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Forms of Sentience in Early Modernity by Timothy Michael Harrison A Forms of Sentience in Early Modernity by Timothy Michael Harrison A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Timothy Michael Harrison 2014 Forms of Sentience in Early Modernity Timothy Michael Harrison Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto 2014 Abstract My dissertation examines the relationship between affect and biological life by exploring how Michel de Montaigne, William Shakespeare, John Donne, and John Milton articulated the feeling of being alive. This phenomenon, which I call sentience, is at the heart of recent debates in philosophy and the cognitive sciences, but I argue that early modern literature plays a central role in developing a language adequate to its expression. I focus on written depictions of threshold experiences when this feeling slips into the historical record: altered states of consciousness, episodes of suspended animation, and moments of radical awakening. Although I adumbrate the theoretical history of sentience—a scattered lineage stretching from Aristotle to Antonio Damasio and other current thinkers—my focus is on first-person accounts of this phenomenon. I draw a methodological distinction between attempts to explain sentience and attempts to express it. There were many early modern categories that expounded how sentience might work: the common sense, humors, animal spirits, vital heat, and so on. These are akin to the current invocation of hormones, homeostasis, and other principles that may have explanatory purchase but never address how it feels to be alive. Since my dissertation seeks to shed light on how early moderns experienced sentience, I anchor my analysis in passages where writers express the felt qualities of vitality in language that is not inscribed in explanatory categories. I focus on two strategies that Montaigne, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton used to express the feeling of being alive. First, since sentience has no inherited system of images and phrases (as do such senses or passions as vision and melancholy), grammar became a primary tool for verbalizing the feeling ii of being alive. Second, because sentience is all but inexpressible, those who put it into words appropriated other discourses—including theology and philosophy—and repurposed them to register subtle distinctions in affect and sensation. Organized around an analogy to the life cycle—beginning with birth and then moving through death to re-birth—each of the five chapters focuses on a different aspect of sentience: its relationship with death, personhood, temporality, effort, and other living beings. iii Acknowledgments This dissertation is inseparable from the ten years I have spent at the University of Toronto, both as an undergraduate and as a graduate student. I am deeply indebted to the great teachers and mentors I have had at this institution, and to the friends I have made here over the past decade. I have, of course, accrued many more debts than I can acknowledge in so limited a format, but I would like, first, to thank those who introduced me to and nurtured my love for early modern literature as an undergraduate: John Reibetanz, Rob Carson, Sally-Beth MacLean, and Alexandra Johnston. I would not have excelled in those early years without the guidance, patience, and wonderful instruction of J. Barbara Rose, whose mentorship was invaluable to me. When I was deciding where I should attend graduate school, I had the marvellous good fortune of meeting, at a very timely moment, my future supervisor, Elizabeth D. Harvey. In addition to helping me decide to stay in Toronto, she has surpassed any and all supervisory protocols in order to help me become better at pretty much everything, in both school and life. She has been a remarkable intellectual collaborator, whose keen eye has helped me improve and reshape many of my beliefs, ideas, arguments, and sentences. Without her, my six years in graduate school would not have become the space of personal and professional flourishing upon which I look back with such fondness. Lynne Magnusson helped me to nuance my thinking in unexpected ways and to develop a method of reading that leant a badly needed specificity to my writing. I am grateful both to her wonderful collegiality and to her capacity for always asking the most pertinent questions. Paul Stevens helped me to see the larger picture and provided a gentle skepticism that encouraged me to expand the scope of my thinking. He is for me a model for how scholarly endeavour can be suffused with the deeply shared human values that motivate everyday life beyond the academy. Alexandra Gillespie has been superlative in her rigorous and creative feedback. She introduced me to book history and then helped me to find a voice that moved ever further away from such forms of inqiury, and in so doing showed me how the best teachers respond to their