This book visits the wondrous, magical, sacred, sainted, numinous, uncanny, auratic, and sacral in the plays of Shakespeare and contemporaries, studying the instabilities of 'enchanted' and 'disenchanted' practices of thinking and knowledge-making in the early modern period. If what marvelously stands apart from conceptions of the world's ordinary functioning might be said to be 'enchanted', is the enchantedness weakened, empowered, or modally altered by its translation to theatre? The book asks what happens in theatre, as a medium that can give power to or curtail experiences of wonder, addressing plays that reflect contemporary reorientations of vision, awareness, and cognitive practice.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

NANDINI DAS AND NICK DAVIS

Introduction: Dis-enchantments/Re-enchantments

1. JESSE LANDER

Demonism and Disenchantment in the First Part of the Contention

2. MAGGIE VINTER

Mortal, Martyr, or Monster? Working on the King's Corpse in the Henriad

3. ERIC MALLIN

The Charm in Macbeth

4. AARON KITCH

Enchanted Materialism in Paracelsus, Hobbes, and Hamlet

5. MARGARET HEALY

"Wondrous" Healing: the "New Philosophy", Medicine and Miracles on the Early Modern Stage

6. CHLOE PORTER

"Things which are not": Idolatry and Enchantment in The White Devil

7. JOAN PONG LINTON

Charisma and the Making of the Misanthrope in Timon of Athens

8. SARAH LINWICK

"The wealthy magazine of nature": Knowledge, Wonder, and Gunpowder in Fletcher's The Island Princess

9. SARA SAYLOR

"Almost a miracle": Penitence in The Winter's Tale

10. ERIC MINEAR

Ghost-Stories and Living Monuments: Bringing Wonders to Life in The Winter's Tale

Contributors

Nandini Das is Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Nick Davis is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Liverpool, UK. A member of the Group for Research in Literature, Psychology and Medical Humanities, he co-edits The International Journal of Literature and Psychology.