Bridget DeLany Commonplace Book

(10.13)

(9.33)

(8.10)

(7.18)

(6.9)

(5.17)

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(1.20)

It doesn’t surprise me at all that “access to information” and “modern relevance” are the two tags that I used the most. The idea of what information is publicly available and who gets access to it is probably the element of Renaissance literature that interests me the most: as modern readers we take for granted all the information that we have at our fingertips (between books and the internet), but I see that fact with a new perspective when I consider that access to books was a luxury for many people. Also, the spread of people via colonialism and the spread of information are, unfortunately, completely inseparable from each other, and I think it’s important to reckon with that. As for modern relevance, I see that tag as being highly related to the other one I discussed; I can’t help but read these pieces with a modern eye, and by drawing connections to events and works of literature from today, I feel more of a personal relationship to the things I’m reading - so they don’t feel so distant and far away. And one other theme that came up a lot during these responses is what I would generally term social justice, which is kind of comprised of the tags of race, women, and contact. As I said, it’s impossible not to read the pieces in this class with the present in mind, and a lot of the ideas discussed in them take on a dark/ironic tone knowing everything that comes after them. For instance, Pizan trying to disabuse her readers of stereotypes of women feels somewhat tragic knowing how, in some ways, so little has changed. Similarly, reading all the contact narratives and accounts of indigenous people is really unfortunate given the horrible impact colonialism has had on them, and in truth I feel somewhat implicated myself reading about how my European ancestors viewed them as subhuman. Overall, I’d say my general approach to reading all the works in this course was to filter them through the lens of my modern perspective, and I ultimately think that helped me to better internalize the ideas discussed, as well as gain a new understanding of how we’ve arrived at these present times.

I chose this quote because it ties back to the first response I did, to Milton’s Aeropagitica. I wrote about Milton’s defense of the freedom of the press in religious terms – how God gave humans free will, reason, and judgment, and so people should be allowed access to all sorts of books to determine for themselves what is good and what is not. To me, this quote from Paradise Lost presents an obvious parallel (and contradiction): in this context, access to knowledge is posed as an evil thing, used by Satan to tempt Adam and Eve away from God. I’m not sure how to reconcile these two ideas of Milton’s, and I wonder if he himself saw these two thoughts as being in conflict.

In Cavendish’s conception of a utopian society, it seems she places a greater emphasis on peace and unity than on justice and equality, as More and Bacon do. This attitude can be seen again later when the Duchess says she wants to make her world into one united family, under one government, language, and religion. I find this ironic considering the value Cavendish places on scientific inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge; one would expect her to, like Bacon, envision a society with a diversity of ideas and opinions. The only explanation I can think of for this is that she seems to hold truth as a value above all else, so perhaps the one government/ruler/language/etc. she envisions is the true one, and she regards all else with a “trim the fat” kind of attitude.

I view this quote as an encapsulation of what Bacon’s utopia stands for. It is interesting comparing Bensalem to More’s utopia – More wrote at great length on the religious and social mores that brought equality to their society, but in Bensalem it seems that equality comes more from access to information. This makes sense considering the time at which Bacon was writing, after contact with the Americas, and right on the precipice of the Scientific Revolution. I think Bacon was prescient in seeing the exchange of ideas as being more valuable than the exchange of material goods; even though everyone at the time was excited about the imports from the New World (e.g. tobacco, sugar cane), it was the scientific discoveries being swapped across nations that would come to shape the world into what it is today.

This quote sort of puts into perspective Hariot’s reasoning for including a section about the native inhabitants of Virginia. One could potentially read this section and conclude that he is observing and writing with an anthropological eye, interested in them and their customs out of sheer curiosity. This paragraph, however, rules out such an interpretation. Rather than appreciating them as a people in their own right, he sees them as incidental to his main goal of colonizing the land – they are an inconvenience to deal with. It seems he does not quite regard them as fully human, a view that is substantiated later when you see the indifference with which he describes the illness and death he and his fellow Englishmen inflicted upon the natives. Reading this first contact narrative from a modern perspective and knowing everything else that would later befall indigenous Americans, it sadly seems to me that there was no other way that things could have gone; the narrow-mindedness of European culture and the grim determination with which they pursued colonization seems to have doomed the natives from the very beginning.

This quote jumped out to me as being kind of disturbing, that Redcrosse would want to kill Una for making a romantic gesture and spoiling her chastity. (To continue the trend of making connections to other texts, this part reminded me of Brave New World when John attacks Lena for doing the same thing.) It’s interesting what a closely held value chastity was at the time (and in some ways still is today); and of course, the poem is dedicated to Queen Elizabeth who was celebrated for her virginity. In a poem that is all about virtues, it seems that chastity is one of the only ways women are able to embody virtuousness. Especially when comparing Una to Redcrosse, who is in all ways a model Christian, the limitations placed on women are apparent – there are even fewer ways for them to be good.

This reminds me a lot of Williams Carlos Williams’ Spring and All, where he argues that writing that comes from the imagination, specifically poetry, is actually realer than any attempt at verisimilitude; indeed, imaginative works create their own realities. I think if Sidney had been alive to read Williams treatise he would have found it compelling. In particular, I see a similarity between the two poets in that both place a heavy emphasis on the unique perspective of the poet serving as a lens through which to view the world.