The Early Modern Imagination

About the lecture

In this module, we look at commonly held beliefs about imagination in the early modern period in England, focusing in particular on: (i) the imagination was viewed negatively as a potentially dangerous mental faculty, that could disrupt reason and understanding, (ii) that the three-chamber model of the brain was often used to explain the relationship between the imagination, reason, and memory, and (iii) how women, children, and those deemed weak in reason were considered to have particularly unruly imaginations.

About the lecturer

Professor Helen Hackett is Professor of English literature at University College London. She is an expert on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in particular female writers and representations of women in Renaissance literature. Some of her recent publications include The Elizabethan Mind: Searching for the Self in an Age of Uncertainty (2022), A Short History of English Renaissance Drama (2012), and Shakespeare and Elizabeth: The Meeting of Two Myths (2009).