Karim-CooperBibliographyIndex

‘Ambitious in its scope, this volume is a significant contribution to cultural criticism and studies of aesthetic response.’Jennifer Rae McDermott, John Abbott College, Renaissance Quarterly 69.4 (Winter 2016)'Smith, Watson and Kenny gather a diverse range of Renaissance scholars into conversation to discuss all five portals of the body equally, and raise timely questions for the field of sense studies.' Karis Grace Riley, Renaissance Studies Volume 31, Number 1'Departing from previous collections in this area through the range of artistic media that it explores, this volume brings together imaginative and thought-provoking contributions from a range of established and rising scholars. It raises penetrating questions about, and offers fresh understandings of, “the culturally specific role of the senses in textual and aesthetic encounters in early modern England” (9).' Briony Frost, University of Plymouth, Shakespeare Bulletin Volume 33, Number 4‘Offers new scholarship aiming to demonstrate the dense texture of ways in which early modern writers and artists recorded sensory experience and coped with its ephemerality and communicative limits.’Professor Lowell Gallagher, Studies in English Literature