| The Renaissance is generally regarded as the era in which modern man arose from the dark ashes of the Middle Ages. As a result, much of the literature that was produced during this period is studied for its signs of modernity, and the texts from the English Renaissance form no exception to this rule. However, as Michel Foucault so brilliantly argued in The Order of Things, the status of language as it functioned in the early modern world was radically different from our own. If the world could be read as a complex of signs, language was an integrated part of this system, for its shape and meaning could not be separated. The importance attributed to the shape of language combined with the supposedly arisen modern man is the starting point of my research. I would like to see how the forms of literature, and poetry in particular, interact with the forms that are deemed important in the process of self-reflection. The underlying text according to which mankind defined itself in the Renaissance was the Bible. Therefore, I choose to analyse the forms of devotional poetry, specifically from 1570 to 1633, as they can be related to rhetoric, theology, and the early modern understanding of the mind in general. My particular interest lies in the working of the memory, which was regarded as part of the soul, and essential in the art of rhetoric. Ideally, my research will retrieve the shapes of memory in literature. To achieve this, I will make an appeal to modern cognitive psychology. The working of our brain is not significantly different from the early modern brain. It should thus be possible to apply our understanding of the memory to early modern poetry. It is my conviction that the forms of poetry are somehow related to the forms of memory a conviction that is confirmed in early modern rhetoric. My aim is to retrace how the memory as we understand it, shapes the image of man in theology and rhetoric, and how this image in its turn is reflected in the forms of poetry. |
