Take Five: Renaissance Literature and the Study of the Senses

Abstract

Abstract In recent years scholars of various critical stripes have shown a keen interest in Renaissance literature and the study of the senses. I offer an overview of such sensory scholarship, detailing the contributions of social historians, of those who work on Renaissance allegory, and of those engaged in scholarship on faculty psychology and early modern embodiment. As I trace the contours of work by literary and cultural critics on the individual senses, I note that critical explorations of vision, the sense that many Renaissance philosophers ranked at the top of the sensory hierarchy, no longer eclipse scholarship on the other senses. Rather, work on aurality has blossomed in the past decade as scholars have investigated the history of hearing and listening and have recognized the privileged position of aurality in Renaissance sensory hierarchies. Before ending, I discuss recent discussions of smell, taste, and touch, and I suggest some ways in which recent scholarship on tactility might reinvigorate the study of Renaissance drama.

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