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The Prolongation of Life in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, with Emphasis on Francis Bacon

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The Prolongation of Life in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, with Emphasis on Francis Bacon THE PROLONGATION OF LIFE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE AND CULTURE, WITH EMPHASIS ON FRANCIS BACON ROGER MARCUS JACKSON A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2010 Approved by: Dr. Reid Barbour Dr. Mary Floyd-Wilson Dr. Darryl Gless Dr. James O‘Hara Dr. Jessica Wolfe ©2010 Roger Marcus Jackson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT ROGER MARCUS JACKSON: The Prolongation of Life in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Under the direction of Reid Barbour) Drawing upon early modern texts of poetry, theology, and natural philosophy written in England and the continent, this dissertation explores the intellectual traditions inherent in Renaissance discourses addressing the prolongation of life. It is organized around two nodal questions: Can life be prolonged? Should it be prolonged? The project hinges upon Francis Bacon (1561-1626), for whom the prolongation of life in the sense of a longer human lifespan serves as the loftiest goal of modern experimental science. Addressing the first question, Part One illustrates the texture and diversity of early modern theories of senescence and medical treatments against the ―disease‖ of old age promoted by Galen, Avicenna, medieval theologians, Jean Fernel, Marsilio Ficino, and Paracelsus. Part Two then demonstrates that Bacon‘s theory of senescence and corresponding therapies nevertheless differ from those of his predecessors and contemporaries in three regards: their attempt to isolate senescence from disease, their postulation of senescence as a process based on universal structures and actions of matter, and their deferral to further experiment for elucidation. Addressing the second question, Part Three situates Bacon within a moral and theological context. It first divulges this context through a close analysis of his most explicit defenses for his project of life extension. Cued by Bacon, who argues that the prolongation of life is the most basic form of Christian charity as well as a natural desire, subsequent iii chapters engage two sources by which early modern debates about the prolongation of life were fueled, Christian theology and classical philosophy. These inform poems and plays dealing with senescence and human longevity by two English authors whose lives overlapped Bacon‘s, Edmund Spenser and Ben Jonson. A comparison of their works with passages from the Bible, Seneca, Lucretius, Cicero, and John Calvin discloses tensions resident within early modern culture at large, tensions that arose from a matrix of conflicting beliefs—a natural desire for survival, Stoic and religious injunctions against life for life‘s sake, optimistic and pessimistic valuations of old age, and contrasting natural and transcendent ideals of human perfection. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation on the prolongation of life has consumed a number of years of my own life, and in that time I have relied upon the assistance and encouragement of numerous persons who have helped me complete it. First, I must express my gratitude to all members of my committee. Of those on my committee, my director, Dr. Barbour, must be singled out for special thanks. His vast knowledge of and enthusiasm for everything about the Renaissance has been an inspiration for me, impelling me to pursue texts and ideas that initially seemed to lie far from the literature with which I began. Additionally, his deference and his irrepressible energy meant that he read everything I sent him graciously and fairly, no matter how long or dense, not even when after two years‘ silence I sent him a substantial first installment. Without the many words of good cheer from him and someone who matches his intelligence and verve, Dr. Wolfe, I doubt I ever could have finished this. Outside my committee, Dr. Victor Marshall, director of UNC‘s Institute on Aging, was kind enough to meet me one summer day back in 2007 and provide a long list of books and authors in the field of gerontology unknown to me but since pivotal to the understanding of my topic. Upon his invitation, I attended UNC‘s Aging Retreat that fall, an experience as enlightening as it was fun. For those kindnesses, I owe him my gratitude. I also wish to express my appreciation to my fellow graduate students in the Department of English at UNC, who made the school an enjoyable place in which to study and Chapel Hill a delightful town in which to live. The only blemish I see to finishing my dissertation is that it forces my departure from those whose presence I cherish. For her encouragement, my