Seventeenth Century « Writing Privacy

Posts Tagged 'Seventeenth Century'

Resource

Published February 25, 2012 Literature , research Leave a Comment
Tags: Andrew Marvell, English Revolution, Literature, Oliver Cromwell, Poetry, research, Self-Confidence, Seventeenth Century

I’ve spent quite a lot of time marvelling (if we can forgive the pun) at the crossovers between my own personality and that of my revered poet. In the last few months, however, sad to say, I think I’ve sunk far beneath him now.

By the time Andrew Marvell turned 28 (as I recently did) in March 1649, Charles I had been executed. The regicide inspired one of the best political poems ever written, and ended up shaping a history that would define Marvell’s fascinating future career.

Private, secretive, awkward man and all, Marvell had numerous great personal qualities, none of which I could never hope to emulate. Last time around, into the spotlight went ‘confidence’, one of Marvell’s deceptive strengths. This time around, it has to be ‘resourcefulness’.

Continue reading ‘Resource’

Shadow Seasons: An Epilogue, 2011

Published January 9, 2012 Geneva , Leicester , Literature , Music 5 Comments
Tags: Geneva, Identity, Music, Privacy, Psychology, Self-Confidence, Seventeenth Century, Sleepthief, Solitude

Dedicated to the few who messaged on New Year’s Eve.

2011 was a story I don’t know how to tell. It’s a year that had so many structural positives, countered by surface negatives. Perhaps it’s best defined by what others have said.

Shadows

In the early summer, I was ‘strange’, ‘sick’ and ‘damaged goods’. Thanks. In the mid-summer, I was an expletive abomination. Consequently, in the late summer, I was branded a defeatist.

Victimisation does arise sometimes. Not because it is wanted – if there’s a brand of people who don’t want to be happy, this author is not one of them – but because it’s a way of dealing with the various angles of attack and the after-effects that cannot be disguised.

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All-Important Questions

Published November 20, 2011 Literature , research 1 Comment
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Literature, Poetry, Privacy, Psychology, Self-Confidence, Seventeenth Century

Every so often, we hit those defining moments where we ask ourselves the all-important questions. What has made us who we are? Why do we do what we do? Why do we live the way we live? What do we value most in life?

And it’s hard, because to approach such questions risks revealing many difficult answers, or things that we never want to contemplate. I’ve been drawn to revisit a favourite post of mine again, which describes how things that we pretend are complicated are often remarkably simple. And so, with that in mind, I ask myself why I do what I do, and if it reflects the person I am and want to be.

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Marvell, Glass, and ‘Upon Appleton House’

Published August 26, 2011 Literature , research 1 Comment
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Art, Dissertation, Early Modern, Ekphrasis, English Revolution, Interregnum, Literature, Mirrors, Poetry, Privacy, Psychology, Seventeenth Century

It is difficult to escape reflection. Mirrors are common enough (and, one might argue, hurtful enough), but windows are often reflectors as well as transparent portals. Personal experience also determines that reflection is there to antagonise the mind as well as to merely display the body. That is the paradigm of glass, a most ambivalent servant.

Ekphrasis becomes a common feature of Marvell’s Interregnum writing, but before it served his Cromwellian verse, these perspective features – of viewing and reflection, of the viewer and beyond – combine in a remarkable way in Marvell’s Upon Appleton House. Marvell’s portrayal of the private Lord Fairfax relies heavily on the construction and reflection of the self through private property and its (often vitrified) representations. Continue reading ‘Marvell, Glass, and ‘Upon Appleton House’’

Privacy and Parliamentary Privilege

Published June 14, 2011 Literature , Politics Leave a Comment
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Censorship, Early Modern, English Civil War, English Revolution, Literature, Politics, Privacy, Public Sphere, Richard Lovelace, Secrecy, Seventeenth Century, Speech-Acts

Parliament in 1647

This recent period has been plagued with privacy issues, the biggest of which, no doubt, has been the issue of super-injunctions.

While it has been good from a ‘subject branding’ perspective to have been asked about this, to be blunt, I simply couldn’t have cared less. About the surface matter, at least. Footballers and their deviance is nothing new. Nor does it matter to the outside world other than as hot gossip. So little of the intrusiveness of private lives gleefully splayed across front pages can be claimed to have significant public interest.

More interesting is the legal implications when thousands of people have denounced privacy laws by flouting collectively. Continue reading ‘Privacy and Parliamentary Privilege’

The Broken Image

Published May 15, 2011 Literature , Politics , research , Television 3 Comments
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Art, Doctor Who, Early Modern, Ekphrasis, Elegy, English Revolution, Icons, Interregnum, Literature, Mirrors, Oliver Cromwell, Privacy, research, Seventeenth Century, Visual Culture

How Doctor Who brings to light one of Andrew Marvell’s most touching moments...

