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Notes to the Introduction Notes Notes to the Introduction 1. In the interest of readability, following this note I will cease my use of scare-quotes around `nature' and related terms; I hope that the ideological weight of these concepts will, nevertheless, remain apparent. 2. Yachnin's suggestion that courtlyliterature and non-literaryprose were probablymore `volatile' than dramatic texts tallies with myown under- standing of non-dramatic writing (see Yachnin, pp. 54±6). 3. George Held's discussion of the relationship between the Herbert siblings is a good example of the traditional valorization of the pious vicar of Bemerton against the supposedlybrash and somewhat nastycourtier/ dilettante/gayblade. 4. Mydeployment of quotation marks around this ®rst use of the term `lesbian' signi®es a recognition that, though criticallyuseful today, the word would not have carried the same meaning in earlymodern England; the term will go unmarked throughout the rest of the book. 5. A sampling of the scholarly®eld indicates the prevalence of the usual group. Joan Bennett's Four Metaphysical Poets (1934) includes Crashaw, Donne, George Herbert, and Vaughan; her revised edition, Five Metaphysical Poets (1964), adds Marvell to the mix. Barbara Lewalski and Andrew Sabol's anthology Major Poets of the Earlier Seventeenth Century (1973) reiterates the group of ®ve, as does Donald Mackenzie's more recent study The Metaphysical Poets (1990). Richard Willmott's collection, Four Metaphysical Poets (1985), drops Crashaw. The Modern Language Association of America's pedagogical guidebook, Approaches to Teaching the Metaphysical Poets (1990), includes essays which usefully illuminate the connections between Metaphysical authors and, amongst others, Ben Jonson, Tottel's poets, and seventeenth-centuryemblematists; however, in the `Approaches to Speci®c Poets' section of the text, the ®ve canonical Metaphysicals are again selected for in-depth scrutiny. Frances Austin's The Language of the Metaphysical Poets (1992) substitutes Thomas Traherne for Marvell, while Janis Lull's The Metaphysical Poets: A Chronology (1994), includes Donne, George Herbert, Crashaw, Marvell, Vaughan, and Traherne. 6. On Gardner's canonizing and critical in¯uence, see Nigel Smith's essay`The Metaphysical Penguin'. While I agree with Smith that Gardner's Introduction and selection need to be reconsidered, I am dismayed by his view that Metaphysical literature is mere `distraction' for young writers (p. 112). 7. Helgerson, for instance, remarks that `in earlymodern England the language of politics was most often the language of religion' (Nationhood, p. 252); see also Shuger, Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance. 157 158 Notes 8. Konrad Eisenbichler discusses mystical sublimation in Michelangelo's religious poetry, usefully adding an awareness of how homoeroticism complicates the picture. For correlative commentary, see James Saslow's introduction and notes to his translation of Michelangelo's poems. 9. See, for instance, George Herbert's condemnation of `this world of sug'red lies' in `The Rose' and `Dullness'. Richard Rambuss, Michael Schoenfeldt, and Richard Strier challenge entirelyspiritualized readings of manyof Herbert's lyrics, notably `The Pearl', `Sinnes Round', `The Flower', `Love (III)', and `Perirrhanterium'. 10. Mark Breitenberg's study Anxious Masculinity is a rare and welcome exception to the practice of separating homo- and heteroerotic matters. 11. For more on Natural Law, see Heinrich Rommen's The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy and the papers gathered together in Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays (ed. Robert George). Especially in terms of sexuality(a concern that White acknowledges as the most vexed for Natural Law [p. 11]) I have also bene®ted from Richard McCabe's Incest, Drama and Nature's Law, 1550±1700. 12. This illustration of Emblem LXXX from Alciati's Emblemata has been supplied courtesyof Glasgow UniversityLibrary, Department of Special Collections. 13. For an in-depth discussion of the Christian injunction against `unnatural' (especiallyfemale±female) sexual relations, see Bernadette Brooten's exemplaryanalysis of St Paul's Epistle to the Romans 1: 18±32 (pp. 215±66). Brooten argues that accusations of homoerotic unnaturalness in the ancient Roman/earlyChristian world were rooted in culturallycontrived gender asymmetry (pp. 216, 234±7, 256, 264, 281, 301). Her ®ndings on the connections between gender and sexualityhelp to illuminate manifestations of negative evaluations in later times and other places. While the topic is beyond the scope of my study, early modern conceptualizations of gender and sexual nature and disorder are also deeplyindebted to mediaeval precursors. JeffreyRichards's wide-ranging studyis an excellent introduction to this subject. More speci®cally, one might also consider Dame Nature's pronouncements in Alan of Lille's The Plaint of Nature (e.g., Metre 1, Prose 4, and Prose 5) and the learned tradition of moralized interpretations of Ovid (the so-called ovide moralise). On the former, see Jan Ziolkowski's book and a rather different reading byMark Jordan (pp. 67±91). On the latter, Fausto Ghisalberti provides a good introduction. 