The Sonnet, the Self, and the Problem of Consciousness in Elizabethan England
This talk investigates the development of the interior self in early modern England. Centrally, it argues that modern conceptions of the self can be traced to internal experiences of consciousness that predate René Descartes’s Meditationes (1641) by about fifty years. It applies a new framework, one informed by philosopher David Chalmers’s easy and hard problems of consciousness, to understand the period’s poetic interiority. Ultimately, it posits that the use of language in the Elizabethan sonnet crafts an internal self that emerges in more recognizable form in Descartes’s Meditationes, a conclusion that has profound implications for literary criticism, the history of ideas, and Renaissance studies.
Speaker
Hayley Cotter is a scholar of early modern literature and culture. Specifically, her work investigates the legal, literary, material, and cultural manifestations of maritime law in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Her research has (or will) appear in Renaissance Quarterly, Quærendo, Imago Mundi, Spenser Studies, and the Journal of Early Modern Studies. Hayley was the 2023-2024 Kemble Fellow in Maritime History at the Huntington Library and has also received fellowships from the Herzog August Bibliothek and the Renaissance Society of America. Her first book, exploring maritime law in English Renaissance poetry and drama, is set to be published by the University of Alabama Press. Her second book, a book-historical study of early modern maritime law, is currently under contract with Palgrave Macmillan.
About Colloquium
Colloquium is a weekly series of talks featuring staff, fellows, and scholars who are working with the library’s vast collections. These events bring together experts from various fields to share their research on a wide range of topics, followed by an opportunity for the audience to ask questions and engage in conversation.
Colloquium is open to the public and offers a chance to explore fascinating ideas and new discoveries. No advance registration is required.