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Thatcher's Policy Unit and the “Neoliberal Vision”
- Aled Davies, James Freeman, Hugh Pemberton
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- Journal:
- Journal of British Studies / Volume 62 / Issue 1 / January 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 06 December 2022, pp. 77-103
- Print publication:
- January 2023
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Using recently released papers, we analyze an attempted neoliberal policy revolution in 1980s Britain—the attempt to restrict the state pension to a minimal flat-rate benefit and supplement it with personal pensions. In the process, the government would abolish both the state earnings-related pension and collective employer-provided occupational pension schemes that then covered about half the workforce and owned about a quarter of all shares listed on the London Stock Exchange. Unusually, our focus is not primarily on ministers, as we unpick an attempted revolution that would have refashioned every worker in Britain as an investor-capitalist. Rather we focus on a sub-ministerial center of political power, the No. 10 Policy Unit, and the influence on it of the Centre for Policy Studies, a right-wing think tank. In doing so, we confirm the latter's importance as source of neoliberal ideas for the architects of policy change in the 1980s and reveal the centrality of the Policy Unit as a source of motive power for Britain's neoliberal revolution. We also, however, highlight the relative pragmatism of ministers as they backed away from the Policy Unit's attempted revolution, choosing instead to implement a more evolutionary set of reforms.
Schizophrenia and Urban Life
- Hugh Freeman
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- Journal:
- European Psychiatry / Volume 11 / Issue S4 / 1996
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 16 April 2020, p. 305s
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Two week wait referral criteria – heading in the right direction?
- C Gao, C Qin, S Freeman, N Oskooee, J Hughes
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- Journal:
- The Journal of Laryngology & Otology / Volume 133 / Issue 8 / August 2019
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 02 August 2019, pp. 704-712
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- August 2019
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Objectives
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence referral guidelines prompting urgent two-week referrals were updated in 2015. Additional symptoms with a lower threshold of 3 per cent positive predictive values were integrated. This study aimed to examine whether current pan-London urgent referral guidelines for suspected head and neck cancer lead to efficient and accurate referrals by assessing frequency of presenting symptoms and risk factors, and examining their correlation with positive cancer diagnoses.
MethodsThe risk factors and symptoms of 984 consecutive patients (over a six-month period in 2016) were collected retrospectively from urgent referral letters to University College London Hospital for suspected head and neck cancer.
ResultsOnly 37 referrals (3.76 per cent) resulted in a head and neck cancer diagnosis. Four of the 23 recommended symptoms demonstrated statistically significant results. Nine of the 23 symptoms had a positive predictive value of over 3 per cent.
ConclusionThe findings indicate that the current referral guidelines are not effective at detecting patients with cancer. Detection rates have decreased from 10–15 per cent to 3.76 per cent. A review of the current head and neck cancer referral guidelines is recommended, along with further data collection for comparison.
‘EVERYMAN A CAPITALIST’ OR ‘FREE TO CHOOSE’? EXPLORING THE TENSIONS WITHIN THATCHERITE INDIVIDUALISM
- ALED DAVIES, JAMES FREEMAN, HUGH PEMBERTON
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- Journal:
- The Historical Journal / Volume 61 / Issue 2 / June 2018
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 10 August 2017, pp. 477-501
- Print publication:
- June 2018
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It is widely recognized that ‘the individual’ was prioritized by the Thatcher governments. However, there has been little analysis by historians of exactly how the Thatcher government conceptualized ‘the individual’. In this article, we attempt to remedy this deficiency by undertaking a case-study of a key Thatcherite social policy reform: the introduction of ‘personal pensions’. This approach allows us to understand the position of ‘the individual’ on the functional level of Thatcherite policy-making. In doing so, we argue that there was no coherent or fixed Thatcherite concept of the individual. Instead, we identify three fundamental tensions: (i) should individuals be capitalists or consumers; (ii) were they rational or irrational; and (iii) should they be risk-taking entrepreneurs or prudent savers? This reflected, in part, conflicts within the diverse tapestry of post-war neoliberal thought. We demonstrate in this article that these tensions undermined the Thatcher governments’ original attempt to create a society of entrepreneurial investor-capitalists, which in turn cemented their preference for simply maximizing individual freedom of choice within a competitive – yet tightly regulated – market environment.
Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
- Published online:
- 05 August 2015
- Print publication:
- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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Suspicious young minds: paranoia and mistrust in 8- to 14-year-olds in the UK and Hong Kong
- Keri K. Wong, Daniel Freeman, Claire Hughes
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- Journal:
- The British Journal of Psychiatry / Volume 205 / Issue 3 / September 2014
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 02 January 2018, pp. 221-229
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- September 2014
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Background
Research on paranoia in adults suggests a spectrum of severity, but this dimensional approach has yet to be applied to children or to groups from different countries.
AimsTo investigate the structure, prevalence and correlates of mistrust in children living in the UK and Hong Kong.
MethodChildren aged 8–14 years from the UK (n = 1086) and Hong Kong (n = 1412) completed a newly developed mistrust questionnaire as well as standard questionnaire measures of anxiety, self-esteem, aggression and callous–unemotional traits.
ResultsConfirmatory factor analysis of the UK data supported a three-factor model – mistrust at home, mistrust at school and general mistrust – with a clear positive skew in the data: just 3.4%, 8.5% and 4.1% of the children endorsed at least half of the mistrust items for home, school and general subscales respectively. These findings were replicated in Hong Kong. Moreover, compared with their peers, ‘mistrustful’ children (in both countries) reported elevated rates of anxiety, low self-esteem, aggression and callous–unemotional traits.
ConclusionsMistrust may exist as a quantitative trait in children, which, as in adults, is associated with elevated risks of internalising and externalising problems.
Dedication
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Renaissance Papers 2012
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 December 2013
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- 01 November 2013, pp vii-viii
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Cosmetic Blackness: East Indies Trade, Gender, and The Devil's Law-Case
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Renaissance Papers 2012
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 December 2013
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- 01 November 2013, pp 83-96
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Summary
With the recent shift in literary studies towards what is often described as a “global Renaissance,” it is hardly surprising that figures of merchants and travelers both in early modern travelogues and plays have come under greater scrutiny as sites for understanding the formation of a fluid English identity, transnational commerce, emergent colonialism, and nation building. What still remains largely unexplored, however, particularly in the context of the East Indies trade, is the impact of this emergent globalization on the bodies of the European women who were closely related to the merchants or factors. While scholarship on plays such as Fletcher's The Island Princess or Dryden's Amboyna emphasizes the roles of both European men and their beloved native women, the white woman still remains a shadowy presence at the fringes of our current academic interest in the early modern spice trade.
This essay seeks to address this gap by turning to the public stage, particularly to a play that explores how the emergent trade with the East Indies appeared to affect the physical and moral complexion of one such European woman. In the trial scene of John Webster's play The Devil's Law-Case (1623), Jolenta, the sister of Romelio, an East Indies merchant enters with “her face colour'd like that of a Moore,” accompanied by two Surgeons, “one of them like a Jew.” Although the assembled people quickly recognize her they still comment on her changed complexion. Ariosto the advocate exclaims, “Shee’s a blacke one indeed” (5.5.40) while Ercole, one of her suitors, wails “to what purpose / Are you thus ecclipst?” (5.5.57–58). Of course, Jolenta’s transformation is temporary and apparently superficial; yet her blackening appears to gesture towards deeper concerns regarding the impact of the East Indies trade, particularly on a woman who has never left her home or sailed the high seas to profit from pepper, cinnamon, cardamom and mace.
Frontmatter
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Renaissance Papers 2012
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 December 2013
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- 01 November 2013, pp i-iv
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From One Marvell to Another: Puritan Logic in “To His Coy Mistress”
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Renaissance Papers 2012
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 December 2013
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- 01 November 2013, pp 97-104
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Summary
Gods apprentice is a jorneyman: he must allwayes learne the mystery of his profession, & walking forward aime hard to the marke for the price of his high calling. as the teacher in Gods schoole must give Line upon Line, precept upon precept: so to the scholler likewise nulla dies sine linea, no day must pass without a new lesson, as Cato said, so Gods child must grow old every day learning many things. And so in practise also. he must adde to his faith vertue, | & to plowing, sowing. Like Charles the fifth, plus ultra must be his motto: he must go from strength to strength untill he appeare be=fore the Lord in Sion. And that because, he is leaving his abode in this world but an im=perfect pilgrime. he is not what, he is not where he should be … [There are those who] ‘looke behind them, that turne their face in the day of battell, & quite give over Gods husbandry’, [those] ‘that forget their first love who though they forsake not the plough yet are they idle companions that do the worke of the Lord negligently … [For them] it had beene better never to have knowne the way of righ=teousness then that they should bee like a dog to his vomit & a sow to wallowing in the mire.
