SEVENTEENTH CENTURY最新文献

{"title":"The political thought of the English free state, 1649–1653 <b>The political thought of the English free state, 1649–1653</b> , by Markku Peltonen, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022, 270 pp., £75.00 (hardback), ISBN 9781009212045","authors":"Alice Hunt","doi":"10.1080/0268117x.2023.2279387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2023.2279387","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54080,"journal":{"name":"SEVENTEENTH CENTURY","volume":"31 42","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134954121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Elizabeth Currer: religious non-conformity in John Dryden’s <i>The Kind-Keeper</i> and Aphra Behn’s <i>The Widdow Ranter</i>","authors":"Cora James","doi":"10.1080/0268117x.2023.2276199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2023.2276199","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTIn many ways, Elizabeth Currer’s career typifies modern assumptions about Restoration actresses. In her mistress roles, we might recognise the ‘lusty young wench’ of John Harold Wilson’s 1958 study.Footnote11 Wilson, All the King’s Ladies, 2. In her provocative prologues, we can read the uneasy voyeurism Elizabeth Howe describes when she writes of how an actress’s ‘rapport with spectators’ could lead to ‘gratuitous titillation’.Footnote22 Howe, First English Actresses, 171. In her trapped wives, we can understand how the libertine ideals of Charles’s court uses and abuses its women. However, beyond her depiction of sexually explicit comic characters, the comedian, Currer, came to represent a specifically eroticised threat of religious dissent during periods of political crisis. By exploring the development of this line from John Dryden’s The Kind-Keeper (1680) to Aphra Behn’s The Widdow Ranter (1690), this paper demonstrates how Currer’s career both contributed to and challenged a theatrical dialogue surrounding the national anxieties of political unrest and ideological non-conformity.KEYWORDS: Restoration TheatreAphra BehnJohn DrydenThe Kind-KeeperThe Widdow Ranter Disclosure StatementThe author reports there are no competing interests to declare.Notes1 Wilson, All the King’s Ladies, 2.2 Howe, First English Actresses, 171.3 Todd, A Secret Life, 215.4 Howe, First English Actresses, 78.5 Bush-Bailey, Treading the Bawds, 39.6 Todd, A Secret Life, 237.7 Howe, First English Actresses, 78; Highfill, Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 4 of A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, 99; Bush-Bailey, Treading the Bawds, 39.8 Crowne, The Countrey Wit, sig. A4r.9 Behn, The Town-Fopp, 49.10 Howe, First English Actresses, 79.11 Rev, 17:5.12 Collecting data from EEBO and LION, I have found the term ‘Whore of Babylon’ or synonyms thereof used twenty-one times in eighteen plays during the period 1660 to 1700. Of the twenty-one references, seven are said either to, about, or by one of Currer’s characters. Of the other references, six are directly describing the influence of Rome and Popery, six are used to describe other characters, both male and female, and two are general oaths.13 Rev, 17:2.14 Dolan, Whores of Babylon, 6.15 Ibid., 85.16 Ibid., 27.17 Stevens, ‘Healing a Whorish Heart’, 71.18 Behn, Sir Patient Fancy, 13.19 Behn, Sir Patient Fancy, 89.20 Ibid., 72.21 Kenyon, Popish Plot; Harris, Restoration, 139–146.22 Kenyon, Popish Plot, 14.23 Ibid., 1.24 Van Lennep, The London Stage. Vol.1 of The London Stage, 276; Harris, Restoration, 176.25 Behn, The Feign’d Curtizans, sig. A4r.26 Ibid.27 Ibid.28 Ibid.29 Ibid.30 Ibid.31 Ibid.32 Ibid.33 Behn, The Feign’d Curtizans, sig. A4v.34 Ibid.35 Dryden, The Kind-Keeper, 16.36 Howe, First English Actresses, 79.37 Ibid.38 Ward, The Letters of John Dryden, 148.39 Dearing and Roper, Works of John Dryden, 375; Thompson, Coyness and Crime, 50.40 Dryden, The Kind-Keeper, 16.41 Ray, Andrew Marvell Companion, 95.42 Thompson, Coynes","PeriodicalId":54080,"journal":{"name":"SEVENTEENTH CENTURY","volume":"12 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134991390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Literature and Natural Theology in Early Modern England <b>Literature and Natural Theology in Early Modern England</b> , by Katherine Calloway, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 249 pp., £85.00 (hardback), ISBN 9781009415262","authors":"Mingna Cheng","doi":"10.1080/0268117x.2023.2279388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2023.2279388","url":null,"abstract":"\"Literature and Natural Theology in Early Modern England.