Susan Wiseman
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199205127
- eISBN:
- 9780191709579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199205127.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines women's place in the mid-seventeenth century understanding of politics, what might be called the political imaginary, from distinct, even opposite, vantage points. It pursues ...
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This chapter examines women's place in the mid-seventeenth century understanding of politics, what might be called the political imaginary, from distinct, even opposite, vantage points. It pursues the question of the way women's poetry imagines politics. Discussing the poetry of Anne Bradstreet and Lucy Hutchinson, this chapter investigates the political and poetic projects of these far from royalist poets during the upheavals of the 1650s and 1660s. Bradstreet's The Tenth Muse gives a disciplined typological poetic history, starting with elements and humours, and building up to an analysis of national histories that uses fifth monarchist ideas. Fifth monarchist ideas were long-lived, widespread, and part of controversies over church discipline and the future of the republic. Hutchinson is relatively unusual because of her deep and rigorous engagement with the materials of elite masculine culture. Most of her extensive writings remained in manuscript throughout her life.Less
This chapter examines women's place in the mid-seventeenth century understanding of politics, what might be called the political imaginary, from distinct, even opposite, vantage points. It pursues the question of the way women's poetry imagines politics. Discussing the poetry of Anne Bradstreet and Lucy Hutchinson, this chapter investigates the political and poetic projects of these far from royalist poets during the upheavals of the 1650s and 1660s. Bradstreet's The Tenth Muse gives a disciplined typological poetic history, starting with elements and humours, and building up to an analysis of national histories that uses fifth monarchist ideas. Fifth monarchist ideas were long-lived, widespread, and part of controversies over church discipline and the future of the republic. Hutchinson is relatively unusual because of her deep and rigorous engagement with the materials of elite masculine culture. Most of her extensive writings remained in manuscript throughout her life.
Paul Salzman
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199261048
- eISBN:
- 9780191717482
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199261048.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter begins by discussing Margaret Cavendish's representation of Authorship. It examines her work entitled Poems and Fancies, and describes her of having a possessive and protective attitude ...
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This chapter begins by discussing Margaret Cavendish's representation of Authorship. It examines her work entitled Poems and Fancies, and describes her of having a possessive and protective attitude towards her writing. It provides a discussion on women and drama from 1553 to 1650. It examines Cavendish plays' natural dispositions and practices. It then talks about the reputation that Margaret Cavendish acquired. The chapter also compares the writings and reputations of Margaret Cavendish and Lucy Hutchinson. It describes Hutchinson as someone who is drawn into poetry. Her work is an ordered and disciplined account, motivated by her ongoing commitment to the same political and religious principles as those held by her husband.Less
This chapter begins by discussing Margaret Cavendish's representation of Authorship. It examines her work entitled Poems and Fancies, and describes her of having a possessive and protective attitude towards her writing. It provides a discussion on women and drama from 1553 to 1650. It examines Cavendish plays' natural dispositions and practices. It then talks about the reputation that Margaret Cavendish acquired. The chapter also compares the writings and reputations of Margaret Cavendish and Lucy Hutchinson. It describes Hutchinson as someone who is drawn into poetry. Her work is an ordered and disciplined account, motivated by her ongoing commitment to the same political and religious principles as those held by her husband.
Elizabeth Scott-Baumann
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199676521
- eISBN:
- 9780191755675
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199676521.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This chapter shows that in the seventeenth-century elegy was alive to various formal re-workings. Poets since Ovid had used the elegy to write erotic love poetry, while it had also developed its ...
