Lesser Living Creatures examines literary and cultural texts from early modern England in order to understand how people in that era thought about—and with—insect and arachnid life. Designed for the classroom, the book comprises two volumes—Insects and Concepts—that can be used together or independently. Each addresses the collaborative, multigenerational research that produced early modern natural history and provides new insights into the old question of what it means to be human in a world populated by beasts large and small.

Volume 1, Insects, examines how insects burrowed into the literal and symbolic economies of the era. The contributors consider diminutive creatures—such as bees and beetles, flies and fleas, silkworms and spiders—and their depictions in plays, poetry, fables, natural histories, and more. In doing so, they illuminate how early modern science and literature worked as intersecting systems of knowledge production about the natural world and show definitively how insect life was, and remains, intimately entangled with human life.

In addition to the editors, contributors to this volume include Chris Barrett, Roya Biggie, Bruce Boehrer, Gary Bouchard, Dan Brayton, Eric Brown, Mary Baine Campbell, Perry Guevara, Shannon Kelley, Emily King, Karen Raber, Kathryn Vomero Santos, Donovan Sherman, and Steven Swarbrick.

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Yes, you can access Lesser Living Creatures of the Renaissance by Keith Botelho, Joseph Campana, Keith Botelho,Joseph Campana in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & British History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

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Penn State University Press

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Index

Cover
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Creatures
1. Silkworm: Thomas Moffett, Silkworm Laureate
2. Ants: Go to the Pismire
3. Flea: Annihilating the Copulative Conceit: John Donne’s Conversion of the “son of dust” into Uncertain Sacrilege
4. Fly: Of Flyes: The Insect Mind of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
5. Gnat: The Clamor of Things: Moffett’s Gnats, Spenser’s Complaints
6. Maggot: Mutable Maggots: Corruption, Generation, and Literary Legacy
7. Bee: “Some say the bee stings”: Toward an Apian Poetics
8. Wasp: What Is It Like to Be Like a Wasp?
9. Butterflies and Moths: Volatile Creatures and Elaborate Work
10. Grasshopper and Locust: Antimonarchal Locusts: Translating the Grasshopper in the Aftermath of the English Civil Wars
11. Beetle: Sycorax’s Beetles: Legacies of Science, the Occult, and Blackness
12. Spider: The Renaissance of Spiders: Ambivalence, Beauty, Terror, Art
13. Water Bugs: Bugs Aquatic: Water Striders from Moffett to Marine Science
14. Worms: Worms of Conscience
15. Scorpions: Flame of Fire Beaten: Scorpions in and out of Mind
Epilogue: Creatures
List of Contributors
Index

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