\" The Seventeenth Century, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2 Notes1 Within this intersection of literature and natural theology, in the medieval, we have Rebecca Davis, Piers Plowman and the Books of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), and for the Romantic period, we have Colin Jager, The Book of God: Secularization and Design in the Romantic Era (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).","PeriodicalId":54080,"journal":{"name":"SEVENTEENTH CENTURY","volume":"118 11","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135136900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hospitality towards European travellers in Latin America in the colonial middle","authors":"Sarah Albiez-Wieck, Raquel Gil Montero","doi":"10.1080/0268117x.2023.2273472","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2023.2273472","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTHospitality was considered a Christian and humanitarian virtue in the early modern period. This article studies hospitality in eight travel reports by Europeans who travelled Latin America in the colonial middle, i.e. the long seventeenth century. We show that even though an infrastructure of paid lodging had been established, hospitality in private homes continued to be a central form of accommodation. In contrast to early modern Europe, tourism had not yet emerged, despite some travellers’ motives being mainly curiosity. We show how the travellers got to know their hosts, what they expected from them and how they expressed their gratitude. Hospitality could be provided by countrymen but also by complete strangers, the latter sometimes being the last resort for travellers in need. Hospitality was central for travellers rich and poor. Hospitality happened mainly among Europeans. Hospitality without consent, we argue, should no longer be referred to as such.KEYWORDS: hospitalitytravelLatin Americaseventeenth century AcknowledgementsThe research for this article was funded by a Feodor-Lynen-Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for Sarah Albiez-Wieck. Funding for an archival visit came from the University of Münster and another one from the Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America under the grant number 01UK2023B from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. We would like to thank colleagues present at a Workshop at CONICET-INCIHUSA in Mendoza, Argentina, and those from the Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Inquality – Conviviality for their helpful comments, especially Samuel Barbosa. We are also grateful for the very insightful comments of the anonymous peer-reviewer which helped enrich the article.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 ‘La hospitalidad ha dejado de practicarse desde que los adelantos de la civilzación moderna, facilitando comodidades para los viajeros en establecimientos públicos destinados á este fin, la ha hecho hasta cierto punto innecesario’ Serrano, Diccionario universal de la lengua castellana, ciencias y artes, 683.2 Real Academia Española, Real Academia Española 1726.3 Covarrubias, La recepción de la figura y obra de Humboldt en México 1821-2000..4 Hamlin, Alfonso de Palencia. ¿Autor del primer vocabulario romance latín que llegó a la imprenta?.5 Palencia, Universal vocabulario en latín y en romance. Tomo I, f. CLXXXXVIIIr.6 Maczak, Travel in Early Modern Europe, 8–9.7 Classen, Traveling to/in the North During the Middle Ages: The World of Northern Europe in Medieval and Early Modern Travel Narratives, 286.8 Bauks, Koenen and Pietsch, Alkier, WiBiLex – Das Bibellexikon.9 IslamReligion.com, The Religion of Islam.10 Cavallar, The Rights of Strangers, 2–3.11 In this respect it is to be mentioned that in many sixteenth-century travel reports – which were written mainly by conquerors and related the first contacts wit","PeriodicalId":54080,"journal":{"name":"SEVENTEENTH CENTURY","volume":"7 15","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135390801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"George Wither and the New World","authors":"Stephen Bardle","doi":"10.1080/0268117x.2023.2273476","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2023.2273476","url":null,"abstract":"Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 Armitage, ‘Literature and Empire’, 109. On Buchanan see Williamson, ‘An Empire to End Empire’, 232. On Daniel see Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America, 81.2 Wither, ‘To His Friend Cap: Smith, Vpon His Description of New England’, A3(r).3 For a detailed contrast between the Virginia Company’s civic humanism and Captain John Smith’s aggressive Machiavellianism see Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America, 177–86. For the poem being submitted via the printers see Barbour, The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith, 327–8.4 Wither, Wither’s Motto, D4(v). See also Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, 204.5 It is difficult to pinpoint the exact familial relationship between George Wither and Anthony and Richard Wither; see Pritchard, ‘According to Wood’, 283, n. 1. Richard Wither was made a shareholder in the Virginia Company on 5 January 1623. He seems to have been a merchant, judging by a reference to his overseas interests in the records of the Company; see Kingsbury (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London, II, 