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Generosity as Generality: The Poetics of Largeness in Renaissance Literature.

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Generosity as Generality: The Poetics of Largeness in Renaissance Literature.
Author:	Cho, Seung.
Published:	Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2022
Description:	304 p.
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-02, Section: A.
Notes:	Advisor: Gross, Kenneth Dr.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International84-02A.
Subject:	English literature.
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=29319215
ISBN:	9798845421388

Generosity as Generality: The Poetics of Largeness in Renaissance Literature.
Cho, Seung.

Generosity as Generality: The Poetics of Largeness in Renaissance Literature. - Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2022 - 304 p.

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-02, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Rochester, 2022.

This item must not be sold to any third party vendors.

This dissertation studies the Renaissance poetics of largeness by close reading Thomas Browne, John Donne, and William Shakespeare. It aims to demonstrate these writers’ literary investment in the power of generosity and their intellectual commitment to articulating generality out of various ideas, values, and perspectives in competition with each other. The notion of largeness of mind is importantly associated with that of copia—abundance, surplus, and fullness—which, in the Erasmian context, refers to rhetorical resourcefulness and enthusiasm for variety and newness. Largeness of mind, in the context of copia, suggests the affluence and fertility of mind, which extends the meaning of largeness to largesse, indicating the attitude of charity, open-mindedness, and munificence. The dissertation sheds light on these writers’ literary expression of largeness of mind by investigating their peculiar engagement with early modern skepticism. By practicing skepticism’s systematic doubting, characterized by nescience (assumed ignorance), epoche (suspension of judgment), and isosothenia (equilibrium of evidence), Browne, Donne, and Shakespeare all endeavored to challenge the prescribed range of what and how one can know as opposed to the dogmatic assertion of the established truth. This intellectual radicalism allowed them to develop a more comprehensive, generous vision of understanding in the face of their time’s inordinate assembly of opposing ideas. Each chapter investigates how Browne, Donne, and Shakespeare figure their largeness of mind through their disciplined use of skepticism, uniquely combined with rhetoric (Browne), casuistry (Donne), and negative capability (Shakespeare). Specifically, Chapter 1 and 2 close read Browne’s Religio Medici and Donne’s “A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day” and “The Canonization.” Each chapter illuminates how these two writers negotiate between their skeptical mindset and orthodox faith, thereby shaping a generous sense of wholeness, by which to accommodate their paradoxical desire for both individual freedom and general harmony. Through their sincere but subtly uneasy allegiance to that orthodox faith, the two authors resolved their inevitable confrontation with epistemological weakness in good humor and in a tolerationist spirit. In other words, their vision of wholeness is aligned with their revisionary encounter with the transcendental order. In keeping with their expression of largeness of mind, this encounter is described in this dissertation either as (1) the radical assumption of the mind of Amphibium, the privatized divine mind imbued with immeasurable generosity, tolerance, and harmony (Browne), or as (2) the casuistic/skeptical dedication to reconciling an individual doubting conscience with universal moral principles, which becomes the linchpin of generalizing the diverse and contradictory elements (Donne). As the study of Shakespeare’s largeness of mind, Chapter 3 pays attention to Hamlet and explores the poet’s heightened attentiveness to one’s exposure to epistemological weakness, the common human frailty that he renders distinctively as “general.” Shakespeare, without relying on any transcendental guarantee, stands on the more radical side of the skeptical and the tragic. The poet suggests that such a “weakness,” when transformed into “strength” via one’s earnest skeptical inquiry, can make the individual existence more solid and possibly more copious with its evocation of epistemological modesty. Shakespeare’s largeness of mind is linked predominantly with an open-minded acknowledgment of this common human weakness, which can orchestrate the fragmented reality of human life, beset by self-doubt, disjunction, and contradiction, into a life open to one’s free and creative participation, echoed by Hamlet’s commandment of “Let be.” In this regard, the poet powerfully illuminates the abundance of freedom and possibilities hidden beneath the precariousness of individual existence, the generosity to which must be general, and incessant.

ISBN: 9798845421388Subjects--Topical Terms:

181224
English literature.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Early modern literature

Generosity as Generality: The Poetics of Largeness in Renaissance Literature.
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520 $a This dissertation studies the Renaissance poetics of largeness by close reading Thomas Browne, John Donne, and William Shakespeare. It aims to demonstrate these writers’ literary investment in the power of generosity and their intellectual commitment to articulating generality out of various ideas, values, and perspectives in competition with each other. The notion of largeness of mind is importantly associated with that of copia—abundance, surplus, and fullness—which, in the Erasmian context, refers to rhetorical resourcefulness and enthusiasm for variety and newness. Largeness of mind, in the context of copia, suggests the affluence and fertility of mind, which extends the meaning of largeness to largesse, indicating the attitude of charity, open-mindedness, and munificence. The dissertation sheds light on these writers’ literary expression of largeness of mind by investigating their peculiar engagement with early modern skepticism. By practicing skepticism’s systematic doubting, characterized by nescience (assumed ignorance), epoche (suspension of judgment), and isosothenia (equilibrium of evidence), Browne, Donne, and Shakespeare all endeavored to challenge the prescribed range of what and how one can know as opposed to the dogmatic assertion of the established truth. This intellectual radicalism allowed them to develop a more comprehensive, generous vision of understanding in the face of their time’s inordinate assembly of opposing ideas. Each chapter investigates how Browne, Donne, and Shakespeare figure their largeness of mind through their disciplined use of skepticism, uniquely combined with rhetoric (Browne), casuistry (Donne), and negative capability (Shakespeare). Specifically, Chapter 1 and 2 close read Browne’s Religio Medici and Donne’s “A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day” and “The Canonization.” Each chapter illuminates how these two writers negotiate between their skeptical mindset and orthodox faith, thereby shaping a generous sense of wholeness, by which to accommodate their paradoxical desire for both individual freedom and general harmony. Through their sincere but subtly uneasy allegiance to that orthodox faith, the two authors resolved their inevitable confrontation with epistemological weakness in good humor and in a tolerationist spirit. In other words, their vision of wholeness is aligned with their revisionary encounter with the transcendental order. In keeping with their expression of largeness of mind, this encounter is described in this dissertation either as (1) the radical assumption of the mind of Amphibium, the privatized divine mind imbued with immeasurable generosity, tolerance, and harmony (Browne), or as (2) the casuistic/skeptical dedication to reconciling an individual doubting conscience with universal moral principles, which becomes the linchpin of generalizing the diverse and contradictory elements (Donne). As the study of Shakespeare’s largeness of mind, Chapter 3 pays attention to Hamlet and explores the poet’s heightened attentiveness to one’s exposure to epistemological weakness, the common human frailty that he renders distinctively as “general.” Shakespeare, without relying on any transcendental guarantee, stands on the more radical side of the skeptical and the tragic. The poet suggests that such a “weakness,” when transformed into “strength” via one’s earnest skeptical inquiry, can make the individual existence more solid and possibly more copious with its evocation of epistemological modesty. Shakespeare’s largeness of mind is linked predominantly with an open-minded acknowledgment of this common human weakness, which can orchestrate the fragmented reality of human life, beset by self-doubt, disjunction, and contradiction, into a life open to one’s free and creative participation, echoed by Hamlet’s commandment of “Let be.” In this regard, the poet powerfully illuminates the abundance of freedom and possibilities hidden beneath the precariousness of individual existence, the generosity to which must be general, and incessant.
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