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This chapter shows that in the seventeenth-century elegy was alive to various formal re-workings. Poets since Ovid had used the elegy to write erotic love poetry, while it had also developed its modern sense of poetry written for the dead. Lucy Hutchinson's Elegies develops an unusual and original kind of elegy, fusing the form's erotic, mourning and political functions and creating poems which are intensely both political and personal. Using original manuscript evidence from Hutchinson's poems and commonplace book, this chapter reveals Hutchinson alluding to Virgil's Dido (in the translation of courtly poet Sidney Godolphin), alongside the more troubling model of female articulacy presented by Eve; both figures are evoked in the Elegies. It also shows how three of Hutchinson's poems on her Nottinghamshire estate, Owthorpe, are elegiac and dystopian country house poems, developing the genre as used by Ben Jonson and Aemilia Lanyer.Less
This chapter shows that in the seventeenth-century elegy was alive to various formal re-workings. Poets since Ovid had used the elegy to write erotic love poetry, while it had also developed its modern sense of poetry written for the dead. Lucy Hutchinson's Elegies develops an unusual and original kind of elegy, fusing the form's erotic, mourning and political functions and creating poems which are intensely both political and personal. Using original manuscript evidence from Hutchinson's poems and commonplace book, this chapter reveals Hutchinson alluding to Virgil's Dido (in the translation of courtly poet Sidney Godolphin), alongside the more troubling model of female articulacy presented by Eve; both figures are evoked in the Elegies. It also shows how three of Hutchinson's poems on her Nottinghamshire estate, Owthorpe, are elegiac and dystopian country house poems, developing the genre as used by Ben Jonson and Aemilia Lanyer.
Jonathan Goldberg
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230662
- eISBN:
- 9780823235827
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230662.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter demonstrates how Margaret Cavendish's literature differs from that of Lucy Hutchinson in reference to the judgement of Norbrook that they have this “unique common ground.” Embellished in ...
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This chapter demonstrates how Margaret Cavendish's literature differs from that of Lucy Hutchinson in reference to the judgement of Norbrook that they have this “unique common ground.” Embellished in this part of the book are the skills and styles/orientation of Cavendish as opposed to Hutchinson and comparison of sample verses from their literary works. As a result, Cavendish is believed to be concise and fantasy-driven in her endeavour and to have embraced lesbian representation or same-sex relation (although some assert that it is more than that) as the cornerstone of identity formation. Hutchinson, on the other side, is accredited for her “shadow” idea, which somewhat reflects her status in the family, and is well-known for talking about materialism in the context of Christianity. With all the presented writing strokes by the two literary makers, Cavendish and Hutchinson have distinguishable techniques in writing, though both are developers of Epicurean atomism.Less
This chapter demonstrates how Margaret Cavendish's literature differs from that of Lucy Hutchinson in reference to the judgement of Norbrook that they have this “unique common ground.” Embellished in this part of the book are the skills and styles/orientation of Cavendish as opposed to Hutchinson and comparison of sample verses from their literary works. As a result, Cavendish is believed to be concise and fantasy-driven in her endeavour and to have embraced lesbian representation or same-sex relation (although some assert that it is more than that) as the cornerstone of identity formation. Hutchinson, on the other side, is accredited for her “shadow” idea, which somewhat reflects her status in the family, and is well-known for talking about materialism in the context of Christianity. With all the presented writing strokes by the two literary makers, Cavendish and Hutchinson have distinguishable techniques in writing, though both are developers of Epicurean atomism.
Elizabeth Scott-Baumann
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199676521
- eISBN:
- 9780191755675
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199676521.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
Katherine Philips and Lucy Hutchinson were both brought up in puritan-leaning households with high-profile literary connections; both were connected by friends and relatives to John Milton, for ...
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Katherine Philips and Lucy Hutchinson were both brought up in puritan-leaning households with high-profile literary connections; both were connected by friends and relatives to John Milton, for instance. Both wrote primarily in manuscript, with ambivalent attitudes to the print publication which some of their works would undergo. Their poems share similar themes of lost love and friendship, political hope and disillusionment. Politically, however, they wrote from opposing viewpoints; after the Restoration Philips wrote increasingly in praise of the monarchy, while Hutchinson's poems from the same period mourn her regicide husband and his hopes for a Godly republic. This chapter–the first study of the two poets in parallel–reveals surprising and illuminating crossover in their reading and influence, the intimate and even erotic tone of their poetry, and their negotiations of form and imagery. More specifically, it will reveal and analyse their shared use of erotic lyric poems from John Donne's ‘Songs and Sonnets’, showing how both women rewrite Donne's seductive poems through their own gender and state politics and also suggesting direct allusions between the works of Orinda (Philips) and Orena (Hutchinson).Less
Katherine Philips and Lucy Hutchinson were both brought up in puritan-leaning households with high-profile literary connections; both were connected by friends and relatives to John Milton, for instance. Both wrote primarily in manuscript, with ambivalent attitudes to the print publication which some of their works would undergo. Their poems share similar themes of lost love and friendship, political hope and disillusionment. Politically, however, they wrote from opposing viewpoints; after the Restoration Philips wrote increasingly in praise of the monarchy, while Hutchinson's poems from the same period mourn her regicide husband and his hopes for a Godly republic. This chapter–the first study of the two poets in parallel–reveals surprising and illuminating crossover in their reading and influence, the intimate and even erotic tone of their poetry, and their negotiations of form and imagery. More specifically, it will reveal and analyse their shared use of erotic lyric poems from John Donne's ‘Songs and Sonnets’, showing how both women rewrite Donne's seductive poems through their own gender and state politics and also suggesting direct allusions between the works of Orinda (Philips) and Orena (Hutchinson).