542. The merchant Anthony Wither may have been the poet’s brother; see Bigg Wither, Materials for a History of the Wither Family, 89. He was made a brother of the Virginia Company on 24 July 1621; see Kingsbury (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London, I, 521. He was later made a member of the Somers Islands Company in September 1626; see Lefroy, Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas or Somers Islands 1515–1685, I, 399. He rarely attended Company meetings due to spending most of his time in the United Provinces. His main input was in procuring saplings ideal for planting in Virginia from the United Provinces; see Kingsbury (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London, I, 521. The same Anthony Wither had made a possible allusion to George’s poetry in September 1614 in a letter from Brussels; see Norbrook, ‘The Masque of Truth’, 109, n. 69. In 1673, when investigating his account of George Wither’s life, John Aubrey planned to meet another Anthony Wither ‘who lives wth my Lady Clynton’ in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; see Pritchard, ‘According to Wood’, 282. This is likely to be the son of the merchant Anthony Wither; see Bigg Wither, Materials for a History of the Wither Family, 89.6 Ferrar, Sir Thomas Smith’s Misgovernment of the Virginia Company, 8, 12. Ferrar’s strong interest in the missionary aspects of colonisation explains his involvement in bringing the poem ‘The Church Militant’ by his friend George Herbert to press in the 1630s, when he was trying to resurrect favour for the Virginia Company. The poem anticipates the westward movement of religion to the New World. For the links between Sir John Danvers, George Herbert, and Ferrar see Powers-Beck, Writing the Flesh.7 Kingsbury (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London, II, 3","PeriodicalId":54080,"journal":{"name":"SEVENTEENTH CENTURY","volume":"4 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135635052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Trace of Stoic logic in Descartes: Stoic <i>axiōma</i> and Descartes’s <i>pronuntiatum</i> in the Second Meditation","authors":"Ayumu Tamura","doi":"10.1080/0268117x.2023.2263840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2023.2263840","url":null,"abstract":"Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 This paper uses the following abbreviations: AT: Œuvres de Descartes, eds. Charles Adam & Paul Tannery, nouvelle présentation, 11 vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1964–1974). Conventional abbreviations, volume numbers (Roman numerals), and page numbers (Arabic numerals) are shown in this order. All emphases (Italics) in the quoted portions have been added by the author. Reference is made to the translation by Cotthingham, et al. (CSM[K]: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes) but some portions of these have been altered by the author.2 Marion, Sur la Théologie blanche de Descartes, 380–381; cf. Brown, Turning Points: Essays in the History of Cultural Expressions, 162.3 Rosenthal, ‘Will and the Theory of Judgment’, 422.4 According to Londey and Johanson, the word ‘propositio’ was established by Apuleius as a name for what is true or false; one can not find this specific usage in literature written prior to his work. See Londey and Johanson, The Logic of Apuleius, 35.5 Abelard, Dialectica, 153.6 Gracia, ‘Propositions as Premisses of Syllogisms in Medieval Logic’, 545.7 Gracia, ibid.8 The following study analyses in detail the distinction between the terms used for the cogito: Tamura, ‘Bringing an End to the Interpretative Dispute on Descartes’s Cogito: the Cogito as Vérité, Cognitio, Propositio, and Conclusio’, 38–48.9 Ramus used ‘propositio’ to name major premises of syllogisms and ‘axioma’, as well as ‘enuntiatio/enuntiatum’, to name propositions that do not constitute syllogisms. See Aho and Yrjönsuuri, ‘Late Medieval Logic’, 83; Kneale and Kneale, The Development of Logic, 303.10 Fonseca’s Institutionum dialecticarum was used as a textbook of Logic in La Flèche. See Camille de Rochemonteix, Un Collège de jésuites aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: le Collège Henri IV de La Flèche, 27. In addition, Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations is one of the few references that Descartes himself mentions by name (4ae Resp., AT-VII, 235). Furthermore, Descartes mentions the commentaries of the Coimbrans as a textbook of philosophy with which he was familiar: ‘[I beg you] to tell me which are the most commonly used, and whether they have any new ones since twenty years ago. I remember only some of the Coimbricenses […]’ (AT-III, 185; CSMK, 154). The commentaries are long, so it is impossible to ensure that Descartes read them all, but it is useful to understand how the Latin word ‘pronuntiatum’ was used at the time.11 However, in Fonseca’s Institutiones, ‘pronuntiatum’ is used only once in a way that could be considered a paraphrase of ‘enuntiatio’, as