Aspects of Science in the Works of Donne and Milton Christopher John
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Aspects of Science in the Works of Donne and Milton Christopher John Stone Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English July 2013 ii Christopher Stone Aspects of Science in the Works of Donne and Milton The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2013 The University of Leeds and Christopher Stone The right of Christopher Stone to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. iii Christopher Stone Aspects of Science in the Works of Donne and Milton Acknowledgements I am very grateful for the continued, tireless, and always constructive efforts and support of my supervisor Professor Michael Brennan. Without his guidance this thesis would not have been realised. I would also like to thank Professor Paul Hammond and Dr Jane Rickard for both allowing me to attend their taught M.A. classes during the first year of this project and for the advice they offered during the upgrade process and beyond. Similarly, I am grateful for the opportunity to present a research paper derived from this thesis to the School of English’s Medieval and Early Modern Research Seminar. I should also like to thank my fellow PhD students for providing a lively and open forum within which to test the ideas that would later come to fruition within this thesis. I am also grateful for the generosity of the School of English more broadly for both funding conference trips to Durham University and The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford- Upon-Avon, which were greatly beneficial to the thesis and offering financial support when acquiring the images necessary within this thesis. Equally, I wish to express my appreciation for the staff at the Special Collections of the Brotherton Library, Leeds, as well as staff at the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, the London Picture Library, the Royal Collection Trust, and the Wellcome Library, London, for assistance with accessing, digitising, and reproducing materials from within their respective collections. All images included in this thesis are reproduced by their permission. iv Christopher Stone Aspects of Science in the Works of Donne and Milton Abstract This thesis exploits the tendency within the early modern period for intellectual eclecticism in order to understand how educated renaissance figures understood the nature of knowledge. Through a detailed study of how both John Donne and John Milton interpreted, acknowledged, and assimilated the understanding gained through their scientific reading and interests into their artistic, literary, and philosophical writings, this thesis outlines a variety of the period’s reflections on the nature of knowledge. Amongst these philosophies, questions of the permissibility of gaining access to information, hierarchical relationships between the knowledge accessed through emergent scientific practices and established literary traditions, and the influence of modern technology upon the quality (and even the trustworthiness) of learning gathered through such endeavours act to establish a collection of academic strategies which early modern intellectuals used to help them navigate the rapidly expanding landscape of knowledge. In pursuing the areas outlined above, the thesis uses an innovative chronological methodology which – whilst fairly common amongst Milton studies – is unusual in the field of Donne scholarship. The predominantly chronological methodology offers several benefits to the thesis. Notably, it allows for the progress and development of ideas over the lives of both writers to be examined. Furthermore, this methodology causes texts to be read according to their merit rather than their arbitrarily assigned ‘historical importance’. Thus, the thesis offers new and detailed readings of texts covering the breadth of Donne and Milton’s respective corpuses selected for their value to the thesis’s remit. It is for this reason that the thesis offers extensive readings of not only major canonical works such as Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, ‘The First Anniversary’, and Donne’s Sermons but also affords the same level of attention to Ignatius His Conclave, and Milton’s Commonplace Book. The chronological methodology also causes a heightened focus upon intertextual readings within v Christopher Stone Aspects of Science in the Works of Donne and Milton the thesis – with prose and poetry considered alongside each other so as to produce a richer and fuller understanding of the respective authors’ canons that is not limited by genre. The thesis, ultimately, offers two intersecting case studies of