14. The classic debunking of Jonson's myth-making is found in Raymond Williams's The Country and the City. 15. The secondaryliterature on the misogynist exemplars of the querelle des femmes is now relativelyvast. The question of the naturalization of gender inequalityis, however, discussed with particular depth byMerryWiesner , Linda Woodbridge, and AnthonyFletcher (who offers a comparative analysis of masculinity and femininity; on women's supposed natural inferiority, see esp. his chapter entitled `The Weaker Vessel' [pp. 60±82]). 16. Knox bases his misogynist rhetoric principally on the authority of Aristotle and St Paul. The immediate inspiration for his sblast wa the Notes 159 objectionable rule of the two queens of Scotland and England, `our mischeuous Maryes' (p. 41v). His comments are also spiced with anti- Catholic prejudice (see p. 30rÀv). 17. R. S. White situates More and his text within a Natural Law framework, with particular regard to the political considerations of the earlysixteenth- centurystruggle between Natural Law and positive law (pp. 107±33). 18. In a letter to Sir Henry Goodyer (May±June 1609), Donne employs similar imageryto make an analogybetween `the Primitive diet and custome' of eating `Akornes' and `such formes, and dressings of Religion, as would distemper and misbecome us, and make us corrupt towards God' (Letters, p. 101). Donne's point here is not to disparage religious practices that do not conform to his own, but to posit the culturallydetermined nature of devotional habits. While it is less vehementlystated, Donne's position shares much in common with his earlier `Paradox IV'. Helgerson's discussion of the symbolic opposition between the barbarity and natural- ness of acorns and the civilityof wheat bread in earlymodern cultural debates (Nationhood, pp. 29±33) provides a context rfo Donne's declarations which align him, at least provisionally, with men like Roger Ascham, Sidney, and Spenser, who advocated an `active model of self-fashioning' based on a knowledge of historical difference (Nationhood, p. 29). 19. Arthur Marotti brie¯yaddresses how, in his unpublished treatise Biathanatos, Donne steers a discussion of the cultural basis of moralityin ways that subvert King James's political prerogative (pp. 189±90). 20. Jonathan Dollimore explores the Montaignean `decentring of man' in relation to earlymodern English drama and cultural materialist theory (Radical Tragedy, pp. 14±21, 173±4). 21. Earlymodern courtesyliterature is replete with testimonies to the instabilityof nature and the hegemonyof culture. One of the most trenchantexamplesofthisisfound in Galateo, a mid-sixteenth-century dialogue written bythe Italian archbishop and papal nuncio, Giovanni Della Casa, and ®rst translated into English byRobert Peterson in 1576. Della Casa credits the humanist belief in social and intellectual improvement, at the same time as he takes a sceptical attitude towards custom and the emptiness of courtesyrituals. `Ceremonies', he sighs, are not onlylies, `but also Treacheries and Treasons' which too often lead people to ruin (p. 42; cf. pp. 43±4). For an exploration of courtesybooks in the English context which pays attention to the highly scripted and strategic dimension of aristocratic conduct, see Frank Whigham's excellent study. 22. See also Traherne's poem `Innocence'. Notes to Chapter 1: Strangeness and Desire 1. Despite Johnson's importance in the history of employing `Metaphysical' as a literaryterm, in his Dictionary of the English Language he onlyde®nes the word and its cognates according to their philosophical/scienti®c senses. 160 Notes 2. Other cognates for Metaphysical that one ®nds in the early seventeenth centuryinclude `transnatural' and `preternatural'. The de®nitions by Bullokar and Cockeram remained the standard models for Thomas Blount's Glossographia (1656), Elisha Coles's An English Dictionary (1676), John Kersey's A New English Dictionary (1702) and Dictionarium Anglo-Britanni- cum (1708), and James Buchanan's Linguae Britannicae Vera Pronunciatio (1757). Florio tinkers with these de®nitions but leaves their core meanings intact in his Vocabolario (1611; rev. edn 1659) and Queen Anna's New World of Wordes (1611). 3. John Partridge writes in a related manner in his mid-sixteenth-century pamphlet, The Great Wonders That Are Chaunced
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