My officemate and I are finishing up coursework this semester and we both figured we'd like to do something that would prep us for our exams in the spring. During my time at Maryland there hasn't been an early modern poetry seminar. Since both of our lists are going to be replete with the lyric poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, why not study it together? So, we designed an independent study examining poetry and promises and perils of humanism, the role of the poet in sounding the limits of human knowledge, virtue, free will, and capacity for justice and good governance.
Harold Bloom’s thesis regarding “the invention of the human” in the Age of Shakespeare is famously problematic, but it insistently, even belligerently continues to bear on discussions of humanist thought and literature in early modern England. The development of modern subjectivity crosses with Renaissance humanism by locating “the dignity of man,” “the outstandingness of human nature” specifically in the powers of the mind common to all humanity. While the flowering of the human mind led to great advancements in egalitarian thought, it had the simultaneous effect of transforming the body into mere potting soil for the mental faculties. This line of thought drives a wedge between human and animal, subject and object, eventually crystallizing in the mind/body dualism of Cartesian philosophy. Humanism’s influence on the development of the New Science corresponded with the disenchantment of the magical properties of things and the totemic power of animals. The early modern subject increasingly became set above the world as an intercessor between God and the rest of God’s creation. Thus, in any discussion of “the invention of the human,” we must necessarily also consider the parallel invention of the nonhuman: the invention of the indignity of the nonhuman, the baseness of the less-than-human.
In defining the relationship between the emergent early modern subject and early modern objects, humanists were obsessed with the question of good governance. From Castiglione to Vives, from More to Bacon, from conduct manuals to husbandry manuals, from dietaries to political treatises, humanist thought was deeply interested in the pursuit of an ordered, well-defined social grammar which defined the proper relation of subject to object, mind to body, king to citizen, and human to nonhuman. Like many philosophers and theologians before him, Pico’s hierarchical worldview regarding the dignity of life places the human in a state of privilege. Man, by virtue of his mental capacity, is invested with both power and responsibility, the potential for oppression and compassion. Having transcended the basic animal needs on the Maslowian hierarchy, the early modern subject freely reorders the world either through love or through violence. The result may be a war between man and nature, as is the case for Sir Tophas in John Lyly’s Endymion, or it may be a nature in perfect harmony with human society, as is the case for Ben Jonson in “To Penshurst.”
I'm not yet sure how well this idea holds together but it's something I'm going to be working with a lot this semester. Hopefullly, by December I'll have a marginally better understanding of how pastoral poetry conceives of the proper social, political, and ecological relationship between human and nonhuman. I'm hoping to explore this in a lecture I'm giving on The Winter's Tale later this semester as well. The Shakespeare lecture I'm TAing this semester is unabashedly Bloomian, so I hope that'll be a nice counterpoint, an opportunity to examine the drama of human identity from the perspective of the nonhuman. Any suggestions appreciated!
This is really thought-provoking, Rob. I'm starting to compile my lists for qualifying exams, and I wonder if you have any mid to late C17 works--primary or secondary--concerning diet particularly. I'm interested in looking at the increasingly gendered way diet is talked about as well as the preoccupation with "moderation" or temperance that later becomes an C18 obsession. While I see you working a lot with issues of the human/nonhuman and, as I'm guessing, animal studies, I wonder if you've come across any reading on this topic that you'd be willing to share :)
ReplyDeleteI think it sounds like a really interesting set of ideas to ponder and I hope you continue to blog about it. I've been giving more thought lately about the effect of humanism on non-human animals. The focus on rationality could obviously lead to better conditions or rights for animals, but the human/nonhuman duality that the whole way of thinking rests on could obviously be ultimately detrimental to nonhumans. Interesting stuff.
ReplyDeleteThis might be beyond the scope of what you're talking about, but your observation of "an ordered, well-defined social grammar which defined the proper relation of..." made me think of the many movements in the early modern period that attempted to "purify" English and make it very orderly. They tried to make English orderly and logical like they thought Latin and Greek were (which, of course, they never were - at least not any more or less than any other natural language) and it actually resulted in some odd things going on in our language that are still with us today (admonitions against split infinitives and ending a clause with a preposition both come to mind as easy examples).
I'm not exactly sure how any of this might fit into what you're doing. It's just something your post made me think of.
Good luck.