Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Instinct, Knowledge and Occult Science on the Early Modern English Stage

Instinct, Knowledge and Occult Science on the Early Modern English Stage

Walker, Katherine

Hardcover

Series: Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture

Literary Criticism

PREORDER - Expected ship date September 30, 2026

ISBN10: 1399548123
ISBN13: 9781399548120
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: Sep 30 2026
Pages: 244
Weight: 1.16
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
In Instinct, Knowledge and Occult Science on the Early Modern English Stage, Katherine Walker focuses on embodied experiences in the theater and the debates within the sciences that eventually fell out of favor but interlaced gut feelings with observational practice. She examines understudied occult sciences, looking to genres such as almanacs, witchcraft pamphlets and demonologies. As Walker argues, the early modern discourse of instinct registers shifting appraisals of the body's role in making new knowledge. Unlike reason, instinct allowed anyone--a witch, an animal or a queen--to interpret a complex, animate environment. This knowledge was not only a seductive idea, but also opened up a range of debates on the limits of human cognition, the rights of marginalised individuals to offer new understanding, and the contours of what we can know about the environment.

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