Early modern english literature PARTE 2, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Early modern english literature PARTE 2 e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE, Scott-Warren PART 2 – FORGING IDENTITIES 5 Nature The politics of nature: Francis Bacon In this period, there’s a development of the history of science, with a triumphalist mode. Everything is understood in terms of the end toward which the science is progressing. It reflects the way in which science is conventionally understood in Western society. what we now call ‘science’, in the early modern period was known as ‘natural philosophy’, that was an area of wisdom related to Nature, rather than Divine or Man. In England, the most important student of this subject was Francis Bacon > he was interested about the power and not about the pursuit of the truth. He develops the ‘govern or be governed’ rhetoric. He also worked at court and helped as secretary of state; this experience forced his description of the new philosophy > An organ of state of power should treat nature like a prisoner, forcing her to disclose her secrets to sovereign humanity. For him, philosophy engaged to reason and not the imagination. Nature’s civil war: Margaret Cavendish During the second half of the 17th century, the advance of this new philosophy inquiry led to the proliferation of incompatible world-pictures > split into vitalist and atomists. The English civil war of the 1640s created a serious problem for devotees of the new philosophy. Margaret Cavendish wrote a book “Blazing world”, very eccentrical and with a deviation from what we now consider rational and scientific. It can be seen as a satire of contemporary thought. It also alludes to the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, who distinguishes between primary and secondary qualities, those qualities that exist in the world and those that are subjective. this suggests that the senses couldn’t be trusted as a guide to reality. what the world is ‘really’ like then? that’s the main question in the 17th century. Margaret Cavendish’s book has a profound and entirely rational scepticism about the power of the new experimental philosophies to unfold reality. Natural philosophy shades into the blasphemy, idolatry and enthusiastic religion from which may be struggling to separate it. Cavendish concludes her book by reminding us that the technological victory we have witnessed has been purely fictional, the daydreaming of an ambitious and capricious woman. Nature and atheism: Christopher Marlowe During the ‘scientific revolution’ period, those who dedicated themselves to the study of nature were dogged as atheists. For Bacon, divinity and philosophy went together but, later in the century, the name of philosopher Hobbes became a byword for atheism, by reducing the universe to matter and motion. The main problem was exacerbated by the fact that God and Nature were often seen as rivals. ‘atheist’ at the time was a neutral description as a generalized calumny, a way of attacking anther individualist credit in order to exclude them from relations. Christopher Marlowe was one of the most spectacular examples of the suspected early modern atheism, in particular for his play Faustus → competition between the 2 visions of the cosmos: the Ptolemaic (the old one, geocentric) and the Copernican (the new one, heliocentric). the playwright’s revolutionary vision is hardly expressed in his play because it couldn’t be accepted by everyone yet. 6 Nation The origins of Brutishness: the relationship between early modern English literature and English nationhood appeared straightforward. ‘Patriotic Exaltation’ is one of the five key characteristic s of the ‘great Period’ of the English Renaissance > national pride. The 16-17th centuries saw a revolution both in language and in writing, a decisive transfer of cultural energy from Italy and Southern Europe to England, and the foundation of English literary excellence and global supremacy. The break with Rome has been one thing that had done most to consolidate these factors → Church of England, in which the monarch has the whole and entire power. This break from Rome gave to Protestantism a big influence on the country. In 1532: the first Bible in English. (Under Elizabeth 1, England could be imagined as a precious protestant nation.) New words and new linguistic self-consciousness spreading across the continent. Many historians allow that England might be described as a nation in the early modern period; it was a staunchly hierarchical society whose members were more subjects than citizens: politics was the preserve of the monarchy and the nobility. → Early modern English may have been patriotic, xenophobic and even occasionally democratic, but they were not nationalists. The ‘cultural renaissance’ or ‘golden age’ of the later 16th century is now seen as a self- conscious project. the accession of James 4th of Scotland to the throne of England in 1603 came to the prospect of a reunited Britain. → Only in 1707, with the Act of Union between England and Scotland, there’s been a consolidation of British identity. > Great Britain in 1707. >> ideological roots of the British Empire. Alphra Behn’s and Oroonoko (1688): realistic depiction of colonial politics and the brutality of slavery. But rather being a critique of slavery, it’s more a critique of the enslavement of royalty. it’s a contradiction in terms. Before the discourse of ‘orientalism’ and the scientific racial theory, the skin was just one marker of identity for all Europeans and the other cultures, such as barbarity and civility, Christianity and paganism. 7 Gender and Desire Misogyny and sexuality: Swetnam’s “Arraignment” It’s a pamphlet that assaults female sex in a strong way, against equality, against marriage and against the female helpfulness. Gender hierarchy > woman as double, as a mask of make-up > the stereotype of female duplicity formed the foundation for myriad’s tale repentance. Shakespeare with the sonnet 129 attacks on men, driven by a desire which won’t stop at murder in order to realize itself in ‘action’, adding an attack on ‘female genitalia’ seen as hell. The lesbian sexuality in literature and the voyeuristic and intellectual entertainment of the elite male reader. In this period, lesbians sex was the ‘amor impossibilis’, an unimaginable form of eroticism. same-sex sexuality appears to be at once everywhere in this period. throughout the period, ‘sodomy’ was seen as a capital offence, but applied also to human-animal as well as men-men deviancy. Early 18th century London gave birth to the ‘molly houses’ to experiment with every kind of homosexuality or distinctive phenomenon which were usually repudiated from society. Recognizing the fluidities of eroticism before sexualities can sensitize us to the play of desires within a text.