Zugl.: Berlin, Humboldt-Univ., Magisterarbeit, 2002

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of English, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-116).

In this paper I present, and offer a solution to, a heretofore unacknowledged textual puzzle that arises from Margaret Cavendish's use of inconceivability to make claims about what is metaphysically impossible. On the one hand, Cavendish asserts that objects or events she cannot conceive of are impossible in nature (i.e., inconceivability entails impossibility in nature). On the other hand, she writes that there are some things that exist or occur in nature that are inconceivable to humans (i.e., inconceivability does not entail impossibility in nature). Put simply, Cavendish seemingly contradicts herself. This textual puzzle not only threatens to undermine Cavendish's philosophical method; it also calls her opposition to human exceptionalism into question. By asserting that what is inconceivable to her is impossible in nature, Cavendish implies by contraposition that she can conceive of everything that is metaphysically possible. In so doing, she seems to make an exception at least for herself: though she believes that other parts of nature cannot conceive of everything in nature, she implies that she can. Ultimately, I argue that Cavendish thinks we can sometimes tell why something is inconceivable. In some cases, something is inconceivable because it lies beyond the limits of humans' mental capacities. In other cases, something is inconceivable because it is contradictory. This interpretation solves the textual puzzle, as it is consistent for Cavendish to maintain that some objects and events in nature are beyond our mental limits and that we can derive the impossibility of some object or event in nature from its contradictoriness. My interpretation preserves Cavendish's opposition to human exceptionalism, moreover, as no part of nature can conceive of contradictions. That is, Cavendish's claim is not merely that what is inconceivable to her is impossible in nature, but rather that what is inconceivable to her and to every other part of nature is impossible in nature. / Master of Arts / Margaret Cavendish, a seventeenth century philosopher, makes two seemingly contradictory claims throughout her philosophical works. On the one hand, she implies that if something is inconceivable to her — that is, if she cannot form a mental picture of it — that thing is impossible in nature. On the other hand, she writes that there are plenty of things that exist or occur in nature which are inconceivable to humans. A textual puzzle therefore arises: Cavendish seems to simultaneously maintain (1) that something is impossible in nature if she cannot conceive of it, and (2) that something is not necessarily impossible in nature if she cannot conceive of it. In this paper, I propose that Cavendish believes humans can at least sometimes determine why something is inconceivable. That is, we can at least sometimes diagnose our inability to form a mental picture of something. In some cases, Cavendish thinks, we cannot form a mental picture of something because of our limited, human mental capacities. (We might think, for example, that this is why we cannot form a mental picture of all the colors butterflies see.) In other cases, we cannot form a mental picture of something because that thing is contradictory. (We might think, for instance, that this is why we cannot form a mental picture of an apple that is both red all over and not red all over.) I further argue that Cavendish only asserts that something is impossible in nature if it is inconceivable because it is contradictory. On my account, the textual puzzle I presented above is in fact not so puzzling. Cavendish thinks that if something is inconceivable because it is contradictory, then it is impossible in nature. She also thinks that there are plenty of things in nature that we cannot conceive of because of our limited human mental capacities. Thankfully, these two claims are not in tension.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2005. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 220 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-217).

William Shakespeare and Margaret Cavendish each published plays and poems focusing on the precarious implications and cultural enactments of female chastity in their time. Their lives and writing careers bookend a time when chastity's place in English politics, religion, and social life was perceived as crucial for women while also being challenged and radically redefined. This paper engages in period-specific definitions of virginity and chastity, and with modern scholarship on the same, to explore the historicity of chastity and how representations of self-enforced chastity create opportunities for female political power in certain fiction contexts. Through a comparison of the female protagonists of Measure for Measure and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity—Isabella and Travellia—I argue that both characters are able to assert and gain practical forms of power within their respective systems of government, and not just in spiritual or economic spheres.

