Books by Michael Witmore

Drawing on intellectual history, cultural criticism, and rhetorical theory, this book chronicles the narrative transformation of "accidents"-whether collapsing buildings, unexpected meetings in the marketplace, monstrous births, or pirate attacks-from a philosophical dead end to an occasion for revelation and wonder in early modern religious life, dramatic practice, and experimental philosophy.

Witmore examines the ways in which children, with their proverbial capacity for spontaneous imitation and their imaginative absorption, came to exemplify the virtues and powers of fiction during the English Renaissance.