Bruno - In Praise of Reason

Bruno's praise of Copernicus and his discussion of cosmology, I noticed, is prefaced by a fairly involved praising of "reason". His reasoning, and dismissal of what he sees as clouding or preventing development of cosmology seems to presage ideas you see in the Enlightenment. However, I'm not well versed in much of the period, so I can't say exactly how Bruno fits in between it and the Renaissance. I just found the rhetoric, profoundly interesting, it being a refutation of what had come before.

Also interesting is how he reconciles his ideas of God, what he sees as disproven concepts of the cosmos, and the scientific principles that he sees operating in the cosmos. It reminds me very much of Christian scientists (not Christian Scientists mind you) I know who could go to work every day, researching human muscle cells, go home to bible study, and reconcile and even merge the two worlds. You would think that "science" and religion would be mutually exclusive in cases like Bruno, especially faced with religious persecution.

A Whole New World

The dialogue format of The Ash Wednesday Supper works quite well in terms of expressing the underlying views expressed. Bruno is able to ask and then answer the inevitable questions which would follow his support of a heliocentric cosmos.

Bruno’s insistence not only of an infinite universe, but of an infinitely inhabited world seems to me an extraordinary belief for an individual living during his time. It was blasphemous enough to believe in a heliocentric cosmos, but by asserting there were worlds out there which were inhabited, might have been enough to convince the Catholic Church that Bruno was disavowing a belief in God. Who were these inhabitants and what was their relation to God?

I was also quite intrigued by the writing style and the contents of Kepler’s Somnium. By formatting it as a tale about a young man and his odd mother, Kepler is able to put forth his own theories about the cosmos. It becomes a story about his own beliefs infused in a science fiction story sure to cause readers to revaluate their own beliefs.

And finally, I really enjoyed reading the works of Galileo. As an avid viewer of the Science channel, I have watched several programs concerning Galileo’s theories, so it was finally great to read his own words. I was particularly fascinated by the description of his spyglass. Imagine finally seeing the craters of the moon for the first time, and in 1610!

Aureng-Zebe

One thing that struck me about Aureng-Zebe:

Despite it's direct invocation of Tamburlaine (Aureng-Zebe and Morat being described as his spiritual descendants, wanting to conquer much) the scale and focus of the production seems much different. Dryden takes as his setting the Middle East but it is only a backdrop for the political and romantic maneuvering and backstabbing that goes on within a small geographical area.

Even the majority of the best dialogue is more focused on this aim: repudiations of outspokenly loud declarations of virtue, "life is but a cheat", "bounding of wishes" etc.

The point I guess I'm making is that it seems Dryden would have this play be a spiritual descendant of the type of Middle Eastern kingmaking we see in Tamburlaine, but he is only nominally concerned with his setting, rather, his energy is more focused on the language of his drama. I like it.

Not sure what to think

I approached this weeks reading with a bit of excitement, having been pretty interested in the travel narratives so far. I was especially intrigued to see that not only would we have an excerpt from Leo Africanus, but the Davis reading, which would, I assumed, give us more insight into Africanus' life. After reading a little background online and discovering that very little is known about Leo Africanus, it made me even more interested to read Trickster Travels, thinking perhaps that Davis knew something no one else did. And I tried to get into the reading, I really did. And I'm not sure why it was so difficult for me. The more I read, it became clear that a lot of what is written is surrounded by maybes and probablys. Davis attempts to get at the root of Africanus' life by bringing in a lot of history and mentions many people, making it difficult at times to keep everyone straight. Perhaps this was a difficulty only I encountered. The fact that people's names were sentences long did not help the reading flow, but of course this is something that cannot be helped. All was not lost though. Despite this particular reading's style failure to lure and hook me the whole way, I certainly found myself interested in learning some of the background story of the man whose excerpt we read in the Mancall reading. His life as a captured diplomat was fascinating. While he is known for his journey's to Africa, it seemed as though his journey did not end there. His knowledge made him an interesting man to many people and as a result he was taken to different places and worked with so many different people. It was also interesting to get a further glimpse into the process of getting and recording history in Africanus' time.