Elizabeth Scott-Baumann
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199676521
- eISBN:
- 9780191755675
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199676521.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This chapter shows how Lucy Hutchinson politicized the process of reading in her long biblical poem Order and Disorder. The poem and its marginal notes show her guiding her Restoration readers into ...
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This chapter shows how Lucy Hutchinson politicized the process of reading in her long biblical poem Order and Disorder. The poem and its marginal notes show her guiding her Restoration readers into an appropriate way of interpreting the Bible, and her poem. This chapter shows that Hutchinson used biblical references to create a radical subtext for the poem, threatening the restored monarchy with her presentation of kings whose rule is 'despised' by their subjects. It is argued that Hutchinson develops a poetics of not knowing, of willing uncertainty, in order to counter skeptical thought. This chapter will reveal connections with Guillaume Du Bartas's Divine Weekes, Abraham Cowley's Davideis, and Milton's Paradise Lost. Order and Disorder presents fascinating evidence of how seventeenth-century poets perceived the epic to be gendered, and the ways in which it became both a vehicle for political comment and a form with which to experiment.Less
This chapter shows how Lucy Hutchinson politicized the process of reading in her long biblical poem Order and Disorder. The poem and its marginal notes show her guiding her Restoration readers into an appropriate way of interpreting the Bible, and her poem. This chapter shows that Hutchinson used biblical references to create a radical subtext for the poem, threatening the restored monarchy with her presentation of kings whose rule is 'despised' by their subjects. It is argued that Hutchinson develops a poetics of not knowing, of willing uncertainty, in order to counter skeptical thought. This chapter will reveal connections with Guillaume Du Bartas's Divine Weekes, Abraham Cowley's Davideis, and Milton's Paradise Lost. Order and Disorder presents fascinating evidence of how seventeenth-century poets perceived the epic to be gendered, and the ways in which it became both a vehicle for political comment and a form with which to experiment.
Mark Burden
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198808817
- eISBN:
- 9780191882500
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198808817.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Since its first publication in 1806, Lucy Hutchinson’s Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson has been praised for its sensitive political analysis and its literary excellence. However, both these ...
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Since its first publication in 1806, Lucy Hutchinson’s Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson has been praised for its sensitive political analysis and its literary excellence. However, both these features are editorial constructions which conceal aspects of the text’s revolutionary energy and smooth over its syntactical rough edges. The beginnings of this process may be viewed in the manuscript annotations of Hutchinson’s nephew, the text’s early custodian, whose response to the growing tide of anti-regicide literature was to conceal his aunt’s republican writings from public view. The main responsibility for reshaping Hutchinson’s prose and injecting a Whiggish flavour into the text was Julius Hutchinson the younger, the text’s first editor. His work formed the basis of all nineteenth-century editions, but eventually led to a bifurcation in Hutchinson scholarship between those who emphasized the text’s feminine literary qualities, and those who questioned its authority as a historical record.Less
Since its first publication in 1806, Lucy Hutchinson’s Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson has been praised for its sensitive political analysis and its literary excellence. However, both these features are editorial constructions which conceal aspects of the text’s revolutionary energy and smooth over its syntactical rough edges. The beginnings of this process may be viewed in the manuscript annotations of Hutchinson’s nephew, the text’s early custodian, whose response to the growing tide of anti-regicide literature was to conceal his aunt’s republican writings from public view. The main responsibility for reshaping Hutchinson’s prose and injecting a Whiggish flavour into the text was Julius Hutchinson the younger, the text’s first editor. His work formed the basis of all nineteenth-century editions, but eventually led to a bifurcation in Hutchinson scholarship between those who emphasized the text’s feminine literary qualities, and those who questioned its authority as a historical record.
