What does it mean to make life? This book focuses on one of the key questions for culture and science in both Shakespeare's time and our own. Shakespeare wrote "A Midsummer Night's Dream" during a period when the "new science" had begun to unsettle the foundations of knowledge about the natural world. Through close analysis of the play and reflection on modern genetic engineering, Turner examines developments in early modern culture as it sought to come to terms with the new forces of magic, astrology, alchemy and mechanics, fields of knowledge that preoccupied the most adventurous intellects of Shakespeare's period and that promised limitless power over nature.Shakespeare's writing sheds light on current developments in science, ethics, law, and religion in contemporary culture. This book reveals the richness and peculiarity of early scientific thought in Shakespeare's time and shows how the questions he poses remain fundamental as the nature of "life" has become one of the most pressing political, ethical, and philosophical problems for society today."Shakespeare Now!" is a series of short books that engage imaginatively and often provocatively with the possibilities of Shakespeare's plays. It goes back to the source - the most living language imaginable - and recaptures the excitement, audacity and surprise of Shakespeare. It will return you to the plays with opened eyes.

Drawing on entirely new evidence, The English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial Arts in England 1580-1630 examines the history of English dramatic form and its relationship to the mathematics, technology, and early scientific thought during the Renaissance period. The book demonstrates how practical modes of thinking that were typical of the sixteenth century resulted in new genres of plays and a new vocabulary for problems of poetic representation. In the epistemological moment the book recovers, we find new ideas about form and language that would become central to Renaissance literary discourse; in this same moment, too, we find new ways of thinking about the relationship between theory and practice that are typical of modernity, new attitudes towards spatial representation, and a new interest in both poetics and mathematics as distinctive ways of producing knowledge about the world. By emphasizing the importance of theatrical performance, the book engages with continuing debates over the cultural function of the early modern stage and with scholarship on the status of modern authorship. When we consider playwrights in relation to the theatre rather than the printed book, they appear less as "authors" than as figures whose social position and epistemological presuppositions were very similar to the craftsmen, surveyors, and engineers who began to flourish during the sixteenth century and whose mathematical knowledge made them increasingly sought after by men of wealth and power.

The Corporate Commonwealth traces the evolution of corporations during the English Renaissance and explores the many types of corporations that once flourished. Along the way, the book offers important insights into our own definitions of fiction, politics, and value. Henry S. Turner uses the resources of economic and political history, literary analysis, and political philosophy to demonstrate how a number of English institutions with corporate associations--including universities, guilds, towns and cities, and religious groups--were gradually narrowed to the commercial, for-profit corporation we know today, and how the joint-stock corporation, in turn, became both a template for the modern state and a political force that the state could no longer contain. Through innovative readings of works by Thomas More, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes, among others, Turner tracks the corporation from the courts to the stage, from commonwealth to colony, and from the object of utopian fiction to the subject of tragic violence. A provocative look at the corporation's peculiar character as both an institution and a person, The Corporate Commonwealth uses the past to suggest ways in which today's corporations might be refashioned into a source of progressive and collective public action.

Drawing on entirely new evidence, The English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial Arts 1580-1630 examines the history of English dramatic form and its relationship to the mathematics, technology, and early scientific thought during the Renaissance period. The book demonstrates how practical modes of thinking that were typical of the sixteenth century resulted in new genres of plays and a new vocabulary for problems of poetic representation. In the epistemological moment the book recovers, we find new ideas about form and language that would become central to Renaissance literary discourse; in this same moment, too, we find new ways of thinking about the relationship between theory and practice that are typical of modernity, new attitudes towards spatial representation, and a new interest in both poetics and mathematics as distinctive ways of producing knowledge about the world. By emphasizing the importance of theatrical performance, the book engages with continuing debates over the cultural function of the early modern stage and with scholarship on the status of modern authorship. When we consider playwrights in relation to the theatre rather than the printed book, they appear less as 'authors' than as figures whose social position and epistemological presuppositions were very similar to the craftsmen, surveyors, and engineers who began to flourish during the sixteenth century and whose mathematical knowledge made them increasingly sought after by men of wealth and power.

The original essays in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature mean to provoke rather than reassure, to challenge rather than codify. Instead of summarizing existing knowledge, scholars working in the field aim at opening fresh discussion; instead of emphasizing settled consensus, they direct their readers to areas of enlivened and unresolved debate. Following the models established by previous volumes in the Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature series, Early Modern Theatricality launches a new generation of scholarship on early modern drama by focusing on the rich formal capacities of theatrical performance. The collection gathers some of the most innovative critics in the field to examine the techniques, objects, bodies, and conventions that characterized early modern theatricality, from the Tudor period to the Restoration. Taking their cues from a series of guiding keywords, the contributors identify the fundamental features of theatricality in the period, using them to launch conceptually adventurous arguments. The volume generates fresh possibilities for criticism by combining historical, formal, and philosophical questions, in order to provoke our rediscovery of early modern drama in all its complexity and inventiveness.

What does it mean to make life? This book focuses on one of the key questions for culture and science in both Shakespeare's time and our own. Shakespeare wrote "A Midsummer Night's Dream" during a period when the "new science" had begun to unsettle the foundations of knowledge about the natural world. Through close analysis of the play and reflection on modern genetic engineering, Turner examines developments in early modern culture as it sought to come to terms with the new forces of magic, astrology, alchemy and mechanics, fields of knowledge that preoccupied the most adventurous intellects of Shakespeare's period and that promised limitless power over nature. Shakespeare's writing sheds light on current developments in science, ethics, law, and religion in contemporary culture.This book reveals the richness and peculiarity of early scientific thought in Shakespeare's time and shows how the questions he poses remain fundamental as the nature of "life" has become one of the most pressing political, ethical, and philosophical problems for society today. "Shakespeare Now!" is a series of short books that engage imaginatively and often provocatively with the possibilities of Shakespeare's plays. It goes back to the source - the most living language imaginable - and recaptures the excitement, audacity and surprise of Shakespeare. It will return you to the plays with opened eyes.

The original essays in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature mean to provoke rather than reassure, to challenge rather than codify. Instead of summarizing existing knowledge scholars working in the field aim at opening fresh discussion; instead of emphasizing settled consensus they direct their readers to areas of enlivened and unresolved debate. Following the models established by previous volumes in the series, Early Modern Theatricality launches a new generation of scholarship on early modern drama by focusing on the rich formal capacities of theatrical performance. The collection gathers some of the most innovative critics in the field to examine the techniques, objects, bodies, and conventions that characterized early modern theatricality, from the Tudor period to the Restoration. Taking their cues from a series of guiding keywords, the contributors identify the fundamental features of theatricality in the period, using them to launch conceptually adventurous arguments that provoke our rediscovery of early modern drama in all its complexity and inventiveness.