“NOTHING IS but WHAT IS NOT”: the SUBJUNCTIVE AESTHETIC in EARLY MODERN ENGLAND by Michael James Alijewicz Dissertation Subm
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
“NOTHING IS BUT WHAT IS NOT”: THE SUBJUNCTIVE AESTHETIC IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND By Michael James Alijewicz Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in English August, 2013 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Leah Marcus Professor Kathryn Schwarz Professor Lynn Enterline Professor Katherine Crawford ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am lucky because this dissertation was hard work and it was good fun. One major reason why is because I had the privilege to be advised by the brilliant professors Leah Marcus, Kathryn Schwarz, Lynn Enterline, and Katie Crawford. My heart goes out to the other Graduate Fellows at the Warren Center: Elizabeth Barnett, Lara Giordano, Cari Hovenec, Paddy McQueen, Cory Duclos, and Rosie Seagraves. Most especially, my love goes to Jennifer Vogt. Their friendship and feedback made me better at writing and at life. I also want to thank all of my fellow graduate students across many other departments and universities, but especially Matt Eatough, Dan Fang, Adam Miller, Elizabeth Covington, RJ, Aubrey, and Faith for helping or cheering me up in the long slog to this defended dissertation. The last and most productive year of this project has been funded by the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities. I especially want to thank director Mona Frederick and Professor Friedman for their advice and care, as well as Allison and Hillery for keeping things easy. A Dissertation Enhancement Grant and a Summer Research award from the Graduate School also helped me as I researched this book. I also want to thank the staff at the British Library, the Newberry Library, and the Bodleian Library for their unique aid as I clumsily figured out how to use that strange thing called an archive. I’m truly grateful to everyone I’ve ever met, and I particularly want to remember those who have recently gone or are currently having difficulties. But I’m most thankful to my parents for keeping me alive when I couldn’t and my sister who loved me though I am annoying. Finally, thanks to you, gentle skimmer. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................................ ii LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................................v Chapter INTRODUCTION: THE SUBJUNCTIVE AESTHETIC...............................................................1 A Narrative Form of Probability..........................................................................................3 The Critical Impact of the Subjunctive Aesthetic................................................................8 Situating the Aesthetic While Finding a Broader Method.................................................13 Terminology.......................................................................................................................21 Chapter Outlines ................................................................................................................24 I. THE AESTHETIC IN ALMA’S HOUSE: NARRATIVE IMAGES OF PROBABILITY..30 Designing Alma’s House ...................................................................................................37 The Shape (and Time) of State Planning Inside Alma’s House ........................................53 Putting Up the Bookshelves: How Planning Mediates Between Allegory and History....66 Planning, Philosophy, Providence: Potential Inhabitants of the Subjunctive Aesthetic....73 II. EXPECTING SIN: NARRATIVE TIMES AND AGENCY IN PARADISE LOST............83 Epic, Myth, and History.....................................................................................................88 Unprovidential Genealogies and Narrative Pre-History....................................................95 Critiquing Theories of History and Pre-History ..............................................................107 New Subjects in Forgotten Times....................................................................................117 III. BACON AND DEE: THE HISTORY OF PROBABILITY IN EXPERIMENT.............127 Dee’s Architecture of the Universe..................................................................................134 The Plan of Bacon’s Knowledge .....................................................................................147 A Broken Knowledge in the Essays and The Advancement of Learning ........................150 Where Projects Meet........................................................................................................157 Dee and Bacon: Magicians, Scientists, Planners .............................................................164 IV. MULTIPLICITY, THE MOON, AND THE SUBJUNCTIVE: UTOPIA .......................169 A Geometric Base: The Connected Proofs of Utopia......................................................177 Narrative Geometry .........................................................................................................182 Walking Through the New Atlantis..................................................................................185 Interiority and Thinking Ahead in Donne’s City of Hell.................................................191 iii Ladies’ (?) Bodies (?) and Utopian Fictions....................................................................201 Looking Back and Looking Forward in the Subjunctive Aesthetic.................................217 V. “NOTHING IS BUT WHAT IS NOT”: MACBETH, KING LEAR, KING JOHN ............220 Prophecy and Tomorrows................................................................................................223 Lear’s Kingdoms and Creatures of the Deep...................................................................232 King John: The History That Might Never Have Been ...................................................246 Abstraction, Aesthetic, Material Practice ........................................................................257 POST SCRIPT: THINKING AHEAD ........................................................................................262 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................267 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. William Austin’s Female Geometric Figure from Haec Homo............................................43 2. Palladio’s Villa Rotundo from his Four Books on Architecture...........................................46 3. Plan of the Harbor of Great Yarmouth .................................................................................49 4. The Family of Henry VIII, c. 1543-1547..............................................................................57 5. Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Edward VI, 1597.....................................................................58 6. John Dee’s table of Mathematical Disciplines....................................................................141 7. Bodley’s Plan of a Limerick Fort........................................................................................235 8. A Map of Ulster ..................................................................................................................235 v Introduction: The Subjunctive Aesthetic The success, Although particular, shall give a scantling Of good or bad unto the general— And in such indices, although small pricks To their subsequent volumes, there is seen The baby figure of the giant mass Of things to come at large. Troilus and Cressida 1.3.334-40 The words above express a beginning that is not a beginning. They predict the arrival of a larger object. A baby figure of a giant mass. An index and its subsequent volumes. The general from the particular. According to Nestor in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, these are the images that define what “shall” give a scantling of the “good or bad” to the Greek and Trojan armies’ martial designs. Nestor is discussing a potential meeting of Hector and Achilles, a battle that should serve as an example for each group’s larger designs. He construes this meeting as a kind of planning. It is literary, made of indexes and volumes, as well as military advice, made up of practical considerations in a particular moment of the Trojan War. His prediction is also a “baby figure,” a small image that leads to a “giant mass of things to come.” This development is strange. A large “mass” is not an adult. Nestor’s words transform the initial figure of a potential person and unfix it, subsuming the baby figure by the ranging mass that follows. In this mass, the deliberations on what is to come implicates an overlap of options—a “good or bad”—in the process of working toward the future. The multiple opposed outcomes of the potential meeting and the war itself are suspended, possible, and of thrilling importance, defined somehow by their lack of clarity. This haziness of the uncertain “or” in “good or bad” connects, in this moment, to the “figure,” or the visual summary of these possibilities. In short, Nestor is grappling with the mechanics of plotting a future in visual terms, confronting the process of finding a practical route 1 to achieve what are, at least initially, unreal ends. In his miniature plot for the future, he sees an experience that mixes the imaginary and the real. From Nestor’s words, I find an appropriate “scantling index” for introducing this dissertation. As Troilus and Cressida