MIMESIS OF SUBJECTIVITY FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE RENAISSANCE

This essay presents some historical, cultural and literary elements which are useful in understanding the emergence of inwardness from the Middle Ages onwards. We discuss that Shakespeare did not invent inwardness by himself as Bloom (2001), Fineman (1986) and Greenblatt (1984) propose in their works. Like Dante, Augustine and Montaigne, he introduced a mimesis of inwardness specifically in the drama and that was his greatest achievement in literature. These authors depicted inward feelings, sensations, thoughts and anxieties in their work. Shakespeare developed the mimesis of inwardness circumscribed in an ongoing process of the development of inwardness, which probably started in the Middle Ages.