students’ interests in a fluid manner that does not insist on drawing boundaries. Never anything less than fully engaged—no matter what extra-academic demands were imposed on her—she inspires me to be a better than I am. In addition to the members of my committee, many other faculty at the University stimulated my growth: Evan Thompson helped me find a topic and grounded my understanding of phenomenology; Brian Stock provided endless inspiration and helped me to appreciate the importance of both Pierre Hadot and Saint Augustine iv for my project; Mary Nyquist taught me how rigorous scholarship should be carried out and has been both incredibly generous and demanding in her responses to my work; Ian Lancashire nurtured my interest in early modern language; David Galbraith introduced me to many new elements of early modern culture; Deidre Lynch nuanced my grasp of affect theory; and Katie Larson provided much needed encouragement and advice. I was also lucky enough to play an active role at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, and my scholarship was wonderfully enriched by the many people I worked with and met there, especially Amyrose McCue Gill, Vanessa McCarthy, and John Christopoulos. Conversations with two visiting scholars at the Centre proved especially important: Bruce R. Smith helped me to refine my methodological thinking and Brian Cummings provided a key suggestion that opened up my understanding of the Luther-Erasmus debate. Massey College was for me a home on campus, and my work in graduate school would not have been possible without the lively interdisciplinary debate fostered by that great institution. I am deeply grateful to John Fraser and Elizabeth McCallum for their many kindnesses and their unflagging support, and to a huge number of Junior Fellows at the College, in particular Claire Battershill, Lindsey Eckert, Letitia Henville, James McKee, Spencer Morrison, and Brys Stafford. In addition to those people just mentioned, I have made a number of great friends and rubbed shoulders with many inspirational colleagues during my time at the University of Toronto. A complete list would be too long to include here, but I should mention Piers Brown, Trevor Cook, Seyward Goodhand, Suzanne Gregoire, Sam Kaufman, Peter Latka, Jennifer McDermott, Michael Raby, Tristan Samuk, Scott Schofield, Erin Webster, and Adele Wilson, all of whom provided ideas or suggestions that have found their way from our engaging conversations and into these pages. I would also like to single out Jim Carscallen, who has read my work and discussed my readings with great enthusiasm and verve throughout the years. My understanding of the texts I treat in this dissertation would be far foggier without Jim’s good advice and resolute common sense. My time in graduate school would have been a shadow of what it was without the steadfast friendship of Jason Peters, whose intelligent responses, humane vision, ethical acuity, and deep sincerity have shaped my approach to scholarship. Whether studying for exams, debating propositions while running on the track, or catching up over drinks, Jason has been as close a friend as I could hope to have. My dear friends beyond the academy—especially Ken v Angeles, Phil Elder, and Brody Paul—make me try to write towards a broader audience and help me to see the really big picture. My studies were also supported by a number of funding bodies. I wish to acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which provided me with Canada Graduate Scholarships at both the Master’s and the Doctoral level. This extremely generous funding helped me to pursue a research agenda that I found deeply meaningful and also enabled me to finish my dissertation in a timely manner. An Ontario Graduate Scholarship provided much needed funding in my final year. The University of Toronto also empowered me with awards and scholarships that made this project possible. I would like to thank the Department of English and the School of Graduate Studies for selecting me as the recipient of the Shane Baghai Fellowship in English, the Viola Whitney Pratt Scholarship, and the Kathleen Coburn Graduate Award. Last, but by no means least, I want to thank my wife, Christina Smit, who has, for over eleven years and across many continents been my home and without whom I could not imagine my work or my life. Our shared adventures are refracted in these pages in multiple and often surprising ways, and this dissertation is literally unthinkable without her constant support, her expert advice, her much needed pragmatism, her wisdom, and her love. If Christina provided the conditions within which this project is possible, the birth of our daughter, Livia, provided the inspiration for its completion. I am deeply grateful to both of them for enriching my life beyond measure and for enabling me to feel my life in ways I had not thought possible before they became part of it.
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