Erin Inglis
We recognize and acknowledge that all the work and scholarship at the University of King’s College, including Babel, takes place on K’jipuktuk, in the third district of the Mi’kma’ki, which is Eskikekwa’kik. This is the unceded, ancestral, and unsurrendered territory of the Mi’kmaq people. Additionally, we publish in English, a language of colonialism and oppression. The Peace and Friendship Treaties struck in the early modern period between the Mi’kmaq and British Nations are unique in that they grant uninhibited use of land resources to First Nations, rather than outlining a surrender of land. Canada, however, continues to violate the spirit peace and friendship and the letter Mi’kmaq access to land and resources of these treaties. This is an important reminder to include at the beginning of a journal that publishes scholarship on the period that gave rise to contemporary colonial frameworks.
For more information on these treaties, visit: www.migmawei.ca/negotiations/ migmaqtreatyrights/ We are all treaty people.
d’Hondecoeter, Melchior. 1686. A Pelican and other Birds near a Pool, Known as ‘The Floating Feather.’ Oil on Canvas.
Foreword
Caroline Jones.........................................................................................vi
Margaret Cavendish, The Royal Society, and Scientific Instruments
Sadie Quinn .............................................................................................1
The Phallic Fight: Women’s Struggle for Sexual Autonomy in The Changeling and The Duchess of Malfi
Olivia Cook............................................................................................10
“Want of Woman’s Wit:” The Rhetoric of Modesty in Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve
Deus
Rex Judaeorum
Sophie Miliner .......................................................................................14
(Mis)Representations of Judaism in Renaissance Drama
Laura Gilron ..........................................................................................18
Ethiopian Rationalists Zara Yacob and Walda Heywat: The Personal Approach Versus The Conventional Approach
McKenna Blucher-Bunting..................................................................23
Punishment or Piety: The Role of Silence in British and American Penal Theory in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Lauren Konok .......................................................................................30
WheneverItellsomeonethatI’mdoingEarlyModernStudies,theirfirstquestionisalways, “whatisthat?”Theirsecondquestionisusually“whyareyoustudyingthat?”(Often,thislastpartis saidinapolitebutratherbemusedtone).Ascheesyasitmaysound,IbelievethatBabel,inaway, answersbothquestions.
WhatisEarlyModernStudies?Itishardeventodefinetheyearsitencompasses,but,inshort,it istheRenaissancetotheRomanticsandeverythinginbetween.Itwasaneraofscientific,philosophical,literary,andpoliticalrevelation.Itwasaneraoftheunspeakablehorrorsofgenocideand slaveryandwar.Itwasanerathatshapedandreshapedourmodernunderstandingoftheworld,for betterandforworse.Itwasaturningpointinhistory,abridgebetweentheclassicalworldandthe modernone.Theessaysthatfollowpaintapictureofthisperiodofhumanhistory,ofthepeople whoshapedit,thediscoveriesthatdefinedit,andtheartthatcharacterisedit.ThisisEarlyModern Studies:ajournaloverflowingwithexplorationsoftheerathatmadetheworld,initssplendorand itsiniquity,whatitisnow.
Whydowestudyit?Becausewemust.WestudytheEarlyModernPeriodbecauseitshapesthe foundationsofourunderstanding.WestudytheEarlyModernPeriodbecauseitwasnotaninert periodoftime,butadynamiccollectionofmillionsofpeople’sexperiences,thoughts,actions,and lives.Witheverynewhistoricalbookandarticleandessay witheveryneweditionofBabel weget alittlemoreunderstandingofwhoourancestorswere,ofhowtheythoughtandexperimentedand created,andthuswegetalittlemoreunderstandingofwhatmadeuswhoweare.Thisiswhywe studytheEarlyModernPeriod:becauseinthesepagesarethirteenmorepiecesofthepuzzlethat showsuswhowewere,whoweare,andwhywedowhatwedo.
Ithasbeenmyabsolutehonourandpleasuretoworkoncurating,editing,andformattingthis year ’seditionofBabelalongsidemyfellowEMSSmembers.Everyessaycontainedinthisvolumeisa beautifultestamenttothebrilliance,curiosity,anddedicationoftheEarlyModernStudiesstudents atKing’s,andeveryessayhastaughtmesomethingnewaboutthesubjectIlove,theworldaround me,andmyself.
So,Iinviteyoutogetacupofteaandfindacomfortableplacetositasyoudiveintotheseessays andexplorethisextraordinaryera.Hopefullyyou’lllearnalittlesomethingnew,aswell.
CarolineJones Co-PresidentoftheEarlyModernStudiesSociety,2023–24Margaret Cavendish “Mad Madge of Newcastle,”1 to some of her contemporaries often found herself in opposition to mainstream natural philosophy in seventeenth-century England. Her critiques of the new experimental philosophy focus on the Royal Society, the emerging authority on natural philosophy in the 1660s and an institution from which Cavendish was excluded due to her gender as well as her unconventional beliefs. This paper examines Cavendish’s conflict with the Society, particularly her scepticism regarding the use of scientific instruments, and asks what her criticism reveals about seventeenth-century approaches to the production of natural knowledge. Differences in Cavendish’s and the Royal Society’s approaches include the value placed on instruments, the impulse to pursue the Baconian project of revealing nature’s secrets, and the question of the usefulness of the knowledge acquired. I place Cavendish’s perspective in the wider context of seventeenth-century English philosophy, revealing that she was not so far from the mainstream as her opponents may have believed. Situating Cavendish also raises questions about the importance of her gender in her response to the Royal Society’s beliefs. I conclude that Cavendish and the Royal Society, although they disagreed on the practice and purpose of natural philosophy, were both seeking to expand human knowledge of nature and attempting to find the most effective way to do so, at a time of many new discoveries when the scientific method began to crystallize in the Western world.
Before examining Margaret Cavendish’s critiques of the Royal Society, it is necessary to establish the purpose of the Society as it was understood by its members. The 1662 royal charter endorses “philosophical studies, especially those by which actual experiments attempt either to shape out a new philosophy or to perfect the old,” and expresses hope that that the Royal Society will have successors “whose studies are to be applied to further promoting by the authority of experiments the sciences of natural things and of useful arts.”5 The Royal Society’s founding document centres experiments as a means by which to advance natural philosophy. The mention of “useful arts” implies that these experiments can also be expected to produce knowledge that will improve the human condition in general. In his History of the Royal Society, Thomas Sprat uses the centrality of experiments as a way to distinguish the project of the Royal Society from that of the ancient philosophers, who “lov’d rather to make sudden conclusions, and to convince their hearers by argument; then to… attend with sufficient patience the labour of Experiments.”6 The early days of the Royal Society saw a shift from informal discussion of natural philosophy to more structured experiments as the primary mode of knowledge production.
The centrality of experiments in the Royal Society, and the use of scientific instruments in particular, are best personified by Robert Hooke, one of its founding members. As Robert Purrington states in his account of Hooke’s life and career, “Hooke’s entire scientific life was devoted to the Royal Society of London. It defined him, and to a considerable extent, he defined it.”7 Considering Hooke’s integral role in the early life of the Society, it is notable that the title he held for over four decades was Curator of Experiments. This fact affirms the importance of experiment as a means of advancing natural philosophy in the eyes of the Royal Society. Hooke’s work also serves as a testament to the significance of scientific instruments in these experiments. In the preface to his Micrographia, the seminal 1665 work of early microscopy, he envisions the use of scientific instruments as “the adding of artificial Organs to the natural” in order to produce “all sorts of useful knowledge.”8 Hooke’s praise of telescopes and microscopes heralds a new era of scientific inquiry, where no detail of nature will remain invisible: “By the means of Telescopes, there is nothing so far distant but may be represented to our view; and by the help of Microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visible World discovered to the new understanding.”9 This hyperbolic language in the preface, combined with Hooke’s incredibly detailed illustrations of insects and other objects, demonstrates the critical role of new instruments in the experiments that became the primary project of the Royal Society.
The high value attributed to experiments in the early Royal Society is emblematic of the Society’s devotion to the improvement of nature through human activity and inventions. Robert Purrington asserts that “the young Society saw itself as thoroughly Baconian,” referring to Francis Bacon’s vision of natural philosophy as expressed in his description of Salomon’s House in The New Atlantis.10 Bacon outlines a process of knowledge production requiring various roles, including those who “direct new experiments, of a higher light, more penetrating into nature than the former,” who “execute the experiments,” and who “raise the former discoveries by experiments into greater observations, axioms, and aphorisms.”11 This process can be seen as setting the standard for the Royal Society’s approach to knowledge production. Certainly, Bacon’s views are echoed by Hooke, who marvels at humanity’s unique “power of considering, comparing, altering, assisting, and improving” elements of nature.12 With his microscopy, Hooke applies the Baconian idea of “penetrating into nature”13 and improving upon its gifts using human inventions. The Royal Society’s approach to natural knowledge, from its foundations in Baconian natural philosophy to the work of figures such as Hooke, focused on the interpretation and enhancement of nature, with the ever-increasing precision afforded by scientific instruments..
Turning now to Cavendish’s views of the Royal Society, it is logical to begin by examining the most direct interaction that Cavendish had with the Society and its methods her visit to a meeting on May 30th, 1667. A firsthand account of Cavendish’s visit to the Royal Society is found in the diary of Samuel Pepys, who reports that she was invited “after much debate, pro and con., it
seems many being against it” and declares that “the town will be full of ballads of it,”14 a reference to the risk that the visit posed to the Society’s reputation. Pepys spends a substantial portion of his diary entry describing Cavendish’s appearance, giving the assessment that she is a “good, comely woman; but her dress so antick, and her deportment so ordinary, that [he does] not like her at all.”15 It seems that Cavendish’s unusual appearance and mannerisms, rather than her opinions on particular matters of natural philosophy, were what put her at odds with the other attendees. As for the experiments themselves, Pepys reports that “Several fine experiments were shown her of colours, loadstones, microscopes, and of liquors among others, of one that did, while she was there, turn a piece of roasted mutton into pure blood, which was very rare.” 16 While this list, combined with Cavendish’s own writings on natural philosophy, could help piece together Cavendish’s thoughts on experiments she witnessed during her visit, Pepys does not provide any of her firsthand reactions; he claims he did not “hear her say any thing that was worth hearing, but that she was full of admiration, all admiration.”17
Cavendish’s reaction to the experiments shown to her at the Royal Society meeting, as reported by Pepys, does not indicate her true view of experimental philosophy. While Cavendish’s Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy was published the year before she visited the Royal Society, the text critiques some of the very same instruments that were shown to her on her visit, making her allegedly positive reaction less plausible. In particular, the microscope is a significant target of criticism on the part of Cavendish. She writes that microscopy, “with all its instruments, is not able to discover the interior natural motions of any part or creature of nature.”18 Whereas Hooke imagines microscopes as tools that could help reveal the most minute details of natural objects, leaving no aspect hidden from the human observer, Cavendish believes that they distort the true appearance of the specimens in question “the more the figure by art is magnified, the more it appears misshapen from the natural.”19 The section on microscopy in Observations upon Experimental Philosophy is dominated by scepticism, expressing the view that microscopes confuse and distort the truth of nature rather than clarifying it.
Comparing the language used by Hooke and Cavendish in their respective writings on microscopy is helpful in identifying the differences in their approaches to natural knowledge production with the aid of scientific instruments. In fact, Cavendish begins her section on art and experimental philosophy by quoting the preface to Hooke’s Micrographia. She critiques Hooke’s notion that by the use of artifice “there may be a reparation made of the mischiefs and imperfections mankind has drawn upon itself by negligence and intemperance.”21 In this passage quoted by Cavendish, Hooke characterizes scientific instruments as tools for correcting the flawed nature of humans and elevating us to divine omniscience. This perspective is emblematic of the Royal Society’s Baconian project of reaching for “a higher light” by “penetrating into nature.”22 It assumes that all of nature’s secrets can be known if humans perform the right experiments with sufficiently advanced instruments. Cavendish, by contrast, recognizes that some aspects of nature will always re-
main unknown to humans.23 Cavendish finds fault with microscopes because they are “not able to discover the interior natural motions” of specimens and make them appear “misshapen from the natural.”24 Her frequent use of the word natural implies a desire to understand aspects of nature on their own terms, rather than through the filter of artifice. This more holistic approach to natural knowledge differs greatly from that of Hooke and the Royal Society.
Another philosophical difference that emerges when comparing Cavendish’s opinion on scientific instruments such as microscopes to that of the Royal Society is the emphasis on the usefulness of the knowledge gained from instruments. The preface to Hooke’s Micrographia includes the claim that microscopes and telescopes can produce “all sorts of useful knowledge,”25 but Hooke does not provide specific examples of uses for his findings. Cavendish sees this lack of concrete purpose as a major flaw in the Society’s project, characterizing them “as boys that play with watery bubbles or fling dust into each other’s eyes, or make a hobbyhorse of snow, [who] are worthy of reproof rather than praise, for wasting their time with useless sports.”26 Referring to the experiments of the distinguished Royal Society as useless sports is a bold claim, but it may point to a certain vagueness in the Society’s purpose. The Society’s goal of improving and promoting knowledge of nature is inadequate for Cavendish, who critiques the inability of the Society’s experiments to “benefit men either in husbandry, architecture, or the like necessary and profitable employments.”27 She calls attention to the inequities between the wealthy gentlemen of the Society and the masses who have more immediate concerns: “before the vulgar sort would learn to understand [the Society’s arts], the world would want bread to eat, and houses to dwell in, as also clothes to keep them from the inconveniences of the inconstant weather.”28 Of course, this comment on the class divide is being made by a duchess, but Cavendish clearly holds the belief that natural knowledge should be produced with the goal of reaping immediate, obvious, and concrete benefits to humankind.
Cavendish’s The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World, her work of proto-science fiction that was published alongside Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, also espouses her desire for clear human benefits to be derived from natural philosophy. The Empress the protagonist of the novel who is an avatar of Cavendish encounters many scholarly creatures in the Blazing World, some of whom are clearly stand-ins for the Royal Society. The Bear-men, who are the natural philosophers of this new world, present the Empress with a microscope and allow her to observe several plants and animals, including fleas and lice. After being appalled by the terrible sight of these insects, the Empress asks “whether their Microscopes could hinder their biting, or at least shew some means how to avoid them.”29 The Bear-men reply “that such arts [are] mechanical and below that noble study of Microscopical observations.”30 Here, Cavendish calls attention to the elitism of natural philosophy as practiced by the Royal Society. Liane Habinek believes that the form of Cavendish’s text itself, as a work of fiction, constitutes a rebellion against the hierarchical nature of knowledge production in the Royal Society; fiction “can and will create and de-
molish any obvious field lines, in the sciences and elsewhere” whereas the Royal Society “fragments and specializes: each inquiry becomes a potential “science” in its own right.31 The fact that Cavendish chose to present her opinions on natural knowledge production in the form of a novel accentuates the differences between her approach to natural knowledge and that of the Royal Society. The microscope is a symbol of the hierarchy, strict disciplinary boundaries, and lack of clear human benefits that Cavendish sees in the Society.
While the Royal Society was a key knowledge-producing body in England, there were prominent philosophers besides Cavendish who did not agree entirely with the Society’s approach. Thomas Hobbes, for example, echoed Cavendish’s scepticism regarding experimental philosophy when he directly criticized founding Society member Robert Boyle, who “maintained that proper natural philosophical knowledge should be generated through experiment.”32 Hobbes believed that “Boyle’s procedures could never yield the degree of certainty requisite in any enterprise worthy of being called philosophical.”33 In addition to Hobbes, Thomas Sydenham and John Locke published an essay two years after Cavendish’s Observations “arguing that knowledge derived from microscopes was limited to ‘the outer husk of the things that we would know.’ No microscope, ‘however exquisitely elaborate’, could possibly penetrate the internal mysteries of organisms.”34 This opinion closely echoes Cavendish’s critiques of the microscope, showing she was not alone in her scepticism regarding experimentation and scientific instruments. Emma Wilkins asserts that “Cavendish's objections to microscopes should also be seen in terms of a wider web surrounding the relationship between 'Sense' and 'Reason' in mid-seventeenth century natural philosophy.”35 Cavendish’s belief in the superiority of reason over instrument-aided observation was shared by Hobbes, who argued that “those who abandoned reason in favour of the popular ‘sense’ were not only bad philosophers; they were also ignoble.”37 Examining the opinions of Cavendish’s contemporaries shows that she was part of a larger philosophical debate in the seventeenth century, between those who praised the new experimental philosophy and its associated instruments and those who questioned the validity of experiments and advocated for the use of reason over sense perception.
When situating Cavendish’s approach to natural knowledge production within the landscape of seventeenth-century natural philosophy, addressing the issue of her gender is almost inevitable. Because she was one of very few women publishing well-known philosophical works at the time, it is tempting to search for something uniquely feminine or feminist in her philosophy, which sets her apart from her male contemporaries. Some scholars argue that the fact that Cavendish was an outsider to the Royal Society because of her gender was the primary basis of her critique of the Society’s methods. Wilkins cites Evelyn Fox Keller and Lisa T. Sarasohn, who believe “that Cavendish’s attacks on experimentalism were part of a uniquely gendered project to undermine and ‘ridicule’ the ‘masculinist’ science of the Royal Society,”38 and that “it was perhaps a woman who
was best able to challenge the pretensions and power of the new science.”39 Wilkins herself, however, argues for a more nuanced approach, emphasizing the similarities between Cavendish’s critique of the Society and those of Hobbes, Sydenham, and Locke.40 Indeed, Hobbes points out the exclusivity of the Society as a space for knowledge production,41 a concern that would have been relevant to Cavendish. This is not to suggest that Hobbes and Cavendish were excluded from the Society for precisely the same reasons, but to emphasize that this supposedly public forum for natural knowledge production was in fact quite private. Cavendish was not its only outsider. Her gender, and the exclusion it caused her, may have been a motivating factor in her attacks on experimentalism and scientific instruments, but it did not necessarily influence the actual content of her critiques. The Royal Society’s Baconian project of “penetrating into nature”42 can be construed as a masculine impulse of domination, but that does not mean that Cavendish’s opposition to the society was uniquely feminine.
In fact, Cavendish’s ultimate philosophical project of seeking the truth about nature may not have been so far removed from the Society members whom she ridiculed. Habinek explains this possible convergence in the beliefs of two apparently opposing parties:
While Hooke, and by extension the Royal Society, might have seemed to Cavendish idealistic in their certainty that both microscopy and telescopy could reveal heretofore hidden natural secrets with greater success than the naked eye alone, the aim of all thinkers was to augment the senses whether with specially-crafted tools (on Hooke’s side) or with specially honed reason (on Cavendish’s side). Ultimately, Cavendish… wishes to uncover a “truth” very similar to that which Hooke seeks, despite the fact that their paths diverge in relation to the validity and reliability of mechanical aids to knowledge production.43
With this observation, Habinek situates Cavendish and the Royal Society as equals, as seekers of truth who diverged in their methods but not in their goal of expanding humanity’s knowledge of nature. While the social circumstances of this philosophical debate, including Cavendish’s position as a woman, must be considered, both Cavendish and her opponents can be viewed as parts of a larger philosophical project in the seventeenth century of attempting to identify the best method by which to understand the inner workings of nature.
Margaret Cavendish’s views on natural philosophy, and particularly experimentation and the use of scientific instruments, call into question the validity of the Royal Society’s practices in their early meetings. While Cavendish’s criticism of techniques such as microscopy often veers into hyperbole and satire, her writing allows for consideration of the implications of experimental philosophy as a mode of natural knowledge production. Cavendish’s concerns regarding the power of scientific instruments to distort the true appearance of nature, as well as her strong opinions on the real-world uses of natural philosophy, provide a welcome complement to the writings of
thinkers such as Robert Hooke. Her broad questioning of the Baconian project of experimentation as the gold standard of natural knowledge production could be seen as a gendered critique of the gentleman’s club that was the Royal Society, but this claim becomes more nuanced when one considers the views of other philosophers such as Hobbes, who agree more with Cavendish than thinkers such as Hooke. Although Cavendish may have had an additional degree of alienation from the Royal Society because of her gender, she was by no means the only person to question the value of scientific experiments and instruments. Margaret Cavendish’s conflict with the Royal Society reveals that there was no singular correct method of producing knowledge about nature in the mid-seventeenth century, even if emerging scientific institutions attempted to make authoritative claims.
