Abstract
The encounter between recent post-structuralist theory and a traditional idea of the Renaissance occasions this book. Its dual purpose is, first, to analyze early modern theories of the will and subjecthood and, second, to explore their relation to poststructuralist thought. It deals with discussions of will and mastery by five 'masters' - Petrarch, Luther, Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and Galileo - in texts that have some autobiographical component. Each writer embodies a paradigmatic early modern discourse on will: humanism, theologies of the will, and the emergent discourse of scientific rationalism. All are structured by a tension between the desire for mastery and the acknowledgment that mastery is impossible. And all share a rhetoric of authority and voluntarism that seeks to compensate for the various forms of predestination or bondage of the will experienced by these writers.
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