Book contents
- Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England
- Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I The Arts of Remembering Death
- Chapter 1 Death and the Art of Memory in Donne
- Chapter 2 Spiritual Accountancy in the Age of Shakespeare
- Chapter 3 Recollection and Pre-emptive Resurrection in Shakespeare’s Sonnets
- Chapter 4 Learn How to Die
- Part II Grounding the Remembrance of the Dead
- Part III The Ends of Commemoration
- Parting Epigraph
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 3 - Recollection and Pre-emptive Resurrection in Shakespeare’s Sonnets
from Part I - The Arts of Remembering Death
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 October 2022
- Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England
- Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I The Arts of Remembering Death
- Chapter 1 Death and the Art of Memory in Donne
- Chapter 2 Spiritual Accountancy in the Age of Shakespeare
- Chapter 3 Recollection and Pre-emptive Resurrection in Shakespeare’s Sonnets
- Chapter 4 Learn How to Die
- Part II Grounding the Remembrance of the Dead
- Part III The Ends of Commemoration
- Parting Epigraph
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Sonnets have been a long-standing object of interest for scholars of early modern memory. However, this essay turns attention away from cultural or collective memory to questions of individual recollection. The chapter explores the poetic speaker’s efforts to understand how his own memory functions and how he might influence the memories of those to whom his poems are addressed. In doing so, the discussion takes as its focus how recollection is co-constitutive of erotic pleasure in the poems. Upon analysis, it is found that the Sonnets overtly tie mental recollection to the revivification of bodily pleasures. The Sonnets constitute a project of bringing the speaker’s past and future loves into his present. The power of the speaker’s desire is thus able to enable a resurrection of lost beloveds in lyric time.
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- Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England , pp. 61 - 77Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022