For many years, scholarship on Thomas Browne (1605-1682) saw him as tangential to his period's thought and writing: an obscure and quaint stylist, detached from the turbulence of mid-17th century England. This volume contributes to the current reevalution of Browne's involvement in his times: identifying his political commitments, milieu, reading, and readers. The essays collected in this volume place Browne's works in unexpected contexts - in Holland, Poland and Germany, in Restoration politics, in publishing history and medical theory. It presents new research into his reputation in the later 17th century, his manuscripts, medical dissertation, association with the Hartlib circle and habits of revision.Essays on familiar works place them in new light, while readings of his letters, notebooks, and lesser works broaden our understanding of Browne as a writer. The result is a fuller picture of Browne's significance in 17th-century European culture. Contributors include: Eric Achermann, Hugh Adlington, Reid Barbour, Harm Beukers, Siobhan Collins, Louise Denmead, Karen Edwards, Doris Einsiedel, Kevin Killeen, Mary Ann Lund, Philip Major, Antonia Moon, Kathryn Murphy, Brent Nelson and Claire Preston.
Author(s): Kathryn Murphy, Richard Todd
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 314
Contents
......Page 8
Acknowledgements......Page 12
Abbreviations......Page 14
Notes on the Editors......Page 16
List of Contributors......Page 18
INTRODUCTION......Page 22
'Between the Paws of a Sphinx': The Contexts of Thomas Browne (Kathryn Murphy)......Page 24
PART I BROWNE IN LEIDEN......Page 34
Discipline and Praxis: Thomas Browne in Leiden (Reid Barbour)......Page 36
Studying Medicine in Leiden in the 1630s (Harm Beukers)......Page 70
'A Fresh Reading of Books': Some Note-Taking Practices of Thomas Browne (Antonia Moon)......Page 88
PART II READING AND WRITING......Page 86
Divination in Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Thomas Browne's Habits of Revision (Hugh Adlington)......Page 108
PART III FORM, MATTER, AND REFORM......Page 126
Curious Readers and Meditative Form in Thomas Browne's Urne-Buriall (Brent Nelson)......Page 128
'There is all Africa [. . .] within us': Language, Generation and Alchemy in Browne's Explication of Blackness (Siobhan Collins and Louise Denmead)......Page 148
Of Cyder and Sallets: The Hortulan Saints and The Garden of Cyrus (Claire Preston)......Page 170
PART IV THE TURBULENCE OF THE TIME......Page 192
'In the Time of the Late Civil Wars': Post-Restoration Browne and the Political Memory of Repertorium (Kevin Killeen)......Page 194
Urne-Buriall and the Interregnum Royalist (Philip Major)......Page 212
Thomas Browne and the Absurdities of Melancholy (Karen L. Edwards)......Page 232
PART V READING AND TRANSLATING BROWNE......Page 248
The Christian Physician: Thomas Browne and the Role of Religion in Medical Practice (Mary Ann Lund)......Page 250
Order in the Vortex: Christian Knorr von Rosenroth as Compiler and Translator of Thomas Browne, Jean d'Espagnet, Henry More, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Antoine le Grand (Eric Achermann (Trans. Kathryn Murphy and Doris Einsiedel))......Page 268
'The Best Pillar of the Order of Sir Francis': Thomas Browne, Samuel Hartlib and Communities of Learning (Kathryn Murphy)......Page 294
Bibliography......Page 316
Index Nominum......Page 332