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My dissertation, Inside Out: Cavendish on Self-knowledge, Perception, and Figure explores the works of philosopher, poet, and playwright Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673). Cavendish wrote extensively on natural philosophy and argues that nature is one material substance imbued with reason, perception, and self-motion. Her theory of matter is novel for her time since her contemporaries, the mechanical philosophers, such as Hobbes and Descartes, frequently claim matter is unfeeling, unthinking, and passive. The orderly mechanisms of the natural world, for them, are explained through matter in motion, specifically collisions from contiguous bodies. For example, billiard balls striking one another explains all natural phenomena. For Cavendish, the order of the natural world is similarly explained through matter in motion, but rather than bodies moved by collisions from contiguous bodies, bodies move themselves guided by their own sense and reason. Nature for her is “entirely wise and knowing” (OEP 2001: 48).One major recurring theme in both Cavendish’s works and the secondary literature is how mind-like and agential nature is given Cavendish’s description of nature’s knowledge and its ability to perceive and reason. The existing interpretations either assign Cavendishian matter robust mind-like qualities akin to contemporary panpsychism, or they naturalize her theory so that all matter’s qualities have a metaphysical explanation based on the nature of bodies. The goal of my dissertation is to provide an alternative interpretation that does not view matter through a panpsychist lens but retains its important mind-like quality, which is knowledge. I aim to show that Cavendish’s theory of nature does not explain nature’s qualities in terms of human cognition; instead it explains sense and knowledge that is unique to matter. This unique sense and knowledge is what produces the “peaceable, orderly and wise government” that is nature according to Cavendish (OEP 2001: 232). I argue that this is a viable interpretation by discussing three important phenomena in her theory: perception, self-love, and self-knowledge. We can understand these phenomena as more metaphysical or naturalized, and less mental, by viewing them through two important concepts in Cavendish’s theory: sympathy and the nature of bodies, which Cavendish calls “figures.” In my first two chapters, I explain human perception (i.e., patterning) and Cavendish’s principle of individuation (i.e., self-love) as metaphysical sympathy. I argue that sympathy for her is naturalized and is constituted by the attraction of figures to each other or the imitation of a figure’s actions, behaviors, or properties. The difference between these two phenomena is how much of the figure each imitates: patterning only imitates sensible qualities while self-love imitates the whole figure. Patterning and self-love as sympathy explains these mind-like qualities metaphysically, rather than as mind-like phenomena. Matter does, in my interpretation, retain a mind-like quality, which is self-knowledge. In my third chapter I explain what self-knowledge is for Cavendish, arguing that it is a mental state. I discuss the features of self-knowledge as a mental state and its content, arguing that self-knowledge, for her, is as much about what a subject’s body is doing as it is about a subject’s mental state. In my fourth chapter I return to visual perception in humans and animals and discuss a potential problem in Cavendish’s theory. I argue that given Cavendish’s commitments concerning causation and the self-motion of matter, light plays seemingly no role. Yet, Cavendish must explain how we see external objects in the presence of light but not when it is absent. To solve this problem, I argue that our perception of external objects is mediated by light: light produces copies (i.e., patterns) of external objects and we see these patterns. By discussing these details of Cavendish’s theory and offering metaphysical or naturalized interpretations, I aim to show that my macroscopic view of Cavendish’s theory is plausible. My interpretation restricts mentality rather than removes it entirely from Cavendish's theory of nature. / Philosophy

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Critical theory has historically situated the beginning of the “modern” era of subjectivity near the end of the seventeenth century. Michel Foucault himself once said in an interview that modernity began with the writings of the late seventeenth-century philosopher Benedict Spinoza. But an examination of early modern English utopian literature demonstrates that a modern notion of subjectivity can be found in texts that pre-date Spinoza. In this dissertation, I examine four utopian texts—Thomas More’s Utopia, Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, Margaret Cavendish’s Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World, and Henry Neville’s Isle of Pines—through the paradigm of Jacques Lacan’s tripartite model of subjectivity—the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. To mediate between Lacan’s psychoanalytic model and the historical aspects of these texts, such as their relationship with print culture and their engagement with political developments in seventeenth-century England, I employ the theories of the Marxist-Lacanian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, to show that “early modern” subjectivity is in in fact no different from critical theory’s “modern” subject, despite pre-dating the supposed inception of such subjectivity. In addition, I engage with other prominent theorists, including Fredric Jameson, Jacques Derrida, and Donna Haraway, to come to an understanding about the ways in which critical theory can be useful to understand not only early modern literature, but also the contemporary, “real” world and the subjectivity we all seek to attain.

“Circulating Knowledges: Literature and the Idea of the Library in Renaissance England” pairs literary texts and libraries to illustrate how literary creation and library building in England from 1500 to 1700 were deeply invested in one another. The history of English Renaissance libraries has generally been analyzed from the viewpoints of religious history and historiography, seen by scholars as a story of Protestant librarians attempting to preserve (or invent) a history of Protestant England. Many literary critics —citing Thomas Bodley’s notorious distaste for “stage plaies”—have typically reduced institutional libraries to elitist boogeymen hostile to popular or vernacular literature. Revising these narratives, this dissertation brings together a large corpus, including works by Thomas More, John Lyly, Edmund Spenser, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, and Margaret Cavendish, to illustrate how literary depictions of England’s fledgling libraries shaped their creation and development, while the practices of these inchoate libraries in turn influenced literary texts. “Circulating Knowledges” advances its argument on several fronts. First, I show that developments (or a perceived lack of development) in library organization, access, and use appeared in literary texts, which often depicted literary libraries in response to these developments. Second, I home in on moments when literary texts that seem not at all interested in libraries become unexpectedly fruitful texts through which to develop literary thinking about libraries. In the process of excavating this literary interest in libraries, I demonstrate that Renaissance literature concerns itself not only with depicting, commenting on, or objecting to the developments in library creation happening during the period, but also in imagining alternative possibilities for how libraries might function, conceptions of a library that often outstripped what was materially possible in the period: these conceptions I term “the idea of the library.” In detailing literature’s preoccupation with developments in Renaissance library systems, I offer new perspectives on the period’s literary attitudes toward the creation, transmission, and protection of knowledge, all questions which the building—or imagining—of a library brings to the forefront.