Sensory Experience and the Metropolis on the Jacobean Stage (1603-1625)

At the turn of the 17th century, Hristomir Stanev argues, ideas about the senses became part of a dramatic and literary tradition in England, concerned with the impact of metropolitan culture. Drawing upon an archive of early modern dramatic and prose writings, and on recent interdisciplinary studies of sensory perception, Stanev here investigates representations of the five senses in Jacobean plays in relationship to metropolitan environments. He traces the significance of under-examined concerns about urban life that emerge in micro-histories of performance and engage the (in)voluntary and sometimes pre-rational participation of the five senses.