Renaissance Personhood: Materiality, Taxonomy, Process

Hobbes's definition is relational; Locke's, intrinsic: "Whereas Hobbes places personhood at the interface between actor and society, defining it, therefore, in terms of a relationship, Locke places personhood at the cognitive core of the actor, defining it, therefore, in terms of an i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Shakespeare Studies 2021-01, Vol.49, p.286-12
Main Author: Smith, Bruce R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actors
Anthologies
Book publishing
Consciousness
Cultural change
Drama
Essays
Herbert, Edward
Literary criticism
Materiality
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Personhood
Philosophy
Renaissance period
Shakespeare studies
Taxonomy
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Summary:Hobbes's definition is relational; Locke's, intrinsic: "Whereas Hobbes places personhood at the interface between actor and society, defining it, therefore, in terms of a relationship, Locke places personhood at the cognitive core of the actor, defining it, therefore, in terms of an individual essence" (4). Because our own ideas about personhood derive from Locke's formulation, we lose sight of the fact that Hobbes's is in fact the older. According to the OED, the oldest sense of "person," dating from the early thirteenth century, is "A role or character assumed in real life, or in a play, etc.; a part, function, or office; a persona; a semblance or guise. [...]any of the characters in a play or story" (OED, "person, n.," I.1.a). Curran calls the book "the first sustained materialist study of Renaissance personhood," even as he calls attention to the book's "uniquely pluralistic critical framework, one that draws eclectically on animal studies, ecocriticism, and food studies, and models new ways of entering these post-humanist approaches into conversation with legal theory, cultural history, and literary analysis" (12-13).
ISSN:0582-9399