Through the permeable body: medicine and ecology in early modern literature

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This project investigates the complex relationship between the permeable body and its environment in earlymodern writing and thought. It examines the implications of a body characterised by 'corporeal fluidity, openness,and porous boundaries' (Paster 1993: 8) for thinking within and beyond the human in a range of canonical andless-explored seventeenth century texts. Writers from Shakespeare and Thomas Browne to Gerrard Winstanleyand Aphra Behn explore the potential for anxiety and desire associated with humoral embodiment, particularlywhere the boundaries between people, animals and plants begin to collapse. At these points, it is possible todiscern a world more radically interconnected than our own. Situated at the intersection of the medical andecological humanities, this study asks how the permeable body informed identification with the earth and other lifeforms, and how this might have changed in response to the solidifying boundaries of enclosed land and settlercolonies.