“Bred Now of Your Mud”: Land, Generation, and Maternity in Antony and Cleopatra
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Renaissance Papers 2012
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 December 2013
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- 01 November 2013, pp 67-82
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Summary
Analyses of Antony and Cleopatra have long noted the dialectical opposition between Rome and Egypt, an opposition that sets up a concomitant correspondence between geography and gender. Although recent scholarship has destabilized the categories, Rome has traditionally represented the masculine—solid, controlled, bounded—while Egypt is feminine—fluid, unchecked, limitless, and thus constantly generating. Egypt in the play evokes an elemental fecundity that is spontaneous and natural at the same time that it is corrupting and degenerate, “dungy,” in Antony's words. Further, the connection between Cleopatra and Egypt is inextricable in the play; she exists in metonymic relation to her country, the word “Egypt” used no less than seven times to refer to her directly. Picking up on Janet Adelman's argument that the play constructs Cleopatra as “one with her feminized kingdom as though it were her body,” this essay examines the complex idea of Egyptian earthiness in connection with Cleopatra and her fertile/infertile body by reading it in conjunction with various theories of reproduction—what the Renaissance called generation. Specifically, I seek to show how the trope of spontaneous generation allows Shakespeare to expand his interrogation of procreation in the play, blurring gender boundaries as he does so.
Ovid, Lucretius, and the Grounded Goddess in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Book:
- Renaissance Papers 2012
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 December 2013
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- 01 November 2013, pp 13-20
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Summary
In the sticky, sweet, and sweaty world in which Shakespeare situates his Venus and Adonis, something has gone awry. According to Venus, “Nature” is “at strife” with herself for having made Adonis. By “Nature” Venus is, of course, referring to herself. Compared to the Venus of book 10 of Ovid's Metamorphoses—a goddess who makes men and women fall in love, who brings stone to life, and whose magical doves transport her anywhere she wishes to go—Shakespeare's Venus is, by comparison, a much more natural being. A creature of the senses, most especially smell, Shakespeare's Venus does not so much manipulate the natural world as bond with it. She experiences heightened, animal-like sensibilities that allow her to commune with Adonis's horse and to imagine herself as the earthbound and hunted Wat the Hare.
But why would Shakespeare strip Ovid's goddess of her supernatural powers and drive her so literally down to earth? The answer, I would suggest, is that Venus and Adonis traces its ancestry not only to Ovid's Metamorphoses but also to Lucretius's De Rerum Natura. Consider the powerful invocation to Venus with which Lucretius begins his great philosophical poem on “the nature of things”: “Venus, power of life, it is you who beneath the sky's sliding stars inspirit the ship-bearing sea, inspirit the productive land.
Getting Past the Ellipsis: The Spirit and Urania in Paradise Lost
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Renaissance Papers 2012
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 December 2013
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- 01 November 2013, pp 117-125
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Summary
In John Shawcross's book The Development of Milton's Thought: Law, Religion, and Government, he quotes that famous phrase from Milton, “fit audience, though few.” I was brought up short while reading because this quotation does not include an ellipsis. Can even Shawcross nod? I was reassured when I realized that he had not cited book and line numbers for the quotation; he was simply quoting an oft-used phrase rather than Paradise Lost itself. I thus felt better about John, but continued to be troubled by the broader implications of “fit audience … though few,” with or without the ellipsis. Here I shall argue that the ellipsis eliminates a central element, in the line and the poetic sentence and in terms of Milton's own concerns about the fate of his text. And what scholars so often omit by typifying Milton's audience using this phrase is the place of the ineffable Spirit of God in the communion or community of believers.
I shall dispense with the simple part first: how often is the ellipsis used, and what does it skate over? The phrase appears in the invocation to Book 7 of Paradise Lost:
Standing on Earth, not rapt above the Pole,
More safe I Sing with mortal voice, unchang'd
To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days,
On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compast round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visit'st my slumbers Nightly, or when Morn
Purples the East: still govern thou my Song,
Urania, and fit audience find, though few.
