Research Catalog

Title

The Smoke of the Soul : Medicine, Physiology and Religion in Early Modern England / Richard Sugg, Department of English Studies, Durham University, UK.

Author

Sugg, Richard, 1969-

Publication

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 389 pages; 23 cm

Summary

"What was the soul? For hundreds of years Christians agreed that it was the essential, immortal core of each individual believer, and of the Christian faith in general. Despite this, there was no agreement on where the soul was, what it was, or how it could be joined to the material body. By focusing on the spirits of blood which were alleged to join body and soul, this book explores the peculiar problems, anxieties, and excitement generated by a zone where spirit met matter, and the earthly the divine. It shows how pious but rigorous Christians such as John Donne and Walter Raleigh expressed their dissatisfaction with existing theories of body-soul integration; how prone the soul was to being materialised; and how an increasingly scientific medical culture hunted the material aspects of the soul out of the human body"--

Subject

• 1500-1700
• Religion and Medicine
• Mind-Body Relations, Metaphysical
• History, Early Modern 1451-1600
• Christianity > history
• Medicine in Literature
• English literature > Early modern, 1500-1700 > History and criticism
• Human body in literature
• Soul in literature
• Literature and medicine > England > History > 16th century
• Religion and literature > England > History > 16th century
• Literature and medicine > England > History > 17th century
• Religion and literature > England > History > 17th century
• LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
• LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry
• LITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance
• English literature > Early modern
• Human body
• Literature
• Literature and medicine
• Religion and literature
• Soul
• English literature > Early modern
• Literature and medicine
• Religion and literature
• England

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-380) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Machine generated contents note: -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. The Physiology of the Soul -- 2. The Soul in Three Dimensions: Pietro Pomponazzi and Andreas Vesalius -- 3. Aspiring Souls (I): Tamburlaine the Great -- 4. Aspiring Souls (II): Doctor Faustus -- 5. Painful Inquisition: Body-Soul Problems in Early Modern Christianity -- 6. The Differential Soul: Women, Fools and Personal Identity -- 7. The Dying Soul (I): Christian Mortalism as Religious Heresy -- 8. The Dying Soul (II): Mortalism as Literary Fantasy -- 9. Anatomy and the Rise of the Brain -- Conclusion The True Location of the Soul -- Bibliography -- Index.

ISBN

• 9781137345592 (hardback)
• 1137345594 (hardback)

LCCN

^^2013035868

OCLC

• 848162876
• SCSB-11657871

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library