Nature and Law in Early Modern English Literature: Shakespeare, Milton, Cavendish

早期现代英国文学中的自然与法则：莎士比亚、弥尔顿、卡文迪什

• 批准号: 228282882
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Andreas Höfele
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Englische Philologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Units
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2012-12-31 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/228282882?language=en
• 关键词: Nature; Law; Early; Modern; English

This project explores negotiations of the relationship between nature and law in early modern English literature. In particular, it examines the role of nature as a source of juridical and political authority: what strategies were employed to assert and stage this authority claim; what problems did they produce? References to nature were used to legitimate a whole spectrum of legal and political positions. During England's central political conflict of the 17th century which led to the Civil War in 1642 and to the liquidation of the monarchy in 1649, both Royalists and Parliamentarians invoked nature's unalterable laws in order to justify their militant policies. Such divisive diversification of legal positions was aided by the polysemic ambiguities of the term 'nature' as well as by increasing competition between the scholastic lex naturalis and more secular conceptions of natural law. In this historical context, all attempts of locating the God of Christianity and His power within the natural order of Creation assumed an eminently political significance.Literary negotiations of the relationship between nature and law reflect key political conflicts of the age. The project engages with such sources in order to reconstruct and revaluate pivotal political and epistemic transformations of the long 17th century. In doing so, it traces both the continuities and discontinuities engendered by the epochal rift of the Civil War and the Interregnum (1642-60). The dynamics of continuity and discontinuity register with particular intensity in Shakespeare and Milton, whose fictional worlds are at the centre of the project's critical investigations. In the current phase, Sidney's Arcadia has been a further focus of interest; in the projected second phase of the project, Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World and other writings by this author will be studied. Sidney, in the 1580s, explores the normative ideals and political anxieties of Elizabethan rule against the exemplary backdrop of pastoral Arcadia; Cavendish, in the 1650s and '60s, seeks to restore a Royalist order of nature in a utopian otherworld, following the traumatic hiatus of the Revolution. In Cavendish's writings a new, heterodox philosophy of nature coalesces with those normative powers of 'natural' affective rule which were canonized, but at the same time already profoundly problematized, by Sidney and Shakespeare. By studying the political role of nature in some of the key texts of early modern English literature, the project illuminates the complex discursive currents and counter-currents, the competing claims to political and epistemic authority that characterize the century between the reign of Elizabeth I and the Stuart Restoration. Encompassing both the 'new philosophy' and traditional systems of knowledge and belief, the transformations which the project explores transcend, and repeatedly run counter to, any unified narrative of modernization.

这个项目探讨了早期现代英国文学中自然与法律之间关系的谈判。特别是，它探讨了自然作为司法和政治权威的来源的作用：采用了什么策略来维护和阶段这一权威要求;他们产生了什么问题？对自然的提及被用来使一系列法律的和政治立场合法化。在17世纪英格兰的主要政治冲突中，导致了1642年的内战和1649年的君主制清算，保皇党和保皇党都援引了自然不可改变的法则来证明他们的好战政策。法律的立场的这种分裂性的多样化是由“自然”一词的多义性以及经院自然法和更世俗的自然法概念之间日益激烈的竞争所促成的。在这一历史背景下，所有试图将基督教的上帝及其权力置于创世的自然秩序中的尝试都具有突出的政治意义，关于自然与法律关系的文学谈判反映了那个时代的关键政治冲突。该项目致力于这些来源，以重建和重新评估漫长的17世纪的关键政治和认识变革。在这样做的时候，它既追溯了连续性和间断性所产生的划时代的裂痕的内战和空白（1642-60）。莎士比亚和米尔顿的作品中，连续性和不连续性的动态表现尤为强烈，他们的虚构世界是该项目批判性研究的中心。在目前的阶段，西德尼的阿卡迪亚一直是进一步的兴趣焦点;在项目的第二阶段，玛格丽特卡文迪什的燃烧的世界和作者的其他著作将被研究。西德尼在16世纪80年代，在田园牧歌式的阿卡迪亚的典范背景下，探索了拿破仑统治的规范性理想和政治焦虑;卡文迪什在17世纪50年代和60年代，试图在革命的创伤性中断之后，在乌托邦的另一个世界中恢复保皇党的自然秩序。在卡文迪什的著作中，一种新的、非正统的自然哲学与西德尼和莎士比亚所推崇的、但同时又被深刻地问题化的“自然”情感规则的规范力量结合在一起。通过研究早期现代英语文学的一些关键文本中的自然的政治作用，该项目阐明了复杂的话语潮流和逆流，对政治和认识权威的竞争要求，这些要求是伊丽莎白一世统治和斯图亚特王朝复辟之间世纪的特征。涵盖了“新哲学”和传统的知识和信仰体系，该项目所探讨的变革超越了任何现代化的统一叙事，并一再与之背道而驰。