1 Samuel I. Mintz, “The Duchess of Newcastle’s Visit to the Royal Society,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 51 (1952): 169.
2 David Knight, Voyaging in Strange Seas: The Great Revolution in Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 137.
3 Robert D. Purrington, The First Professional Scientist: Robert Hooke and the Royal Society (Basel: Burkhäuser Verlag, 2009), pp. 33-34.
4 Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (London: T.R., 1667), p. 56.
5 Charles II, “Translation of First Charter, granted to the President, Council, and Fellows of the Royal Society of London, by King Charles the Second, A.D. 1662,” p. 1.
6 Sprat, The History of the Royal Society of London, p. 9.
7 Purrington, The First Professional Scientist, p. 33.
8 Robert Hooke, Micrographia (London: The Royal Society of London, 1665), sig. a2r-a2v.
9 Hooke, Micrographia, sig. a2v.
10 Purrington, The First Professional Scientist, p. 38.
11 Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis, ed. Gerard B. Wegemer, (Irving, Texas: Center for Thomas More Studies, 2003), p. 40.
12 Hooke, Micrographia, sig. a1r.
13 Bacon, The New Atlantis, p. 40.
14 Samuel Pepys, “Thursday 30th May 1667,” The Diary of Samuel Pepys, accessed October 19, 2022, www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1667/05/30/.
15 Pepys, “Thursday 30th May 1667.”
16 Pepys, “Thursday 30th May 1667.”
17 Pepys, “Thursday 30th May 1667.”
18 Margaret Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, ed. Eileen O’Neill (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 50.
19 Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, p. 50.
20 Lianne Habinek, “Margaret Cavendish was Not Fond of Telescopes,” Shakespeare Studies 49 (2021): 109. 21 Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, p. 48.
22 Bacon, The New Atlantis, p. 40.
23 Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, p. 48.
24 Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, p. 50.
25 Hooke, Micrographia, sig a2v.
26 Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, p. 52.
27 Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, p. 52.
28 Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, p. 52.
29 Margaret Cavendish, The Description of a New World, called the Blazing World, ed. Sara H. Mendelson (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2016), p. 82.
30 Cavendish, The Blazing World, p. 82.
31 Habinek, “Margaret Cavendish Was Not Fond of Telescopes,” p. 114.
32 Steven Shapin and Simon Shaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 22.
33 Shapin and Shaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, p. 22.
34 Emma Wilkins, “Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 68 (2014): 249.
35 Wilkins, “Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society,” p. 251.
36 Cavendish, The Blazing World, p. 79.
37 Wilkins, “Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society,” p. 252.
38 Wilkins, “Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society,” p. 246.
39 Wilkins, “Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society,” p. 248.
40 Wilkins, “Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society,” p. 249.
41 Shapin and Shaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, p. 113.
42 Bacon, The New Atlantis, p. 40.
43 Habinek, “Margaret Cavendish was Not Fond of Telescopes,” p. 109.
Works Cited Primary Sources
Bacon, Francis. The New Atlantis. Edited by Gerard B. Wegemer. Irving, Texas: Center for Thomas More Studies, 2003.
E-book, HSTC 3001 Brightspace.
Cavendish, Margaret. The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World. Edited by Sara H. Mendelson. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2016.
Personal Copy.
Cavendish, Margaret. Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. Edited by Eileen O’Neill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Dalhousie Library e-book.
Charles II. “Translation of First Charter, granted to the President, Council, and Fellows of the Royal Society of London, by King Charles the Second, A.D. 1662,” royalsociety.org//media/ Royal_Society_Content/aboutus/history/Charter1_English.pdf?la =enGB&hash=EE2FF8F0745DE30775F7EBD6F9A7A1E5. Accessed 6 October 2022.
Hooke, Robert. Micrographia. London: The Royal Society of London, 1665. ttp.royalsociety.org// ttp/ttp.html?id=a9c4863d-db77-42d1-b294fe66c85958b3&type=book Pepys, Samuel. “Thursday 30th May 1667.” The Diary of Samuel Pepys. www.pepysdiary.com/ diary/1667/05/30/. Accessed October 19, 2022.
Sprat, Thomas. The History of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowledge London: T.R., 1667. E-book, www.google.ca/books/edition/The_History_of_the_Royal_Society_ of_Lond/g30OAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0. Accessed October 7, 2022.
Habinek, Lianne. “Margaret Cavendish was Not Fond of Telescopes.” Shakespeare Studies 49 (2021): 107-118.
ProQuest via Dalhousie Library.
Knight, David. Voyaging in Strange Seas: The Great Revolution in Science. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.
Personal copy.
Mintz, Samuel I. “The Duchess of Newcastle’s Visit to the Royal Society.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 51 (1952): 168-176. www.jstor.org/stable/27713402. Accessed 19 October 2022.
Purrington, Robert D. The First Professional Scientist: Robert Hooke and the Royal Society. Basel: Burkhäuser Verlag, 2009.
Dalhousie Library e-book.
Shapin, Steven, and Simon Shaffer. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Dalhousie Library e-book.
Wilkins, Emma. “Margaret Cavendish and the Royal Society.” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 68, no. 3 (2014): 245-260. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43287730. Accessed 23 September 2022.
In Eve Sedgwick’s seminal book Between Men, she lays out the framework for the theory of homosociality, building off scholarship from Freud, Foucault, Girard, and others. Of homosociality, she wrote that it exists “in an intimate and shifting relation to class; and that no element of that pattern can be understood outside of its relation to women and the gender system as a whole.”1 By reading The Changeling and The Duchess of Malfi through the homosocial lens, and how each play uses weaponry, much can be understood about sexual and gender politics within the worlds of each play. In The Changeling, a direct comparison can be drawn between the weapons which De Flores uses to kill his male sexual rival, Alonzo, and his female object of desire, Beatrice one being a noble rapier and the other a simple penknife. The Duchess of Malfi introduces much more complexity to this conversation of phallic weaponry, with swords, guns, and bare hands. Through how these weapons are used, especially by and between men, The Changeling and The Duchess of Malfi work to display how a woman’s sexuality often belongs to men rather than to herself.
In The Changeling, the character De Flores commits two murders: Alonzo’s, ordered by Beatrice, and the other of Beatrice herself. Though De Flores commits each of these with a bladed weapon, it is the differences between these two tools that highlight this idea of a woman’s sexuality existing only between men. When killing Alonzo, De Flores uses a “naked rapier” that he had hidden prior to the third act,2 but when killing Beatrice, the object of his sexual desire, he does so with the penknife he later kills himself with: “I can prevent you; here’s my penknife still. / It is but one thread more [stabbing himself] and now ‘tis cut.”3 Why does De Flores use a sword to kill Alonzo, but something small and ignoble as the penknife to kill Beatrice, whom he loves? In her book, Sedgwick describes how, Recent psychoanalytic discourse…identifies power, language, and the Law itself with the phallus, [and that] distinguishing…the phallus…from the actual anatomical penis…creates a space in which anatomic sex and cultural gender may be distinguished from one another and in which the different paths of men's relations to male power might be explored (e.g. in terms of class).4
I argue that by viewing a sword as a phallus which is physically separate from the anatomical, and thus identified with male power, these two interactions of murder can be read as demonstrating the homosocial pattern of women’s sexual power existing solely within their relationships to men. When killing Alonzo, De Flores finds that, as a man, he is both worthy of being stabbed with a sword, but also that the inherent power he possesses can only be combatted and defeated by using a tool that is an extension of his own non-physical phallus. When killing Beatrice, though, even as he is dedicated to her through his sexual desire for her, Alonzo views her as lacking the power
that would require him to use a sword and its phallic connotations of power.
The theatrical performance of these two murders, compared to their levels of intimacy in location and weapon, also work to show how Beatrice and her sexual relation to De Flores is not as valuable as De Flores’ rivalry with Alonzo. When killing Alonzo, De Flores sets the stage; he places his prop, the rapier, between scenes, brings Alonzo into a new setting, and commits the stabbing with a dramatic speech:
ALONZO.
I am upon’t.
DE FLORES. And so am I. [He stabs Alonzo.]
ALONZO. De Flores! Oh, De Flores, Whose malice hast thou put on?
DE FLORES. Do you question
A work of secrecy? I must silence you. [He stabs again.]5
Though this murder is committed in “a narrow passageway in the castle,”6 these elements of performance are still overtly present. Contrasting to this, when Beatrice is stabbed, it is done offstage after her husband Alsemero had ordered her to “enter [his] closet.”7 The entire action of her stabbing is obscured by the walls of her husband’s rooms, separating her from both the action of the play which concerns her sexual life, and from the view of the audience. Where Alonzo’s death is worth setting up as a moment of performance, Beatrice’s stabbing, and thus Beatrice herself, is not worthy of even being onstage. It could be argued that by placing Beatrice offstage when De Flores stabs her with his penknife, and then by De Flores killing himself with that same tool, he is protecting her in this intimate moment. Yet, after he stabs her, the stage directions state: “Enter De Flores, bringing in Beatrice.”8 De Flores ‘protects’ her from being perceived in this moment only to drag her, wounded, out into the main action so that her death can be placed back within the sphere of performance. Furthermore, when stabbing Beatrice, he uses a penknife, which “is a small knife used principally for cutting or sharpening the nibs of quill pens. It might also sometimes be used for erasing errors by scraping them from the parchment or paper.”9 Rather than using the phallic rapier, De Flores uses a knife that is associated with writing and intellect. Through his use of this tool, De Flores treats Beatrice as an “error” and “scrap[es her] from the parchment” of the play’s story. De Flores furthers Beatrice’s lack of importance in relation to her own sexuality by using a penknife and allowing the action to play out ‘behind the curtain.’ But when he kills Alonzo, his sexual rival, he takes care to set the scene as its own miniature performance and to use the rapier which does carry those associations with male power.
In The Duchess of Malfi, there is instead a focus on women with weapons, allowing for these female characters to subvert the expectation of power, but then contains this by having both lose their weapons and then be killed by means not associated with phallic power. In his essay “Invisible Bullets,” Stephen Greenblatt argues that “the term subversive for us designates those elements in Renaissance culture that contemporary audiences tried to contain or, when containment
seemed impossible, to destroy and that now conform to our own sense of truth and reality.”10 In this play, the expectation for only men to possess the phallic weapons of power is subverted by both the Duchess, who is given a poniard, and Julia, who carries a pistol, but, as following what Greenblatt outlined, these subversions of gendered power are contained by each woman never actually using said weapons, and their eventual deaths. When confronting Bosola over her belief that he tricked her into feeling lust for him, Julia “Enters[s]…pointing a pistol at Bosola,”11 but she does not get the opportunity to use it beyond threatening as Bosola “embraces her, and takes her pistol.”12 Julia manages to hold onto this relatively new weapon of phallic power, a pistol as opposed to a gun, subverting the expectation of who should be allowed to possess such a thing. This weapon, though, is almost immediately taken from her through force by a man. This action contains her grapple for power over her own sexual autonomy. Even if her accusation of trickery on Bosola’s part is imagined, this is, for her, a real and honest attempt to capture the control over her own sexuality that these two women lack.
The occurrence of a woman bearing a weapon is again present with the Duchess, who is given a poniard, but she never actually uses it. After Ferdinand observes the Duchess speaking to herself of her love affair with Antonio, he “gives her a poniard,” telling her to “Die then, quickly!”13 Ferdinand only gives over this phallus to the Duchess for her to carry out his instructions to kill herself with it once again framing it as part of his control over her sexuality. Unlike Julia who possesses the pistol, if only for a short time, as a way to seize control over her own sexual freedom, the Duchess is not given that chance. Furthermore, when the Duchess is later killed by Ferdinand’s orders, it is done by strangling; she is not perceived by the men who assert control over her sexuality as being worth the power or attention of any weapon, let alone one associated with the phallic like a sword or gun. This is situated directly opposed to every man that dies in the play, as they all do so by being stabbed with a sword Antonio,14 the Cardinal,15 Bosola,16 and Ferdinand.17
Though four separate men are killed by a sword, all by Bosola’s hand except for himself, when Bosola oversees the Duchess’ death, he has the executioners use their bare hands. In the terms of Sedgwick’s argument of the nonphysical phallus and how I argue it relates to woman’s sexual autonomy, or lack thereof, the Duchess is deemed not worth its attention. The play allows for a signal towards her subverting expectations with the poniard, but ultimately contains this through her murder via strangling.
In both The Changeling and The Duchess of Malfi, their authors experiment with sexual autonomy and gender. By using Sedgewick’s theory of homosociality, especially as pertaining to the nonanatomic phallus, and Greenblatt’s subversion and containment theory, the way that the characters within each play interact with sexual and power dynamics through weapons can be examined. In The Changeling, this is purely through the chosen weapons and settings of killing by De Flores; in The Duchess of Malfi, Webster pushes further by placing those weapons of control into Julia and the Duchess’ hands, but ultimately rips that phallic power away. Through the connotations of
power associated with weapons and gender, Middleton, Rowley, and Webster each work to represent how in the context they were writing in, Renaissance England, a woman’s sexuality often lied within the control of the men she was connected to, rather than within her own command.
1 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, 1.
2 Middleton, Thomas, and William Rowley. “The Changeling.” English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, 2.2.174.
3 Ibid., 5.3.183-4.
4 Sedgwick, 24.
5 Middleton and Rowley, 3.2.14-19.
6 Bevington, 1620n1.
7 Middleton and Rowley 5.3.90.
8 Ibid., 5.3.151.
9 Beal, Peter. A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology: 1450-2000, 292.
10 Greenblatt, Stephen. “Invisible Bullets.” The Greenblatt Reader, edited by Michael Payne, 134.
11 Webster, John. “The Duchess of Malfi.” English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, edited by David Bevington et al., 5.2.154.
12 Ibid., 5.2.171.
13 Ibid., 3.2.72-73.
14 Ibid., 5.4.48.
15 Ibid., 5.5.54-67.
16 Ibid., 5.4.66.
17 Ibid., 5.5.77.
Works Cited
Beal, Peter. A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology: 1450-2000, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 262-263.
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Invisible Bullets.” The Greenblatt Reader, edited by Michael Payne, Blackwell Publishing, 2005, pp. 121-160.
Middleton, Thomas, and William Rowley. “The Changeling.” English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, edited by David Bevington et al., W.W. Norton & Company, 2002, pp. 1600-1656.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, Columbia University Press, 1985, pp. 1-24.
Webster, John. “The Duchess of Malfi.” English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, edited by David Bevington et al., W.W. Norton & Company, 2002, pp. 1755-1832.
In her Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum collection of poems, Aemilia Lanyer England’s first selfproclaimed female poet intentionally constructs her own identity as author of her work and creates a female literary space by exploring author-reader relationships between women. At the same time, she frequently seems to downplay her poetic ability with statements like “Pardon (dear lady) want of woman’s wit / to pen thy praise.”1 In Early Modern Women’s Writing and the Rhetoric of Modesty, Patricia Pender examines the tradition of reading early modern female writers’ frequent selfeffacement literally as evidence of “the author’s submission to a hostile, patriarchal literary culture.”2 She argues that this reading fails to recognize these moments as demonstrations of rhetorical skill, and she calls this device the “rhetoric of modesty.”3 For Pender, these moments of modesty and authorial denial constitute literary devices in themselves, and should be read as instances of female authors’ “subtle and and strategic self-fashioning.”4 The lens of the rhetoric of modesty shows that the tension between Lanyer’s self-conscious construction of her own role as author alongside her expressions of authorial self-effacement highlights her skill as a female author in a harshly patriarchal context. Generating this tension assists her creation of a female literary space that furthers her argument for the social and religious value of women.
In the poem Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, Lanyer argues for the value of female worship within often-misogynistic Renaissance Christianity by framing her account of the crucifixion as an address to the Countess of Cumberland and drawing attention to her own position as author of the poem. The first stanza of the poem invokes the piety of the deceased Queen Elizabeth I, describing her ascent into heaven “where saints and angels do attend her throne,” and indicating that female piety will be a central theme of the work.5 Lanyer then turns to praising the Countess, whose great piety and virtue serve as inspiration for the poem.6 She uses a first-person voice to write about the act of writing, using the word “pen” as both a noun and a verb and referring to the lines themselves multiple times. By doing so, she asserts herself firmly as the author of the poem.7 At the same time, she applies the rhetoric of modesty as she declares herself “wanting skill.”8 However, in the same line, Lanyer also displays her rhetorical skill and literary ambition; she alliterates in “want of woman’s wit” and “Pardon [...] / To pen thy praise” while working within an intricate ABABABCC rhyme scheme.9 Additionally, this performance of humility directly follows her proclamation that her verse has the ability to preserve the Countess’s “never dying fame” indefinitely, making it implausible as a sincere moment of self-deprecation.10
Lanyer draws her reader’s attention to her author-reader relationship with the Countess throughout Salve Deus as well as in its dedication. After a series of stanzas praising God, she returns to admiration of the Countess at line 145. In a couplet at 271-72, Lanyer links herself and
the Countess as author and reader, skillfully suggesting the closeness of their association in the chiasmus and rhyme of the two lines: “His death and passion I desire to write, / And thee to read, the blessed soul’s delight.” She also again invokes her “lowly Muse,” once more juxtaposing displays of poetic authority and performative modesty. Over the following stanzas she repeatedly deprecates her Muse and her own verse as “poor,” “weak,” “silly,” and “infant” and compares her Muse to Icarus and Phaethon, suggesting that she is overreaching in her poetic task.11 However, the very act of claiming a Muse and working with mythological references shows off Lanyer’s education and poetic skill, and the length of the poem at over a thousand lines directly contrasts with her reference to “these few humble lines” as evidence of her confidence in her own abilities.12 In Early Modern Women’s Writing, Pender points out that scholars read similar declarations of inadequacy by Milton in Paradise Lost as evidence of “colossal ambition” rather than humility, showing literal interpretations of female authors’ modesty to be the product of “an untenable gendered double standard.”13 Similarly, Lanyer’s use of the modesty trope in this section of the poem clearly reflects her poetic aspirations rather than an internalization of misogynistic norms. Lanyer further enforces her argument by suggesting that her identity as a female author with a “weakling Muse” benefits her poetry in praise of God by better evoking his glory in comparison.14 This elaborate humility allows Lanyer to extend her use of modesty rhetoric into an argument for the inherent value of her own devotion and that of other women, as well as to display her own rhetorical prowess and ability to argue as a woman writing in a male-dominated literary culture. When she later claims not to seek “fame’s loud trumpet” with her poetry, she continues the theme of deploying humility as part of worship by asserting that her motive in writing is now to glorify Christ.15 Later, in her defence of Eve delivered through Pontius Pilate’s wife, Lanyer once again mobilizes modesty to argue for the religious value of women from the premise of their weakness. A skillfully balanced line describing Eve offering Adam the fruit shifts blame to Adam as Lanyer suggests that Eve could not have been expected to resist temptation because she lacked strength and knowledge: “What weakness offered, strength might have refused.”16 Again demonstrating her own rhetorical ability as a female writer, Lanyer transforms even the misogynistic logic of the critique of Eve into a defence of female piety.
