Troubled Metaphors: Shakespeare and the Renaissance Anatomy of the Eye

As the medium of closer (if uncanny) encounters with the elements of both heaven and earth, the eye and ocular physiology are the object of a privileged curiosity in the course of the scientific revolution of Renaissance Europe, sometimes resulting in the acknowledgement of a deceiving and hence diminished status. The empowering or disempowering agency of the eye is increasingly put under scrutiny in Shakespeare’s times by scientists and artists alike. Astronomers, anatomists, painters, artists/anatomists variously test its capacity to objectively appropriate reality. It does not come as a surprise then that from Labour’s Lost, to King Lear, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest, the eye and acts of seeing take centre stage in Shakespeare’s plays, often leading to a convoluted proto-baroque staging of the self. The study of ocular tropes has long been on the agenda of Shakespearean criticism. Focusing on Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest I explore the richer field of issues disclosed by the study of the relationship between the Shakespearean text and contemporary scientific enquiries.