Lucretius and Modernity is an edited collection that brings together essays by distinguished scho... more Lucretius and Modernity is an edited collection that brings together essays by distinguished scholars in the disciplines of philosophy, classics, literary studies, and the history of science to examine the relationship between the roman poet Lucretius—author of the poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)—and modernity. The volume understands “modernity” to encompass a number of topics when paired with Lucretius: Lucretius’s relation to the thought of his time and to the literary and philosophical traditions on which he drew; Lucretius’s role in inaugurating the historical period of European modernity (through his Humanist readers and in the work of writers from Machiavelli to Montaigne, Descartes, and Spinoza, among many others); and the influence of Lucretius’s thought on contemporary approaches to poetry, philosophy, and literary studies (his influence on contemporary materialist thought, both philosophical and scientific; on theology; on literary criticism).
In the late sixteenth century, Arthur Golding, a prolific Tudor translator perhaps best known for... more In the late sixteenth century, Arthur Golding, a prolific Tudor translator perhaps best known for his 1567 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translated a collection of fables that he entitled A Morall Fabletalke. This manuscript of Golding’s translation was never printed and is little known. Our volume is a scholarly edition of the manuscript, with additional edited selections from four other English Renaissance fable translations that, collectively, illustrate the importance of fable translations in literary, pedagogical, and political contexts in Renaissance England. By situating Golding’s text alongside William Caxton’s early printed translation from French (1485), Richard Smith’s English version of Robert Henryson’s Middle-Scots Moral Fabillis (1577), John Brinsley’s grammar school translation (1617, 1624), and the politicized fables that John Ogilby translated during the English Civil War (1651–68), we show the wide-ranging forms and functions of the fable during the English Renaissance.
The Asexuality and Aromanticism Bibliography is a resource designed to help researchers find rele... more The Asexuality and Aromanticism Bibliography is a resource designed to help researchers find relevant writing on a variety of topics in asexuality studies and aromanticism studies. The site includes, at its core, a searching bibliography that aggregates, categorizes, and tags both academic and community writing on asexual and aromantic theory, allowing people interested in the study of these two critical queer theories to more easily find writing relevant to their interests. The site also includes a "Research and Teaching Collections" section that includes short blog posts offering recommended introductions to sub-fields in asexuality studies and aromanticism studies.
In the mid-seventeenth century, while in exile as a royalist during the English Civil War, Margar... more In the mid-seventeenth century, while in exile as a royalist during the English Civil War, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, wrote a book of poems that she entitled Poems and Fancies (along with a slightly later companion volume called Philosophical Fancies). Poems and Fancies, printed in London in 1653 while she was back in England advocating for her exiled husband, covered topics as various as the atomic makeup of the world; ethics and empathy with the non-human world; the cognitive possibilities of poetic and allegorical modes; the importance of making mental room for the supernatural; and the ravages of war on a nation and on individual minds. A second, much-revised edition was printed in 1664, and this revised edition was reprinted again in 1668, five years before her death. This digital critical edition, produced by Liza Blake with thirteen undergraduate editorial collaborators, makes this remarkable collection of poems freely available online, fully collated, edited, and modernized.
This essay argues that we can enrich our understandings of form and formalisms if we return to ea... more This essay argues that we can enrich our understandings of form and formalisms if we return to early modernity’s rich variety of physics. The central object of study is the relationship between physics and poetics in Arthur Golding’s 1567 English translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Although this translation is commonly cast today as the work of an unsophisticated or moralizing Puritan, Golding claimed that Ovid’s work offered a “dark philosophy of turnèd shapes,” a natural philosophy of substance and change. As Golding translates, he systematically reshapes the physics he finds in Ovid, converting Ovid into a crypto-Neo-Platonist and, in the process, offering a new physics and poetics revolving around the concept of shape—a concept similar to but not identical with our modern understanding of form. In Golding’s translation, poetics becomes not just a way of communicating or elaborating natural philosophy, but the mechanism for exploring the nature of the universe. [L.B.]