Lanyer’s prose piece “To the Virtuous Reader” also contributes to her construction of a female author-reader relationship. She writes, “I have written this small volume [...] for the general use of all virtuous ladies and gentle-women of this kingdom,” referring directly to herself as author and to her audience of women, and presenting the literary written word as a space for communication between women.17 In an intricate rhetorical sentence containing two ideas balanced around a semicolon, Lanyer declares that she writes in response to the problem of women who “speak unadvisedly against the rest of their sex” before deploying her own rhetorical skill to defend women’s reputation by attacking male misogyny.18 A tricolon asserting the necessity of women to men points out that men are “born of women, nourished of women, and [...] if it were not by the means of
women, [...] would be quite extinguished out of the world” and builds to the evocative image that “evil-disposed men [...] like vipers deface the wombs wherein they were bred.”19 In this piece Lanyer also asserts the value of female exemplars communicated through writing both in the act of advertising her own work to other women and by invoking biblical examples of powerful women like Deborah and Judith.20 She concludes “To the Virtuous Reader” by referring to her own writing as her “imperfect endeavours,” again setting off her faith in her own rhetorical abilities with the device of modesty.21
“To All Virtuous Ladies in General” also presents a female literary space populated by female exemplars alongside self-conscious references to Lanyer herself as poet. Once again directly addressing female readers, this time as “each blessed lady,” Lanyer praises illustrious women’s chastity, beauty, and faith by combining Biblical and classical references that display both her piety and her learnedness.22 References to Daphne, Minerva, and Cynthia as models for Lanyer’s virtuous ladies show the extent of her education as well as serving as a second layer of female exemplars; Lanyer draws on mythological women in creating her own catalogue of exemplary women.23 She invokes her own Muse at line 81, and she seems to praise both chastity and female authorship in her invitation to “let the Muses your companions be.”24 Additionally, Lanyer characteristically juxtaposes humility and ambition toward the end of the poem, where she writes that the elevation of the names and fame of some virtuous ladies has been entrusted to her Muse, a task “which if I should presume to undertake / My tired hand for very fear would quake.”25 Here, she performs modesty at the same time that she draws attention to her own act of writing with the image of her hand, and invokes the poetic authority of her Muse.
Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum collection advocates for female excellence in religion and society by highlighting Lanyer’s role as author within emphatically female author-reader relationships. Her assertions of authorship sometimes seem at odds with her performances of selfdeprecation, but read through Patricia Pender’s theory of modesty rhetoric Lanyer’s elaborate modesty appears as a device in itself, reinforcing her rhetorical abilities as a female author within a largely male literary culture and opening up paths for her arguments in defence of women.
1 Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum line 16.
2 Pender, page ii.
3 Pender, ii.
4 Pender, ii.
5 Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum line 7.
6 Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum lines 9-10.
7 Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum lines 10, 16, 12, 18.
8 Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum line 14.
Lanyer, Aemilia. “Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (excerpts).” The Broadview Anthology of SeventeenthCentury Verse and Prose, edited by Alan Rudrum et al., Broadview Press, 2000, pp. 76-93.
Pender, Patricia. Early Modern Women’s Writing and the Rhetoric of Modesty. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012..
Although British Renaissance Drama originates from a culture without Jewish citizens, many plays written during the period depict Jewish characters, stereotypes, beliefs, and laws as that Christian society understands them. Three such plays, each depicting Judaism from different perspectives and to different degrees, include Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam. In Bartholomew Fair and The Duchess of Malfi, only one aspect of religious law the Kosher rule against eating pork is mentioned. While religious law is central to The Tragedy of Mariam’s conflict, it is referred to without authenticity, solely through invocation of Moses. Additionally, greed is a main characteristic of all references to Judaism. Bartholomew Fair and The Tragedy of Mariam reference usury (charging interest, which is against Christian law but allowed in Jewish law), The Duchess of Malfi’s only mentioned Jewish characters are moneylenders, and The Tragedy of Mariam depicts a Jewish character offering to destroy a holy site in pursuit of riches. In Bartholomew Fair, there is a fleeting mention of Jerusalem’s destruction alongside well-known tales, and The Tragedy of Mariam focuses almost exclusively on the violence of Jewish people. Overall, characters in Bartholomew Fair and The Tragedy of Mariam depict Jews as a group of people who are entirely other, and The Duchess of Malfi questions whether they are human at all. The (questionably accurate) representation of Judaism is used as a literary tool to suit the needs of each narrative without concern for reality, a tactic that must be studied for its continued contribution to stereotypes that affect the modern-day perception of Judaism.
Christian characters in Bartholomew Fair and The Duchess of Malfi primarily distinguish themselves from Jews by citing the Kosher law prohibiting Jewish people from eating pork, and consider any aversion to pork a cause for disdain. Puritan Rabbi Zeal-of-the-land Busy aims, “by the public eating of swine’s flesh, to profess [his] hate and loathing of Judaism”1, and when the Duchess asks her officers their opinions of Antonio, one says that “[h]e could not abide to see a pig’s head gaping, I thought Your Grace would find him a Jew”2 because “religious Jews are forbidden to eat pork”3. The former example’s negative connotations speak for themselves; Judaism cannot just be disregarded, but must be mindfully and vehemently opposed with distaste. In the latter case, Antonio is being sent away with a bad reputation in order to dispel suspicion of his marriage to the Duchess, and the comments being made about him are purposefully negative. Criticizing the Kosher diet exhibits characters’ negative opinions about Judaism, but for the plays that focus on Christian countries, it is nearly the extent of Judaism that is known to them as well.
The Tragedy of Mariam focuses on Jewish characters, but perhaps because its author is Christian does not delve any further than widely known, surface-level information. Of course, the story’s early historical origin means that texts such as the Talmud do not exist when it occurs, but Kosher rules, for example, do. Multiple times, characters refer to “the principles of Moses’ laws”4 ,
what “Moses say[s]”5, and “[their] Moses’ sacred laws”6, those being the Ten Commandments God gave to Moses. Doris mentions “banishing sour leaven”7, referencing “the yeast that is absent from the unleavened bread of the Passover meal”8, and of course Passover is an incredibly important Jewish holiday. However, other important holidays such as Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot exist already in some form when The Tragedy of Mariam takes place, and these are excluded completely. The inauthentic representation shows that The Tragedy of Mariam only adheres to its ethnoreligious context for historical accuracy, and the narrative more significantly operates according to the playwright’s Christian cultural norms.
One of the laws Christian people adhere to, and heavily criticize Jewish people for not following, is that against usury, which is alluded to in many negative depictions of Judaism. In Bartholomew Fair, Rabbi Busy’s complaints about Judaism explain that it is a religion “whereof the brethren stand taxed”9. The Duchess of Malfi’s only Jewish characters are mentioned as “Neapolitan Jews”10, or “[t]he Neapolitan moneylenders”11 a job that is popularly associated with Jewish people because they can charge interest. The aforementioned description suggesting that Antonio seems Jewish is followed by the notion that he “[stops] his ears with black wool, and to / those [come] to him for money [says] he [is] thick of hearing”12, directly connecting his supposed Judaism with greed. Even Constabarus, a Jewish character in The Tragedy of Mariam, says that “[w]ith friends there is not such a word as ‘debt’”13, which is a nice thought but one that would certainly seem ironic to Christian audiences because of the associations between Judaism and usury. Later, Herod offers to “rob the holy David’s sepulchre / To give [Mariam] wealth” of “all they did with him inter,” and thereby to “make the Temple bare”14: a romantic offer to be sure, but one that comes from a place of prejudice. Considering Herod is the leader of Judaea, for a Christian playwright to depict him with such disregard for Jewish landmarks insinuates that Jewish people have little real regard for their religious tradition, especially compared to riches. Associating Judaism with something Christians consider unholy invalidates the sanctity of the religion at all, furthering the sense that Christians are better than Jews. Furthermore, depicting Jewish characters who seem to put wealth over religious tradition creates the sense that Jews prioritize money above God, cheapening their religious practices.
While the Christian-based Bartholomew Fair focuses on violence against Jewish people, the already-violent Tragedy of Mariam’s Jewish characters draw on what one non-Jewish character calls the “Hebrews’ cruelty”15. When discussing the traditional puppet shows, Leatherhead begins by saying that “‘Jerusalem’ was a stately thing’”16, referencing a show that depicts “the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Titus in 70 C.E.”17. The reenactment of Jerusalem’s destruction allows the British characters, and audience, to violently suppress Jewish people who had been driven out of Jerusalem when the Temple was destroyed even though Jewish people had also been driven out of England. In The Tragedy of Mariam, when Constabarus bemoans the possibility of Salome divorcing from him, he references “the Book of Joshua, where the Gibeonites are made
bondsmen to Joshua and forced to be hewers of wood and drawers of water in Joshua’s campaign to lead the Israelites back to the Holy Land”18, and later “Herod compares his sorrowful sense of the slow passage” of time to “Joshua command[ing] the sun and moon to stand still for a day while the Israelites avenged themselves on the Amorites (see Joshua 10.12-14)”19. Both violent Biblical passages are disproportionate to the situations they are in, and focus on Jewish people as cruelly oppressive. Even stranger is Constabarus describing how “mildest Moses, friend unto the Lord”20 “slew the firstborn babes [in Egypt] without a sword”21, but it is untrue that “the Lord had Moses perform miracles to show the might of [the Israelites’] God”22. In one Passover Haggadah, which tells the story of Moses and describes the rites of a Passover Seder, God tells Moses “I will put wonders in heaven and on earth”23 when He begins the ten plagues. If Moses, an undeniably Jewish figure, performs this act of violence, then the God of the Old Testament and the New is not directly responsible, and remains more similar to the Christian God and morality. Furthermore, there is no mention of Jewish people’s enslavement in Egypt. The depiction of Judaism and violence in Renaissance Drama is very carefully used to show Jewish people either as oppressed, or as oppressors; while both have been true in their turn, representations by Christian characters show Jews without any semblance of power, and those by Jewish characters show Jews as always wielding power.
Since there is no exposure to, or coexistence with, Jewish people, there can be no surprise that British Renaissance playwrights may not feel much connection to Judaism, but there is a dramatic sense of separation between Christian characters and Jewish people. In Bartholomew Fair, Littlewit says he “will be no Jew,” calling Jewish people a “stiff-necked generation”24 The Tragedy of Mariam shows Jewish characters identifying as a separate “race, [and] country”25, and according to its Christian playwright “Judah’s race”26 cannot mix with other tribes of Israel, lest characters be “parti-Jew and parti-Edomite, / [a] mongrel, issued from rejected race”27. The character “Alexandra considers herself a true Jew” and “Herod, as a descendant of Esau, she considers a usurper”28, as though Judaism is firstly inherited through the father, and secondly more reliant on blood than belief. The strictness with which both plays treat belonging to Judaism as a drastic, intrinsic difference from Christianity (or even other branches of the Semitic groups of the time) perpetuate the incorrect idea of Jews as a race that has been so damaging; it is particularly damaging for a Christian author to depict Jewish characters so staunchly adhering to this idea when no Jews can respond to its veracity.
Even more dramatic than the depictions of Judaism as a racial difference are the moments where Jewish people are referred to as entirely inhuman. The Duchess of Malfi takes place in Italy, which does have a Jewish population at the time of its action (although, as in Venice, many cities force the Jews to live in ghettos), but Bosola says that in “a shop of witchcraft” one can find “the fat of serpents, spawn of snakes, Jews’ spittle, and / their young children’s ordure”29 ordure is glossed as “excrement”30. There is a high chance Bosola has come across Jewish people, but he
discusses them in the same context as reptiles, and furthermore essentially discusses using Jewish people's bodies as sources for goods. Judaea is seemingly a nation where Jewish people can thrive, but Mariam’s mother calls King Herod also Jewish, but a “[b]ase Edomite”, “Esau's heir”31 a “toad”32. The dehumanization of Jewish characters in these contexts is frankly disturbing, as though non-Jewish people view Jews as lesser beings and Jewish people view people without the correct ancestry as lesser, too.
In Renaissance England, Jewish people are primarily known for adhering to the Kosher diet, and Moses’s Ten Commandments; for committing usury (and therefore coveting money); for being oppressed by Western power, and being oppressive themselves. Overall, Jewish people are another peoples, or perhaps not people at all in Renaissance plays. Every narrative draws on culturally recognizable concepts to support its message in Bartholomew Fair, The Duchess of Malfi, and The Tragedy of Mariam, Jewish stereotypes are frequently used inauthentically and reflect negatively upon Judaism, no matter how well they suit each play. The effect of these plays on cultural antisemitism is incalculable but unquestionable, and critically engaging with the inaccuracy of these stereotypical representations is a vital first step towards dismantling the prejudices that have produced them.
1 Jonson and Bevington, 1.6.96-98.
2 Webster and Bevington, 3.2.218-219.
3 Ibid, 1791.
4 Cary and Bevington, 1.4.39.
5 Ibid, 4.8.63.
6 Ibid, 2.4.21.
7 Ibid, 2.3.8.
8 Ibid, 639.
9 Jonson and Bevington, 1.6.98.
10 Webster and Bevington, 3.2.172.
11 Ibid, 1790.
12 Ibid, 3.2.223-224.
13 Cary and Bevington, 2.2.14.
14 Ibid, 4.3.19-22.
15 Ibid, 2.2.94.
16 Jonson and Bevington, 5.1.9-10.
17 Ibid, 1043.
18 Cary and Bevington, 632.
19 Ibid, 650.
20 Ibid, 1.6.71.
21 Ibid, 1.6.73.
22 Ibid, 633.
23 Gutstein, 15.
24 Jonson and Bevington, 1.6.100-103.
25 Cary and Bevington, 1.6.2.
26 Ibid, 1.2.12.
27 Ibid, 1.3.29-30.
28 Ibid, 625.
29 Webster and Bevington, 2.1.36-40.
30 Ibid, 1771.
31 Cary and Bevington, 1.2.6.
32 Ibid, 1.2.11.
Works Cited
Cary, Elizabeth and David Bevington. “The Tragedy of Mariam.” English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, W.W. Norton, 2003, pp. 621-672.
Gutstein, Rabbi Z. Harry. Passover Haggadah. Translated by Rabbi Nathan Goldberg, Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1966.
Jonson, Ben and David Bevington. “Bartholomew Fair.” English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, W.W. Norton, 2003, pp. 961-1065.
Webster, John and David Bevington. “The Duchess of Malfi.” English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, W.W. Norton, 2003, pp. 1749-1832.
Scholars have labelled both Zara Yacob and Walda Heywat as rationalists, each of their Treatises being the proof to support the label; with Yacob being Heywat’s teacher, the foundation of their philosophies is undeniably similar. They believe every human being should create their own opinion, not just mindlessly listen to those around them; speculation of other views is an essential attribute for anyone. Their opinions on marriage, fasting, and having kindness for your fellow neighbours are also the same. However, the difference within each text is the explanation, which is how the core foundation of their respective arguments is supported. Yacob approaches the text in a very personal manner, using descriptions of his own experiences to support his perception of God and the human beings around him. Andrej Krause explains that “God maintains this relationship with Zara Yacob through revealing and hiding. The philosopher celebrates the revealing in the form of thankful prayers,”1 highlighting the intricate interpretations a reader is able to make about Yacob’s relationship with God from his writing alone. Contrastingly, Heywat does not use any personal experience to support his work, resulting in a gap between himself as the author and the arguments in his Treatise. The difference between the two texts, while it may initially be interpreted as though Heywat disapproves of his master’s personalized approach, is in fact more complex than this: philosophy professor Claude Sumner asserts that, “Walda Heywat is aware that his master is not just one more teacher in Ethiopia, but a profound and original thinker. He will treasure the memory of Zara Yacob until his death.”2 Even though Heywat takes a different approach to his text, it is not because of any distaste towards his master; instead, it is due to the difference in Heywat’s upbringing.
For the context of these works, Sumner defines rationalism as “...the view that recognizes as true only that content of Faith which can be made to appeal to reason.”3 It must be taken into account that for the discussion of this topic, theology and philosophy cannot be separated from one another; this is because “[i]n Ethiopia, traditional ‘philosophy’ and its written form is intimately linked with Christianity in general and monasticism in particular”4; however, due to both authors having such a drastically different approach to their works, there is an evident difference between between each of their rationalistic approaches. This paper argues that Zara Yacob represents this rationalism with more success; primarily a result of his own lived experiences which shape his philosophy. He depicts his earlier life as one filled with conflict, with many people hating him for his teaching methods, him being forced to flee after being betrayed by one of his colleagues, living in solitude for two years, and then emerging as a respected thinker of his time. Many modern thinkers consider him “...the founder of rationality in Africa.”"
5 Heywat grew up differently; he was the son of a wealthy man, Habtu, who paid Yacob to teach him from a very early age. Before Habtu’s
death, he told Yacob: “‘May God protect and bless you! You shall be the father of my children.’”
Yacob fulfilled these duties, continuing to teach Heywat, who eventually became a teacher himself. With Yacob’s text relying so heavily on his life as support for his arguments, it is evident that Heywat’s text has to look different with such a different background. Another point of consideration is that each author composes their Treatise for a different reason. Walda Heywat asks Zara Yacob to record his thoughts, “...writing an autobiography, and the manifestations of Divine Providence [which] tend to find their place within the framework of his life.”7 Interestingly, “...it is the only known autobiography in Ethiopian literature.”8 In contrast, Heywat decides to write his own Treatise, and by this time, he himself is a teacher to Ethiopian men and women; this means his primary goal for the text is to instruct others, not record his own life.
Both Yacob and Heywat warn the reader of other human beings' falsehoods, stressing the importance of creating one’s own opinion of what others say. Yacob explains that “people hastily accept what they have heard from their fathers and shy from any [critical] examination.”9 He comes to this conclusion after his experience in Aksum, as he was subjected to overwhelming hostility as a result of his objectivity while teaching; he describes that “[he] used to say: ‘The Franğ say this and this’ or ‘The Copts say that and that,’ and [he] did not say: ‘This is good, that is bad,’ but [he] said: ‘All these things are good if we ourselves are good.’ Hence [he] was disliked by all.”10 The alienation experienced during his time teaching in Aksum was simply due to his refusal to reveal his opinion about either faith, which he did to allow students to form their own opinions, rather than blindly follow his. Eventually, he had to flee for his life from Aksum, as the result of a “betrayer [who] went to the king and said this [. . .]: ‘Truly this man misleads the people and tells them we should rise for the sake of our faith, kill the king and expel the Franğ’.”11 This serious accusation results in Yacob fleeing from Aksum: “I took three measures of gold which I possessed and the Psalms of David, with which I prayed, and fled at night. I did not tell anyone where I was going.”12 There are many descriptions like these throughout his Treatise, emphasizing the autobiographical framework of Yacob’s text.
Heywat also adopts this belief, warning the reader to “ not believe what men teach you before you have examined all they teach you and have distinguished the true from the false.”13 However, Heywat does not provide experiential context; he only asks the reader to think about “[h]ow many things appeared as useless to our forefathers, which later on were found to be useful or how many things appear useless to us whose usefulness will be found after us?”14 He uses generalized language to support his beliefs, never drawing on personal instances in which these thoughts are supported. Even from the beginning of the text, the different approaches are already made clear.
