The virtue of sympathy: magic, philosophy, and literature in seventeenth-century England

Beginning with an analysis of Shakespeare's The Tempest and building to a new reading of Milton's Paradise Lost, author Seth Lobis charts a profound change in the cultural meaning of sympathy during the seventeenth century.

Having long referred to magical affinities in the universe, sympathy was increasingly understood to be a force of connection between people.

By examining sympathy in literary and philosophical writing of the period, Lobis illuminates an extraordinary shift in human understanding.