Ben Jonson's Masque of Blackness and the Natalie Zamon Davis's conception of Africa

I really enjoyed all the raedings this weekend. They were all different and all enlightening in their own way. Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness was really fascinating. I feel it is really unique and teachable. I definitely want to teach it some day. It is fascinating to read about the English superiority and the place of King James in the scheme of things. It was Queen Anne for whom the Masque was written as she wanted to be seen as a blak woman. The lines, "As of Phaeton that fired the world.." were interesting as they convey the white presumption that black people were miserable as the sun had blackened them. Also interesting was to note that the sun is actually King James in "Britannia who makes all tongues sing..."The King can possibly cure them of their physical wounds as well as political displacement.The image of a hundred torch bearers around the Black God Niger dressed in silver and azure sounds compelling. I wished every minute that I could see the Masque. On your left is the image of the Masque I found in a painting.Its pretty close to what I had in mind for the torch bearers.


Davis' Conception of Africa made fascinating reading as well. Chapter 5 of Trickster Travels did the trick for me, the earlier chapters did not. I liked finding out that Africa comes from Ifriqiya although I also read other versions of its name making. It was also interesting to read the debate on Egypt on Page 129 .Here are a few other stories around the name Africa from wikipedia.org:

• the 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (Ant. 1.15) asserted that it was named for Epher, grandson of Abraham according to Gen. 25:4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya.
• the Latin word aprica, meaning "sunny", mentioned by Isidore of Seville (sixth century) in Etymologiae XIV.5.2
• the Greek word aphrike, meaning "without cold." This was proposed by historian Leo Africanus (1488–1554), who suggested the Greek word phrike (φρίκη, meaning "cold and horror"), combined with the privative prefix "a-", thus indicating a land free of cold and horror.
• Massey, in 1881, derived an etymology from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, "to turn toward the opening of the Ka." The Ka is the energetic double of every person and "opening of the Ka" refers to a womb or birthplace. Africa would be, for the Egyptians, "the birthplace."^[8]

The Irish female name Aifric is sometimes Anglicised as Africa, but the personal name is unrelated to the geonym

Redefining Centrality

I was most intrigued by Natalie Zevon Davis' account of Leo Africanus in Rome and her description of cultural exchanges within the city. It seemed that as Rome attempted to claim new peripheral lands and kingdoms for Christendom the Romans were incorporating different cultural practices in interesting ways. Obviously all outsiders and prisoners of Rome were to become Catholic, but Christian authorities did not simply ignore the cultural practices, religions and languages of the Muslims and Jews in Rome. This, of course, serves a strategic purpose; the Pope and his advisors needed to know about other cultures, kingdoms and empires in order to gain power over them, but the types of information the authorities required allowed for former Muslim and Jewish prisoners to serve a defined purpose in Rome. By writing about Africa and creating a trilingual dictionary, Leo Africanus enfolded aspects of others cultures into Roman culture. It's not that the Romans were tolerate of other cultures, but their inquiry into other worlds made it so that some hybridity of cultures was allowed--through language for instance. I found it interesting that, despite his important scholarly role, Leo Africanus could not be considered a top advisor because of his cultural background. The central power, Rome, is incorporating aspects of peripheral cultures into their culture but only by allowing them to diffuse into the dominant culture.

More believable

Although I have read all of the travel narratives so far believing less than 50% of the descriptions, there is something in the writings of Leo Africanus which rang more true than those previous. It comes from the two stories he imbedded in his narrative-one concerning the beating of a man by a friend and the other concerning an Amphibian. Africanus seems to have gone out of his way, more than the others, to add credibility to his tales. In this way he attempts to he solidify his position as a historian -one who does not gloss over facts to appeal to either his former countrymen or his benefactors.