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What is the artificial in English Renaissance Culture and Literature? On the one hand, it is any material object represented in Renaissance narrative; on the other, it is metaphorically any artificial/fictitious representation of an "objective" external reality. In Thomas More´s Utopia and Philip Sidney´s New Arcadia the "artificial" element assumes the dimension of a new kind of technological nature that transcends the "artifice-nature" dichotomy. In these two seminal works, artificial natures and fake desires become "natural" and real in a retrospective and unconscious fashion, thus problematizing the very nature of Renaissance reality.

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Dr. Emmanouil Aretoulakis is Fellow at the Faculty of English Language and Literature of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He teaches British Fiction, English Poetry, contemporary Theory and Aesthetics. His book Forbidden Aesthetics, Ethical Justice, Terror is forthcoming (2016) from Lexington Books, USA.

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