On the subject of whether or not there is a creator, both thinkers conclude that there is. Yacob comes to this conclusion after examining the natural world in relation to himself. He tries to ascertain how he exists by asking himself: “who created me as a rational [being] and how have I come into this world? Where do I come from? Had I lived before the creator of the world, I would have
known the beginning of my life and of the consciousness [of myself] [….] ‘there is a creator, else there would have been no creation.’”15 Unlike his master, Heywat creates distance between himself as a created being and the process of creation, eliminating any mention of himself while investigating: “How can it be created without a creator? For each creature is finite and weak; it has no power to create from nothing. Therefore there needs to be one essence, that existed before all creatures, without beginning or end, that created from nothing all that is dense and thin, visible and invisible.”16 The analysis only consists of observations of the world around him, rather than how he came into being. This conventional approach is suited to teach many students, with the impersonal qualities ideal for a class. Encouraging the reader to think about their own life rather than the author. Heywat’s writing is for a classroom setting; he “is first and foremost an educator, using pedagogical techniques.”17
Both thinkers ascertain certain laws within Christianity, such as fasting and marriage, to be examples of falsehood. Yaqob states that “Moses and Christians have defiled the wisdom of the creator.” 18 Heywat agrees that it does not make sense that specific men have access to the word of God. He poses the question: “How do you know that God spoke to men and revealed the truth to them? Have you not heard it from the lips of men who have testified about things they in turn have heard from others?”19 Whether or not one believes these aspects of Christianity heavily ties into the views on speculation and falsehood that both Yacob and Heywat share, and for these Christian laws, it requires one “to believe in the words of men that may be false, in such a way that you give your assent without knowing whether what you believe in is true or false.”20 This means one has to relinquish the speculative nature that is essential to maintain. He accuses Christianity of defiling God’s character: “...they said: ‘God did those things;’ and so they made God a witness of falsehood and a party to liars.”21
On the subject of fasting, Yacob states, “[t]he Jews, the Christians and the Mohammedans did not understand the work of God when they instituted the law of fasting.”22 Christianity is not the only religion to obtain falsehood; it is any faith in which one has to fast. This goes against the creator’ s purpose, since “God does not order absurdities, nor does he say ‘Eat this, do not eat this; today eat, tomorrow do not eat; do not eat meat today, eat it tomorrow,’ unlike the Christians who follow the laws of fasting.”23 The creator does not focus on such minute details which go against the natural desire of hunger, and because “these are unreasonable laws by human beings[,] God could not possibly stand behind them [. . .] God loves his children too much to create cruel laws that disfigure the body not to say the soul [. . . as there is a] difference between necessity and luxury.”24 Natural urges have already been instilled within human beings by God, which fasting contradicts. God provided human beings with everything they need to live a life of providence. Heywat affirms that God “can[not] judge me for not believing in a faith that does not appear to me to be true; for he himself gave me the light of reason that I may discriminate between good and evil, true and false.”25 Here Heywat unusually inserts himself into his work, being the receiver of “the
light of reason,” an explanation being that because what an individual believes is specific to them, it emphasizes that although Heywat does not believe in Christianity, that does not automatically mean his students have to agree with him.
Next, on the subject of marriage, this similarity of opinions between both philosophers continues; they believe everyone should get married, however, the positives as to why someone should get married differ. The personal approach of Yacob versus the conventional approach of Heywat is quite evident here: Yacob’s passion for the topic can be witnessed as he describes that a “husband and wife are equal in marriage; we should not call them master and maid servant; for they are one flesh and one life.”26 The importance of equal value being described between both parties reflects the experience of Yacob and his own wife, Hirut. His desire to marry her is great, and when Habtu approves, Yacob declares he does “not wish her to be [his] maid servant, but [his] wife.”27 His philosophical views are reflected in his own life, proving he lives his life based on what he believes; he does not write words with empty meanings for him. While Heywat does indicate marriage is essential as well, the reason lies solely in the man’s favour; he describes that “[m] utual love embellishes man's entire life; it makes all our afflictions easier to bear.”28 Even his views of love lack personability, leaving his own affairs out of the classroom in which he teaches that “everything [in his text] is sapiential and paranetic.”29 There is no way to know if the way in which he lives reflects his teachings.
It can be argued that, in some ways, Heywat’s teaching method is similar to that of Yacob’s in Aksum, as they both remove their own emotions from their teachings: Yacob does not argue for or against the Conts or the Faranğ, and Heywat does not reveal his own personal experiences in his text. However, Heywat is arguing his own philosophy, whereas Yacob simply described the beliefs of two types of beliefs that he did not create. Therefore, Heywat is instructing those he teaches of his philosophy which in part is to question everything you learn but he is not making it a point to prove whether or not he lives in accordance with what he teaches, whereas Yacob does.
For Zara Yacob’s Treatise, a prominent experience that shapes his thought is the two years of living isolated in a cave after he fled Aksum. He describes this experience: “I found an uninhabited location. There was a beautiful cave at the foot of a deep valley, and I said [to myself:] ‘I shall live here unnoticed.’ I lived there for two years until [King] Sudsanyos died.”30 The two years of isolation Yacob spent in this cave are dedicated to meditation; he meditated every day, his whole life being dedicated to his faith in God. He reflects on this time with immense positivity: “‘I have learned more while living alone in a cave than when I was living with scholars.’”31 The subject of solitude is arguably the most important part of his philosophy, as it shapes both the context of his work and the way it is written. Teodros Kiros, a professor of philosophy at Harvard's summer school, claims that Yacob, “meditated in a way that cannot be captured by formal language.”32 This is due to the complete isolation he experiences during his meditations, where most of the philo-
sophical findings emerge from the elimination of communication with others, making it impossible to accurately interpret his thoughts unless an untraditional method is used; there is an informality about it his work that is not seen in his student. Actually, Heywat does not agree with Yacob’s isolation at all; while he does not explicitly name Yacob in his writing, the criticism is quite obviously about his master: “do not praise those who isolate themselves from men that they may live as hermits and country caves. They have ignored the will of the Creator who ordered that each and every man help one another.”33 Yacob heavily praises his time spent in solitude, as it was used to dedicate full focus to faith and prayers; even so, Heywat strongly believes there is no point to one’s life if they do not spend it among other human beings. He believes interacting with society is essential, as it was created by God; it is meant to be used. A man in solitude “is useless to human society as if he were already dead; God does not accept the service of such a man who refuses to walk through the path he would have led him by and does not want to serve in the welldetermined service that he had imposed on him.”34 This claim aligns with the argument previously mentioned, in which God provides everything one needs within, through natural urges and “the light of reason,”35 so any manipulation of these things is falsehood. However, Yacob’s unfortunate situation forced him into isolation, his life was in danger, and he emerged once it was safe for him to do so. Heywat’s seeming lack of understanding for his master proves “[h]e situates divine justice on an objective and universal level”rather than analyzing situations on a smaller, more personal scale to determine his opinions.36 These aspects make this an excellent example of Heywat’s conventional approach to philosophy.
After analyzing the difference between Zara Yacob and Walda Heywat’s approach to their respective Treatises, then comparing this analysis with Sumner’s definition of rationalism, as previously mentioned that “only that content of faith which can be made to appeal to reason,” it is only logical to claim that Yacob aligns more closely than Heywat with Sumner’s definition. Yacob’s more radical approach to his work reflects his faith in God much more than Heywat, since “[t]he fundamental obligation of humans is towards God [. . . and] ‘God created us intelligent so that we may meditate on his greatness, praise him and pray to him in order to obtain the needs of our body and soul.’”37 Yacob’s experience in the cave was a sole dedication to God, spending all his time honouring God, which reflects his complete submission to faith unlike his student. Heywat does briefly reference himself when addressing the topic of falsehood, “...but the ‘outside’ is explicitly characterized as the ‘outside’ [. . . while] the ‘inside is never explicitly formulated.”38 This is what is lacking in comparison to his master when comparing his text with the notion of rationalism. Yacob’s unusual life allowed for an expansion of thought; his thought was innovative, risktaking, and adapted throughout his lifetime; those same skills can be seen throughout his work. Modern scholars still emphasize the radical approaches to his text, while addressing Heywat as a man whose mind is accepting, but not able to break the cultural traditions set in place:
Zera Yacob was a dove, free and independent, as he soared over the jagged divisions
of earth with its mountains and chasms huddled on against the other. Walda Heywat, on the other hand, is a tree. The branches spread all around him and reach out toward light, warmth, and free space. But the roots are firmly anchored in the rich soil of ancient Ethiopia.39
This imagery depicts the essence of both philosophers, such as Yacob’s “fiercely independent mind,”40 and Heywat’s “pedagogical qualities [while also exhibiting] the deep influence of the folk literature of Ethiopia.”41
Yacob’s mind is one that modern scholars recognize and appreciate; his radical work is undoubtedly a result of his exceptionally noteworthy life experiences. Heywat, while not as radical, is an exceptional thinker, reflecting his master’s influence on his own mind; there are simply aspects of Yacob’s life that he did not agree with, the cave being a significant point of disagreement. While the argument is logically sound, it lacks an awareness that sometimes there is no logical explanation provided with the circumstances for life; and even though one might live in accordance with God, other human beings do not always live in a truthful way, creating obstacles for oneself. The ability to adapt to the unexpected, while continuing to hold onto faith, is why Zara Yacob achieves rationalism more successfully than Walda Heywat.
1 Krause, “Teodros Kiros: Zara Yacob. A Seventeenth Century Rationalist,” 1.
2 Sumner, “The Significance of Zera Yacob’s Philosophy,” 179.
3 Sumner, “The Significance of Zera Yacob’s Philosophy,” 182.
4 Sumner, “The Significance of Zera Yacob’s Philosophy,” 182.
5 Krause, “Teodros Kiros: Zara Yacob. A Seventeenth Century Rationalist,” 1.
6 Yacob, “The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 251.
7 Sumner, “The Light and the Shadow,” 176.
8 Sumner, “The Significance of Zera Yacob’s Philosophy,” 174.
9 Yacob,“The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 235.
10 Yacob,“The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 231.
11 Yacob,“The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 231.
12 Yacob,“The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 231.
13 Heywat, “The Treatise of Walda Heywat,” 255.
14 Heywat, “The Treatise of Walda Heywat,” 256.
15 Yacob, “The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 233.
16 Heywat, “The Treatise of Walda Heywat,” 256.
17 Sumner, “The Light and the Shadow”, 175.
18 Yacob, “The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 237.
19 Heywat, “The Treatise of Walda Heywat,” 258.
20 Heywat, “The Treatise of Walda Heywat,” 258.
21 Yacob, “The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 235.
22 Yacob, “The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 238.
23 Yacob, “The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 238.
24 Kiros, “The Meditations of Zara Yaquob,” 4.
25 Heywat, “The Treatise of Walda Heywat,” 259.
26 Yacob, “The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 248.
27 Yacob, “The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 248.
28 Heywat, “The Treatise of Walda Heywat,” 268.
29 Sumner, “The Significance of Zera Yacob’s Philosophy,” 180.
30 Yacob, “The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 232.
31 Yacob, “The Treatise of Zara Yaqob,” 244.
32 Kiros, “The Meditations of Zara Yaquob,” 7.
33 Heywat, “The Treatise of Walda Heywat,” 266.
34 Heywat, “The Treatise of Walda Heywat,” 266.
35 Heywat, “The Treatise of Walda Heywat,” 259.
36 Sumner, “The Light and the Shadow,” 176.
37 Kiros, “The Meditations of Zara Yaquob,” 7.
38 Sumner, “The Light and the Shadow,” 181.
39 Sumner, “The Light and the Shadow,” 176.
40 Kiros, “The Meditations of Zara Yaquob,” 7.
41 Sumner, “The Light and the Shadow,” 175.
Heywat, Walda. The Treatise of Walda Heywat, Ethiopian philosophy. Translated by Claude Sumner. Addis Ababa: Commercial Printing Press, 1982.
Yaqob, Zara. The Treatise of Zara Yaqob, Ethiopian Philosophy. Translated by Claude Sumner. Addis Ababa: Commercial Printing Press, 1982.
Kiros, Teodoros. “The Meditations of Zara Yaquob.” The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, 1998, 24–33. https://doi.org/10.5840/wcp20-paideia199823406.
Krause, Andrej. “Teodros Kiros: Zara Yacob. A Seventeenth Century Rationalist: Philosopher of the Rationality of the Heart ” Aethiopica 11 (2012): 273–76. https://doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.11.1.174.
Sumner, Claude. Introduction to the Treatise of Zara Yaqob and of Walda Heywat Ethiopian Philosophy. Addis Ababa: Commercial Printing Press, 1982.
Sumner, Claude. “The Light and the Shadow: Zera Yacob and Walda Heywat: Two Ethiopian Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century.” A Companion to African Philosophy, 2004, 172–88. https:// doi.org/10.1002/9780470997154.ch10.
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, silence played a major role in both American and British penal theory. Silence was initially viewed as a powerful tool of self-reflection and piety, but its institution became a component of judicial punishment. While the emphasis was on silence as a method of enforcing discipline, and to encourage reflection, it could even be used as a punishment in and of itself. Silence as a part of imprisonment was first emphasised by philosopher Jeremy Bentham in his concept of the Panopticon prison where silence was used to gain control over inmates. A form of physically forced punitive silence was the Scold’s Bridle or the Branks, which was applied to women deemed to be scolds, nags, or gossips. It was used as a form of correction and humiliation in Britain, and was subsequently brought over to America. This punishment acted as a bridge between the older European ideals for behaviour and the new American realities of punishment. Ultimately, it was the Quakers who adopted and perfected silence and solitude as a mechanism for control, discipline and religious piety with the aim for producing societal reform particularly through the use of solitary confinement.
A major proponent of silence in the history of the British penal system was Jeremy Bentham, one of the designers of the Panopticon. The Panopticon was conceived as a building where the architecture gave the illusion of constant surveillance. It was believed this would lead to the selfregulation of whomever was working or imprisoned there. A key component of the Panopticon was silence, which was supported by its architecture. Inmates were kept in individual cells, all of which faced a central guard tower: this led the inmates to perceive that they were being constantly surveilled, even if that was not the case. It was believed that, to avoid further punishment or retribution which would be observed by an enforcer, inmates would self-regulate their behaviour. If an inmate were to disobey, the offender was first corrected with a verbal warning whispered down a tube connecting to his cell, and then if necessary, more strict measures ensued. Bentham describes the system of the tube as follows:
“to prevent one prisoner from knowing, that the Inspector was occupied by another prisoner at a distance, a small tin tube might reach from each Cell to the Inspector’s Lodge, passing across the Area, and so in, at the side of the correspondent window of the Lodge… the slightest whisper of the one might be heard by the other.”1
This method for encouraging silence enforced Bentham’s primary objective: solitude. He writes that, “in regard to persons of the description of those to-whom punishments of the nature in question are destined, solitude is in its nature subservient to the purpose of reformation.”2 Moreover, silence was also a mechanism for order and control. By preserving the silence, prisoners
could be prevented by engaging in inappropriate behaviour and potentially damaging their chances at reformation. Bentham describes this reasoning: “no thronging, nor jostling, in the way between the scene of work, and the scene destined to devotion; no quarrellings, nor confederatings, nor plottings to escape; nor yet any whips or fetters to prevent it.”3 By controlling inmate behaviour, Bentham’s Panopticon aims to prevent any corrosion or corruption of morals in the prison, leading to increased likelihood of redemption for prisoners.
Another form of forced silence that was present in both the American and British penal systems was the Scold’s Bridle, also referred to as the Branks. This torture device was brought over from England, as is specified by Negley King Teeters, “As has already been stated, the American colonies inherited many of their institutions from England.”4 This punishment was primarily applied to women accused of gossip, nagging, and disrupting the peace. The Bridle was formed of a metal cage that surrounded the head with a projection that was inserted into the mouth.5 This metal protrusion was often sharpened or covered in spikes so that any attempt to speak or move the tongue would result in lacerations and injury, rendering the victim physically incapable of speech.6 Teeters writes on the Bridle’s use in America, which “sometimes … was called a ‘brank.”’7 The old expression, “‘bridle thy tongue,’ is a hangover from the times when the bridle was used for punishment.”8 This punishment was designed to fit the crime of a loose tongue, where it emphasised silence not only as a form of humiliation, but also as a virtue for which to strive in the future. In this instance, silence was not encouraged for surveillance or reflective purposes, but as a source of shame and control.
The roots of the modern American penitentiary can be traced to the Quaker judicial system in Pennsylvania. As a pacifist religion, the Quakers were interested in developing a new judiciary system that relied less on capital punishment, and more on corrective measures and moral improvement of criminals. Eventually these measures included punishments such as hard labour and public humiliation. However, these methods were often found to be ineffective: according to Dr. Benjamin Rush, many individuals eventually became jaded to social ridicule, making them more likely to reoffend. Rush wrote, "it is always connected with infamy, it destroys in the criminal the sense of shame which is one of the strongest outposts of virtue.”9 Moreover, others even found a way to continue the commission of crimes while out performing labour, as described by Teeters:“the more malicious would often throw down the balls in such a manner as to injure passers-by. Most of the convicts were professional thieves and adroit robberies were frequently perpetrated by them, despite their handicap of carrying irons.”10 Thus, William Penn’s conception of correction and imprisonment, inspired by European and British workhouses,11 was brought to the forefront.
The ultimate goal of sequestering the criminal was to encourage reflection and religious piety through silence, solitude, and labour.12 This punishment remained in line with the Quaker belief that one should foster a personal relationship with God through silence and contemplation: by imposing silence and solitude, the criminal would build their relationship with God and be inspired
to reform themselves. However, in order to encourage this contemplation, appropriate accommodations needed to be constructed. As the ideal prison was developed, silence became integral to the perceived success of the system, and architecture became the main strategy to attain that goal. The Walnut Street Jail was designed by Robert Smith to be the consummate structure to accomplish the ideals of silence and isolation. It was constructed with “sixteen solitary cells, each six by eight by nine feet high…”13 which were rather dark as “only light admitted came from above through a peculiar, narrow form of blind.”14 Even the exterior of the building was designed to inspire solemnity, as described by Teeters, “the building was of rough-hewn stone, designed to give the impression of "solitude and fitness.”15 These features ensured not only visual isolation, but auditory isolation: silence was enforced in communal meal and work areas. Even though long term isolation was not sustainable in the Walnut Street Jail, with the combined efforts of these two forces, inmates at the jail lived in what was perceived as the ideal state for self-reflection. By denying an inmate a voice, they became easier to manage. This would be true of an individual’s control, but also prevent the corruption of one inmate by another, similar to Bentham’s Panopticon.
In the final analysis, silence played an integral role in the evolution of punishment in the British and American penal systems in the 18th and 19th centuries. Silence could be used to instil and maintain discipline and control. Tt could be used as a punishment in and of itself, as seen in Bentham’s Panopticon, or in the case of the Scold’s Bridle, or it could be used to inspire reformation, piety and self improvement as is the case with the Quaker judicial system. Forced silence may encourage penitence and piety, but more importantly, it renders one powerless, and this was exploited by both the British and American judicial systems, with little regard for the rehabilitation of the prisoner.
1 Bentham, Jeremy. Panopticon, or the Inspection-House, 8.
2 Bentham, Jeremy. Panopticon, or the Inspection-House, 39-40.
3 Bentham, Jeremy. Panopticon, or the Inspection-House, 41.
4 Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary, 8.
5 Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary, 7.
6 Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary, 7.
7 Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary, 7.
8 Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary, 7.
9 Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary, 29.
10 Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary, 27-28.
11 Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary, 3.
12 Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary, 3.
13 Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary, 19.
14 Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary, 19.
15 Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary, 18.
Teeters, Negley King. The Cradle of the Penitentiary: The Walnut Street Jail at Philadelphia, 1773-1835. UMI, 1994.
Bentham, Jeremy. Panopticon, or the Inspection-House: Containing the Idea of a New Principe of Construction Applicable to Any Sort of Establishment in Wich Persons of Any Description Are Be Rept under Inspection ... By T. Payne, 1791.
John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton’s The Roaring Girl diverge significantly in their narratives and genres, yet possess intriguing similarities. Both plays feature characters whose sexualities deviate from the conventional norm and are subsequently dehumanized. Ferdinand from The Duchess of Malfi exhibits non-normative incestuous desires towards his sister, while Moll Cutpurse from The Roaring Girl demonstrates non-normative gender expression. While both characters are dehumanized for these deviant sexualities, Ferdinand differs from Moll in that he embodies this dehumanization while Moll defends herself against it. As a result, Ferdinand is punished for his sexual deviance while Moll is forgiven for hers, reflecting Renaissance anxieties about hidden and visible sexual deviancy. Ferdinand and Moll both exhibit deviant sexualities and are subsequently dehumanized for these expressions.
Ferdinand harbors obsessive and incestuous feelings towards his sister, striving to control her body and actions. When she marries without his consent, he orders her execution, saying, “That was the main cause - her marriage, / That drew a stream of gall quite through my heart.”1 Ferdinand mentions gall (yellow bile), which in Renaissance humoral theory causes excess violence. Ferdinand’s dehumanization begins to show here: he blames his violent actions on humoral imbalance, a justification similar to how animals commit violence based on instinct rather than conscious choice. Ferdinand’s dehumanization becomes even more pronounced as he is haunted by guilt after the murder and is afflicted with lycanthropy: “and he howled fearfully; / Said he was a wolf.”2 Ferdinand succumbs completely to basal animal instinct as a result of his incest-driven murder, believing himself to be a wolf and even howling like one. Ferdinand’s lycanthropy is a manifestation of his sexual deviancy which renders him subhuman in his own eyes and in the eyes of others, like the doctor who diagnosed him. While Ferdinand’s sexual deviance remains hidden, its manifestation leads to others being able to see that he is subhuman.
