"Nobler in the mind": The emergence of early modern anxiety
Article
Article Title | "Nobler in the mind": The emergence of early modern anxiety |
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Article Category | Article |
Authors | |
Author | Johnson, Laurie |
Editors | Goodall, Peter |
Journal Title | AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association |
Journal Citation | pp. 141-156 |
Number of Pages | 16 |
Year | 2009 |
Place of Publication | Sydney, Australia |
Web Address (URL) | http://www.aulla.com.au/AULLA%202009,%20Proceedings.pdf |
Abstract | Although there is no doubt that anxiety is everywhere in early modern literature, it seems something of a curiosity that the word itself is missing from the same body of writings until around Shakespeare's departure from London. It is not until around 1612 and beyond that the word 'anxiety' and a range of variant forms (including the obsolete 'anxietude' and 'anxiferous') begin to appear with greater frequency. Certainly, the word is not to be found in Shakespeare's own writings. This does not mean that anxiety is a state with which Shakespeare and his characters are unfamiliar, yet it does force us to look awry, so to speak, when seeking anxiety in the play texts. This article, that this perplexing fact about the late arrival of the word 'anxiety' during a time that is characterised, it seems from a more modern vantage point, by anxiety, is in fact a proof of what I call the early modern 'body-mind'. What is experienced as anxiety in such a discursive realm is thus known and described through a language of the body, wherein writers try to describe the idea that the mind can be troubled or even 'strangled' (which is indeed the origin of the root from which we get 'anxietas' in Latin) in a physical sense. The language of anxiety is already everywhere to be found in Early Modern texts and in Shakespeare in particular, as an expression of the physical torment to which the mind is prone, and that the emergence of the word 'anxiety' became a quite necessary historical adjunct to the existing discourse of anxiety. |
Keywords | Shakespeare; embodiment; anxiety; Hamlet; early modern |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 470504. British and Irish literature |
500314. Philosophy of language | |
470299. Cultural studies not elsewhere classified | |
Public Notes | File reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher/author. |
Byline Affiliations | Public Memory Research Centre |
Faculty of Arts | |
Event | AULLA 2009 Conference: The Human and Humanities in Literature, Language and Culture |
Event Details | AULLA 2009 Conference: The Human and Humanities in Literature, Language and Culture Event Date 04 to end of 06 Feb 2009 Event Location Sydney, Australia |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/9z7vq/-nobler-in-the-mind-the-emergence-of-early-modern-anxiety
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