Penelope Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748655823
- eISBN:
- 9780748676620
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748655823.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter argues that the key to Lucy Hutchinson's political imagination lies in the relation between her two epics, the De rerum natura translation and Order and Disorder. In both poems, ...
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This chapter argues that the key to Lucy Hutchinson's political imagination lies in the relation between her two epics, the De rerum natura translation and Order and Disorder. In both poems, Hutchinson tells a story of how humans came to be who they are and how best they can live in the world; and she grapples with a world riven with conflict and distrust, constituted by betrayal and changeability. Her answer to the problem of conflicting obligations turns this problem into a resource by understanding these threats as integral to human existence. Drawing on Epicurean friendship doctrine and Lucretius' modifications of it, Hutchinson describes the origin of human society in chosen associations between friends rather than biological ties within families. This leads, in Order and Disorder, not only to a mitigation of procreation as a dominant structure, but also to a larger scope for wifely prudential counsel.Less
This chapter argues that the key to Lucy Hutchinson's political imagination lies in the relation between her two epics, the De rerum natura translation and Order and Disorder. In both poems, Hutchinson tells a story of how humans came to be who they are and how best they can live in the world; and she grapples with a world riven with conflict and distrust, constituted by betrayal and changeability. Her answer to the problem of conflicting obligations turns this problem into a resource by understanding these threats as integral to human existence. Drawing on Epicurean friendship doctrine and Lucretius' modifications of it, Hutchinson describes the origin of human society in chosen associations between friends rather than biological ties within families. This leads, in Order and Disorder, not only to a mitigation of procreation as a dominant structure, but also to a larger scope for wifely prudential counsel.
Elizabeth Scott-Baumann
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199676521
- eISBN:
- 9780191755675
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199676521.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This book reveals previously unrecognized patterns of influence between women poets Katherine Philips, Lucy Hutchinson, and Margaret Cavendish and their peers and predecessors including Donne, ...
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This book reveals previously unrecognized patterns of influence between women poets Katherine Philips, Lucy Hutchinson, and Margaret Cavendish and their peers and predecessors including Donne, Jonson, Hobbes, Davenant, Cowley, and Milton. It shows how the aesthetic qualities of women’s poetry emerge from the culture in which they write: Margaret Cavendish develops a poetics of singularity, Katherine Philips of sociability, and Lucy Hutchinson of irony in a literary culture shared with men. While early modern women writers have to date been served more fully by historical and biographical than formalist analysis, this book sees the study of form as essential to an historical understanding of women writers. The premise of this book is that reading for form is reading for influence. By tracing formal influences on women poets we can understand more precisely their place in intellectual and poetic culture; by placing them in their literary culture we can better understand their aesthetic decisions and qualities. Hutchinson, Philips, and Cavendish were immersed in mid-seventeenth century cultural developments, from the birth of experimental philosophy, to the local and state politics of civil war and the rapid expansion of women’s print publication. For women poets, reworking poetic forms such as elegy, ode, epic, and couplet was a fundamental engagement with the culture in which they wrote. It is argued that by focusing on these interactions, rather than statements of exclusion and rejection, a formalist reading of these women can actually provide a more nuanced historical view of their participation in literary culture. Indeed, for Hutchinson, Philips, and Cavendish, engaging with other poets allowed them to be more original and innovative.Less
This book reveals previously unrecognized patterns of influence between women poets Katherine Philips, Lucy Hutchinson, and Margaret Cavendish and their peers and predecessors including Donne, Jonson, Hobbes, Davenant, Cowley, and Milton. It shows how the aesthetic qualities of women’s poetry emerge from the culture in which they write: Margaret Cavendish develops a poetics of singularity, Katherine Philips of sociability, and Lucy Hutchinson of irony in a literary culture shared with men. While early modern women writers have to date been served more fully by historical and biographical than formalist analysis, this book sees the study of form as essential to an historical understanding of women writers. The premise of this book is that reading for form is reading for influence. By tracing formal influences on women poets we can understand more precisely their place in intellectual and poetic culture; by placing them in their literary culture we can better understand their aesthetic decisions and qualities. Hutchinson, Philips, and Cavendish were immersed in mid-seventeenth century cultural developments, from the birth of experimental philosophy, to the local and state politics of civil war and the rapid expansion of women’s print publication. For women poets, reworking poetic forms such as elegy, ode, epic, and couplet was a fundamental engagement with the culture in which they wrote. It is argued that by focusing on these interactions, rather than statements of exclusion and rejection, a formalist reading of these women can actually provide a more nuanced historical view of their participation in literary culture. Indeed, for Hutchinson, Philips, and Cavendish, engaging with other poets allowed them to be more original and innovative.