(7.23–31)
Renaissance Papers 2012
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Edward Gieskes
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- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 December 2013
- Print publication:
- 01 November 2013
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Renaissance Papers collects the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The 2012 volume opens with two essays on sexuality in Elizabethan narrative poetry: on homoeroticism in Spenser's Faerie Queene and on Shakespeare's "swerve" into Lucretian imagery in Venus and Adonis. The volume then turns to Renaissance drama and its links to the wider culture: the commodification of spirit in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Shakespeare's evocation of the Acts of the Apostles in The Comedy of Errors, "summoning" in Hamlet and King Lear, discourses of procreation and generation in Antony and Cleopatra/, trade and gender in John Webster's Devil's Law-Case, and an examination of street scenes in Romeo and Juliet in relation to Paul's Cross Churchyard, the hub of the London bookselling market in the early modern period. The volume closes with essays on seventeenth-century literature and literary culture: on the "puritan logic" of the elder Andrew Marvell in his famous son's poem "To His Coy Mistress," on the "sociable lexicography" of a Royalist polymath attempting to reconcile with the English Commonwealth, and on the underestimated roles of Urania in Milton's Paradise Lost. Contributors: David Ainsworth, Thomas W. Dabbs, Sonya Freeman Loftis, Russell Hugh McConnell, Robert L. Reid, Amrita Sen, Susan C. Staub, Emily Stockard, Nathan Stogdill, Christina A. Taormina, Emma Annette Wilson. Andrew Shifflett and Edward Gieskes are Associate Professors of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.
Antipholus and the Exorcists: The Acts of the Apostles in Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Book:
- Renaissance Papers 2012
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 December 2013
- Print publication:
- 01 November 2013, pp 31-40
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Summary
In act 4 of The Comedy of Errors, Adriana, in response to her husband's wildly erratic behaviour, recruits one Doctor Pinch to cure his apparent madness. Antipholus of Ephesus is of course not really mad at all, but understandably frustrated and confused with the events of the day, which have seen him locked out of his own house and accused of failing to pay for valuables that he actually never received, thanks to a series of misunderstandings involving his identical twin, Antipholus of Syracuse. When Antipholus of Ephesus refuses to cooperate with his wife's well-intentioned intervention, Doctor Pinch attempts an exorcism to drive away the demons which he supposes to possess him:
I charge thee, Satan, housed within this man,
To yield possession to my holy prayers
And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight:
I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven!
Of course, Pinch's attempted exorcism fails, because there is no Satan to exorcise, and Antipholus becomes so angry that Adriana has him forcibly bound and taken away in Pinch's custody. In a later scene a messenger reports that Antipholus and his servant Dromio have gnawed through their bonds and escaped and then captured and tormented the hapless Doctor Pinch, burning off his beard “with brands of fire,” putting it out again with “Great pails of puddled mire,” and then preaching patience to him while cutting him with scissors and concludes that “unless you send some present help, / Between them they will kill the conjurer” (5.1.172, 74–76, 177–78).
“An Heap Is Form'd into an Alphabet”: Thomas Blount's Sociable Lexicography
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Book:
- Renaissance Papers 2012
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 December 2013
- Print publication:
- 01 November 2013, pp 105-116
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Summary
In the criticism of the last thirty years, the consensus has been that the English Civil War was fought on the battlefield and on the page. Titles such as Writing the English Republic, Literature and Revolution, Literature and Dissent, Literature and Politics, and Poetry and Allegiance urge that politics and literature were inextricable in mid-century England. And, when talking about the English Civil War, when we say “political” we mean “partisan.” Lucasta, we have learned, is a royalist rallying cry and Paradise Lost a “Republican epic.” In these contentious times, the act of taking up the pen was a partisan one. But while much attention has been given to the expressions of partisanship, much less has been given to the concepts of sociability that marked its borders. While the violent disruptions of the English Civil War certainly created a culture of divisiveness, they also created an alternative culture increasingly attentive to the advantages of adaptability. Recent work on literary form in the period suggests that, far from sites of stable partisan expression, literary genres were inherently flexible spaces that lent themselves to experimentation not conflict. Lyric's association with “verses” or “turnings,” romance's many reversals and transformations, and the essay's function as a genre of “attempts” provided authors opportunities to explore and enact strategies of “flexibleness.” In this essay, I would like to consider this “flexibleness” as it appears in an unlikely place: the English vernacular dictionary.
