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Francis Bacon's New Atlantis Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis Reflections on the Revolution in France Price_00_prelims 1 14/10/02, 9:11 am series editors Jeff Wallace and John Whale founding editors Stephen Copley and Jeff Wallace advisory editors Lynda Nead, Birbeck College, London Gillian Beer, Girton College, Cambridge Roy Porter, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine Anne Janowitz, University of Warwick This series offers specially commissioned, cross-disciplinary essays on texts of seminal importance to Western culture. Each text has had an impact on the way we think, write and live beyond the confines of its original discipline, and it is only through an understanding of its multiple meanings that we can fully appreciate its importance. already published Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species David Amigoni, Jeff Wallace (eds) Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations Stephen Copley, Kathryn Sutherland (eds) Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince Martin Coyle (ed.) Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex Ruth Evans (ed.) Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams Laura Marcus (ed.) The Great Exhibition of 1851 Louise Purbrick (ed.) Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France John Whale (ed.) Price_00_prelims 2 14/10/02, 9:11 am Edmund Burke’s Francis Bacon’s NEW ATLANTIS New interdisciplinary essays BRONWEN PRICE editor Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Price_00_prelims 3 14/10/02, 9:11 am Copyright © Manchester University Press 2002 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors. This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC- ND) licence, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester m13 9nr, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, ny 10010, USA http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for isbn 0 7190 6051 6 hardback isbn 0 7190 6052 4 paperback First published 2002 10090807060504030210987654321 Typeset in Apollo by Koinonia, Manchester Printed in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd, Midsomer Norton Price_00_prelims 4 14/10/02, 9:11 am Contents Series introduction page vii Acknowledgements ix Chronology x bronwen price 1 Introduction 1 paul salzman 2 Narrative contexts for Bacon’s New Atlantis 28 sarah hutton 3 Persuasions to science: Baconian rhetoric and the New Atlantis 48 david colclough 4 Ethics and politics in the New Atlantis 60 richard serjeantson 5 Natural knowledge in the New Atlantis 82 jerry weinberger 6 On the miracles in Bacon’s New Atlantis 106 claire jowitt 7 ’Books will speak plain’? Colonialism, Jewishness and politics in Bacon’s New Atlantis 129 kate aughterson 8 ‘Strange things so probably told’: gender, sexual difference and knowledge in Bacon’s New Atlantis 156 simon wortham 9 Censorship and the institution of knowledge in Bacon’s New Atlantis 180 Notes on contributors 199 Select bibliography 201 Index 204 Price_00_prelims 5 14/10/02, 9:11 am vi Series introduction Price_00_prelims 6 14/10/02, 9:11 am Series introduction vii Series introduction Texts are produced in particular cultures and in particular historical circumstances. In turn, they shape and are shaped by those cultures as they are read and re-read in changing circumstances by different groups with different commitments, engagements and interests. Such readings are themselves then re-absorbed into the ideological frameworks within which the cultures develop. The seminal works drawn on by cultures thus have multiple existences within them, exerting their influence in distinct and perhaps contradictory ways. As these texts have been ‘claimed’ by particular academic disciplines, however, their larger cultural significance has often been obscured. Recent work in cultural history and textual theory has stimulated critical awareness of the complex relations between texts and cultures, highlighting the limits of current academic formations and opening the possibility of new approaches to interdisciplinarity. At the same time, however, the difficulties of interdisciplinary work have become increas- ingly apparent at all levels of research and teaching. On the one hand the abandonment of disciplinary specialisms may lead to amorphousness rather than challenging interdisciplinarity; on the other, interdisciplinary approaches may in the end simply create new specialisms or sub- specialisms, with their own well-guarded boundaries. In these circum- stances, yesterday’s ground-breaking interdisciplinary