Jonathan Goldberg
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230662
- eISBN:
- 9780823235827
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230662.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
The title of this book translates one of the many ways in which Lucretius names the basic matter from which the world is made in De rerum natura. For Lucretius, and in the strain of thought following ...
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The title of this book translates one of the many ways in which Lucretius names the basic matter from which the world is made in De rerum natura. For Lucretius, and in the strain of thought following his study, matter is always in motion, always differing from itself and yet always also made of the same stuff. From the pious Lucy Hutchinson's all but complete translation of the Roman epic poem to Margaret Cavendish's repudiation of atomism (but not of its fundamental problematic of sameness and difference), a central concern of this book is how a thoroughgoing materialism can be read alongside other strains in the thought of the early modern period, particularly Christianity. The chapters move from Milton's monism to his angels and their insistent corporeality. Milton's angels have sex, and, throughout, this study emphasizes the consequences for thinking about sexuality offered by Lucretian materialism. Sameness of matter is not simply a question of same-sex copulation, and the relations of atoms in Cavendish and Hutchinson are replicated in the terms in which they imagine marriages of partners who are also their doubles. Likewise, Spenser's knights in the 1590 Faerie Queene pursue the virtues of Holiness, Temperance, and Chastity in quests that take the reader on a path of “askesis” of the kind that Lucretius recommends and that Foucault studied in the final volumes of his history of sexuality. Although English literature is the book's main concern, it first contemplates relations between Lucretian matter and Pauline flesh by way of Tintoretto's painting, The Conversion of St. Paul. Theoretical issues took place in the work of Agamben and Badiou, among others, leading to a chapter that takes up the role that Lucretius has played in theory, from Bergson and Marx to Foucault and Deleuze.Less
The title of this book translates one of the many ways in which Lucretius names the basic matter from which the world is made in De rerum natura. For Lucretius, and in the strain of thought following his study, matter is always in motion, always differing from itself and yet always also made of the same stuff. From the pious Lucy Hutchinson's all but complete translation of the Roman epic poem to Margaret Cavendish's repudiation of atomism (but not of its fundamental problematic of sameness and difference), a central concern of this book is how a thoroughgoing materialism can be read alongside other strains in the thought of the early modern period, particularly Christianity. The chapters move from Milton's monism to his angels and their insistent corporeality. Milton's angels have sex, and, throughout, this study emphasizes the consequences for thinking about sexuality offered by Lucretian materialism. Sameness of matter is not simply a question of same-sex copulation, and the relations of atoms in Cavendish and Hutchinson are replicated in the terms in which they imagine marriages of partners who are also their doubles. Likewise, Spenser's knights in the 1590 Faerie Queene pursue the virtues of Holiness, Temperance, and Chastity in quests that take the reader on a path of “askesis” of the kind that Lucretius recommends and that Foucault studied in the final volumes of his history of sexuality. Although English literature is the book's main concern, it first contemplates relations between Lucretian matter and Pauline flesh by way of Tintoretto's painting, The Conversion of St. Paul. Theoretical issues took place in the work of Agamben and Badiou, among others, leading to a chapter that takes up the role that Lucretius has played in theory, from Bergson and Marx to Foucault and Deleuze.
Penelope Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748655823
- eISBN:
- 9780748676620
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748655823.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This book changes our understanding both of the masculine Renaissance friendship tradition and of the private forms of women's friendship of the eighteenth century and after. It uncovers the latent ...
