This dissertation offers a new interpretation of the metaphysics of two seventeenth-century women philosophers – Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) and Anne Conway (1631–1679) – and brings to light an unnoticed tradition in seventeenth-century philosophy. I argue that both Cavendish and Conway can be understood as panpsychist-materialist monists: despite their other differences, they agree that there is one kind of substance in nature or creation, and that the single sort of substance always displays material features and mental capacities. Further, I propose that Cavendish and Conway are joined by the physician Francis Glisson (1597–1677) and the poet John Milton (1608–1674) as examples of a distinct panpsychist-materialist tendency in early modern England. ‘Panpsychist-materialist monism’ may at first seem too clunky to serve as the moniker of a movement, but it earns its keep by accurately capturing three elements of the figures’ systems that, when studied together as a group of related commitments, reveal the philosophical significance of each person’s views. My reading therefore bears on the project of interpreting Cavendish and Conway on their own terms and changes the way their context should be understood. Moreover, to the extent that contemporary philosophers of mind draw on philosophers from history in the formulation of their current views, the work presented in this dissertation stands to make a difference in present-day philosophy as well.

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By examining Renaissance criticism both literary and musical, framed in the context of the contemporaneous obsession with the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Horace, among others, this thesis identifies the parallels in poetic and musical practices of the time that coalesce to form a unified idea about the poet-as-singer, and his role in society. Edmund Spenser and John Milton, who both, in various ways, lived in periods of upheaval, identified themselves as the poet-singer, and comprehending their poetry in the context of this idea is essential to a fuller appreciation thereof. The first chapter addresses the role that the study of rhetoric and the power of oratory played in shaping attitudes about poetry, and how the importance of sound, of an innate musicality to poetry, was pivotal in the turn from quantitative to accentual-syllabic verse. In addition, the philosophical idea of music, inherited from antiquity, is explained in order elucidate the significance of “artifice” and “proportion”. With this as a backdrop, the chapters following examine first the work of Spenser, and then of Milton, demonstrating the central role that music played in the composition of their verse. Also significant, in the case of Milton, is the revolution undertaken by the Florentine Camerata around the turn of the seventeenth century, which culminated in the birth of opera. The sources employed by this group of scholars and artists are identical to those which shaped the idea of the poet-as-singer, and analysing their works in tandem yields new insights into those poems which are considered among the finest achievements in English literature.