A revealing look at how the cultural meaning of sympathy shifted during the seventeenth century
Beginning with an analysis of Shakespeare’s
The Tempest
and building to a new reading of Milton’s
Paradise Lost
, author Seth Lobis charts a profound change in the cultural meaning of sympathy during the seventeenth century. Having long referred to magical affinities in the universe, sympathy was increasingly understood to be a force of connection between people. By examining sympathy in literary and philosophical writing of the period, Lobis illuminates an extraordinary shift in human understanding.