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This book changes our understanding both of the masculine Renaissance friendship tradition and of the private forms of women's friendship of the eighteenth century and after. It uncovers the latent threat of betrayal lurking within politicized classical and humanist friendship, showing its surprising resilience as a model for political obligation undone and remade. Incorporating authors from Cicero to Abraham Cowley, and Margaret Cavendish to Mary Astell, the book focuses on two extraordinary women writers, the royalist Katherine Philips and the republican Lucy Hutchinson. It explores the ways in which they appropriate the friendship tradition in order to address problems of conflicting allegiances in the English Civil Wars and Restoration. As the book suggests, their writings on friendship provide a new account of women's relation to public life, organized through textual exchange rather than bodily reproduction.Less
This book changes our understanding both of the masculine Renaissance friendship tradition and of the private forms of women's friendship of the eighteenth century and after. It uncovers the latent threat of betrayal lurking within politicized classical and humanist friendship, showing its surprising resilience as a model for political obligation undone and remade. Incorporating authors from Cicero to Abraham Cowley, and Margaret Cavendish to Mary Astell, the book focuses on two extraordinary women writers, the royalist Katherine Philips and the republican Lucy Hutchinson. It explores the ways in which they appropriate the friendship tradition in order to address problems of conflicting allegiances in the English Civil Wars and Restoration. As the book suggests, their writings on friendship provide a new account of women's relation to public life, organized through textual exchange rather than bodily reproduction.
David Norbrook, Stephen Harrison, and Philip Hardie (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198713845
- eISBN:
- 9780191807152
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198713845.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The rediscovery in the fifteenth century of Lucretius’s De rerum natura was a challenge to received ideas. This poem offered a vision of the creation of the universe, the origins and goals of human ...
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The rediscovery in the fifteenth century of Lucretius’s De rerum natura was a challenge to received ideas. This poem offered a vision of the creation of the universe, the origins and goals of human life and the formation of the state, all without reference to divine intervention. It has been hailed in Stephen Greenblatt’s best-selling The Swerve as the poem that invented modernity. But how modern did early modern readers want to become? This book demonstrates the sophisticated ways in which some readers assimilated the poem to theories of natural law and even natural theology, while others were both attracted to Lucretius’s subversiveness and dissociated themselves from him. This book offers a wide geographical range, from Florence and Venice to France, England, and Germany, and extends chronologically from Lucretius’s contemporary audience to the European Enlightenment. It covers authors such as Machiavelli and Montaigne and neglected figures such as Italian neo-Latin poets. It is the first book in the field to pay close attention to Lucretius’s impact on political thought, from Machiavelli through Hobbes to Rousseau, and through the topical spin put on the De rerum natura by translators in revolutionary England.Less
The rediscovery in the fifteenth century of Lucretius’s De rerum natura was a challenge to received ideas. This poem offered a vision of the creation of the universe, the origins and goals of human life and the formation of the state, all without reference to divine intervention. It has been hailed in Stephen Greenblatt’s best-selling The Swerve as the poem that invented modernity. But how modern did early modern readers want to become? This book demonstrates the sophisticated ways in which some readers assimilated the poem to theories of natural law and even natural theology, while others were both attracted to Lucretius’s subversiveness and dissociated themselves from him. This book offers a wide geographical range, from Florence and Venice to France, England, and Germany, and extends chronologically from Lucretius’s contemporary audience to the European Enlightenment. It covers authors such as Machiavelli and Montaigne and neglected figures such as Italian neo-Latin poets. It is the first book in the field to pay close attention to Lucretius’s impact on political thought, from Machiavelli through Hobbes to Rousseau, and through the topical spin put on the De rerum natura by translators in revolutionary England.
Edith Hall
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198725206
- eISBN:
- 9780191792571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198725206.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
One of the activities within classical scholarship which long attracted women excluded from formal education or academic institutions was translation. Although some women translated for money, others ...
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One of the activities within classical scholarship which long attracted women excluded from formal education or academic institutions was translation. Although some women translated for money, others did so for pleasure, in order to alleviate boredom, to stimulate their intellects, and provide relief from domestic responsibilities and drudgery. This chapter looks at pleasure as a motive for female scholarly activity and translation in Early Modern English treatises on women’s education, especially those by Bathsua Makin and Mary Astell, before conducting a comparative discussion of two important translations by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English women, Lucy Hutchinson’s Lucretius and Sarah Fielding’s Xenophon.Less
One of the activities within classical scholarship which long attracted women excluded from formal education or academic institutions was translation. Although some women translated for money, others did so for pleasure, in order to alleviate boredom, to stimulate their intellects, and provide relief from domestic responsibilities and drudgery. This chapter looks at pleasure as a motive for female scholarly activity and translation in Early Modern English treatises on women’s education, especially those by Bathsua Makin and Mary Astell, before conducting a comparative discussion of two important translations by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English women, Lucy Hutchinson’s Lucretius and Sarah Fielding’s Xenophon.