In contrast, Moll Cutpurse harbors no incestual, murderous desires, but is similar to Ferdinand in that she expresses her sexuality in an unconventional manner: she is a cross-dresser. The first time she appears onstage, she is wearing “A frieze jerkin and a black safeguard,”3 which are a men’s jacket and a women’s overskirt, respectively. Moll is thus presented as a person who dresses in both men’s and women’s clothing, an unconventional phenomenon during the Renaissance period. As a result of her unconventional gender expression, she is dehumanized. Sir Alexander says, “‘Tis woman more than man, / Man more than woman” to which Sir Davy responds, “‘Tis some monster.”4 Rather than using the pronoun “she” or “he” for Moll, Alexander and Davy refer to her as an “it,” which is a pronoun generally reserved for animals and objects, not humans. Moll is dehumanized further when Alexander refers to her as a “mermaid / Who hath lured my son to ship-
wreck.”5 Mermaids were half-fish, half-human hybrids who seduced men and led them to their deaths. Alexander sees her as a monstrous hybrid because of her gender expression. He also sexualizes her in his analogy of the mermaid by saying she has “lured” his son, demonstrating how he sees her as a sexual object due to her gender expression. Because Moll expresses her gender in an unconventional manner, she is dehumanized bodily and sexually.
While both Ferdinand and Moll are dehumanized because of their unconventional sexualities, they respond to this dehumanization in different ways. Ferdinand’s physical and mental state embody his dehumanization. Lycanthropy is said to be a disease caused by the humors: “In those that are possessed with’t there o’erflows / Such melancholy humor they imagine / Themselves to be transformèd into wolves.”6 Lycanthropy was understood to be caused by an excess of melancholy humor (black bile), which was accompanied by depressed moods and hallucinations. This change in humors in Ferdinand’s body from yellow to black bile and resultant lycanthropy is a direct result of his incest-driven murder of the Duchess. Not only is Ferdinand recognizably subhuman as a result of his sexual deviancy, as established before, but his own body is also reflecting his dehumanization, evidenced by his lycanthropic behavior being governed by his excess humors.
Along with his body, Ferdinand’s mind gains animalistic characters as well, which is apparent when he “said he was a wolf, only the difference / Was, a wolf’s skin was hairy on the outside, / His on the inside.”7 The uncomfortable descriptor of “hairy on the inside” shows the extent to which Ferdinand is dehumanized. He proclaims that the only difference between him and a wolf is the lack of fur on his skin. Instead, this hair is growing internally, symbolizing the dehumanization which has usurped his mind. Because of his sexual deviance, Ferdinand’s mind, along with his body, completely succumb to dehumanization. Ferdinand’s bodily and mental loss of humanity is strengthened by a point Bosola makes earlier in the play, when he says, “Didst thou ever see a lark in a cage? Such is / The soul in the body.”8 If the body is but a prison for the soul, then the soul represents one’s true self. Ferdinand’s body has become subhuman, as evidenced by his changed humors, but even worse: his mind, and thus his true self, has become subhuman. Because of his sexual deviance, represented by the symbol of the wolf, Ferdinand has embodied dehumanization in every aspect of his being: mind, body, and soul.
Moll, on the other hand, defends her body and mind against dehumanization. Various men, now including Laxton, have assumed she is promiscuous because of her crossdressing and see her as a sexual object rather than as a human being. Laxton asks, “Wilt thou untruss a point, Moll?” to which Moll draws her sword in response, saying, “Yes, here’s the point that I untruss,”9 and beats Laxton in combat. Moll physically fights this objectification off with a sword, which in this context can symbolize a phallus, another aspect of her unconventional gender expression. Her wordplay on “untruss,” meaning she will unsheath her sword rather than “untruss” her clothes, is another demonstration of her exercising her bodily and sexual agency. Using her wits and swordplay, two stereotypically male characteristics, Moll demonstrates that her gender expression does not
make her lesser-than. Unlike Ferdinand, she ascends above dehumanization rather than succumbing to it. Moll also refuses to let her gender expression be seen in any monstrous way. In response to Sir Alexander, who equates her to a monster and a sexual object throughout the play, Moll says, “Methinks you should be proud of such a daughter, / As good a man as your son.”10 Moll elevates her gender expression by saying Sir Alexander should be proud of a woman who also exhibits masculine characteristics, instead of dehumanizing her. She further negates any sexual views Alexander may have had of her by calling herself his daughter and equates herself to his son.11 Moll painstakingly defends her gender expression from objectification, thus deflecting and rising above dehumanization.
Ferdinand and Moll’s response to dehumanization can be attributed to Renaissance anxieties regarding hidden and visible sexual deviancy. These anxieties align with the Renaissance idea of physiognomy, which states that that the body reflects one’s inner character and therefore, judgements are able to be made based on appearance. In Ferdinand’s case, his hidden sexual deviancy manifests as bodily and mental dehumanization through lycanthropy. His humors change and cause him to behave in a violent, animalistic fashion when he secretly orders the murder of the Duchess.12 When he attempts to hide the murder, he transforms into a lycanthrope, behaving like a wolf, along with exhibiting the torturous sensation of feeling “hairy on the inside.”13 Despite Ferdinand’s attempts to hide his sexual deviance and misdeeds, his inner self is represented in his animalistic physical state and behavior. This physical manifestation of his sexual misdeeds allow judgements to be made about him, such as Bosola’s “What a fatal judgment / Hath fall’n upon this Ferdinand,”14 which foreshadows Ferdinand’s eventual death as a result of his lycanthropic madness. Considering the taboo nature of Ferdinand’s sexual deviancy, a Renaissance audience would have expected punishment for such incestuous misdeeds. Thus, Ferdinand’s hidden sexual deviance manifests in his physical appearance and behavior, allowing other characters to make judgements about him and ensuring the Renaissance audience witnesses his just punishment.
Moll, on the other hand, quite literally wears her sexuality on her sleeve, being visibly nonconforming to conventional gender expressions. Unlike Ferdinand, she does not attempt to hide her sexual deviancy, and instead, her outer appearance truthfully reflects her inner character. Because there is no disconnect between her inner and outer self, like there is with Ferdinand, she is able to deflect the false, dehumanizing judgements made about her throughout the play. When Laxton objectifies her, she not only beats him in a swordfight, but he apologizes to her, saying “I do confess I have wronged thee, Moll.”15 Sir Alexander, who objectifies her and calls her monstrous, also apologizes, saying “I’m sorry now / The opinion was so hard I conceived of thee.”16 Not only is Moll able to deflect the dehumanizing accusations made towards her, but the characters who are most guilty in dehumanizing her, apologize to her! Because of the value Renaissance audiences and playwrights placed on physiognomy, a character exhibiting deviant gender expression is able to be forgiven and even rewarded if they do not attempt to hide this expression. All in
all, Ferdinand’s hidden sexual deviance manifests physically as lycanthropy and he is justly punished, while Moll’s visible sexual deviance is justly forgiven.
In conclusion, Ferdinand from The Duchess of Malfi and Moll from The Roaring Girl both exhibit sexualities that deviate from the norm and are subsequently dehumanized. They respond differently to this dehumanization: Ferdinand embodies it, exhibiting lycanthropy and succumbing to animal instincts, while Moll physically and verbally fights off others’ attempts to dehumanize her. Their different responses to their respective dehumanization demonstrate Renaissance anxieties about hidden sexualities and their relation to physiognomy. Ferdinand’s lycanthropy is innately hidden, and thus threatening, while Moll’s gender nonconformity is visually expressed, and thus nonthreatening. Future research may look at the difference in dehumanization between male and female characters: for example, Moll is sexually objectified, while Ferdinand is not.
1 Webster, 4.2.285-6.
2 Ibid., 5.2.15-6.
3 Middleton and Dekker, 2.1.180.sd.
4 Ibid., 1.2.131-6.
5 Ibid., 1.2.217-8.
6 Webster 5.2.8-10.
7 Ibid., 5.2.16-8.
8 Ibid., 4.2.117-8.
9 Middleton and Dekker, 3.1.60-1.
10 Ibid., 5.2.158-9
11 I realize that this is an ironic point to make in an essay about incest.
12 Webster, 4.2.286.
13 Ibid., 5.2.18.
14 Ibid., 5.2.85-6.
15 Ibid., 3.1.119.
16 Ibid., 5.2.233-4.
Middleton, Thomas and Thomas Dekker. “The Roaring Girl.” English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, edited by David Bevington, W. W. Norton & Company, 2002, pp. 1377-1149.
Webster, John. “The Duchess of Malfi.” English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology, edited by David Bevington, W. W. Norton & Company, 2002, pp. 1756-1830.
In order to search for truth and enlightenment, one must abandon their own personal and national partisanships, as well their pride. During the Enlightenment, the topics of mathematics and physics were still classified as a branch of philosophy, albeit natural philosophy. In her Foundations of Physics, Emilie du Châtelet synthesises the ideas of Newton, Leibniz, and her other predecessors in natural philosophy. She emphasises that making connections between these philosophers and their theories will increase our understanding of physics and the natural world. By doing so, du Châtelet champions knowledge for knowledge's sake, and embodies true enlightenment.
Written for and addressed to her young son, Du Châtelet constructed Foundations of Physics in the format of a manual or textbook. She hoped to “accustom [his] mind to think, and to be self sufficient” and to stress to him the importance of studying mathematics and physics.1 In Foundations, Du Châtelet practised a syncretic form of natural philosophy and sought to broaden her son’s knowledge of physics with thinkers from all over the continent. As previously stated, the sciences as a discipline did not yet exist during the enlightenment. Instead, the subjects of mathematics, geometry, and physics, were categorised into the branch of natural philosophy. Early enlightenment thinkers like René Descartes, Issac Newton, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz had various opposing views within the subsection of natural philosophy, especially when it came to physics and the construction of the cosmos. Each of these thinkers believed that they were proprietors of the ultimate truth in natural philosophy which became, as Du Châtelet described, “a sort of national affair.”2 In France, the English Newtonian cosmos was not accepted in favour of the Cartesian philosophy.3 What could have been a pursuit of knowledge and truth about the cosmos turned into a pursuit for patriotism, and Du Châtalet warns that taking part in acts such as these is frivolous and impedes on what one can learn about physics.4 In an excerpt from Foundations, du Châtelet writes that “about a book of physics one must ask if it is good, not if the author is English, German, or French.”5 This is especially important when considering Du Châtelet’s embrace of Newtonian physics in Foundations. The French Du Châtelet would have been one of the earliest supporters of Newton’s philosophies in the country.6 Incidentally, Du Châtelet would have been one of the earliest proponents of Lebiniz’s theories on metaphysics, and writes as much, saying “M. Leibniz’s ideas on metaphysics are still little known in France, but they certainly deserve to be [known].”7 However, Du Châtelet does not form an idolatry around these polymaths, and once again warns her son of doing anything of the sort, writing that “each philosopher has seen something but none has seen all; no book is so bad that nothing can be learned from it, and no book is so good that one might not improve it.”8 Just as Du Châtelet praises many of Newton's works,
she also finds errors in many of them, and this method is extended to both Descartes and Leibniz in the text. By removing partisanship and taking what is valuable from each of these philosophers, Du Châtelet is able to broaden the areas of physics for her son and readers alike, building upon each philosophy to create a solid foundation of knowledge.
Extending beyond the debate and politics of the enlightenment philosophers, Du Châtalet also argues for a syncretic approach in the debate between deductive and experimental research for physics. She writes to her son that she hopes to acquaint him with “less with what has been thought than what must be known.”9 On the notion of hypotheses, Du Châtelet believed that they were absolutely necessary to the study of physics.10 By encouraging and making hypotheses, one uses their own curiosity to expand their own knowledge and discover enlightenment. Du Châtelet also notes once a theory is proven, a hypothesis is no longer necessary, but that theory could not have been proven without the hypothesis.11 However, a hypothesis only becomes true when it is proved in action and Du Châtelet once again warns that passing off a hypothesis as a certainty is dangerous. Once again, a hypothesis cannot be proven true without experiment and as du Châtelet writes, “with its [the experiment’s] help we will make good progress, but, if we cease to use it we cannot help failing.”12 The harmonising of deduction and experiments in physics is crucial and builds off each other to find certainty. On account of this, Du Châtelet is looking backwards in time just as much as she looks forwards. While emphasising the importance of experiments in the scientific method, she still is able to embrace abstract thinking and ideas, especially Leibniz’s theories on metaphysics.13 Du Châtelet argues that while there is a lack of a calculation system for metaphysics, there is nothing to stop one being developed over time.
When reading Foundations, it is interesting to see just how aware Du Châtelet is of herself, her predecessors, and the inevitable constraint of time. This sense of awareness truly heightens just how honest her pursuit of knowledge is and her own enlightenment. Du Châtelet is aware of her own boundaries of knowledge and writes that “A man who has studied physics only in this book [Foundations of Physics] would still have many things to learn. As for me, who in deploring this scarcity, am very far from believing myself capable of supplying it.”14 By recognizing her own shortcomings in her knowledge, Du Châtelet is able to recognize that “it is not given to a single man, nor a single century to know all.”15 Incidentally, Du Châtelet continues to write in this passage that “we rise to the knowledge of the truth, like those giants who climbed up to the skies by standing on the shoulders of one another.”16 This is directly taken from a statement from Newton in his letter to philosopher Robert Hook. Newton's direct quote was: "if I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”17 It is crucial to note that Du Châtelet does not fully echo Newton’s original statement, but instead forges a new meaning from his quotation. By using Newton’s quotation to emulate the humility and the syncretic approach of Foundations, Du Châtelet rids the Newtonian quote of its original self-importance. She still echoes the idea of Newton’s statement, but harmonises the statement with her own knowledge and humility. Du
Châtelet knows that in her period, not all answers on physics can be found.18 However, by collecting the best thoughts, theories, and experiments of her predecessors, she knows that they can be used in furthering the study of the sciences for centuries to come.
When speaking of the enlightenment, Immanuel Kant remarked that “Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another…‘have course to use your own understanding!’ – that is the motto of enlightenment.”19 Emilie du Châtelet’s Foundations of Physics embraces this enlightenment, and Du Châtelet herself champions this. In her writing, Du Châtelet truly seeks knowledge for knowledge’s sake by bypassing national and personal prejudices and building off a foundation created by her predecessors. Emilie du Châtelet’s work truly represents the enlightenment that Kant speaks of and this work is crucial in the development of the Enlightenment period.
1 Du Châtelet, Emilie “Foundations of Physics, selections,” 41
2 Du Châtelet, 43.
3 Morris “The Newtonian Cosmos.”
4 Du Châtelet, 43.
5 Ibid., 43.
6 Morris “The Newtonian Cosmos.”
7 Du Châtelet, 44.
8 Ibid., 44.
9 Ibid., 42.
10 Ibid., 43.
11 Ibid., 43.
12 Ibid., 43.
13 Ibid., 44.
14 Ibid., 41.
15 Ibid., 42.
16 Ibid., 42.
17 Description: Isaac Newton Letter to Robert Hooke, 1675.
18 Du Châtelet, 43.
19 Kant, 1.
Description: Isaac Newton Letter to Robert Hooke, 1675. discover.hsp.org/Record/dc-9792/ Description#tabnav.
Du Châtelet, Emilie “Foundations of Physics, selections.” Foundation Year Program Handbook, Section IV, University of King’s College, 2023, pp. 41-45.
Kant, Immanuel. An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? Translated by Ted Humphrey, Hackett Publishing, 1784, nypl.org/sites/default/files/kant_whatisenlightenment.pdf.
Morris, Kathryn. “The Newtonian Cosmos.” Foundation year Program, 18 January 2024, University of King’s College, Halifax, NS. Lecture.
In the beginning few lines of Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, also referred to throughout this paper as De Fabrica, his medical anatomy treatise, Vesalius discusses how he believes the separation of natural philosophy (i.e. science) and arts is not conducive to the expansion of human understanding: “I think also that great harm is caused by too wide a separation of the disciplines which work toward the perfection of each individual art, and much more by the meticulous distribution of practices . . . they never attain their proposed goal, but constantly fall short.”1 He expresses that medicine and the study of the body has gone in a similar fashion, relating it to this separation of art and science. The study of the physical body, understood by barber-surgeons, had become divorced from the academic study of medicine, understood by physicians. The practice of these physical elements of medicine, such as dissection and surgical procedures, was relegated solely to the barber-surgeons, and was considered a less elevated practice than the academic realms of medicine. Throughout De Fabrica, Vesalius argues for these practices to be unified, making the practice of medicine into one unified body rather than being constituted of all these separated elements: “all the individual parts of medicine should be constituted and prepared equally so that all the individual elements can be put to use more advantageously, and each element in turn united all together more perfectly.”2 If we observe the anatomical illustrations provided by Vesalius within this medical treatise, we can see a reflection of this sentiment expressed above. The representation within these images contributes to his goal of unification of parts. The images of De Fabrica depict unions of various kinds. Firstly, they depict the essential union between artistic and scientific pursuits that Vesalius hopes will advance his goal of improving the public view of anatomical knowledge, and serve to acclimate the public to the practice of human dissection. Secondly, these images depict the union that is necessary within the body between the different organs and bodily systems, such as the muscles, bones, or organs. These artistic depictions show these corpses in various states of decomposition or dissection, which allows for the viewer to see the different layers of the body and its systems, and how they both flow into one another and require each other to make up the full human body. By observing the text and the illustrations of Vesalius as complementary elements, we can see that he places the most importance in the body being understood as the unification of various smaller systems to function as a greater ordered whole.
The first of these key reflections of Vesalius’ ideology is evident in its inherent presence through this unified use of art and text to describe the anatomy of the body. The journal article “The Woodcut to Vesalius'' by William Ivans states, “The ‘Fabrica’ was the volume that first brought these three things, words, pictures, and communicability, to the task of the analysis of a complicated physical organism.”3 Ivans speaks on the significance of the images and text being presented as a unified medium that constitutes the importance of Vesalius’s anatomical contribu-
tions. The inclusion of and emphasis on the images in De Fabrica communicated the importance that Vesalius placed on the unification of the two disciplines. These are the learned study of medicine and the physical body, as he has extensive textual representation of the body and various surgical procedures but also illustrates it in detail. The images in relation to De Fabrica’s text are akin to how practical surgical knowledge is related to medical knowledge, a medium that requires connection to another in order to reach the full potential of the art. In order to publicly advance the field of human anatomy, it necessarily requires a merging of both art and science to fully demonstrate its value, and to raise it as a field above the original existence of anatomy as something only a ‘lowly’ barber-surgeon would require knowledge of. Via this incorporation of both artistic and textual knowledge sharing modes, Vesalius is inherently showcasing a unification of the academic and practical, as the physical anatomical knowledge is unified in the artful display of these human dissections. As well, Vesalius hoped that the images he provided within De Fabrica would not serve to replace the act of dissection, but to inspire and remind those viewing it of the importance of experiencing dissection by one's own hands. He created the text “with the idea that students would rely upon these and thus let up on the dissection of bodies; and the criticism would be just if I had not thought that by the pictures I was doing all in my power to encourage the candidates in medicine towards dissection with their own hands.”4 The art within De Fabrica does not merely serve an illustrative purpose, but contributes to the greater goal of the encouragement of the practice of dissection by a medical student’s own hands rather than the continued procedure of allowing surgery and academic medical knowledge to be separated between two different disciplines.