Also available for download from the journal website itself: https://www.new.ox.ac.uk/new-college... more Also available for download from the journal website itself: https://www.new.ox.ac.uk/new-college-notes
This essay begins by arguing that discussions of interdisciplinarity between literature and scien... more This essay begins by arguing that discussions of interdisciplinarity between literature and science have been overly preoccupied by problems of counting: the issue is not that there are or are not Two Cultures, but that we start from defining and delimiting specific numbers of disciplines. It then suggests that that the works of Margaret Cavendish, a philosopher, scientist, playwright, and poet from the mid-seventeenth century, offer two concepts that may help us escape the traps of counting. With her concepts of grounds, she insists on fiction or literature as a mode of rationality parallel to and comparable to reason or science. She also attempts to re-orient contemporary debates about the possible grounds of scientific knowledge, insisting that Nature herself, in all of her variety, must serve as the ground or basis of nature. The essay then shows that the concept of the creature, as Cavendish develops it in her late works, offers a generative model for thinking about combination, cooperation, and association, and might therefore be a useful concept for helping us think beyond the numbering of disciplines.
Lucretius and Modernity is an edited collection that brings together essays by distinguished scho... more Lucretius and Modernity is an edited collection that brings together essays by distinguished scholars in the disciplines of philosophy, classics, literary studies, and the history of science to examine the relationship between the roman poet Lucretius—author of the poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)—and modernity. The volume understands “modernity” to encompass a number of topics when paired with Lucretius: Lucretius’s relation to the thought of his time and to the literary and philosophical traditions on which he drew; Lucretius’s role in inaugurating the historical period of European modernity (through his Humanist readers and in the work of writers from Machiavelli to Montaigne, Descartes, and Spinoza, among many others); and the influence of Lucretius’s thought on contemporary approaches to poetry, philosophy, and literary studies (his influence on contemporary materialist thought, both philosophical and scientific; on theology; on literary criticism).
In the late sixteenth century, Arthur Golding, a prolific Tudor translator perhaps best known for... more In the late sixteenth century, Arthur Golding, a prolific Tudor translator perhaps best known for his 1567 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translated a collection of fables that he entitled A Morall Fabletalke. This manuscript of Golding’s translation was never printed and is little known. Our volume is a scholarly edition of the manuscript, with additional edited selections from four other English Renaissance fable translations that, collectively, illustrate the importance of fable translations in literary, pedagogical, and political contexts in Renaissance England. By situating Golding’s text alongside William Caxton’s early printed translation from French (1485), Richard Smith’s English version of Robert Henryson’s Middle-Scots Moral Fabillis (1577), John Brinsley’s grammar school translation (1617, 1624), and the politicized fables that John Ogilby translated during the English Civil War (1651–68), we show the wide-ranging forms and functions of the fable during the English Renaissance.
The Asexuality and Aromanticism Bibliography is a resource designed to help researchers find rele... more The Asexuality and Aromanticism Bibliography is a resource designed to help researchers find relevant writing on a variety of topics in asexuality studies and aromanticism studies. The site includes, at its core, a searching bibliography that aggregates, categorizes, and tags both academic and community writing on asexual and aromantic theory, allowing people interested in the study of these two critical queer theories to more easily find writing relevant to their interests. The site also includes a "Research and Teaching Collections" section that includes short blog posts offering recommended introductions to sub-fields in asexuality studies and aromanticism studies.
In the mid-seventeenth century, while in exile as a royalist during the English Civil War, Margar... more In the mid-seventeenth century, while in exile as a royalist during the English Civil War, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, wrote a book of poems that she entitled Poems and Fancies (along with a slightly later companion volume called Philosophical Fancies). Poems and Fancies, printed in London in 1653 while she was back in England advocating for her exiled husband, covered topics as various as the atomic makeup of the world; ethics and empathy with the non-human world; the cognitive possibilities of poetic and allegorical modes; the importance of making mental room for the supernatural; and the ravages of war on a nation and on individual minds. A second, much-revised edition was printed in 1664, and this revised edition was reprinted again in 1668, five years before her death. This digital critical edition, produced by Liza Blake with thirteen undergraduate editorial collaborators, makes this remarkable collection of poems freely available online, fully collated, edited, and modernized.
