How We Became Modern: literary context from the Renaissance to today
Project summary
This is a series of posts that charts literary context from the early modern period to now. It’s a rather ambitious project and rather nascent. I’ve mapped out a timeline of over 40 potential posts! I feel like I need a compressed version to go with each broad section. There are main threads I seem to be following:
- How human beings situate themselves:
- Within themselves (consciousness, Identity and self-perception)
- Within their societies (in relation to each other)
- Within their literature (as reflection of the above, but also how the literature shapes them)
- How this changing situation and self-perception influences:
- Politics (the rise of democracy and fascism; the rise of liberalism)
- Philosophy, belief and religion (rise of secularisation)
- Money, economy, industry and notions of value (rise of Capitalism, the nature and value of work/labour)
- Education (what, who, how, when, where, why?)
- Treatment of others (rise of emancipatory approaches within academic and social discourse)
- Communication (the rise of mass media)
- Social norms, mores and relationships (the rise of social media, global society)
- Emotion (the rise of psychology)
Completed essays
Linked
Shakespeare
- '[...] thou, Iago, who hast had my purse / As if the strings were thine' (Othello, 1.1.1-4)
- 'Thou toldst me thou didst hold him in thy hate' (Othello, 1.1.5)
- Review: The Merchant of Venice (RSC, dir. Polly Findlay, 2015)