Jenny C. Mann
Assistant Professor
Graduate Faculty Member
- Degrees
- Northwestern University
Ph.D. - Northwestern University
M.A. - Yale University
B.A.
Bio
Jenny Mann’s book-in-progress, Outlaw Rhetoric: Figuring Vernacular Eloquence in Shakespeare’s England, argues that the translation of classical rhetoric into the everyday vernacular becomes a means of literary invention in the sixteenth century. Reading rhetorical handbooks alongside plays, poems, and prose romances, it shows how the translation of Greek and Latin figures of speech into English functions as a plot generator, turning classical figures of transport and exchange into native stories of fairies and Robin Hood. Her next project, Frustrating Voyeurism in the English Renaissance, explores how vernacular poetry resists the impulse towards visual observation that dominates early modern works of medicine and natural philosophy. This project will attempt to revise our understanding of the rise of empiricism, exposing competing ways of “seeing” in the discourses of science and letters.
Research and Teaching Interests
- 16th and 17th-Century English Literature and Culture
- Classical and Early Modern Rhetoric
- Literature and the Scientific Revolution
- Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama
- Utopian Fiction
Current Projects
- Outlaw Rhetoric: Figuring Vernacular Eloquence in Shakespeare’s England
- Frustrating Voyeurism in the English Renaissance