Reconstructing the Bower of Bliss: Homoerotic Myth-Making in The Faerie Queene
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Book:
- Renaissance Papers 2012
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 05 December 2013
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- 01 November 2013, pp 1-12
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Summary
Erotic encounters between women appear with surprising frequency in the middle books of The Faerie Queene. Both Guyon's adventure in the Bower of Bliss and Britomart's encounters with Malecasta and Amoret reflect Renaissance beliefs about female-female desire. Spenser consistently associates heterosexual intercourse with sexual maturity: his treatment of homoerotic desire as an “adolescent” stage of development adheres to early modern myths regarding same-sex attraction. Indeed, one of Spenser's goals in the middle books of The Faerie Queene seems to be discouraging women's non-teleological, non-reproductive eroticism, and encouraging them to “move forward” into a reproductive sexual marriage. The homoeroticism that fills Spenser's garden of sexual delight motivates Guyon's wrathful destruction of Acrasia's Bower—a destruction that points toward the potential threat of feminine stasis in non-reproductive sexual activity. In addition, Britomart's sexual encounters with other women become both a primary challenge to the lady Knight's quest and a central element of her sexual education as she learns to embrace her role as a mother and wife.
Reconstructing the Bower of Bliss
Spenser's Bower of Bliss is a space of feminine sexual autonomy. Although critics once viewed the sexuality displayed in the Bower as a show that exists only for Guyon, describing it as a realm of lust devoid of sexual fulfillment, a world of pornographic show as opposed to one of sexual satisfaction, more recent readings acknowledge the rampant female sexuality of the Bower. Only Guyon sees a show without sexual satisfaction. Indeed, the women in the fountain who “wrestle wantonly” are enjoying lust in action (2.12.63). Acrasia repeatedly “bedew[s] Verdant’s lips . . . with kisses light” and “sucke[s] his spright,”—considering the early modern connection between “spright” and “semen,” Acrasia is obviously engaged in sexual activity and satisfying her lust (2.12.72). For the women fondling each other in the fountain, and for Acrasia and Verdant, the Bower contains sex: the reader only sees a show if he or she looks through the eyes of the voyeuristic Guyon. Indeed, Spenser invites such a perspective: the Bower is full of references to eyes and sight.
The Summoning of Hamlet and Lear
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Renaissance Papers 2012
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 05 December 2013
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- 01 November 2013, pp 53-66
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Summary
Summoning provokes the psyche's most momentous unfoldings. The mental and visceral impact of a legal summons is obvious to all who receive one, unleashing a flood of piteous self-justification and sharp questioning of the Rule of Law. No one likes being called to judgment. To the discomfort of social courts Shakespeare's summonings add a spiritual burden. Because King Hamlet was killed as he slept, when his sinful soul was unready, his anxious ghost vanishes at cock-crow “like a guilty thing / Upon a fearful summons” (1.1.154–55). King Lear, distraught at lost power and public humiliation, allies his voice with heavenly thundering (“Close pent-up guilts, / Rive your concealing continents and cry / These dreadful summoners grace”), but he denies that the thunder summons him: “I am a man / More sinned against than sinning” (3.2.57–60).
Each play begins with a king, or a kingly wraith, summoning children for judgment, and each king's spectacular enactment of sovereignty goes terribly wrong. The “fearful summons” and “dreadful summoners” carry deep irony in that each king—one secretly slain, one publicly shamed—clings to an illusory summoner-power after having been quite defanged. Old Hamlet's ghost is “majestic” in complete armor.
Contents
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Renaissance Papers 2012
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 05 December 2013
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- 01 November 2013, pp v-vi
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The Soul as Commodity: Materialism in Doctor Faustus
- Edited by Andrew Shifflett, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, Edward Gieskes, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, Columbia
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- Renaissance Papers 2012
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 05 December 2013
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- 01 November 2013, pp 21-30
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Summary
The well-known premise of Doctor Faustus is that Faustas trades his soul in return for twenty-four years of pleasure served up by Mephostophilis. To judge from the state of scholarly discussion, the fact that this premise is essentially economic in nature goes without saying. But because it has gone without saying, the implications of the play's economic underpinning have likewise gone unexamined. For obvious reasons, critical analysis has focused largely on the play's relation to religious orthodoxy of its time. I propose to look instead at Marlowe's portrayal, in the person of Faustus, of a perspective that, void of any sense of the spiritual, in effect denies the soul any status other than that of commodity. Faustus's commodification of his soul, and the attendant market logic which for us rings so prophetically, is only the most egregious example of his characteristic materialism. The very conception of giving one's soul in trade, after all, exemplifies a reified view of the soul; for Faustus, his soul is a thing—a commodity that he has in surplus and that he will trade in return for goods he lacks. Faustus's reification of his soul extends logically to his sense of the soul as a thing that he owns and that he can dispense with as he wishes: “is not thy soule thine owne?” Faustus asks himself, giving explicit voice to his mistaken sense of property and possession (2.1.457).