Empire against Melancholy: Healing the Body Politic in Britain, c. 1558-1630

对抗忧郁的帝国：治愈英国的政体，c。

• 批准号: 2712586
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2712586
• 关键词: Empire; against; Melancholy; Healing; Body

My research explores the idea of the diseased body politic in the context of colonisation in early seventeenth-century Britain. I will challenge the current understanding of early modern empire by arguing that idleness as a pathological sign of melancholy played a central role in the expansionist discourse. Accordingly, I propose that the allegory of the organic body and the state was conceived much more literally than scholars previously thought, following the Aristotelian and Galenic traditions that rendered the world in terms of micro- and macrocosms of the body politic.My project will follow a methodology in intellectual history that has been dominant for over fifty years: to interpret ideas in their contexts. Intellectual historians, however, have routinely failed to expand their contexts beyond the narrowly political. In practice if not in theory, intellectual history has remained restricted to a long-established canon. My project offers to expand our appreciation of context. I will provide an intertextual analysis of political and religious tracts, medical writings, and previously ignored manuscript material. The texts my research will focus on were all written to assist the establishment of new colonies, and to do so they all relied heavily on the concept of the diseased body and its treatments. As these authors were all active in the process of colonisation, part of the methodological implications of my study will be to demonstrate that the sources for the study of intellectual history were not at all theoretical, quite the opposite: they were very much used, debated, and put into practice.By directing attention to these texts, I shall demonstrate that the inseparability of the health of the body, mind, and the state was taken for granted by the citizens of early modern Britain. It was crucial for any form of "good" constitution to work effectively, but even more so in republics where citizens were required to participate in political life. My study, therefore, is an exploration of the importance of the connection between individual health and the proper functioning of the state.

我的研究探讨了十七世纪早期英国殖民背景下患病政体的概念。我将挑战当前对早期现代帝国的理解，论证懒惰作为忧郁的病理标志在扩张主义话语中发挥了核心作用。因此，我提出，有机身体和国家的寓言比学者们先前认为的更为字面化，遵循亚里士多德和盖伦传统，从政治体的微观和宏观世界的角度来呈现世界。我的项目将遵循一种在思想史上占主导地位超过50年的方法论：在其语境中解释思想。然而，理智的历史学家通常无法将他们的研究背景扩展到狭隘的政治范畴之外。在实践中，如果不是在理论上，思想史仍然局限于一个长期建立的规范。我的项目提供了扩展我们对环境的欣赏。我将提供对政治和宗教传单、医学著作和以前被忽视的手稿材料的互文分析。我的研究将重点关注的文本都是为了帮助建立新的殖民地而写的，为了做到这一点，它们都严重依赖于患病身体及其治疗的概念。由于这些作者都活跃在殖民过程中，我的研究的部分方法论含义将是证明思想史研究的来源根本不是理论的，恰恰相反：它们被大量使用、辩论和付诸实践。通过将注意力引向这些文本，我将证明，近代早期英国公民认为身体、精神和国家的健康是不可分割的。对于任何形式的“好”宪法来说，有效运作都是至关重要的，但在要求公民参与政治生活的共和国，这一点尤为重要。因此，我的研究是对个人健康与国家正常运作之间联系的重要性的探索。