far as I have been able to ascertain: ‘This enuntiatio, “Socrates is not an animal”, […] contradicts the antecedent. […] this pronuntiatum, “Socrates is not a philosopher”, does not contradict the antecedent. ([…] haec enuntiatio, Socrates non est animal, […] repugnat Antecedenti. […] ","PeriodicalId":54080,"journal":{"name":"SEVENTEENTH CENTURY","volume":"86 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136067982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"John Donne and English Puritanism, 1650–1700","authors":"Katherine Calloway","doi":"10.1080/0268117x.2023.2266480","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2023.2266480","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTIn recent decades, it has become clear that John Donne’s seventeenth-century readership is larger and more varied than was once believed. One audience that has not been given much scholarly attention, however, is English puritans on both sides of the Atlantic. This article brings to light several possible avenues for the transmission of Donne’s works to these readers and then identifies explicit references and poetic allusions to Donne by writers of these theological and ecclesiastical persuasions.KEYWORDS: John Donnepuritanismnonconformity Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Brooke Conti, rev. of Manuscript Matters, E100.2 Lein, ‘John Donne’, 114–16, lists twenty-four first editions of complete works authored by Donne printed in the seventeenth century; Sullivan, ‘Modern Scholarly Editions’, 65–80, works through the early prose publications/editions among these; he also collects hundreds of appearances of Donne’s verse in seventeenth-century multi-authored works in The Influence of John Donne.3 Critical studies of Donne’s early reception include A.J. Smith, ‘Donne’s Reputation’, and John Donne: The Critical Heritage; Shawcross, ‘Some Early References to John Donne’, ‘Some Further Early Allusions to Donne’, and ‘More Early Allusions to Donne and Herbert’; Sullivan, Influence of John Donne and ‘John Donne’s Seventeenth-Century Readers’; Daniel Starza Smith, John Donne and the Conway Papers; Lara M. Crowley, Manuscript Matters; and Joshua Eckhardt, Religion around John Donne.4 Sullivan, ‘Donne’s Seventeenth-Century Readers’, 26–27.5 ‘Puritan’, ‘Reformed’, ‘nonconformist’, and ‘dissenter’ have different meanings, the latter two applying in the Restoration when conformity to the established church was again enforced in England to varying degrees. Nonetheless, there is considerable overlap on the ground among members of these groups between 1650 and 1700, and in this essay I aim to cast a net over this theological and ecclesiastical plot – even including members of radical sects – defined against conforming or Catholic readers. For a discussion of the complexity of these categories, see Adlington, ‘Restoration, Religion, and Law’, 424–25; a helpful survey of the literary output of dissenters between 1558 and 1689 can be found in Sell, ‘Varieties of English Separatist and Dissenting Writings’, 25–46.6 Ibid., 29.7 Sullivan, Influence of John Donne, 7.8 Barbara Lewalski, Donne’s Anniversaries and the Poetry of Praise, 307–70.9 Raspa, ‘Introduction’, xli-xliv; Sullivan, ‘Introduction’, xlii-lvii, xxiv.10 Raspa, ‘Introduction’, lxxii-iii.11 Sullivan (ed.), Biathanatos, 73, citing Paul Sellin. Notably, Grindal’s parents were English puritan separatists who emigrated in 1608: see Schoneveld, ‘t Word grooter plas, 19.12 Dixon, ‘Sermons in Print’, 469. Dixon adds that ‘Isaac Watts’s copy [of Ecclesiastes], in which he recorded the recommendations of his tutor Thomas Rowe, is in Dr Williams’s Librar","PeriodicalId":54080,"journal":{"name":"SEVENTEENTH CENTURY","volume":"PAMI-1 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135413546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Devil from over the Sea: remembering and forgetting Oliver Cromwell in Ireland <b>The Devil from over the Sea: remembering and forgetting Oliver Cromwell in Ireland</b> , by Sarah Covington, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022, 410 pp., £29.99 (hardback), ISBN 9780198848318","authors":"Alan Ford","doi":"10.1080/0268117x.2023.2267508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2023.2267508","url":null,"abstract":"\"The Devil from over the Sea: remembering and forgetting Oliver Cromwell in Ireland.