Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England by Rebecca Lemon

Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England by Rebecca Lemon

Rebecca Lemon shows how sixteenth-century writers, such as Marlowe and Shakespeare, depict addiction to many things, including to God, study, love, friendship, and drinking. Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England explores the fine line between devotion and pathology, revealing addiction's laudable as well as pejorative meanings.

"Addiction and Devotion performs valuable scholarly work by recovering a lost history of addiction, and illuminating a wide range of cultural attitudes both towards specific addictive practices and towards different forms of addiction as determined by the relationship of the addict to their object" (Renaissance and Reformation) "Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England simultaneously dismantles the modern, medical definition of addiction as pathology and expertly reconstructs an image of early modern addiction as a confluence between material and immaterial phenomena…[This book] will certainly appeal to scholars of Shakespearean drama looking for nuanced rebuttals of individual sovereignty in canonical plays. More broadly, it will speak to early modernists in search of the period's potential for disrupting and recomposing historical teleologies. In this regard, Lemon's book heartily deserves a glass raised in its honor." (Comitatus) "[Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England] succeeds in unfolding changing understandings of addiction, drawing attention to its forgotten links to devotion. Lemon amply demonstrates that addiction involved abandonment to something beyond oneself: God; the beloved; a community or cause; a substance… In prompting scholars to pay closer attention to the word's implications, the work performs valuable service. Readers are unlikely to take the term or concept for granted in future." (Parergon) "Rebecca Lemon presents a compelling, richly substantiated treatment of early modern cultures of addiction that offers genuinely new perspectives. Charting the development of the modern sense of addiction while at the same time attending to its early modern senses as something laudable, even heroic, Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England is an important intervention." (Adam Smyth, University of Oxford)

Rebecca Lemon is Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern California and author of Treason by Words: Literature, Law, and Rebellion in Shakespeare's England.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780812249965
ISBN 10	0812249968
Title	Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England
Author	Rebecca Lemon
Series	Haney Foundation Series
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	University of Pennsylvania Press
Year published	2018-03-20
Number of pages	280
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.