David Norbrook
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198713845
- eISBN:
- 9780191807152
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198713845.003.0011
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter explores the reception of Lucretius’s account of the origins of the state in his fifth book in England from the 1650s to the 1680s. It argues through close attention to key passages that ...
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This chapter explores the reception of Lucretius’s account of the origins of the state in his fifth book in England from the 1650s to the 1680s. It argues through close attention to key passages that Lucretius’s poetic language and structure have often been over-systematized, and that his ambiguities leave the poem open to divergent readings across a spectrum from the Hobbesian to the republican, from the atheist to the anticlerical. After a discussion of Hobbes and Gassendi as readers of Lucretius, it focuses on a key episode, Lucretius’s narrative of the fall of monarchies, by three contemporary translators, Evelyn, Hutchinson, and Creech, showing how their translators were affected by contemporary responses to the regicide in England. There is a brief discussion of Dryden’s Lucretius translations and of Tonson’s edition.Less
This chapter explores the reception of Lucretius’s account of the origins of the state in his fifth book in England from the 1650s to the 1680s. It argues through close attention to key passages that Lucretius’s poetic language and structure have often been over-systematized, and that his ambiguities leave the poem open to divergent readings across a spectrum from the Hobbesian to the republican, from the atheist to the anticlerical. After a discussion of Hobbes and Gassendi as readers of Lucretius, it focuses on a key episode, Lucretius’s narrative of the fall of monarchies, by three contemporary translators, Evelyn, Hutchinson, and Creech, showing how their translators were affected by contemporary responses to the regicide in England. There is a brief discussion of Dryden’s Lucretius translations and of Tonson’s edition.
Margaret J. M. Ezell
- Published in print:
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- eISBN:
- 9780191849572
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780191849572.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Many who lived through the English Civil War penned memoirs of their experiences, some of which were published after their deaths, such as Richard Baxter’s life writings and Thomas Fuller’s accounts ...
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Many who lived through the English Civil War penned memoirs of their experiences, some of which were published after their deaths, such as Richard Baxter’s life writings and Thomas Fuller’s accounts of the worthies of England, or wrote and published topical public histories, including John Milton’s history of Britain. Samuel Pepys’s and John Evelyn’s diaries are among the most important sources about the Restoration years. Others such as Lucy Hutchinson wrote memoirs for their family or, like Margaret Cavendish, to defend the reputation of a family member. There was also interest in the history of foreign cultures, past rulers, and antiquarian topics.Less
Many who lived through the English Civil War penned memoirs of their experiences, some of which were published after their deaths, such as Richard Baxter’s life writings and Thomas Fuller’s accounts of the worthies of England, or wrote and published topical public histories, including John Milton’s history of Britain. Samuel Pepys’s and John Evelyn’s diaries are among the most important sources about the Restoration years. Others such as Lucy Hutchinson wrote memoirs for their family or, like Margaret Cavendish, to defend the reputation of a family member. There was also interest in the history of foreign cultures, past rulers, and antiquarian topics.
Tessa Whitehouse and N. H. Keeble (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198808817
- eISBN:
- 9780191882500
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198808817.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This collection of twelve original essays by an international team of eminent scholars in the field of book history explores the many ways in which early modern books were subject to reworking, ...