\" The Seventeenth Century, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2","PeriodicalId":54080,"journal":{"name":"SEVENTEENTH CENTURY","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135883981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rhetoric and scepticism: Thomas Browne’s Amphibium mind in <i>Religio Medici</i>","authors":"Seung Cho","doi":"10.1080/0268117x.2023.2261409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2023.2261409","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis article explores Thomas Browne’s figuration of the Amphibium mind in Religio Medici as the hallmark of the seventeenth-century literary mind, oriented toward intellectual flexibility, generosity, and harmony. The article argues that such a mind is the specific product of Browne’s double engagement with rhetoric and scepticism, whose innate kinship has not received much critical attention. Religio Medici includes multiple locations, in which Browne’s diversity-seeking, conciliatory rhetoric is aligned with his sceptical acuity. The rhetoric and scepticism share dissatisfaction with any dogmatic centralisation of ideas and sensitivity to the ambiguity of truth. Their affiliation is often expressed in this book as a dynamic presentation of conflicting perspectives, ideas, and values, subject to a careful deliberation that demands the suspension of judgment and the open-minded acceptance of different opinions. Investigating this rhetoric-scepticism coupling illuminates the process of how his distinctively magnanimous mind germinated and developed into his literary profile.KEYWORDS: BrownescepticismrhetoricepistemologyAmphibiumcreative generalisation AcknowledgmentsI genuinely thank Dr. Kenneth Gross and Dr. Jonathan Baldo of the University of Rochester for their inspiring feedback and sincere commitment to the development of this article.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Pascal, VII. 130.2 All quotations from Religio Medici are from the text printed in Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Ramie Targoff. New York: New York Review Books, 2012. Religio Medici will be hereafter written in this paper as an abbreviation, Religio.3 Digby, 114, 115, criticises Browne’s stylistic extravagance, which, in his opinion, lacks the clarity of thought necessary for a philosopher, reducing Religio to a collection of ‘aequivocall considerations,’ not articulated ‘scientifically and methodically.’ Johnson, xiv, famously states that Browne’s mind consists of ‘self-love’ and ‘an imagination vigorous and fertile,’ despite his distaste for the author’s fragmentary, flamboyant rhetoric. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 176, defines Browne as ‘a quiet and sublime enthusiast’ as well as ‘a fantast, a humourist, a brain with a twist,’ whose mind is ‘egotistic like Montaigne.’ Hazlitt, 333, favourably views the bewildering power of Browne’s prose, characterizing his literary mind with ‘the universality of its nature and the inscrutableness of its origin.’ As a fervent proponent of Browne, Pater, 164, pays attention to the author’s ingenious, sympathetic mind in inquiry as the source of his ‘intellectual powers’ untouched by prejudice, one that ‘tend[s] strongly to agnosticism.’4 Matthiessen, 103.5 De Quincey, 44; also qtd. in Matthiessen, 120.6 Melville, 121.7 Conti, 112.8 Berensmeyer, 116.9 Barbour, 601, 604.10 Many Browne critics have attempted to define the notion of","PeriodicalId":54080,"journal":{"name":"SEVENTEENTH CENTURY","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135592818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The ambassador and the press: printed diplomatic letters and the entanglement of public and private news provision in the late seventeenth-century Dutch Republic","authors":"Basil Bowdler, Arthur der Weduwen","doi":"10.1080/0268117x.2023.2249861","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2023.2249861","url":null,"abstract":"In 1669, the regents of the States General, the federal assembly of the Dutch Republic, instructed their printer (Statendrukker) henceforth to print all documents that they required in at least five copies. Amongst resolutions, placards and ordinances, this included the regular despatches from the Republic’s diplomatic agents. This remarkable printed correspondence, which has never before been studied in depth, is the focus of our article. The practice of printing diplomatic despatches was unique to the Dutch Republic: by drawing attention to this neglected source, we shed light on the circulation of news amongst the political elite of the Dutch Republic, as well as broader diplomatic and news networks in Europe. By directly comparing the content of the news provided in the diplomatic despatches with that publicly available in the commercial newspapers of the Republic, we also challenge a dichotomy between public and private news provision and a perception of the regents as obsessed with secrecy. We suggest that the printed despatches were not valued by the States General because they contained exclusive information, but rather because they could be used to verify news already available to the regents through other sources, and to facilitate the circulation of information from the States General in The Hague to the provincial States and city councils. This article also presents evidence that the States General’s printed despatches occasionally circulated among foreign agents and officials.","PeriodicalId":54080,"journal":{"name":"SEVENTEENTH CENTURY","volume":"97 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135739406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}