wife, Erin Ashworth-King, deserves more thanks than I can give here. We met our first year as graduate students at Chapel Hill, and ever since she has been my constant, most generous, and most mirthful companion. Sometimes she must have wondered whether v I would ever finish this dissertation; nonetheless, her words to me always reflected her hope and love, the guiding principles of her life, while her selfless actions embodied the same. To her I owe a profound debt. My longest-standing debt is always to my family, including my brother Tom, my ardent champion, and my parents Roger and Sandy, who alternately challenged and encouraged me as a budding student. From elementary school till now, my family has afforded me the opportunity of a tremendous education. Without their unwavering support I simply could not lead the life I want, which, as I have come to see, is not my life alone but theirs, too. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………1 Part I Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..37 Chapter 1: Senescence in the Pre-Renaissance Medical Tradition Section (a): Introduction…………………………………………………….40 Section (b): Galen……………………………...……………………………48 Section (c): Avicenna……………………………………..…………………75 Section (d): Scholastics………………………………………………….…..90 Chapter 2: Senescence in Renaissance Medicine Section (a): Introduction………………………………………………..….97 Section (b): Jean Fernel……………………………………………………99 Section (c): Marsilio Ficino…………………………………………….….112 Section (d): Paracelsus……………………………………………………..126 Part II Introduction…………………………………………………………………………140 Chapter 3: Bacon‘s Innovation…………………………………………………….142 Chapter 4: Bacon‘s Theory of Senescence Section (a): Introduction…………………………………………………...155 Section (b): Bacon and the theory of radical moisture……………………..158 vii Section (c): Bacon‘s theory of senescence…………………………………168 Section (d): Conclusion……………………………………….……………215 Chapter 5: Bacon‘s Techniques for Prolonging Life Section (a): Introduction…………………………………………………...220 Section (b): Health versus longevity………………………………….……222 Section (c): Bacon‘s three precepts for the prolongation of life………...…234 Section (d): Complication and the medical arts……………………………260 Chapter 6: Limits of Life and Matter Section (a): Human longevity in history…………………………………...268 Section (b): The metaphysics of human longevity.……………………..….285 Chapter 7: Francis Bacon and the Meaning of ―Life‖……………………………..318 Part III Introduction…………………………………………………………………………347 Chapter 8: Francis Bacon‘s Justifications for Prolonging Life…………………….350 Chapter 9: Spenser‘s Ascent to Age: the Fowre Hymnes…………………………397 Chapter 10: Ben Jonson and the Senecan Paradox of Long Life: The Cary-Morison Ode……………………………………………….435 References………………………………………………………………………………......472 viii INTRODUCTION Background The current form of this dissertation represents something quite different from what I originally had planned. Although from the idea‘s inception I had planned to write about early modern concerns surrounding the prolongation of life, which the present work still addresses, I had thought that I would canvass a host of stories, images, disciplines of knowledge, and ethical and religious polemics that exercised the minds of early modern Englishmen when facing the prospect of longevity. My interest arose from two observations, one about the past and one about the present. On the side of the past, I noticed without much claim to acuity that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of Europe witnessed a surge of interest in the prolongation of life. The great university medical schools of previous centuries plus new ones elsewhere in Europe trained more medical professionals than ever before, many of whom defended their art as a proven means of prolonging life. Moreover, hygienic manuals written both by those very physicians and by humanist educators proliferated, spreading the doctrine of ―each man, his own best doctor‖ and touting regimens that could extend health into old age. At least two of these, Luigi Cornaro‘s immensely popular De Vita Sobria (1558) and Thomas Philologus of Ravenna‘s De Vita Hominis Ultra Centum et Viginti Annos Protrahenda (1553), departed from the classical model Galen‘s De Sanitate Tuenda (2nd century A.D.) by explicitly setting life extension as the goal of hygiene. Furthermore, whereas the humanist Petrarch had once spurned medicine as a mercenary and lethal deceit, now humanists such as Erasmus and Melanchthon composed encomia on behalf of medicine and its life-preserving techniques. Meanwhile, Ponce de Leon and other explorers sought and occasionally thought they had found the fountain of youth.1 Alchemists continued to search for an elixir of life that could reverse aging and immunize the body against decay, making its beneficiaries virtually immortal. Marsilio Ficino and other astral magicians like him believed
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