This thesis argues that 17th century polymath Sir Kenelm Digby treats his
scientific discourses as psychological romances in his works Loose Fantasies and Two
Treatises, with his use of courtly romantic tropes, and that a contemporary audience
would have read Digby's scientific treatises as literary. I first argue that science and
romance in Digby's narrative romance Loose Fantasies are literary modes of the text's
narrative form and that these modes are not mutually exclusive, since science is a
"pyschodrama" to Digby, who is both the audience and author of these putative "private
memoirs." I then relate Digby's "romantic science" in Loose Fantasies to his "poetike
Idea of science" in Digby's Two Treatises in order to argue that while the treatise is
traditionally received as a philosophical discourse, it is also a work of literary criticism.
I conclude that Digby's "poetike Idea of science" is always unstable, because Digby
cannot choose between the primacy of language and ideas in human cognition, due to the
rapid rationalistic developments in epistemology during his time.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-05-757 |
| Date | 2009 May 1900 |
| Creators | Streeter, Michael T. |
| Contributors | Ezell, Margaret |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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