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This collection of twelve original essays by an international team of eminent scholars in the field of book history explores the many ways in which early modern books were subject to reworking, re-presentation, revision and reinterpretation. Their history is often the history of multiple, sometimes competing, agencies as their texts were re-packaged, redirected and transformed in ways that their original authors might hardly recognize. The essays discuss the processes of editing, revision, redaction, selection, abridgement, glossing, disputation, translation and posthumous publication that resulted in a textual elasticity and mobility that could dissolve distinctions between text and paratexts, textuality and intertextuality, manuscript and print, author and reader or editor, such that title and author’s name are no longer sufficient pointers to a book’s identity or contents. The essays are alive to the impact of commercial and technological aspects of book production and distribution (discussing, for example, the career of the pre-eminent bookseller John Nourse, the market appeal of abridgements, and the financial incentives to posthumous publication), but their interest is also in the many additional forms of agency that shaped texts and their meanings as books were repurposed to articulate, and respond to, a variety of cultural and individual needs. They engage with early modern religious, political, philosophical and scholarly trends and debates as they discuss a wide range of genres and kinds of publication (including fictional and non-fictional prose, verse miscellanies, abridgements, sermons, religious controversy) and of authors and booksellers (including Lucy Hutchinson, Richard Baxter, Thomas Burnet, Elizabeth Rowe, John Dryden, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lucy Hutchinson, Henry Maundrell, John Nourse; Jonathan Swift, Samuel Richardson, John Tillotson, Isaac Watts and John Wesley).Less
This collection of twelve original essays by an international team of eminent scholars in the field of book history explores the many ways in which early modern books were subject to reworking, re-presentation, revision and reinterpretation. Their history is often the history of multiple, sometimes competing, agencies as their texts were re-packaged, redirected and transformed in ways that their original authors might hardly recognize. The essays discuss the processes of editing, revision, redaction, selection, abridgement, glossing, disputation, translation and posthumous publication that resulted in a textual elasticity and mobility that could dissolve distinctions between text and paratexts, textuality and intertextuality, manuscript and print, author and reader or editor, such that title and author’s name are no longer sufficient pointers to a book’s identity or contents. The essays are alive to the impact of commercial and technological aspects of book production and distribution (discussing, for example, the career of the pre-eminent bookseller John Nourse, the market appeal of abridgements, and the financial incentives to posthumous publication), but their interest is also in the many additional forms of agency that shaped texts and their meanings as books were repurposed to articulate, and respond to, a variety of cultural and individual needs. They engage with early modern religious, political, philosophical and scholarly trends and debates as they discuss a wide range of genres and kinds of publication (including fictional and non-fictional prose, verse miscellanies, abridgements, sermons, religious controversy) and of authors and booksellers (including Lucy Hutchinson, Richard Baxter, Thomas Burnet, Elizabeth Rowe, John Dryden, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lucy Hutchinson, Henry Maundrell, John Nourse; Jonathan Swift, Samuel Richardson, John Tillotson, Isaac Watts and John Wesley).
Penelope Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748655823
- eISBN:
- 9780748676620
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748655823.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to offer different ways of looking both at what was — the figurations of loyalty and betrayal; the relations of gender and ...
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This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to offer different ways of looking both at what was — the figurations of loyalty and betrayal; the relations of gender and political obligation; the work of literary texts in shaping and expressing those ideas — and what might have been — a theory of political obligation modelled on friendship. The central claim of this book is that two exceptional women, independently of one another, take up the discourse of friendship and in so doing offer new ways of understanding the most important intellectual problem of their time. The women are Katherine Philips and Lucy Hutchinson. The chapter presents a reassessment of the classical friendship tradition and its Renaissance manifestations; a discussion of women's political subjectivity that shows why they could exploit this tradition; and a consideration of alternative political models in relation to friendship.Less
This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to offer different ways of looking both at what was — the figurations of loyalty and betrayal; the relations of gender and political obligation; the work of literary texts in shaping and expressing those ideas — and what might have been — a theory of political obligation modelled on friendship. The central claim of this book is that two exceptional women, independently of one another, take up the discourse of friendship and in so doing offer new ways of understanding the most important intellectual problem of their time. The women are Katherine Philips and Lucy Hutchinson. The chapter presents a reassessment of the classical friendship tradition and its Renaissance manifestations; a discussion of women's political subjectivity that shows why they could exploit this tradition; and a consideration of alternative political models in relation to friendship.
Josephine Balmer
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199585090
- eISBN:
- 9780191747519
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199585090.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter begins with an overview of translations of classical poetry by women translators through the ages, examining, in particular, their prefaces and author statements, including those by Lucy ...
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This chapter begins with an overview of translations of classical poetry by women translators through the ages, examining, in particular, their prefaces and author statements, including those by Lucy Hutchinson, Anne Finch, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Anna Swanwick, and H.D., through to Mary Barnard, Diane Rayor, and Sarah Ruden. It concludes with Josephine Balmer’s own personal statement, exploring the paths that led her to classical poetry translation.Less
This chapter begins with an overview of translations of classical poetry by women translators through the ages, examining, in particular, their prefaces and author statements, including those by Lucy Hutchinson, Anne Finch, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Anna Swanwick, and H.D., through to Mary Barnard, Diane Rayor, and Sarah Ruden. It concludes with Josephine Balmer’s own personal statement, exploring the paths that led her to classical poetry translation.