some sort of valentine to the early modern period
0 Comments Published by ginny on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 2:06 PM.
Sometimes I think I've ended up in the Renaissance sort of by accident. I took a lot of classes in it in undergrad, I'm good at it, I like Renaissance (and Restoration) plays better than any other plays (except musicals), and, well...there I am. Renaissance. But my interests certainly aren't confined to the period of roughly 1530-1620 in England. No, no.
I have, as you all know, a frantic passion for most incidentals related to the 18th c. (esp. clothing). In fact, in terms of culture I would [caveat, caveat, had I been born a white, relatively well-off man] have been happiest then, I think. I also love to read children's fiction more than anything else -- and people who study children's fiction necessarily begin in the 19th century (since children's fiction as we now classify it begins then, though I like 20th c. children's fiction better). And I also of course delight wholly and absolutely in television, internet, and telenetual culture at large.
It would be awful to be permanently deprived of any of these interests, or even any of my smaller ones (Eliot, medieval Catholicism, histories of the South and of Jewish culture in America, genre fiction immediately surrounding WWI, mystery novels). And so sometimes I think I've followed the wrong thing -- the are that seemed to dominate, but about which I am perhaps less incindiarily passionate.
But then sometimes I realize that I am exactly where I need to be. Because I don't always burn for the Early Modern England, but I always love it. And more even -- I love studying it. I love being in a period at the very, very beginning of print. I love that authorship is still a tenuous idea. I love the shiftiness around commerce and culture and national culture -- about how much you can even use those words. I love studying a time and a place that's far enough back that it's always still surprising. I love spending my time with people who treated the past the way they treated the past, who really believed that the Greeks and Romans were sort of kinfolk to them. I love placing myself where medieval England -- wonderful, tricky, even-more-mysterious shifting medieval England is only a few steps away. I love the teeming, clever, ornamented Restoration and eighteenth century are just as close.
I love that you can read the Renaissance as if it were new. That is: new to me, new to them. It isn't of course empirically true -- I certainly don't subscribe to a view of it as in fact a renaissance, a re-birth, re-discovery after the Dark Ages. No, no, not at all. (And really, I do like the term "early modern," though it's kind of clinical. I alternate, though, obviously between the two.) But what I mean is that the Renaissance is a moment before paralyzing over-irony, before agoraphobic multiplicity -- at least, I don't see them reading themselves in those ways. Sometimes I guess the flip side is true: of course, a Renaissance scholar, particularly one interested in drama, can feel totally stifled by the centuries worth of minute examination the period has already been subjected to. But that doesn't get me so much. After all, it's almost true of everyone -- unless you're going to "discover" something, which isn't usually advisable anyway, you're going to feel out-talked for the most part.
All this came to me reading Derrida on genre for class on Thursday. (I am, by the way, still annoyed by his style. I really think he is confusing on purpose, and I think it's kind of cheating. Mixing people up so that they have to think hard is a cheap trick!) He mentions the way titles "legally give [works] a name" -- it isn't an important point, just incidental to his main argument -- but it still struck me. That isn't of course true of most (or perhaps any) early modern works. And I LOVE that. I love it. I love that I spend my time with people who operate towards writing in such a very different way from most of what we now take for granted. It's wonderful. And I wouldn't change it.
p.s.: I didn't really think about it being valentine's day until after I wrote this, but I guess the English Renaissance is my valentine this year! Awww. Last year, as suggestion, I read The Parliament of Fowls -- perhaps I'll do so again.
I have, as you all know, a frantic passion for most incidentals related to the 18th c. (esp. clothing). In fact, in terms of culture I would [caveat, caveat, had I been born a white, relatively well-off man] have been happiest then, I think. I also love to read children's fiction more than anything else -- and people who study children's fiction necessarily begin in the 19th century (since children's fiction as we now classify it begins then, though I like 20th c. children's fiction better). And I also of course delight wholly and absolutely in television, internet, and telenetual culture at large.
It would be awful to be permanently deprived of any of these interests, or even any of my smaller ones (Eliot, medieval Catholicism, histories of the South and of Jewish culture in America, genre fiction immediately surrounding WWI, mystery novels). And so sometimes I think I've followed the wrong thing -- the are that seemed to dominate, but about which I am perhaps less incindiarily passionate.
But then sometimes I realize that I am exactly where I need to be. Because I don't always burn for the Early Modern England, but I always love it. And more even -- I love studying it. I love being in a period at the very, very beginning of print. I love that authorship is still a tenuous idea. I love the shiftiness around commerce and culture and national culture -- about how much you can even use those words. I love studying a time and a place that's far enough back that it's always still surprising. I love spending my time with people who treated the past the way they treated the past, who really believed that the Greeks and Romans were sort of kinfolk to them. I love placing myself where medieval England -- wonderful, tricky, even-more-mysterious shifting medieval England is only a few steps away. I love the teeming, clever, ornamented Restoration and eighteenth century are just as close.
I love that you can read the Renaissance as if it were new. That is: new to me, new to them. It isn't of course empirically true -- I certainly don't subscribe to a view of it as in fact a renaissance, a re-birth, re-discovery after the Dark Ages. No, no, not at all. (And really, I do like the term "early modern," though it's kind of clinical. I alternate, though, obviously between the two.) But what I mean is that the Renaissance is a moment before paralyzing over-irony, before agoraphobic multiplicity -- at least, I don't see them reading themselves in those ways. Sometimes I guess the flip side is true: of course, a Renaissance scholar, particularly one interested in drama, can feel totally stifled by the centuries worth of minute examination the period has already been subjected to. But that doesn't get me so much. After all, it's almost true of everyone -- unless you're going to "discover" something, which isn't usually advisable anyway, you're going to feel out-talked for the most part.
All this came to me reading Derrida on genre for class on Thursday. (I am, by the way, still annoyed by his style. I really think he is confusing on purpose, and I think it's kind of cheating. Mixing people up so that they have to think hard is a cheap trick!) He mentions the way titles "legally give [works] a name" -- it isn't an important point, just incidental to his main argument -- but it still struck me. That isn't of course true of most (or perhaps any) early modern works. And I LOVE that. I love it. I love that I spend my time with people who operate towards writing in such a very different way from most of what we now take for granted. It's wonderful. And I wouldn't change it.
p.s.: I didn't really think about it being valentine's day until after I wrote this, but I guess the English Renaissance is my valentine this year! Awww. Last year, as suggestion, I read The Parliament of Fowls -- perhaps I'll do so again.
Labels: books, early modern, reading, the_profession
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