Examining these diagrams individually can assist in showing Vesalius’s goal. One of De Fabrica’s images depicts the backside of a male corpse, with the scalp still attached to his head, and his skin loosely hanging from the muscles of his arms (see Figure 1). The male is posed very gracefully, with a contrapposto lean, despite the seemingly horrific nature of the image. Each key individual part of the figure is delicately labeled and illustrated; the muscles and sinews all flow into one another with the lines of the drawing, showing how each individual muscle flows into the next to form the entire body. The idealistic pose of the figure, as well as the picturesque background it stands before, is an element of Vesalius’ work that is analyzed in the paper “Andreas Vesalius and the Anatomy of Antique Sculpture” by Glenn Harcourt. He says: The visceral figures provide a direct illustrative parallel to Vesalius' metaphorical description of a human anatomical norm in terms of normative antique sculpture. And, finally, they allow Vesalius to retain, even in his visceral demonstrations, some sense of a teleological relationship between structure and function, while at the same time avoiding the onus of necessary violation that so often attended such representations.5
Harcourt states that Vesalius’ artistic depiction of these flayed corpses has a twofold purpose: to
showcase the detailed structural nature of human anatomical figure while attempting to form a standard human anatomical model, and to lessen the grotesqueness of the image by placing it in a classic artistic context. In Harcourt’s understanding, Vesalius’s choice to associate and base his depictions of the complete human body in such an artistically minded manner was specifically for the purpose of shifting the public viewpoint on the invasive nature of human dissection. He states that the artistic poses do not serve an anatomically demonstrative purpose, as they render the images inherently inaccurate by posing them in a position that would be impossible to accomplish during dissection. Harcourt argues that this choice was made by Vesalius to lessen the gravity of the images he was drawing, and to allow the public eye to view it with less horror than one would expect upon looking at a dissected corpse. In this representative choice by Vesalius to add a more artistically minded lens to his medical diagrams, he is inherently expressing the need for unity in art and medicine, as is paralleled in his emphasis on unity of medical and surgical knowledge. The way in which these images are depicted is unrealistic in the fact that no anatomist will ever see a body posed or displayed in this manner, as it represents an idealization and beautification of the flayed human form than a textbook accurate diagram of a human dissection. If Vesalius’s goal with the full body illustrations of De Fabrica had been to display a completely accurate depiction of one of his dissections, then these images would be a failure in that respect. If we instead look upon these illustrations in the respect of seeing them as artistic depictions of the anatomical form, accuracy of the posing and movement of the corpse becomes less important. The artistic posing serves as a distraction from the image’s primary purpose, which is to educate the viewer about the finer details of human anatomy, and secondarily functions to normalize the practice of dissection by beautifying these images. The viewer sees these corpses as still moving within the space of the living in lifelike poses, and the reality of it being a specific dead individual is lessened in this interpretation, and therefore to the audience. The fact that the corpses are depicted in a state of movement also serves to express the importance of unity, as each system works within another to influence the body’s movement. This unification of multiple examples of a dissection into the posed models serves as another moment in which Vesalius uses the parts to form the whole, each individual body taking a place in the larger project of his formation of what he thought to be the median human form. These bodies cease to be a specific dissected individual, and instead become artistic examples of the newly evolving standard anatomical form.
Another of De Fabrica’s images depicts a body which is partly skeletal, with some muscle and skin still remaining (see Figure 2). This piece is interesting because it directly shows Vesalius’ attempt to display two systems of the body interacting within the same image, as both the muscular system and the skeletal system are shown together and interacting within the one diagram. With the jawbone split open to show the curvature of the bones, the tongue and muscles of the cheek remain. As well, the rib cage is in place, but the muscles surrounding it and underneath also remain. Rather than having individual anatomical models which show the different bodily systems as
they function on their own, many of the full body illustrations in De Fabrica have elements of other bodily systems flowing into one another. Another image shows a corpse struggling to remain upright, only held by a rope through the eye sockets, with muscles, skin, sinews, and organs exposed at the various angles that are present in the figure (see Figure 3). One can see what are likely lungs peeking out from the bottom of the ribcage, and partial bone exposed with only some sections having muscle or skin joining it. Upon looking at these images, the viewer gets a sense of how all of these elements are present within the body as they look at the different stages of dissection that are present in the illustration. The arms of this figure start with just bone at the finger, with the skin peeled away but still present, and further up the arm the muscle returns, showing how the muscular structure would be interacting with the skeletal structure. This continues within this and other illustrations of Vesalius’ work, emphasizing the importance of his images being able to communicate that the construction of the human body is deeply interconnected. The pieces all contribute to the larger whole which creates the body’s ability to function; the bones necessarily connect to the sinews, which connect to the muscles, followed by the skin. Knowledge of one part does not suffice: while it is important in some contexts, and De Fabrica illustrations focus on a singular system, such as the skeletal (see Figure 4), many of them contain an artful display of these various systems in different layers of the body at the same time. On viewing these images, one can understand that Vesalius’ project with his art of the human body was to show these different systems interacting and to emphasize how key the knowledge of how they interact was to the study of medicine:
As long as the doctors thought that only the curing of internal affections belonged to them, they considered that the mere knowledge of the viscera was abundantly sufficient. They neglected the fabric of bones, muscles, nerves, veins and of the arteries which creep through the bones and muscles.5
Without the individual parts, there would be no whole, but the human body does not function without those parts' ability to interact in the correct way. Without the medical practitioner's knowledge and physical study of how these parts interact with one another, the practice of medicine will be lacking in essential knowledge which can only ever be gained through practicing dissection.
Vesalius says in the introduction to his text, “I should help as many as possible and that I should treat as truly and completely as possible the history of the fabric of the human body, a fabric not built of ten or twelve parts, as it appears . . . but of several thousand diverse parts.”7 Including the use of both images and text to create both a visual representation of the dissection, as would be achieved by physical experience, and textual representations, as is referential to the learned medical knowledge of physicians, is what ultimately leads Vesalius to his end goal of complete unification of knowledge. Vesalius’ project of unification, in the understanding of the human body, in art and science, and in learned medicine and anatomical knowledge, all comes to-
gether within the completed product of De Fabrica. When understanding the treatise as an act of moving forward with this goal of unification and acceptance of dissection practices, the reader can understand the text more fully and with greater appreciation for the impact that his work would have had, and still has, on the project of understanding the human body.
1 Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, 128.
2 Ibid., 131.
3 Ibid., 142.
4 Ibid., 138-139.
5 Harcourt, 52-53.
6 Vesalius, 132.
7 Ibid., 139.
Vesalius, Andreas, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, 1543, Accessed via Brightspace, 15. Dec 2023
Ivans, William M. “The Woodcuts to Vesalius.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 31, no. 7, 1936, pp. 139–42. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3256067. Accessed 15 Dec. 2023.
Harcourt, Glenn. “Andreas Vesalius and the Anatomy of Antique Sculpture.” Representations, no. 17, 1987, pp. 28–61. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3043792. Accessed 15 Dec. 2023.
Calcar, Jan Stephan van, 1499-1546? View of Body Showing Muscle. woodcut, 1543 (Basel). JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.13734075. Accessed 15 Dec. 2023.
Figure 1, 3, and 4 Accessed via Brightspace, 15. Dec 2023.
Richard II shows the development of a new nationhood, from a king who sees himself as the mother to the land, to a new king who sees himself as England’s son. This development can only occur through the separation of the king and the land. I highlight that Richard’s “motherhood” is strange and enmeshed, as he claims to be a nourishing mother to the land, but also subsumes the nation into himself as his body politic. I will lay out the context for this analysis through early modern understandings of the king’s body, and the differences between masculine and feminine bodies in the humoural system of medicine. Using this context, I will argue that Richard characterizes himself as sacrificial and nourishing towards England, but is characterized by others as wasteful and self-destructive, two opposing aspects of the feminized body. These images are synthesized through a metaphor of Richard as a cannibalistic and perverted pelican, a common emblem of motherhood and Christ. As Richard’s rule breaks down, other characters begin to see England herself as the maternal figure, separated from the king’s body. This is strengthened as Bolingbroke comes into power because he is described with extremely masculine humoral language and speaks of himself as England’s son, a sharp contrast to Richard’s claimed motherhood. As Bolingbroke comes into power, ironically Richard performs a final act of self-sacrifice and nourishment of the new nation by separating his natural body from the body politic. In his final act, he is not wasteful but a Christ-like and maternal figure feeding the land.
Any discussion of the body and bodily metaphors in Richard II must acknowledge the concepts of the body politic and the body natural within the play, as laid out by Ernst Kantorowicz. Kantorowicz writes that Richard II is fundamentally “...the tragedy of the King’s Two Bodies.”1 For Kantorowicz, the play dramatizes the tensions between Richard’s physical body, and the body politic which he takes on as king. Richard’s description of himself and his body as eternal and divine is in line with the concept of the king’s body politic, which Kantorowicz describes as overpowering the body natural with its physical size and mystical nature. Though the body politic may subsume the body natural, anatomical and medical metaphors are used consistently to describe the entire polity of England within the play. Strikingly, in Richard II, this language feminizes both Richard as a person and the country he heads. The most consistent feminizing language uses the terminology of humoral medicine, the dominant theory of bodily function in the early modern period. Health and character were believed to be defined and maintained by the balance of four fluids within the body: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood.2 The humours were considered different for individuals, but certain general beliefs are important for Richard II. Gail Kern Paster explains that men were thought more sanguine than women, filled with hot blood, while women
were pale and cold.3 Kern Paster writes that “This discourse inscribes women as leaky vessels by isolating one element of the female body’s material expressiveness its production of fluids.”4 Women were considered “leakier” than men, producing fluids like breast milk, menstrual blood, and tears. Breast milk was of course nourishing and life-giving, but women’s production of other fluids was often seen as evidence of waste and excess. This excess was connected to “...the representation of a particular kind of uncontrol as a function of gender,”5 with women lacking bodily control. The feminine body was simultaneously a source of sustenance, and an uncontrolled, wasteful body, spewing excess fluid. In Richard II, the tensions between the nourishing feminine and the wasteful feminine colours how characters speak about the king and the land, often in opposition.
Richard himself feminizes his role by fashioning himself as both the nation itself and mother to the nation. Upon returning from Ireland, Richard speaks against Bolingbroke’s rebellion, saying “The breath of worldly men cannot depose/The deputy elected by the lord.”6 Considering this alongside Bolingbroke’s earlier line “Four lagging winters and four wanton springs/End in a word; such is the breath of kings,”7 there is a clear connection between Richard’s bodily breath, his divinity, and his power over the natural world and land. Richard is the anointed head that breathes and fashions both England’s politics and land to his fancy. Yet earlier in the homecoming scene, he speaks not as head, but as a mother, saying, “As a long-parted mother with her child/ Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting/ So, weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth.”8 This direct feminization of himself gives Richard a new role that is perhaps at odds with the enmeshment between his body and the body politic. If Richard is England, how can he simultaneously be a sustaining mother to England? Rachel Moore writes that “The mother could also maintain a sanguine link after childbirth by feeding the child her breast-milk, which was thought to be whitened menstrual blood.”9 Thus, the humoral theory allows for some degree of continued enmeshment between mother and child, each a part of the other’s body. Richard takes on this language when he stops Mowbay and Bolingbroke’s duel “For that our kingdom’s earth should not be soiled/With that dear blood which it hath fosterèd.”10 The kingdom is “our '', using the royal pronoun, denoting its role as Richard’s body politic. It also fosters blood and produces new human beings. Thus Richard is, at least in his mind, both country and mother to the country. However, Moore also writes that political and national identity requires a separation akin to how a child separates their identity from their mother.11 The development of England’s nationhood will require disrupting Richard’s enmeshed mother-child relationship.
Richard’s enemies feminize him as well but as the leaky and wasteful feminine rather than the maternal. From the beginning of the play, Richard’s humoral status stands in contrast to the masculine aggression of characters like Bolingbroke. When he interrupts Bolingbroke and Mowbray’s trial by combat, he says “Let’s purge this choler without letting blood/This we prescribe, though no physician.”12 Through this medical analogy, Richard aims to remove the choleric humour,
standing for Bolingbroke’s and Mowbray’s anger, without the controlled purge of a bloodletting treatment, standing for the trial. The Duchess of Gloucester describes Richard’s use of words rather than combat as “...pale, cold cowardice.”13 Paleness and coldness were associated with the humoral makeup of the female body.14 The Duchess, mimicking Richard’s medical language, is directly feminizing him for his unwarlike nature. As Derrick Higginbotham writes, “...the play links Richard’s effeminacy to the submissiveness of patience, which further emphasizes this king’s exile from the masculinity proper to his rank.”15 Refusing a controlled humoral release feminizes Richard, and leads to uncontrolled humoral release- leakiness and waste. Richard’s lack of masculine action and his feminine wastefulness are synthesized by Northumberland, who says that Richard has, “..basely yielded up upon compromise/ That which his noble ancestors achieved with blows/ More hath he spent in peace than they in wars.”16 War is described as a necessary, noble means of maintaining the kingdom. Richard has replaced it with his excessive spending in peacetime, particularly on the feminized pastime of fashion.17 He is wasteful like the feminine body, aimlessly spewing built-up fluid and built-up wealth in an unproductive and uncontrolled manner. Margaret Healy writes, “Within the model of humoral medicine…poor regimen by the king of his own body results in his poor regiment of the kingdom and a dangerously imbalanced, unsettled condition establishes itself in the body politic.”18 Because Richard is wasteful and completely enmeshed with England, the entire nation is at risk..
The synthesis of Richard as maternal and Richard as wasteful feminine comes out in a rarely studied line from Gaunt. Accusing Richard of Gloucester’s death, he says “That blood already, like the pelican/ Hast thou tapped out and drunkenly caroused.”19 Here, Gaunt perfectly encapsulates how Richard perverts the maternal image he claims for himself. In medieval bestiaries, the pelican was described as piercing her breast and feeding or reviving her chicks with her own blood.20 Daniel Zimmerman describes how the animal became a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice and the Eucharist through her maternal sacrifice.21 However, as he Zimmerman explains, Richard is a perverse version of the pelican. He does not nourish his kingdom through self-sacrifice but instead feeds on himself and his land, and then drunkenly carouses in the “blood,” wasting it.22 He is not merely leaky, he is self-consuming, of both his own body and his body politic. This is evident when he heavily taxes the land to spend on the Irish wars: “And, for our coffers, with too great a court/ And liberal largess, are grown somewhat light, We are enforced to farm our royal realm.”23 He consumes England’s wealth to replace the courtly wealth he has already consumed through his wasteful spending.
Higginbotham connects the terms “consume” and “waste”: “To “consumen” means to reduce something to ashes…echoing the intertwined destructive and economic overtones of the verb “to waste”. These two verbs can also imply the enervating of the body… a weakening that hints at the sense of diminishment linked to spending wealth.24 Richard’s humoral and bodily lack of control are thus easily connected to his economic waste. There is a feminine overtone to this. Gaunt’s im-
agined perverted pelican spurts blood without feeding her chicks, mimicking the uncontrolled leaking fluids of the humoral female body. It is worth noting that humourally, blood was believed to be both a humour unto itself and to carry other humours within it.25 Thus, Richard’s waste can be described through metaphors involving the expulsion of blood, like the pelican, even though he is described as a feminine, non-sanguine body. Richard claims maternal love for England but offers no metaphorical breastmilk. Instead he “..denies his subjects this nourishment to satisfy his own appetites.”26
Though Richard maintains his divine connection to England until quite late in the play, other characters divide the two bodies to a degree. They replace the maternal figure that Richard claims to be with the idea of England itself as a motherland. Nowhere is this clearer than Gaunt’s speech in Act Two, wherein he praises, “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, / This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings.” The earth of England, the physical land, becomes the mother of kings. Using the language of “teeming womb” gives a visceral quality to this statement, and makes Richard’s later speech where he greets England as his child seem like a strange reversal. Gaunt’s language gives other qualities that Richard claims for himself to England as land, too. The isle itself is described as “sceptered”28 and “blessed.”29 This England is royal and divine by itself, without the current king. As Moore writes, England is “...a body, a motherland, and a corporeal commonwealth,” and a conspicuously female one.31 Gaunt suggests a new sense of nationhood and familial ties, separate from the dynastic kingship.
Richard’s defeat by Bolingbroke solidifies this preference for England as a mother. Banished by Richard, Bolingbroke says, “Then, England’s ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu, / My mother and my nurse that bears me yet.”32 He begins the theme that Gaunt will continue, locating his origin and his sustenance in the physical soil, and imbuing England with fertile femininity. If England is a “teeming womb of royal kings,”33 then Bolingbroke takes on the possibility of his royalty when he claims to be a “...true-born Englishman.”34 The “man” in Englishman is important as well since Bolingbroke is continually masculinized through humoral language. He and Mowbray’s “...blood is hot,”35 he is a “...lord of such hot youth,”36 he rides a “...hot and fiery steed.”37 In humoral theory, the masculine body was considered hot, dry, and sanguine, and these made it superior to the cold and leaking feminine.38 In bodily and humoral metaphors, Bolingbroke is Richard’s complete opposite, a hot-blooded masculine son defending his motherland.
His ability to defeat Richard is predicated upon the natural conclusion that as a son of England, Bolingbroke has loyal siblings in all English people. While Richard mocks his respect towards common people,39 Bolingbroke rallies supporters from both the nobility and the peasantry, all angered by Richard’s cannibalization and waste of their land and money. Even after Richard’s deposition, he greets his subjects with, “I thank you, countrymen.”40 Though Bolingbroke is now king, he maintains a sense of equality with his subjects by focusing on their common nationhood. Moore writes, “Bullingbrook [Bolingbroke] identifies himself as a son of Gaunt and England
a cousin, and an Englishman, before he becomes king.”41 This new sort of kingship maintains some autonomy of his body natural, by imagining himself as a product of the vast body of England herself, rather than enmeshed with it. Jacqueline Vanhoutte writes that “...motherland tropes argue for the primacy of nationalist affiliation and so resist dynastic claims.”42 By positioning England as the primary figure English people must be loyal to; through the primal bonds of a familial relationship, Bolingbroke negates any loyalty to Richard and rises to kingship.
Yet Bolingbroke’s kingship and this new land-based sense of Englishness require Richard’s sacrifice. The language surrounding Richard’s deposition makes it an act of self-feeding, but one that nourishes the new kingdom. Richard takes on a sacrificial, Christlike, and maternal role, rather than his previous wasteful feminine role. Yet what he has to sacrifice is that enmeshment between his body natural and the body politic, that convinced him of his maternality to begin with. Richard begins to separate his body from the body politic after hearing of the executions of Bagot, Bushy, and Greene. Though he begins the scene assured of his divinity, he then laments, “Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood/ With solemn reverence. Throw away respect, / Tradition, form and ceremonious duty, / For you have but mistook me all this while.”43 He refers to himself in bodily terms and rejects the ceremony that was previously so central to his identity. Though he is not yet deposed, he already begins to acknowledge his natural body. When the deposition occurs, Richard must do it to himself, an act of self-destruction. He says, “With mine own tears I wash away my balm/ With mine own hands I give away my crown/ With mine own tongue deny my sacred state.”44 This self-wounding is reminiscent of the pelican, wounding her breast with her own beak. Unlike Richard’s previous status as a wasteful carousing pelican, he now completes the proper bestial metaphor. The royalty he takes from himself, he bestows on Bolingbroke his “heir”, like the pelican feeds her chicks. Where previously, as I laid out, Richard was self-consuming and then wasteful, here he is self-consuming and then nourishes the new England. Richard describes himself as a “..mockery king of snow/ Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke/ To melt myself away in water drops.”45 He gives Bolingbroke his previous role as master of the natural world and fashions himself as a being reduced to nothingness, producing watery fluids. If we imagine this scene, however, presumably those water drops are melting into the earth. Richard’s feminine production of fluids nurtures the earth of England, no longer wasteful.
This dramatic shift from Richard as a leaking king to a nourishing, Christlike sacrifice46 occurs through Richard’s separation from the body politic and deposition as king, not his physical death. Instead, Richard’s murder shows the possibility that Bolingbroke’s rule could become wasteful as well. At his death, Richard defends himself, in contrast to the passivity of his self-deposition.47 It was Richard’s twisted maternal enmeshment with England that caused his wastefulness. Now that he has been reduced to a body natural, any further attack is also wasteful, an unnecessary purge of blood. Bolingbroke acknowledges that Richard’s death makes him more secure as king, but says “Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe/ That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow.”
