The individual, property and discursive practice in Burton and Locke /

This thesis attempts a critical analysis of modern individualism through an examination of its origins in the seventeenth century. In this thesis I discuss the notion of autonomous and self-responsible individuality as a culturally constructed and culturally specific idea. Furthermore, I describe autonomy as only one of a complex of related features of the modern individual, including a withdrawn and objectifying stance toward the natural world, values and other human beings.In this thesis, I examine two seventeenth-century authors--Robert Burton and John Locke--each of whom represents a different conception of individuality. Burton emulates communal conceptions of identity characteristic of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, while Locke describes an essentially modern, analytical individuality based on the control and possession of an objectified "other".The theoretical framework for this analysis is derived from Michel Foucault and Timothy Reiss' description of the transition from the Renaissance to the seventeenth century as a transition between different epistemes or discourses. Throughout this thesis, I supplement this essentially structuralist approach with perspectives from Medieval, Renaissance and seventeenth-century cosmology, literary theory, political theory and epistemology