A foray into a few secondary sources on Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World reveals scholars examining and disagreeing over the text as forward-looking and feminist, or retrograde and affirming of patriarchy even with a feminine voice. One the one hand, we can see the 1666 novel as a feminist revision of the relatively new utopian genre, yet on the other hand, as a move backwards in its support of monarchy, suffocation of disagreement, and evocations of the contemporary racist thinking of its times. Multiple meanings are contained within the Blazing World, not only the contradictions in its internal coherence as a utopia, but in what it accomplishes as a utopian novel.  Read the rest of this entry »

Turner, James Grantham. “Romance and the Novel in Restoration England.” Review of English Studies 63.258 (2012): 58-85. Oxford Journals Online. Web.

While Turner only mentions Margaret Cavendish in passing in this article, it is useful for contextualizing her utopian narrative, The Blazing World within the context of other developments in fictional narrative of the Restoration. Turner’s argument relates to the developing distinction between “old” romances, involving giants, dragons, and other unlikely beings and occurrences, and “new” romances, in which authors made vehement attempts at verisimilitude, often purporting to relate true stories from history which were embellished with conversations between and interior thoughts of characters.

Though today, we often think of such devices as realistic, Turner states that it was just this quality of realism that made “new” romance a contested genre. Many thought such devices to be embellishments which unnecessarily muddled fact and fiction in readers’ minds. Turner notes that Cavendish herself felt ambivalently about the genre, expressing an aversion to “telling Romansical falsehoods for historical truths,” while overtly calling Blazing World “romancical” (Cavendish qtd. Turner 71).

However, Cavendish’s work also resists categorization under Turner’s definitions of romance. Unlike either old or new romances, Cavendish’s romance attempts to make the impossible appear realistic. Examples of this tendency are when she makes scientific justifications for the fantastic things in her blazing world, such as how two worlds could exist at the same geographical location though people can only see one sun, and when she describes at length the kinds of precious stones available in this world, etc.

The question for me was: Why would Cavendish go to such trouble to make these unrealistic things seem realistic? What does this say about her purpose for writing The Blazing World? Luckily, we can also turn to Cavendish’s own words, as she discusses her purpose in the preface to the work. Cavendish acknowledges that her work joins two genres, the philosophical and the “romancical,” and that this is an unorthodox choice (Cavendish 124). In her preface, she states that her purpose in making this choice is twofold: to “divert my studious thoughts,” and to “delight the reader with variety” (Cavendish 124). Though divert may mean, in one sense, to amuse, according to the OED, it can also mean to “turn aside (a thing, as a stream, etc.) from its (proper) direction. Thus, Cavendish’s Blazing World could also be read as an attempt to dazzle the reader with its brightness, to alienate one from one’s serious thoughts on philosophy and science by presenting another fully formed, thought out world, which though it is ostensibly merely a fanciful world to be enjoyed, actually presents serious philosophical arguments about the best ways to engage in scientific inquiry and to structure a state. Indeed, in the Empress’s words, the Blazing World is a “romancical Cabbala, wherein you can use metaphors, allegories, similitudes, etc. and interpret them as you please” (Cavendish 183).

Though Turner does not struggle with the ways in which Cavendish’s Blazing World departs from the romance genre, his delimitation of the genre’s boundaries and discussion of her ambivalence about the genre helped me begin to think about how her work troubles generic boundaries and why she might have been interested in doing so. I hope others find these questions interesting as well, and that my review of the article and thoughts about it might spark discussion about them!

Stephen Spencer sent the following discussion questions for next class.  I am posting them because he is experiencing some kind of technical difficulty which is preventing him from joining the blog.  See you Thurs!  CH

1) In the epilogue, I was struck by the rather direct association Cavendish makes between imperialism and authorship (“By this poetical description, you may perceive, that my ambition is not only to be Empress, but Authoress of a whole world”). My impulse is to say that this is motivated by gender politics. As a woman, Cavendish wanted to be able to enter the male dominated public sphere, as she is clearly enormously intelligent. Still, her association of publication with imperialism strikes our modern ears as disconcerting. I think it’s particularly fascinating given debates about imperialism in the early modern period (was their a “nascent” imperialism in early modern texts? Is it anachronistic to consider imperialism in the period?). My question is broad — does gender help us to understand the relationship between imperialism and authorship in the New Blazing World?