educated individuals which – in some areas – offer a broader understanding of how the emergence of new areas of knowledge and new classifications within the panorama of human learning were interpreted, managed, and accommodated. vi Christopher Stone Aspects of Science in the Works of Donne and Milton Abbreviations Cambridge University Press CUP English Literary History ELH Huntington Library Quarterly HLQ Oxford English Dictionary OED Oxford University Press OUP Proceedings of the Modern Language Association PMLA Numerous editions of both Donne and Milton’s works have been consulted in the production of this thesis and all are cited in the bibliography. When citing Milton’s prose works within this thesis all quotations, unless otherwise stated, are taken from J. Milton, The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don Wolfe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966), 8 vols. For Milton’s shorter poetry all quotations are taken from J. Milton, The Complete Shorter Poems, 2nd edition, ed. J. Carey (London: Longman, 1997), and in the case of Paradise Lost quotations relate to J. Milton, Paradise Lost, 2nd edition, ed. A. Fowler (London: Longman, 2007). All references to Donne’s poetry are taken from J. Donne, The Complete Poems of John Donne, ed. R. Robbins (London: Longman, 2010). The editions from which those quotations relating to his prose, letters, and sermons are taken are noted in footnotes upon the first citation from each work. vii Christopher Stone Aspects of Science in the Works of Donne and Milton Table of Contents Abstract iv Abbreviations vi Table of Contents vii List of Illustrations viii Introduction 1 Chapter One: Anatomical and Medicinal Science in Donne’s Works 19 ‘The First Anniversary’ 22 Alchemical Tumours in Donne’s Sermons 36 Anatomical and Medicinal Concerns in the Devotions 42 Chapter Two: Anatomical and Physiological Thought in Milton’s Works 66 Dissection, the Mind, and the Body within Milton’s 67 Commonplace Book Miltonic Bodies 88 The Dissection of Adam and Conclusions 116 Chapter Three: Geographic, Cartographic, Navigational, and Astronomical Imagery in Donne’s pre-1609 Works 123 Donne’s Earliest Interest in Kepler 127 Donne, Ptolemy, and Images of the Sun 140 Donne’s Early Conceptualisation of ‘India’ 145 Donne’s Early Interest in America 158 ‘Then Man is a World’ and Conclusions on the Early Works 164 Chapter Four: Geographic, Cartographic, Navigational, and Astronomical Imagery in Donne’s post-1609 Works 170 Donne’s Later References to ‘India’ 171 Donne’s Later References to America 183 Further References to ‘New Worlds’ 187 The Astronomy of ‘The First Anniversary’ 194 Donne’s Astronomical Authors 203 ‘Then Man is a World’ in Donne’s Later Works 221 and Conclusions Chapter Five: Astronomy and Knowledge in Milton’s Works. 225 Milton’s Interest in Astronomy Contextualised 226 ‘Instrumentall’ Science and Paradise Lost 234 Milton, Galileo, and the Telescope 237 ‘Knowledge’ and Lying in Milton’s Commonplace Book 257 Conclusion 269 Bibliography 274 viii Christopher Stone Aspects of Science in the Works of Donne and Milton List of Illustrations Figure 1 – Frontispiece of Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (Basle: Ex Officina I. Oporini, 1543). Reproduced by permission of the Brotherton Library, Leeds. Figure 2 – Skeleton contemplating a skull taken from De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (Basle: Ex Officina I. Oporini, 1543). Reproduced by permission of the Brotherton Library, Leeds. Figure 3 – Male écorché taken from De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (Basle: Ex Officina I. Oporini, 1543). Reproduced by permission of the Brotherton Library, Leeds. Figure 4 – Male écorché holding a dagger and his own skin taken from Valverde’s Historia de la Composicion del Cuerpo Homano (Rome: A. Salamanca and A. Laferi, 1556). Reproduced by permission of the Wellcome Library, London. Figure 5 – Leonardo’s depiction of a foetus in the womb c.1510 – pen, two shades of brown ink and wash, with red chalk. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Collection Trust/ © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013. Figure 6 – Leonardo’s anatomical drawings of the stomach and intestines c.1506 – pen and brown ink over traces of black chalk. Reproduced by permission of the Royal Collection Trust/ © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013. ix Christopher Stone Aspects of Science in the Works of Donne and Milton Figure 1 Reproduced by permission of the Brotherton Library, Leeds. x Christopher Stone Aspects of Science in the Works of Donne and Milton Figure 2 Reproduced by permission of the Brotherton Library, Leeds. xi Christopher Stone Aspects