Confirmation of Candidature - Candidate : Kenneth Crowther

Over the last thirty years, the fields of humoralism, demonology, and meteorology have proved rich sources of discovery in early modern studies. In particular, approaching plays written and performed throughout the 50 years on either side of 1600 through a new-historicist methodology informed by historical phenomenology has revealed epistemological perspectives and ways of being that were informed by early modern beliefs about topics as disparate as medicine, demons and the weather. While there has been some recognition of the syncretic overlap of some of these fields, no specific scholarly attention has been given specifically to the nexus of these three epistemologies - to the ways they inform and shape each other, despite their seeming contradictions. This research examines this syncretic nexus, investigating the prevalence of an interdependence and interplay between the natural, preternatural and supernatural, between humans, demons and the environment, as it is presented in the plays of William Shakespeare and John Webster.

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