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Everard Digby: A Syncretic Philosopher at Spenser's Cambridge
Abstract
This essay affords a look at intellectual activity in the Cambridge of Spenser's day by way of an introduction to a large Neo-Latin volume of metaphysics entitled the Theoria Analytica, published by Everard Digby in 1579. Digby's defense of metaphysics against the Ramist assault
thereupon is explored, along with his remarkable efforts to read Neoplatonic mysteries (including alchemy and Kabbalah) into the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle. The structure of Digby's tome exhibits similarities to patterns detected by Spenserians of a numerological bent. In its
overall linkage of Platonic and Aristotelian themes and in its epistemology of identification—by which the reader is formed into the likeness of what he reads—the Theoria exhibits striking affinities with Spenser's Faerie Queene. Everard Digby, Spenser's Cambridge
contemporary, has furnished us with a virtual charter for the poet's allegorical invention.
The article interprets "New Atlantis" by Francis Bacon and reads it as a hypertext of "Instauratio Magna", the project of restoration of sciences, which the philosopher failed to carry out fully. The author seeks to discover the interrelations between the discursive, rhetorical and literary modes of writing that shaped the early stages of modern science. In his opinion, empirical science does not establish its starting point only with its own new instruments, but it also deploys contemporary patterns of narrative fiction (for example, the modal frame of travel story) and rhetorical probability (also allegory). The power of this composite renders its own origin coherent.
W artykule poddano interpretacji "Nową Atlantydę" Francisa Bacona, odczytując ją jako hipertekst projektu odnowy nauk ("Instauratio Magna"), którego filozofowi nie udało się w pełni zrealizować. Autor podejmuje próbę odpowiedzi na pytanie, jaki model relacji między rejestrami dyskursywnym, retorycznym i literackim legł u początków nowożytnego kształtowania nauki. Jego zdaniem nauka empiryczna nie ustanawia swojego początku wyłącznie własnymi nowymi narzędziami, wykorzystuje natomiast sobie współczesne wzorce fikcji narracyjnej (np. ramę modalnościową opowieści podróżniczej), retorycznego prawdopodobieństwa (oraz alegorii) i siłą wynikającą z ich kompozytu nadaje spoistość własnej genezie.
Beginning with the work of Marsilio Ficino through the poems of Michele Marullo, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Pierre Ronsard, Edmund Spenser and others, this essay discusses the revival and fortune of philosophical hymns in Quattrocento Italy and the diffusion of this genre in Early Modern Europe. In doing so, we will attempt at framing this phenomenon in the context of Early Modern religious pluralism and interpret it as an instance of experiential knowledge.
- Schmitt Charles B.