From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State: An Intellectual History of Consciousness and the Idea of Order in Renaissance England

Collins, Stephen L.:

ISBN 10: 019507131X / ISBN 13: 9780195071313

Editore: New York : Oxford University Press Inc, 1989

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VIII; 235 p. From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Very good and clean. - Sehr gut und sauber. - My interest in the intellectual history of the English Renaissance and in Shakespeare in particular began during a summer matinee performance at the Aldwych Theater, London, 1969. My experience of Troilus and Cressida that afternoon exhilarated yet disconcerted me. While I had never formally studied Shakespeare, I sensed that I had experienced him wronglynot as I was supposed to, not as intended. As I turned to Elizabethan historians and literary critics and returned to Troilus and Cressida (at the theater and in the text), I began to feel that the unease I had experienced, the dis-order (if you will), was meaningful. The play I watched and listened to and the text I read were problematical. Its language gave the lie to its meaning, to the ideology of order that Tillyard and others so clearlyand so appropriately, it appearedidentified as a thematic Elizabethan and Shakespearean convention. It was not that the play (and as I continued to read other of Shakespeares plays, I saw a similar relationship) was not about order, it was more that it problematically questioned its own obvious theme. It simultaneously established (reinforced, perhaps) and contested (critiqued) an ideology of order. Such textual self-contestation denied reductive interpretations that identified objective meaning in Shakespearean text and/or in Elizabethan cultural contexts; it suggested that historical meaning could best be apprehended as an experiential process. In trying over the years and in this book to approach the historical nature of this textually momentous self-contestation, I have treated the idea of order both as the objectively conventional Elizabethan ideology and as the referential context against which such meaning is subjectively problematized. As an intellectual history of the idea of order, this book hopes in the words of Dominick LaCapra to formulate as a problem what is so often taken deceptively as a solution: the relationship between texts and their various pertinent contexts. Contents: From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State: The Tudor Idea of Orderfully described. The Idea of Order in the 1640soutlined.; The Dramatic Microcosm: From Tamburlaine to Prospero, The Struggle with Self-Definition: Tudor Drama and Marlowe. Shakespiere.; Anomalies and Alternatives in Elizabethan England: The Subtle Changes in the Order Men: Barckley, Merbury, Mulcaster, Smith, Wentworth, et al. Richard Hooker: The Innovative Conservative. The Doleman Controversy: Catholic Political Psychology.; Refining and Defining: Jacobean England: The New Order Theorists and Radical Conservatism: James I, Forset. The Secular Inroads, Political Psychology, and New Values in Politics and Economics: Raleigh, Bacon, Eliot, and Merchant Pamphlets. The Hermetic-Eirenicist View: Sidney, Greville, and the Cult of the Magus. The Place of Nature, Philosophy, and Magic in New Social Utility: Sir Francis Bacon.The Final Defining Voices: Sir Robert Filmer and John Selden. Pamphlets on Politics and Society, 1640-1643: Parker, Herle, Hunton vs. Digges and Ferne. Hobbes and the Sovereign State. ISBN 9780195071313 Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 396.

Codice articolo 1184766

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State: An Intellectual History of Consciousness and the Idea of Order in Renaissance England
• Editore: New York : Oxford University Press Inc
• Data di pubblicazione: 1989
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 019507131X
• ISBN 13: 9780195071313
• Rilegatura: Original Paperback.
• Condizione: Gut
• Peso: 396 grammi
• Cataloghi dei venditori:
  • Rennaissance

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Riassunto

In the late English Renaissance, writers as varied as Shakespeare, Hooker, Bacon, and Hobbes problematically engaged the traditional idea of order and helped define a new, secular one. In this intellectual history, Collins treats the idea of order as a dynamic concept which incorporates changing views of self, society, and the relationship between private and public during these years. He sees this as a process of meaning redefinition that simultaneously heightens and comes to terms with the dissolution of the old idea of order; the self-consciously articulated concept of the representative sovereign state replaces the vision of the divine cosmos as the medium for identity and social order. Collins draws on a wide range of political, literary, and other contemporary writings to chart this process--now associated with secularization--providing a provocative analysis of social and intellectual change.