Workshop in Poetics: Hannah Smith-Drelich

Speaker(s): Hannah Smith-Drelich (PhD Candidate in English, Stanford), Mattea Koon (PhD Candidate in English, Stanford)

Hannah Smith-Drelich (English) will workshop “Charm Logic in Robert Herrick’s Hesperides,” a draft chapter from her dissertation, “Altered Appetites: Food and Metaphor in Early Modern England.” Mattea Koon (English) will offer a response, followed by questions and group discussion.

Here is a brief overview of Hannah’s project:

My dissertation draws on an emerging scholarly interest in embodiment to reveal the centrality of appetite in the early modern period. Beginning in the sixteenth century, European tastes were confronted with several cataclysmic upheavals, from the Protestant Reformation’s disgust over the eucharist to increased encounters with peoples and resources across the Atlantic, leading to strange fears and destructive hungers. More than ever, eating was a crucial act of identity which divided self from other. In literature, the metaphor of appetite acquired new tenors, motivating discussions of gender and desire, power and philosophy, language and poetry. In my third chapter, “Charm Logic in Robert Herrick’s Hesperides,” I explore domestic appetite in the cavalier poet’s 1648 publication of over 1400 poems, and his royalist reclamation of charm recipes and kitchen magic.

Register in advance to receive the Zoom details.

Image: 'A Kitchen Interior with Christ at Emmaus' by Hendrick Maertesnz