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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Drama texts, plays
The Eco-Self in Early Modern English Literature>/cite> tracks
an important shift in early modern conceptions of selfhood, arguing
that the period hosted the birth of a new subset of the human, the
eco-self, which melds a deeply introspective turn with an abiding
sense of humans' embedment in the world. A confluence of cultural
factors produced the relevant changes. Of paramount significance
was the rapid spread of literacy in England and across Europe:
reading transformed the relationship between self and world,
retooled moral reasoning, and even altered human anatomy. This book
pursues the salutary possibilities, including the ecological
benefits, of this redesigned self by advancing fresh readings of
texts by William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Webster,
and Margaret Cavendish. The eco-self offers certain refinements to
ecological theory by renewing appreciation for the rational,
deliberative functions that distinguish humans from other species.
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