Doctor Who: The Curse of Black Spot #1

There is little more pleasing than the perfect image. There is also real gratification in constructing an image. Over recent months, however, I have come to understand the terrible beauty and power that comes with an image that is broken.

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East Midlands Early Modern Colloquium

Published April 21, 2011 Culture , Leicester , Literature , research 1 Comment
Tags: Censorship, Drama, Early Modern, English Revolution, Icons, Interregnum, John Donne, Kingship, Literature, Print Culture, Public Sphere, Quakers, Religion, research, Self-Discipline, Self-Promotion, Seventeenth Century, Visual Culture, William Shakespeare

Religion, Print and Visual Culture in the Early Modern Period [April 2011].

The second East Midlands Early Modern Colloquium convened at De Montfort University in April 2011 after a three year hiatus. Delegates from Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham, and Nottingham Trent joined home convenor Siobhan Keenan at the impressive Clephan Building for an equally impressive set of papers. [Full schedule attached here].

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A Long Winter’s Tale

Published April 17, 2011 Leicester , Literature , Politics , research 2 Comments
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Cultural Revolution, Early Modern, English Civil War, English Revolution, Geneva, humour, John Milton, Leicester, Literature, Nigel Smith, Politics, Print Culture, Public Sphere, Reformation, Religion, Seventeenth Century, Teaching

A summary of research activity from January-March 2011. This features a lecture by Nigel Smith at the Andrew Marvell Centre in Hull; a teaching event at the University of York; and the biannual British Milton Seminar at Birmingham Central Library.

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“Life is a Jigsaw”: Literary Shapes and Private Thoughts

Published April 11, 2011 Edinburgh , Literature , research 2 Comments
Tags: Andrew Balfour, Andrew Marvell, Art, Circles, Early Modern, Ekphrasis, Elegy, Facebook, George Puttenham, Jigsaw, John Donne, Literature, Mosaic, Oliver Cromwell, Print Culture, Psychology, Robert Browning, Seventeenth Century, Thomas Salusbury

Several years ago, a phrase came into my head on a dark day: “life is a jigsaw”. It was used for a trail of dark introspective thoughts concerning self-image, but it was clearly an analogy that had plenty more to offer.

The phrase is hardly unique to me; Google will attest to that. But my introspective thought has long revolved around shapes. George Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie (1569), which describes the properties of shapes, reminds us that the study of literature can transgress disciplines and fuse modes of thought creatively.

Original thought is fun to contemplate. Are our lives the equivalent of average undergraduate essays: recasting what has come before in our own way and offering a mere fraction of originality along the way? What constitutes new ideas? What is a ‘philosopher’, for their own chutzpah? Much which challenges subjective realms of thought must owe itself to literature.

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An MP Turning Down a Secret Bribe? Bipolar Privacy

Published January 22, 2011 Literature , Politics , research 1 Comment
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Early Modern, Literature, MPs' Expenses, Nigel Smith, Politics, Privacy, Restoration, Secrecy, Seventeenth Century

There are two sides to privacy: the bright side and the dark side. It is often politics which brings these to the fore. In 2009, the scandal surrounding MPs expenses showed the ugly art of secrecy breeding secrecy, and the ramifications are only now beginning to take effect.

Yet key public figures constantly find themselves involved with, or victim of, private and secretive practices. The prime minister’s communications chief, Andy Coulson, still suspected by many of complicity in secret phone-tapping, has just resigned. As has shadow chancellor Alan Johnson, citing private issues, after a member of his security team was alleged to have had an affair with his wife.

Mr Brightside

Andrew Marvell was MP elect for Hull for almost two decades from 1659. Interestingly, his inclination towards secrecy and privacy has rarely complicated the view of him as an honest, dedicated, and incorruptible public servant. And I was pleased to recently stumble across an anecdote about Marvell from the mid-eighteenth century that celebrates (as well we might today) the value of an honest politician. It relates to expenses, no less!

Continue reading ‘An MP Turning Down a Secret Bribe? Bipolar Privacy’

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Writing Privacy

Posts Tagged 'Seventeenth Century'

Resource

Shadow Seasons: An Epilogue, 2011

Shadows

All-Important Questions

Marvell, Glass, and ‘Upon Appleton House’

Privacy and Parliamentary Privilege

The Broken Image

East Midlands Early Modern Colloquium

A Long Winter’s Tale

“Life is a Jigsaw”: Literary Shapes and Private Thoughts

An MP Turning Down a Secret Bribe? Bipolar Privacy

Mr Brightside

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