study may become today’s autonomous (and so potentially circumscribed) discipline, as has happened, it might be argued, in the case of some forms of History of Ideas. The volumes in this series highlight the advantages of interdisci- plinary work while at the same time encouraging a critical reflexiveness about its limits and possibilities; they seek to stimulate consideration both of the distinctiveness and integrity of individual disciplines, and of the transgressive potential of interdisciplinarity. Each volume offers a collection of new essays on a text of seminal intellectual and cultural importance, displaying the insights to be gained from the juxtaposition of disciplinary perspectives and from the negotiation of disciplinary boundaries. The volumes represent a challenge to the conception of authorship which locates the significance of the text in the individual act of creation; but we assume that no issues (including those of interdisci- plinarity and authorship) are foreclosed, and that individual volumes drawing contributions from a broad range of disciplinary standpoints, Price_00_prelims 7 14/10/02, 9:11 am viii Series introduction will raise questions about the texts they examine more by the perceived disparities of approach that they encompass than by any interpretative consensus that they demonstrate. All essays are specially commissioned for the series and are designed to be approachable to non-specialist as well as specialist readers: substantial editorial introductions provide a framework for the debates conducted in each volume, and highlight the issues involved. We would, finally, like to dedicate the series to the memory of our colleague Stephen Copley, whose insight and energy started it all. Jeff Wallace, University of Glamorgan John Whale, University of Leeds GENERAL EDITORS Price_00_prelims 8 14/10/02, 9:11 am Acknowledgements I would like to thank all of the contributors to this volume for their patience, efficiency and hard work. My thanks also go to the following people for their advice and support: Jeff Wallace, Martin Coyle, Jon and Jocelyn Donlon, Stephen Copley (in memoriam), my colleagues from the English and History department at Portsmouth, especially to Robbie Gray, who sadly died before this project was completed, Sue Harper and Simon Wortham. I am also very grateful for the administrative assistance of Lyn Kerr and the help of our librarian, David Francis. I am particularly indebted to Tom Cooper, for his tender loving care, and to my dog, Chloe, who slept faithfully and soundly during much of the process of putting this volume together. This book is dedicated to my father, Israel Price (1929–78). Price_00_prelims 9 14/10/02, 9:11 am Chronology with particular reference to this volume 1561 Francis Bacon born 1573 Bacon enters Trinity College Cambridge 1576 Bacon enrolls at Gray’s Inn 1582 Bacon admitted as barrister 1584 Bacon elected MP for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis (he represented various constituencies as an MP for the next 36 years) 1589 Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation 1596 Bacon appointed Queen’s Counsel Extraordinary Walter Ralegh’s Discovery of Guiana 1597 Bacon’s Essays (first ed.), rpt. 1597, 1598, 1606 and 1612 1598 Gresham College founded 1599 James VI’s Basilikon Doron 1600 Bacon appointed Double Reader at Gray’s Inn William Gilbert’s De Magnete 1601 Bacon acts as state prosecutor in trial of Essex for rebellion Bacon’s A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons Attempted and Committed by Robert, late Earl of Essex etc. 1603 Bacon knighted by James I Bacon’s A Brief Discourse Touching the Happy Union of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland John Florio’s Essays of Montaigne Elizabeth I dies, succeeded by James I The Accademia dei Lincei of Rome founded 1604 Bacon appointed King’s Counsel Peace with Spain Joseph de Acosta Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies (1590, trans. English 1604) Price_00_prelims 10 14/10/02, 9:11 am Chronology xi 1605 Bacon’s Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Humane, rpt. 1629 Gunpowder Plot 1606 Charter for Virginia 1607 Bacon appointed Solicitor General English colony founded in Virginia 1608 Bacon appointed Clerk of the Star Chamber John Smith’s True Relation of Virginia 1609 Bacon’s The Wisdom of the Ancients (English trans. Sir Arthur Gorges 1619) 1610 Silvester Jourdan’s Discovery of Bermudas Galileo’s Siderius Nuncius (confirms Copernicus’s theory that the earth revolves round the sun) 1611 King
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