48 In
this imagery, Bolingbroke is a “...blood-nourished plant,”49 grown out of his English motherland but fed with Richard’s blood. This blood, since it came from murder is an excess,50 more than he needs. It now must be purged in turn from Bolingbroke’s body, through a cleansing pilgrimage “...to wash this blood off from my guilty hand.”51 While Bolingbroke describes himself as a son of England, now that he is king his body natural, his hand, is inevitably connected to the body politic just as Richard’s body was. He can cleanse himself this time, but the possibility of excess threatens to destabilize him, just as it did Richard.
Richard II is a political play, but it uses language surrounding conceptions of the human body and the natural earth to make its political arguments. King Richard feminizes himself as a mother to the land of England, while his enemies connect him to the leaky, wasteful early modern idea of the feminine body. Richard is a twisted pelican, who self-consumes and self-destructs both his own body and his body politic. Bolingbroke sees himself as England’s son, and through a new nationalistic focus on the physical land of England, he can gain support and depose Richard. However, Richard’s deposition turns him into the sacrificial figure he could not be before, nourishing England and Bolingbroke’s rule. Richard is hated and mocked for his femininity, using the early modern language that saw the feminine body as inferior. Yet the feminine sacrifice is necessary, when it separates Richard from the body politic and makes way for a new nationhood built on the land rather than dynastic claims.
1 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, 26.
2 Healy, “Fictions of Disease,” 38.
3 Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed, 8.
4 Ibid., 25.
5 Ibid., 25.
6 Shakespeare, Richard II, 3.2.57-58.
7 Ibid., 1.3.219-220.
8 Ibid., 3.2.8-10.
9 Moore, “The ‘peaceful Bosom’ and the ‘bloody Crowns,’” 35.
10 Richard II, 1.3.126-127.
11 Moore, 5.
12 Richard II, 1.1.157-158.
13 Ibid., 1.2.36.
14 Kern Paster, 79.
15 Higginbotham, “The Construction of a King,” 64.
16 Richard II, 2.1.263-265.
17 Ibid., 2.1.24.
Headley, Cynthia M. “The Temporary Nature of Health: The Humoral Body in Early Modern Drama”, The University of Arizona, United States Arizona, 2012. ProQuest, https:// ezproxy.library.dal.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/te mporarynature-health-humoral-body-early-modern/docview/1010278451/se-2.
Healy, Margaret J. “Fictions of Disease: Representations of Bodily Disorder in Early Modern Writings”, University of London, University College London (United Kingdom), England, 1995. ProQuest, https://ezproxy.library.dal.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/ dissertations-theses/fictions-disease-representations-bodily-disorder/docview/1781332635/se2.
Higginbotham, Derrick. “The Construction of a King : Waste, Effeminacy and Queerness in Shakespeare’s Richard II.” Shakespeare in Southern Africa, vol. 26, no. 1, 2014, pp. 59–73, https:// doi.org/10.4314/sisa.v26i1.4.
Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. Princeton University Press, 1997.
Kern Paster, Gail. The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England. Cornell University Press, 1993, https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501724497.
Moore, Rachel. “The “peaceful Bosom” and the “bloody Crowns”: Nationalistic Metaphors of Mother England and the Body Politic in Shakespeare's “Richard II”, State University of New York at Buffalo, United States New York, 2011. ProQuest, https://ezproxy.library.dal.ca/ login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/pe aceful-bosom-bloody-crownsnationalistic/docview/900443146/se-2.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Richard II. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Updated edition., Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2016.
Vanhoutte, Jacqueline. Strange Communion: Motherland and Masculinity in Tudor Plays, Pamphlets and Politics. Associated University Presses, 2003.
Zimmerman, Daniel. "Crisis of Communion: Eucharistic Representations in Shakespeare's History Cycle." Elh, vol. 89, no. 2, 2022, pp. 317-343. ProQuest, https://ezproxy.library.dal.ca/login? url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/crisi s-communion-eucharisticrepresentations/docview/2813530527/se-2,doi:https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.2022.0012.
Within Tullia D'Aragona’s insightful Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, the intellect of a young Italian courtesan flourishes in her privileged access to social and sexual liberty. While by no measure can it be called freedom by modern standards, it is important to note her advantageous position from a historical lens, and to ascribe this work to the power Tullia expertly takes in her interactions with men. Scarcely before could women have power enough to move through life unchaste and educated, with connections to support them; the life of a courtesan, while a largely inaccessible and coveted profession, could provide just that. While not favourable in theory, when contrasted to the alternatives (nuns, women chaste nor opinionated until married, etc.) the courtesan's life provides a considerable amount of mobility. In the introduction to her article “Private Lives and Public Lies: Texts by Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance,” Fiora A. Bassanese notes that “the courtesan was a self-made woman, occasionally rising from the lowest classes to an enviable position, overcoming the stigmas of poverty, illegitimacy, and ignorance.”1 While it had its labours and baggage (as all positions women occupy seem to attract) the “honesta”2 was arguably the attainable profession that garnered the most social eminence for women at the time. Through the knowledge she gains from her position within a society pitted against her sex, her power is cultivated, appearing in her writing in a subversive and tactile fashion. She subtly points out places within the debate that highlight commonplace practices that undermine women, practices which are otherwise overlooked. The text works to argue the sexual and political freedom of women as both productive and non-threatening.
The myriad of traits instilled in the ostensibly noble courtesans mesh to create women with clandestine sway in their own affairs and that of the men they served. While they were still treated as objects, courtesans were objects of reverence and beauty, and if learned enough, respect. Bassanese describes the courtesan as a combination of “entertainer, hostess, siren, substitute lady, and prostitute”3 and navigates “fashion[ing] herself to reflect the characteristics of the dominant group she serve[s].”4 Tullia was learned in arts usually only praised when attributed to men, yet through her position she makes them her own, retaining an outward presence that is far from manly. Through this, she can produce an inward image for herself of a confident noble lady able to lucratively navigate aristocratic society and to change minds where she sees fit. Most ladies of the time did not have the flexibility of the “honest” courtesan, and “in his journals Montaigne sets the figure [...] at 150 such women.”5 These male-supervised standards were impossible for most, and Tullia understands her remunerative arrangement, choosing to ground herself and her writing in it. From there, she can keep conversations from straying to the purely theoretical, which Varchi
has a particular affinity for. She asks he keep his “bogus sophistry which is all the modern rage”6 at bay, allowing her to remain the forewoman of the debate.
Tullia’s sense of self, amplified by her allowance in high society is paramount to her power in the philosophical rhetoric of The Dialogue. Courtesans with the correct opportunities “turned to writing, literary criticism, or classical studies to gain distinction and, thereby, a professional edge,”7 but Tullia takes this a step further by focusing her writing on the merits of her perspective as a woman. The stigma surrounding her profession did not stop her from pursuing a career in literary arts. While in practice, Tullia’s position as a courtesan can contradict her efforts to undermine the misogynistic inadequacies in antiquities philosophy, it also heightens her authority to speak on such matters: her experiences serve to validate her claims and give power to her arguments. In the introduction to The Dialogue, Rinaldina Russell notes how Tullias places herself in opposition to the “conservative backlash”8 in Florence at the time, as a woman both “sexually liberated and accustomed to economic independence.”9 Tullia removes the common consensus of love, straining out predominantly male projections of eros and its role in lovemaking, which “lead[...] poor, miserable women astray.”10 She notes how it subjects women to the objectification validated by male superiority, effectively barring female voices from being heard. Tullia observes from both near and far, giving her pursuit of truth a progressive flourish. Throughout The Dialogue “she removes women, traditionally identified with physicality and sin, from the marginal position occupied in men’s progress to spiritual life and salvation.”11 Tullia writes as Varchi, claiming “we come from the same town but we can’t understand each other”12 in reference to a misunderstanding in the early stages of the debate. This statement hints at the chasm that sits between Varchi’s male participation in love, and Tullias' notably learned experiences of love both as a feeling and a transaction. They both live within a society built for Varchi's masculinity by those with the same preconceived notions, whereas Tullia has the adverse privilege of a view from outside of that privilege.
Instead of painting herself beguiling the men in the room with her intellect, or self-effacing it to highlight theirs, Tullia turns the argument into her own territory. Not only does she prove the infinity of love, but calls into question every step she and Varchi took to get there, subsequently changing the face of the topic at hand entirely. When the debate between Tullia and Varchi harkens back to ancient times, Tullia mentions the love between male teachers and pupils that famous philosophers of antiquity would engage in. Varchi attempts to validate these relationships as “authentic” and “virtuous.”13 Tullia remarks how these lamentations of value between persons only arise at the mention of love between men. She asks, “why a woman cannot be loved with the same type of love”14 for Varchi, who (whether intentionally or not) brings to the surface the underlying consensus of the time so as to “imply that women lack the intellectual soul that men have.”15 Her inquisition into his line of thought displays a deep understanding of the inner workings of rhetoric about love at the time. In another minute squabble, Varchi prods whether “it is such a heroic feat to defeat a woman,”16 attempting to centre her sex in the opposition he is fac-
ing, but Tullia reminds him yet again of the truth that he is “not in a contest with a woman. [He is] fighting against reason,”17 furthering the feebleness of his retort.
Her engagements with Varchi oscillate between endearment and reprimand, and despite their polarising exchanges, Tullia maintains the reader's understanding of the respect they share for each other. Varchi takes pleasure in “praising that beauty, virtue, and refinement [...] which is bound to be honoured, admired, and adored by anyone who has [seen] it for himself,”18 appealing to the male pronoun to exemplify the excellence intrinsic to both her intellect and stature as a courtesan. It must also be noted though, that while it is a part of her profession to appeal to men and their ideals, this does not impair her defence of women and their voices. Her position, while requiring her to entertain men for her livelihood, does not impair her from pointing out male assumptions and projections in her work. The two speakers flip-flop most in these instances, but Tullia's reason ceaselessly prevails. Varchi associates women's love with feebleness, complaining they “love rarely”19 and quoting a line from Petrarch: that “love lasts but a short time in a woman's heart.”20 Tullia responds to this by citing Laura, Petrarch's muse, asking: “just think what would have happened if Madonna Laura had gotten around to writing as much about Petrarch as he wrote about her.”21 In pointing out one instance of silence, she puts the voices of all female muses centre stage, calling into question their absence, and how that leads to Varchi’s ignorant observation. For the sake of relevance, the subject is quickly glossed over, and the pair move on yet the seed is already planted. Debates like these between women and men provide room, even in small instances, for important questions to be brought to the surface. Tullia takes advantage of that, but only through her profession is it possible for them to be heard.
Tullia D’Aragona’s genius comes from the coveted position that empowers her rich intellect, a profession that, in the timeline of her life, was repeatedly threatened. Her works display a snapshot of what life was like for a woman of such stature, and while it was not easy for her, it gave her a unique opportunity to shed attention on the life of a sexually and financially liberated woman a rare sight in the renaissance. the result of which being deeply insightful conversations where men and women can be put, temporarily, on an equal footing, and engage civilly in productive philosophical debate. The power Tullia derives from her position is put on display as something positive and healthy. Come the end of the argument, Varchi apologises to the gentlemen in the room, for Tullia has brought his fallacies to the surface and he risks a blow to his reputation. He voices his fear of “being considered not just ignorant but presumptuous as well.”22 Being a celebrated scholar himself, his scope is undoubted, and Tullia's ability to beat him at his own game is owed to her unique perspective; she effectively turns the gameboard upside down. Tullia's hardearned influence works in her favour as a thinker, leaving a legacy sound in its impact.
1 Bassanese, “Private Lives and Public Lies,” 297.
2 Ibid., 297.
3 Ibid., 295.
4 Ibid., 295.
5 Ibid., 296.
6 d’Aragona, “Dialogue on the Infinity of Love,” 60.
7 Bassanese, 298.
8 Russell, 22.
9 Ibid., 22.
10 Aragona, 75.
11 Russell, Introduction to “Dialogue on the Infinity of Love,” 21.
12 Ibid., 59.
13 Ibid., 96.
14 Ibid., 97.
15 Ibid., 97.
16 Ibid., 75.
17 Aragona, 75.
18 Ibid., 56.
19 Ibid., 69
20 Ibid., 69
21 Ibid., 69
22 Ibid., 104. Works
Bassanese, Fiora A. “Private Lives and Public Lies: Texts by Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 30, no. 3, 1988, pp. 295–319. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40754861. Accessed 9 Dec. 2023.
d’Aragona, Tullia. “Dialogue on the Infinity of Love”, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, edited and translated by Rinaldina Russell and Bruce Merry, University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Rinaldina Russel. Introduction and notes. “Dialogue on the Infinity of Love”, by Tullia d’Aragona, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, edited and translated by Rinaldina Russell and Bruce Merry, University of Chicago Press, 1997.
The argument that men and women alike are entitled to live a life of liberty, free from subjugation or abuse, is essential to the works of Fonte and Tarabotti. Their position that women are equal, or even superior to men in virtue was not necessarily radical in Early Modern Venice, but as Virginia Cox notes, “the majority of Cinquecento ‘defenders of women,’ make no attempt to move from affirming women's natural abilities to analyzing the reasons why, historically, women have been denied the opportunity to exercise those abilities.”1 This essay will compare the authors’ views of the mechanisms of hegemonic masculine control in Venetian society; namely, Fonte argues that marriage is used as an instrument of patriarchal control over women’s liberty rather than a means to display feminine virtue, and Tarabotti contends that men abuse the sanctity of monastic life to eliminate the threat of women’s free will to male-dominated society. Although presented differently, both authors assert that the realms of society that exhibit women’s virtuous contribution to society are subverted by masculine powers to serve the patriarchy.
Even though Moderata Fonte is not considered a rights theorist, she presents liberty as a natural, but frequently misused right in The Worth of Women. Her conception of liberty is best represented by the Liberty statue in Leonora’s garden, “[...] which stands free and alone, giving light to itself and sharing its light with the whole universe.”2 It serves as a reminder of the values of Leonora’s widowed aunt, the previous owner of the garden, who “won a shining renown through her many fine and respected qualities; [...] something she might not have been able to do under the rule and command of a husband.”3 Liberty, for Fonte, is less a political right and more an individual’ s capacity to exercise their virtues to their fullest capacity without corruption from outside influences. She notes that the best way for women to protect their liberty from men’s abuses would be to abstain from their company, but recognizes that marriage “is imposed on us [women], we can hardly avoid.”4 Thus, Fonte’s vision of liberty allows women freedom to choose whether or not they would like to marry, and, once in a marriage alliance, a life that continues to be free of restriction or subjugation to another person's will. Furthermore, by gathering in a private, purely feminine space and electing a woman as queen to oversee their debate,5 the characters of Fonte’s dialogue create their own discursive space that mimics the oppressive patriarchal structure of Venice. Historian Katherine McKenna argues that Fonte’s emphasis on setting is critical to her argument, as “[i]n a fantastical setting, the safety of unreality would mitigate the subversive sting of such words. Proclaimed as they are from a literary facsimile of the Republic, however, their arraignment of patriarchal hegemony cannot be so easily dismissed.”6 Fonte subverts the structure of the male-dominated Venetian Republic through her female dialogue to demonstrate the power of women’s liberty when not hindered by the oppressive control of husbands.
Arcangela Tarabotti’s definition of liberty also takes into account an individual’s free will, but she employs a theological defence for men and women’s equal right to liberty, rather than Fonte’s secular one: “Divine Providence created both Adam and Eve in a state of innocence with choice and free will and the woman did not lack such a matchless gift.”7 Tarabotti identifies the Church as a section of society where women may exercise their liberty: by taking the veil and “voluntarily withdraw[ing] to a solitary cell after experiencing the world’s vanities and men’s deceptions are truly praiseworthy and full of prudence.”8 However, much like Fonte’s argument for the domestic sphere, Tarabotti claims that men use the Catholic Church as an instrument to subjugate women’s liberty and defend the patriarchal structure of Venetian society: “Men dare to endanger free will, bestowed on men and women alike by the Divine Majesty”9 when they force women into convents. Therefore, Tarabotti’s idea of liberty should also be considered beyond the political realm, “in terms of the republican concept of liberty as non-domination.”10 Tarabotti’s work represents liberty as an innate aspect of the human condition that is illegitimately denied to women through social institutions such as the Church in order to maintain men’s dominance in Venetian society. Fonte’s dialogue identifies the domestic sphere, particularly marriage, as an area of society where women may exemplify their virtues, as well as the mechanism men use to deprive women of liberty and exercise dominance. Near the end of the first day, Leonora describes women’s critical role in the domestic sphere:
When we take charge of household affairs (and we do so not in order to dominate our husbands, as many men claim, but simply in order to give them a quieter life), we take over a part of their work, overseeing the whole household. And it's certainly true that a man can never really find true domestic contentment and harmony without the fond companionship of a woman, whether she be a wife or a mother or a sister.11
Fonte insists that women make the best use of their virtues when free to exercise liberty within the domestic space, but men quickly exploit this space to exert control over their counterparts. Venetian women, “thinking that by marrying they are winning for themselves a certain womanly freedom to enjoy some respectable pastimes, find themselves more constricted than ever before, kept like animals within four walls and subjected to a hateful guardian rather than an affectionate husband.”12 She contends that men crudely modify the promise of happiness and liberty in marriage into a mechanism of abuse and demonstration of power. In Joanne M. Ferraro’s article on marriage separation laws in Early Modern Venice, she notes that “Sex and gender made a difference in the plaintiffs grounds for separation”; while men’s grounds for separation were mainly allegations of adultery, “women's requests, on the other hand, were often based on grounds of extreme cruelty.”13 Ferraro’s study provides further insight into the unequal power dynamic that Fonte describes: Women’s accusations deal with the violation of their liberty and safety, while men’s allegations are to protect their reputation and perception of power. Ferraro also points out that “though
many requests were filed with the curia, a much smaller proportion of cases was actually investigated or received a judgment.”14 Even when women dared to bring their cases against their husbands to court and fight for their liberty, they did not receive justice on account of the patriarchal structures that permeated Venetian marriage customs and laws, as well as legislative institutions.
In Paternal Tyranny, Tarabotti asserts that the Catholic Church serves as an excellent place for women to display their virtue, but similar to Fonte, acknowledges that it is another section of society that the oppressive powers of the patriarchy have taken over. Although joining a convent is an excellent way for women to demonstrate their virtues, Tarabotti warns that for a woman to join a convent against her will is a violation of God-given liberty and, thus, an act of violence on the part of the man who forces her:
If a young girl is pleased to consecrate her life to God in a cloister, is granted supernatural grace, and is attracted by the Holy Spirit’s promptings, then do not fail to attend to her desire by giving her your blessing [...] If, on the other hand, her inclination runs contrary to this life and she wants to live with modest means in the world, do not force her into the cloister, for I assure you that the eternal abyss awaits you as punishment.15
Like Fonte, Tarabotti argues that certain aspects of society, such as the Church, allow women to display their merits openly. However, men subvert these outlets of liberty to serve the greedy pursuit of power. As Sabrina Ebbersmyser points out, “Tarabotti draws a clear line between the teaching of the Scripture and just laws and the unjust, corrupted practices that have become institutionalized.”16 She is careful to maintain that the convent is a worthy pursuit for women but that men often spoil the sanctity of the position through their desire for dominance and control. It is not only individual men that demonstrate this depravity: Tarabotti insists that corrupt patriarchal power exists at the foundation of the institution itself, wherein religious leaders take part in the subjugation and violation of women’s free will: “For private individuals to commit such enormity through self-interest cursed be self-interest! is an abominable abuse of power, but for religious superiors and rulers to allow it makes one reel in horror at their insensitivity.”17 Here, she contends that the violation of women’s liberty does not end with a few tyrannical fathers; the patriarchal values that permit such cruelty are implemented in trusted factions of society such as the Church.