This essay argues that we can enrich our understandings of form and formalisms if we return to ea... more This essay argues that we can enrich our understandings of form and formalisms if we return to early modernity’s rich variety of physics. The central object of study is the relationship between physics and poetics in Arthur Golding’s 1567 English translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Although this translation is commonly cast today as the work of an unsophisticated or moralizing Puritan, Golding claimed that Ovid’s work offered a “dark philosophy of turnèd shapes,” a natural philosophy of substance and change. As Golding translates, he systematically reshapes the physics he finds in Ovid, converting Ovid into a crypto-Neo-Platonist and, in the process, offering a new physics and poetics revolving around the concept of shape—a concept similar to but not identical with our modern understanding of form. In Golding’s translation, poetics becomes not just a way of communicating or elaborating natural philosophy, but the mechanism for exploring the nature of the universe. [L.B.]
Also available for download from the journal website itself: https://www.new.ox.ac.uk/new-college... more Also available for download from the journal website itself: https://www.new.ox.ac.uk/new-college-notes
This essay begins by arguing that discussions of interdisciplinarity between literature and scien... more This essay begins by arguing that discussions of interdisciplinarity between literature and science have been overly preoccupied by problems of counting: the issue is not that there are or are not Two Cultures, but that we start from defining and delimiting specific numbers of disciplines. It then suggests that that the works of Margaret Cavendish, a philosopher, scientist, playwright, and poet from the mid-seventeenth century, offer two concepts that may help us escape the traps of counting. With her concepts of grounds, she insists on fiction or literature as a mode of rationality parallel to and comparable to reason or science. She also attempts to re-orient contemporary debates about the possible grounds of scientific knowledge, insisting that Nature herself, in all of her variety, must serve as the ground or basis of nature. The essay then shows that the concept of the creature, as Cavendish develops it in her late works, offers a generative model for thinking about combination, cooperation, and association, and might therefore be a useful concept for helping us think beyond the numbering of disciplines.
This article argues that Henry Medwall’s early interlude Nature (c. 1495) reworks the typical sta... more This article argues that Henry Medwall’s early interlude Nature (c. 1495) reworks the typical staged allegory of the morality play, staging a struggle not over the fate of man’s soul, but over two competing interpretations of Aristotelian physics. Medwall finds in theater the perfect way of investigating the role that allegorical drama can—and must—play in understanding not only how our ideas about nature are intimately connected to ideas such as causality, responsibility, and the place of the human within the natural world, but also how staged allegory might be used to engage in debates about nature.
This chapter is a study of dildos and strap-ons as accessories in early modern literature and cul... more This chapter is a study of dildos and strap-ons as accessories in early modern literature and culture. It first asks what it means to theorize accessories as things, and then what it means to theorize things as accessories. The end performs a reading of Thomas Nashe’s dildo poem “The Choise of Valentines” (c. 1592), demonstrating how a positive theory of accessories based on joining and attachment rather than lack can bring us back to the very question that the Freudian fetish denies from the start: the question of pleasure.
The question of embodiment is at once the question that makes posthuman theory so exciting, and t... more The question of embodiment is at once the question that makes posthuman theory so exciting, and the area in which posthuman discourse sometimes stumbles over its own false alternatives. In order to consider the body of the posthuman, and the modes of corporeality available to posthumanity, we need to develop a more expansive body theory that can encompass nonhuman as well as human bodies. The place to start is with early modern physics, which is the study of what we would consider today both physics and physiology. This article dwells on the figure of the Echo in John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi and Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, arguing that reading the scene through the lens of early modern physics illustrates an alternative mode of corporeality for the posthuman.
A reading list for researching and teaching queer asexuality in early-modern English literature a... more A reading list for researching and teaching queer asexuality in early-modern English literature and culture.
Audiofiles from the proceedings of two laboratory-ateliers on ‘Speculative Medievalisms’—a sort o... more Audiofiles from the proceedings of two laboratory-ateliers on ‘Speculative Medievalisms’—a sort of mashup, or collision, or ‘drive-by’ flirtation between pre-modern studies and Speculative Realism (SR)—that took place at King’s College London (14 January 2011) and the Graduate Center, CUNY (16 September 2011), and featured talks by: (a) LONDON: Kathleen Biddick, Eileen Joy + Anna Klosowska, Eugene Thacker, Nicola Masciandaro, Anthony Paul Smith, Ben Woodard, Nick Srnicek, Michael O'Rourke, Evan Calder Williams, and Scott Wilson; and (b) NYC: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Ben Woodard, Kellie Robertson, Drew Daniel, Graham Harman, Patricia Clough, Julian Yates, and Liza Blake.
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