2) Animals obviously play a huge role in the New Blazing World, but I found myself thinking of their presence in the text in terms of technology. Not only do they literally assist in the technology necessary in the Empress’s colonial/imperial endeavors (the fish men pulling the submarines, the bird-men and their firebombing), they also form the basis for the Blazing World’s construction of knowledge (the worm-men as geologists/earth scientists). The horse, however, seems to be a privileged animal. The Emperor is fascinated by horsemanship, so much so that he builds an infrastructure for riding and caring for horses towards the end of the text. What is so special about horses?

3) Much importance is placed on the Empress’s relationship with The Duchess of Newcastle. Much of this is framed by the notion of the “Platonic friendship,” which, at the time, was seen as specific to male-male relationships; women were not usually considered “capable” of fostering a “friendship.” Clearly, we see the opposite in the New Blazing World, but my question is related to my scare-quoting: what does their friendship (and friendship in general) mean in this text? To what extent can the relationship between the Empress and the Duchess be considered erotic, as opposed to Platonic?

4) Cavendish constantly reminds us of the importance of both sense and reason in intellectual endeavors. Concerning sense perception, vision, — for me — is privileged in this text. One need only think of the bears and their microscopes to see this; the microscopes are an improver of vision, they say. I’m curious, however, about the role of the other senses in this text. What roles do the four other, “lower” senses play in the New Blazing World?

5) There’s an issue between class and knowledge in the New Blazing World, and this issue seems to be mediated by the question of the animal. There’s definitely a class hierarchy in the Blazing World, but its interesting to think that it is also dependent, or tied to, the kind of intellectual function each class of human-animal occupies (I’m thinking of the experimentalist Bear-Men as working class knowledge-makers of sorts). What does Cavendish mean to convey with this fixity of class and knowledge-production, and why is it all couched in a kind of allegorical reading of animals?

Techno-Utopianism and the Fate of the Earth

Date & Time
10/25/2014 – 10/26/2014
10:00 am – 6:00 pm

Co-sponsored by the New York Open Center & the International Forum on Globalization

Vandana Shiva • Bill McKibben • Ralph Nader • Wes Jackson • Jerry Mander • Andy Kimbrell Winona La Duke • Helen Caldicott • Richard Heinberg • Helena Norberg-Hodge • Ralph White • Langdon Winner • Kirkpatrick Sale • Clive Hamilton • Severine von Tscharner-Fleming & others

*Please note that October 25th’s schedule will run from 10am-10pm and October 26th’s will be from 10am-6pm.

Forty-five leading scholars, authors and activists will convene at The Great Hall of Cooper Union for a public “teach-in” on the profound impacts — environmental, economic and social — of runaway technological expansion, the tendency to see technology as the savior for all problems, and on the urgent need to change directions, returning the welfare of Nature to the center of economic and social decision-making.

Speakers will include: Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, Ralph Nader, Wes Jackson, Jerry Mander, Andy Kimbrell, Winona La Duke, Annie Leonard, Richard Heinberg, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Langdon Winner, Kirkpatrick Sale, Clive Hamilton, Severine von Tscharner-Fleming and 30 others; plus films and workshops.

This event comes at a crucial moment. Ecological systems are near collapse — global climate, soils and fertility; fresh water supplies; deep ocean life, forests, biodiversity; global food production; and unprecedented rates of species extinctions. Human life is similarly threatened by expanding wars over scarce resources, unsustainable development, shocking rates of economic inequality, and increased alienation from the natural world. But proposed solutions rarely stray off-message: “Technology will solve our problems.”
We do not share this optimism.

