The golden muse : Protestantism, mercantilism, and the uses of Ovid in Marlowe's Hero and Leander
Religion & Literature, 2006
Despite the execution of Mary Stuart in 1 587 and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 by an ... more Despite the execution of Mary Stuart in 1 587 and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 by an outnumbered English fleet, England remained gripped by religious conflict and the fear of foreign invasion throughout the 1590s. The deaths of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester in 1588 and Sir Francis Walsingham in 1590 not only enshrined the failure of the Dutch campaign against the Spanish, which had also cost the life of Dudley's nephew Sir Philip Sidney, but also suggested limits of Protestant resistance to Hapsburg domination in Europe (Guy 437; Wilson 304- 1 0). These events influenced the popularity of specific literary genres during the last decade of Elizabeth's reign. At court, the allegorical plays and masques of Sidney and Lyly, with their political allegory directed toward the Queen as spectator, gave way to the less overtly political comedies of London's professional playing companies. Even though the first three books of Spenser's Faerie Queene were publishe...
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Papers by Aaron Kitch
De magnete (On the Magnet, 1600), represents a paradigm shift in understanding
natural philosophy, yet historians of science have overlooked
its significance to the history of sexuality, which they also tend
to isolate from the history of science. Gilbert defined magnetism as a
form of desire within nature, a mode of “incorporeal materialism” and
dispersed sexual agency that asserts a masculine “vigor” and form of
nature upon the feminine “womb” of the Earth. This essay argues that
such a theory of a disembodied yet masculine magnetic virtue marginalizes
knowledge practices associated with the secrets of women
and reproduces a set of binary oppositions between male science and
female nature that becomes codified even more forcefully during the
Scientific Revolution. At the same time, like the “field of desire” that
Karen Barad identifies in lightning and quantum physics, magnetism
in Gilbert provokes questions about the “agential capacities” that link
animate and inanimate material in affective and embodied networks.
De magnete (On the Magnet, 1600), represents a paradigm shift in understanding
natural philosophy, yet historians of science have overlooked
its significance to the history of sexuality, which they also tend
to isolate from the history of science. Gilbert defined magnetism as a
form of desire within nature, a mode of “incorporeal materialism” and
dispersed sexual agency that asserts a masculine “vigor” and form of
nature upon the feminine “womb” of the Earth. This essay argues that
such a theory of a disembodied yet masculine magnetic virtue marginalizes
knowledge practices associated with the secrets of women
and reproduces a set of binary oppositions between male science and
female nature that becomes codified even more forcefully during the
Scientific Revolution. At the same time, like the “field of desire” that
Karen Barad identifies in lightning and quantum physics, magnetism
in Gilbert provokes questions about the “agential capacities” that link
animate and inanimate material in affective and embodied networks.
De magnete (On the Magnet, 1600), represents a paradigm shift in understanding
natural philosophy, yet historians of science have overlooked
its significance to the history of sexuality, which they also tend
to isolate from the history of science. Gilbert defined magnetism as a
form of desire within nature, a mode of “incorporeal materialism” and
dispersed sexual agency that asserts a masculine “vigor” and form of
nature upon the feminine “womb” of the Earth. This essay argues that
such a theory of a disembodied yet masculine magnetic virtue marginalizes
knowledge practices associated with the secrets of women
and reproduces a set of binary oppositions between male science and
female nature that becomes codified even more forcefully during the
Scientific Revolution. At the same time, like the “field of desire” that
Karen Barad identifies in lightning and quantum physics, magnetism
in Gilbert provokes questions about the “agential capacities” that link
animate and inanimate material in affective and embodied networks.
De magnete (On the Magnet, 1600), represents a paradigm shift in understanding
natural philosophy, yet historians of science have overlooked
its significance to the history of sexuality, which they also tend
to isolate from the history of science. Gilbert defined magnetism as a
form of desire within nature, a mode of “incorporeal materialism” and
dispersed sexual agency that asserts a masculine “vigor” and form of
nature upon the feminine “womb” of the Earth. This essay argues that
such a theory of a disembodied yet masculine magnetic virtue marginalizes
knowledge practices associated with the secrets of women
and reproduces a set of binary oppositions between male science and
female nature that becomes codified even more forcefully during the
Scientific Revolution. At the same time, like the “field of desire” that
Karen Barad identifies in lightning and quantum physics, magnetism
in Gilbert provokes questions about the “agential capacities” that link
animate and inanimate material in affective and embodied networks.