Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Western European Studies
Episode: Jane Hwang Degenhardt, "Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Description: How were understandings of chance, luck, and fortune affected by early capitalist developments such as the global expansion of English trade and colonial exploration? And how could the recognition that fortune wielded a powerful force in the world be squared with Protestant beliefs about the all-controlling hand of divine providence? Was everything pre-determined, or was there room for chance and human agency? Jane Hwang Degenhardt's book Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) addresses these questions by demonstrating how English economic expansion and global transformation produced a new philosophy of fortune oriented around discerning and opt...