The motive for men’s relentless attempts to annihilate women’s liberty is the fear of losing their unjustly acquired dominance in society, as Corinna demonstrates in The Worth of Women: “In short, we were created as men's helpmates, their companions, their joy, and their crowning glory, but men, though they know full well how much women are worth and how great the benefits we bring them, nonetheless seek to destroy us out of envy for our merits.”18 That is to say, men cruelly confine women to the domestic sphere out of fear of disruption to patriarchal hegemony. They recognize the virtues of women, but rather than allowing them to exercise them in their marriage,
they seek to destroy women’s free will in order to secure their (illegitimate) superiority. Virginia Cox comments on men’s unwarranted claim to superiority through the annihilation of women’s liberty, saying:
Men's dominance over women is represented as a tyranny that seeks to legitimate itself by spurious claims of male superiority. Stripped of these essentialist justifications, the relation between the sexes is revealed as a struggle for power in which men exploit every instrument at their disposal to keep their "enemies" in a state of weakness.19
In other words, the cruel treatment of wives that Fonte describes in The Worth of Women is founded upon men’s anxiety surrounding their power and status in society. Without a wife to subject to their will, men fall outside the expectations of patriarchal society, as Leonora points out: “In fact, men's corruption has reached such a point that when there is a man who is rather better than the others and does not share their bad habits, it is seen as a sign of unmanliness on his part and he is regarded as a fool.”20 Here, Fonte argues that men’s supposed right to exert control over women’s liberty has been ingrained so heavily into Venetian marriage customs that the respect of women’s free will opposes the precepts of patriarchal society. The “possession” of a wife and her liberty is so essential to a man’s status in Early Modern Venice, that a woman’s accusation of cruelty could be overruled in court, and “[a] husband from the ruling class who was unwilling to dissolve the marriage ties could potentially make use of his power and status to obstruct formal proceedings.”21 Ferraro presents the marriage separation case of Clara Gritti and Paolo Priulo as an example of the destruction of women’s liberty in the domestic sphere. Gritti attempted to dissolve her marriage three times between 1577 and 1580 on the grounds of severe physical violence, but “[d] espite the evidence that Clara proposed to justify a separation, she lost the case. Her husband claimed that her leaving the household had injured his honor.”22 Due to the patriarchal underpinning of Venetian society, man’s honour takes precedence over the protection of women’s liberty and safety. Men rely on the subjugation of women to maintain a powerful reputation. As Cornelia suggests, “they aren't fussy about who it is, as long as they have some woman in their power”23 whom they can subjugate to prove the superiority that “they have unjustly arrogated to themselves.”24
Similarly, Tarabotti identifies men’s insatiable greed for power as the main incentive for suppressing women’s liberty through forced claustration. By sending women to convents and eliminating their free will, men increase their own freedom: “[M]en today imprison women to avoid expense and make life easier for themselves by enjoying every kind of luxury, indulgence, and superfluous vanity, [...] Men like this who abuse the law of Christ for political interests deserve to have their names effaced from the Book of Life!”25 Tarabotti suggests that the destruction of women’s divinely ordained liberty is not only corrupt, but sacrilegious. She goes on to address men directly, warning that “[y]ou were never granted such unlimited authority, but you have arrogated it to
yourselves or rather, your puffed-up conceit, like Lucifer’s, has usurped the power.”26 Although Tarabotti recognizes the Catholic Church as an enabler for men’s unjust claim to power, she is careful to articulate that it is ultimately men who have corrupted the institutions with their greed. Ebbersmyer remarks that Tarabotti argues that women have the right to liberty because it is divinely ordained. The injustice of forced claustration stems from man’s interpretation of Scripture for their secular desires:
Tarabotti was not questioning Christian thought and its institutions. Instead, she used the Christian religion as a tool to refute patriarchal structures. She refers to Scripture as a standard that transcends the standards of man-made legislation and the institutions based on this legislation [...] In this respect, Christianity could be a liberating power.
27
For Tarabotti, religious institutions are both the answer to and the reason for the deterioration of women’s liberty in Venice. When used to serve God, the Church is a necessary tool for elevating the self and exemplifying virtue; when the institution is used to maintain man’s self-arrogated supremacy, it serves as proof of the corrupt foundations of Venice. Virginia Cox notes that Tarabotti was writing Paternal Tyranny when the Church attempted to tighten the rules of admittance to Venetian convents.28 However, “papal projects for reform [were] frequently met with opposition not only from nuns themselves but also from the Venetian clergy and government aware of the function that convents fulfilled as a safety valve for patrician domestic finance.”29 Much like the relation between marriages and the Venetian court, the individual men forcing their daughters into convents acted as extensions of the institutionalized patriarchal power within the Church, which made it extremely difficult for women to defend their liberty.
The works of Fonte and Tarabotti both contend that patriarchal Venetian society is predicated on the annihilation of women’s liberty. However, they differ on which social mechanisms are employed to maintain this masculine dominance. Fonte defines liberty as the capacity for women to live according to their free will, whether part of a marital alliance or not. She argues that the domestic sphere offers women a respectable place to contribute to society and exhibit their best qualities, but men subvert the domestic sphere by cruelly subjugating women to their control to serve their selfish desires for power and dominance. Tarabotti also closely identifies liberty with the freedom of choice - particularly the choice to dedicate one’s life to God within a convent, or to live piously in everyday society. She maintains that the Catholic Church offers a place for women to exhibit virtues, but men have tainted the sanctity of monastic life by forcing women into convents as a means of exercising and preserving patriarchal power. Although the authors diverge in terms of the institutions responsible for the oppressive patriarchal foundation of Venice, they share the assertion that “[s]tructures in the family, the church, and the state complement each other to maintain women in this condition of suppression, [...] in each of which liberty plays a significant role.”30 Neither woman is considered a rights theorist, but their work collectively serves as a
defence of Venetian women’s entitlement to a life of liberty, free from the oppressive patriarchal powers of the time.
1 Cox, “The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice,” 516.
2 Fonte, The Worth of Women, 54.
3 Ibid., 55.
4 Ibid., 91.
5 Ibid., 56.
6 McKenna, “Women in the Garden,” 70.
7 Tarabotti, Paternal Tyranny, 44.
8 Ibid., 49.
9 Ibid., 43.
10 Ebbersmeyer, “There Remains Nothing to Lose for the One Who Has Lost Liberty,” 11. 11 Fonte, 100.
ice.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 3, 1995, pp. 513–81. JSTOR, https:// doi.org/10.2307/2862873.
Ebbersmeyer, Sabrina. “There Remains Nothing to Lose for the One Who Has Lost Liberty”: Liberty and Free Will in Arcangela Tarabotti’s (1604–1652) Radical Criticism of the Patriarchy.” Intellectual History Review, vol. 31, no. 1, 2021, pp. 7–26. EBSCOhost, https://doiorg.ezproxy.library.dal.ca/10.1080/17496977.2020.1855948.
Ferraro, Joanne M. “The Power to Decide: Battered Wives in Early Modern Venice.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 3, 1995, pp. 492–512. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2862872.
Fonte, Moderata. The Worth of Women : Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men. Translated by Virginia Cox, University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 43-117, EBSCOhost.
McKenna, Katherine. "Women in the Garden: The Decameron Reimagined in Moderata Fonte’s Il Merito Delle Donne." Early Modern Women, vol. 13 no. 2, 2019, p. 58-80. Project MUSE, https:// doi.org/10.1353/emw.2019.0003.
Tarabotti, Arcangela. Paternal Tyranny. University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. 37-153, EBSCOhost.
Parents hold a supreme amount of power over their offspring in the sense that they are responsible for the conditions they are born into, and for shaping their understanding of the world. Cereta's strained relationship with her mother during her formative years offers her a unique perspective on the female experience. Every child relies on its caretakers not only for survival but as a source of comfort and support. Children look up to their caretakers as an example of how they should engage with others and how they should act in the world. The figure of the mother is an especially elusive character as depicted through most of history, but especially during the Renaissance, as explained by Diana Robin in her commentary. Mothers are not mentioned in history at nearly the same frequency as fathers, and when they are mentioned, rarely are they contemplated or dwelled on. Within her letters, Cereta repeatedly expresses anguish at her lack of a close relationship with her mother. The mother for Cereta is a figure who is always present, but consistently out of reach and fails to provide the typical comforts associated with motherhood. Cereta would spend her entire life trying to hold on to some fraction of closeness to her mother, only to be repeatedly let down. This imitates the structure of the world as she would come to understand it as an adult - she found in history a lineage of educated women whom she would come to refer to as “the republic of women.”1 Cereta knows that there are in fact many learned women who would excel in academics like epistolography, philosophy, and mathematics (like herself), but that these women remain unreachable to her. Cereta’s yearning for a closer relationship with her mother inspired her to seek comfort in female relations exterior to her biological family, reaching out to other well-attributed educated women, which resulted in her unique crafting of the women’s republic.
After reaching the age of seven, Cereta began spending the majority of her time with her female teacher at the convent. This teacher provided Cereta with a sort of surrogacy, a form of both teaching and comfort which was not being granted to Cereta by her mother. As Cereta explains, she had been suffering from bouts of insomnia her entire life, which often distressed her. The person who was able to provide Cereta with comfort from these long sleepless nights was not her mother, but rather her teacher: “ She was the first to teach me to find a passage through my nights by using an embroidery needle to draw a picture.”2 Cereta continues to express instances of her mother’s own “abandonment and separation from her.”3 The female teachers present in Cereta’s life only provide evidence that if a woman - specifically her mother - wanted to engage in a close relationship with Cereta, she would have made the effort to do so. She also refers to “the second nurse I had after my mother,”4 implying that even before being sent to the convent, she was mostly raised by nurses and not her mother. This is certainly not an uncommon phenomenon,
considering that at this time it was common for upper-class families to acquire live-in help in raising children (consider the popular practice of wetnursing at the time in Europe), yet it still represents just another layer of separation between Cereta and her mother.
In a letter from Cereta to her husband regarding the conflicting values on the role of women in marriage, McCue Gill explains in a volume of the Renaissance Quarterly how Cereta describes that women are cornered into the impossible role of the wife. “Women thus become simultaneously hunted and hunter, in either case fully capable of turning each role, through manipulation and deceit, to their own advantage.”5 This perfectly summarises Cereta’s depiction of the inner turmoil she feels towards her mother - both yearning for her affection and being disturbed by it when it finally arrives. It also matches Cereta’s description of her mother’s attitudes – hunted by Cereta’s quest for affection and repeatedly dodging it, while also displaying a longing for her daughter’s return home.
Upon arriving home from the convent for some time, Cereta describes her mother’s reaction: “As soon as I crossed my father’s threshold, my mother greeted me, clasping me to her in an uncomfortable embrace. Feeling joy for herself yet pity for me, she began to comfort me, following me wherever I went as though she did not know how to satisfy herself in her delight at my homecoming.”6 This is a very telling statement. Firstly, she describes entering her “father’s threshold”7 indicating that she considers this space as belonging solely to her father as its legal property owner, rather than seeing it as her parent’s household or even a family place. She even proceeds to describe her father as “the more purposeful figure in the family in his role as our governor and, above all, a man of temperate counsel,”8 while in contrast, her mother exists only to bother her. Cereta describes her mother as holding her in an “uncomfortable embrace” or, as Robin suggests in her commentary, “overly constricting arms,”9 The context of the collection suggests that this is more than just a tight hug, but uncomfortable both physically and emotionally. It appears that she is unsure of how to react to her mother as though this is an uncommon interaction. She might even feel that her mother wishes to restrict her education. Although she mentions her mother's expressions of pity, her mother seemingly just can't hide her overwhelming joy about Cereta’s return home - from Cereta’s point of view, it might look like her mother is celebrating the fact that she is home instead of continuing her education.
Why did Cereta place so much blame on her mother, when it was her father who called for her return home? Cereta makes it very clear that after being “imbued both with the fear of God and humility and kindliness to everyone,”10 she considered it her duty to help those who called upon her. After all, as a woman of God, it would be her duty to aid people who may find themselves less fortunate or less able than herself. As she explains, “I blamelessly devoted myself to obedience and I was always ready … to go to the aid of those who called me.”11 She was willing to help and support her father, as she was the one who asked her to come back home. Her mother ex-
presses no request for aid, and Cereta may even hold her mother accountable for the household finding itself in such disarray in the first place.
Cereta may even be projecting her understanding of womanhood as exemplified by her mother onto other women. While all of her educated female teachers have been supportive of Cereta, to the point that some of them would eventually become her close friends, this is not the case for all of the women in her life. Her mother, the one woman who is supposed to support and comfort her no matter what, is not able to do so in a manner that is satisfactory to Cereta. Later in her life, it appears Cereta has concluded that some women are simply unwilling to make any sort of effort, not only in their personal lives but also academically. Cereta categorizes women as either one of two things: good and educated like the nuns who she respects, or bad and lazy like her mother. Because Cereta comes from a family of high social standing, it stands to reason that she would have witnessed her own mother fretting about her hair, clothes, and jewelry, more focused on how she appears within society than maintaining her integrity.
“And here choice alone, since it is the arbiter of character, is the distinguishing factor. For some women worry about the styling of their hair, the elegance of their clothes, and the pearls and other jewelry they wear on their fingers. Others love to say cute little things, to hide their feelings behind a mask of tranquillity… but those women for whom the quest for the good represents a higher value restrain their young spirits and ponder better plans.”12
Cereta’s conflicting feelings about her mother may have permeated her opinions about women as a whole. As Diana Robin writes in her commentary, “Most women, she fears, are too content with their condition as dependents to push for advancements.”13 As McCue Gill explains, Cereta despises women who exhibit complacency. “Cereta immediately embarks upon a sharp invective against wives who permit their husbands to treat them like animals and who are thus complicit in accepting and even encouraging the demeaning restrictions placed upon them by the institution of marriage.”14 This demonstrates once again Cereta’s lack of hesitation in blaming women for their own oppression and misfortunes: “She has already made it clear that wives and widows themselves are by no means without blame.”15
The collection itself emphasizes the oddity of the relationship between Cereta and her mother. For example, Robin states in the commentary that there is only one letter addressed to Cereta’s mother.16 The letter itself recollects a “perfect day”17 they once spent together. But this letter is short - only eight lines long - perhaps indicating that as much as Cereta wants to engage in a positive relationship with her mother, she finds herself at a loss for what to say. Robin’s commentary makes it clear that this letter’s happy tone is not representative of Cereta’s usual portrayal of her sentiments towards her mother. “This letter… is also revealing in relation to other reminiscences of her early childhood in her letters, all of which concern her mother’s abandonment and separation from her.”18 This seems to display Cereta’s mixed array of emotions towards her mother. Un-
fortunately, despite the commentary assuring us that this letter “stands out as a singular for its period and genre since the figure of the mother remains largely absent from Renaissance humanist letters,”19 the letter itself is inaccessible within the selections from the Foundation Year Program Handbook.
Cereta’s lack of a stable mother figure in her formative years may very well have been the source of this yearning for a community of female support. She may be attempting to retroactively close the emotional gap between her mother and herself in her search for female peers. This distance from her mother may also serve as the source for some of the more distasteful attitudes towards women she displays, such as blaming women for their own oppression. Her mother’s lack of effort to maintain a close relationship during Cereta’s adolescence might have caused her to consequently categorize all women as selfish, lazy, and complacent. Cereta’s letters have provided unprecedented insight into not only the relationships of women during the Renaissance but also the power which a parental figure holds in shaping the perspectives of children and how they view the world around them. It’s important to note that though it is possible to speculate how Cereta herself may have perceived and internalized her mother’s actions, we can't know the inner life of her mother. Her mother’s true thoughts, feelings, and motivations, are left up to interpretation. We can only know her mother through the framework which Cereta herself has provided through these letters. With the knowledge that these letters were published during her lifetime, one must wonder whether certain details may have been emphasized or omitted to pursue a desired narrative. Like countless women in history, Cereta’s mother has been overshadowed by the traditional lack of interest in women’s lives. It’s unfortunate that we will likely never have access to her mother’s true thoughts, as it could provide a much more stable framework for understanding this woman who today is often referred to as one of the first feminists. If we knew more about her mother, perhaps we could understand more about Cereta’s relationship with womanhood from an early age, and her understanding of the woman’s role in society.
As she distances herself from figures like her mother, she tries to surround herself with female peers who she considers to be more like her ideal woman. Not only does she remain close friends with some of the nuns well into adulthood, but she also reaches out to other notable women of the time searching for friendship. Cereta, in an attempt to separate herself from women whom she considers to be like her mother, and bring herself closer to women like the nuns and teachers she idolizes, searches among a history of female voices. Yearning for a connection to these women, considers herself a part of their historical lineage, resulting in her coining of the “republic of women.”20
1 Cereta, Laura. “Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist.” Foundation Year Program Handbook, Section III, University of King’s College, 2023, 187.
2 Ibid., 173.
3 Ibid., 179.
4 Ibid., 173.
5 McCue Gill, Amyrose. “Fraught Relations in the letters of Laura Cereta: Marriage, Friendship, and Humanist Episolotary.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 62. No. 4, Winter 2009, 1120.
6 Cereta, 174.
7 Ibid., 174.
8 Ibid., 174.
9 Ibid., 174.
10 Ibid., 174.
11 Ibid., 174.
12 Ibid., 186.
13 Ibid., 184.
14 Gill, 1107.
15 Ibid., 1109.
16 Cereta, 179.
17 Ibid., 179.
18 Ibid., 179.
19 Ibid., 179.
20 Ibid., 187.
Cereta, Laura. “Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist.” Foundation Year Program Handbook, Section III, University of King’s College, 2023, pp. 171-193.
McCue Gill, Amyrose. “Fraught Relations in the letters of Laura Cereta: Marriage, Friendship, and Humanist Episolotary.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 62. No. 4, Winter 2009, pp. 1098-1129.
Robin, Diana. Commentary. Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist by Laura Cereta, transcribed, translated, and edited by Robin, The University of Chicago Press, 1997.
AsIwaslookingoversomeofthepreviouseditionsofBabelduringtheformattingprocess,it dawnedonmethatIamlikelyoneofthefirstEMSSpresidents,ifnotthefirst,whowasnotalive whenthefirstvolumeofBabelwasreleasedin2002.Iamsohonouredtobeapartofsuchawonderful,decades-longtradition,andsoproudofandgratefultoeveryonewhohasworkedtomakethis year ’ sBabel,andeveryBabelbeforeit,suchanastoundingsuccess.
Myfirstthanksgoesouttoourbrilliantanddedicatedcontributors.Ithasbeensuchapleasure togettoreadallofyourpapers.Itisnoteasytoputoneselfandone’sworkoutintotheworld,and theEMSSissogratefultoeachandeveryoneofyouforalltheworkyouputintoyourpapersand submittingthemtoBabel.Youshouldallbeincrediblyproudofyourselves.
Second,I’dliketothankmyfellowmembersoftheEMSS,especiallyEmma,Erin,andEleanor. AllofyouworksohardandputsomuchintotheEMSS.Icansay,withoutaflickerofdoubt,that thisyearwouldnotbeevenafractionassuccessfulwithouteachofyou.Thankyouso,somuchfor alloftheworkyouputintotheEMSS.
TheEMSSwouldn’texistwithouttheUniversityitself,especiallythefacultyandstaffintheEarlyModernStudiesProgramandalltheirsupport.Yourfeedback,encouragement,andenthusiasmis whatmakesEarlyModernStudiesatKing’ssoenjoyabletosomanystudents,andtheEMSSiseternallygratefultoyou.SpecialthanksgoesouttoDrMorrisandDrKowfortheirunwaveringdedicationtotheprogram,itsstudents,andtheEMSS.Wearesoluckytohavesuchwonderfulprofessors whoaresopassionateaboutthisprogramandsociety.
I’dalsoliketothanktheKing’sStudentUnionforalltheirgeneroushelpfinancing,promoting, andgenerallyassistingtheEMSSinallourundertakings.
Finally,I’dliketothankyou,ourreaders,forsupportingtheEMSSandtheauthorsofthesepapers.Ihopeyou’veenjoyedreadingthisyear’seditionofBabelandthatyou’velearnedsomething new,andwelookforwardtosharingthenexteditionofBabelwithyounextyear.
CarolineJones Co-PresidentoftheEarlyModernStudiesSociety,2023–24