Corporations see the situation as economic opportunity. New technologies are being rapidly rolled out to create substitute nature: Re-seeding the heavens to install artificial climates (geo-engineering); re-arranging the genetics of food (GMOs), animals and trees; inventing artificial life forms (“synthetic biology”), as well as new basic molecular structures (nanotechnology); introducing mass robotic production on farms and in factories (eliminating workers!); and marketing drones, driverless cars, Google glasses, app after app, and ever more instruments for cyber-envelopment of our consciousness and everyday lives. Did anyone ask for these? All are expressions of science in service to profit and growth. Meanwhile, human experience — now embedded within a global technological cocoon — is in danger of losing its awareness and connection with the natural world. This will not solve our problems.

What is needed is New Consciousness, and New Economic Strategies that break from the assumption of human dominion over nature and the planet (“anthropocentrism”), while reforming our economies toward renewing a balance with nature. Tweeting won’t save us. Alternative ideas, policies and programs will be presented and discussed in detail.

Location: Cooper Union, 7 East 7th St., New York, NY.
Scholarships available email: skasten@ifg.org

REGISTRATION AND FEES A CONFERENCE
Saturday, October 25, 10am–10pm
14FEC72S
$45 (No Discount) / $20 for seniors or students
Early Bird rate $35 by October 1
Click HERE to register for this single day.

Sunday, October 26, 10am–6pm
14FEC73S
$40 (No Discount) / $15 for seniors or students
Early Bird rate $30 by October 1
Click HERE to register for this single day.

Combined price $75 for both days
when registering for both at same time
14FEC74S (REGISTER ONLINE BELOW AT THIS PRICE)

Combined price $25 for seniors or students
when registering for both days at same time
14FEC75S
Click HERE to register for this special combined rate.

For further information, contact the International Forum on Globalization: www.ifg.org • 415.561.7650 • info@ifg.org

“I reject all forms of fiction and imposture” (Novum Organum, 598).

1) As Hogan notes, one of the most striking differences between More’s Utopia and Bacon’s New Atlantis is the lack of intentional ambiguity in the latter (39). Nowhere does New Atlantis appear to question the truth of its narrator or his interlocutors. Nor does it seem to invite any critique of the virtue and harmony of Bensalem, “so chast a Nation….the Virgin of the World” (26). How should we account for this difference?

2) In spite of his desire to set aside all preconceptions in the pursuit of knowledge, Bacon is an unapologetic eurocentrist. This attitude is most succinctly put in the quote from Novum Organum, “man is a god to man” (599). Why does this (as well as his Christian faith) escape the rejection of received wisdom articulated so forcefully in Novum? And how does Bacon justify this attitude in New Atlantis?

3) There is one thing, however, that the Europeans are not so great at: marriage. Why does this provoke such a hostile and relatively lengthy critique? Is it significant that this critique comes from the Jewish merchant? And why is chastity such a central ‘virtue’ in Bensalem?

4) What begins overflowing with Christian symbolism, ends with a long list of all the ‘worldly’ wonders apparently derived thereof (via divinely-inspired scientific study).  Is Bacon attempting to reconcile science and faith, or does he genuinely see no contradiction between the two? Or is he disguising radical ideas in the acceptable language of Christianity? Related to this, I think it’s worth examining the strange statement, which ends the selections from the Novum Organum, “Only let the human race recover that right over nature which belongs to it by divine bequest, and let power be given it; the exercise thereof will be governed by sound reason and true religion” (600).

5) Considering the reception of the Bible in Bensalem via divine intervention, the island’s pacification of other nations without bloodshed (15), and expansion of knowledge through benevolent spies, is Bacon attempting to legitimize imperialism and the spread of Christianity by masking or effacing their ‘original sin’ (i.e. that they are inextricable from pervasive violence, exploitation, and domination)?

Please note that there is a Project Gutenberg edition of Bacon’s New Atlantis in your Dropbox folder in case the EEBO is too tough to navigate.