Stephen Clucas

Valery Rees

Peter J. Forshaw

Proceedings of a conference held in Sept. 2004 at Birkbeck College.

Marsilio Ficino and His Influence

Laus Platonici Philosophi

This title was first published in 2003. This collection of essays presents a variety of new approaches to the oeuvre of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, one of the most influential and controversial women writers of the seventeenth century. Reflecting the full range of Cavendish's output - which included poetry, drama, prose fictions, orations, and natural philosophy - these essays re-assess Cavendish's place in seventeenth- century literature and philosophy. Whilst approaching Cavendish's work from a range of critical (and disciplinary) perspectives, the authors of these essays are united in their commitment to recovering her writings from their frequent characterisation as "eccentric" or "idiosyncratic", and aim to present her work as historically legible within the cultural contexts in which they were written. The "Mad Madge" of literary legend and tradition is re-written as a bold, innovative and experimental creator of a female authorial voice, and as a thinker vitally in contact with the intellectual currents of her age.

Essays on Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle

A Princely Brave Woman

Intellectual History and the Identity of John Dee In April 1995, at Birkbeck College, University of London, an interdisciplinary colloquium was held so that scholars from diverse fields and areas of expertise could 1 exchange views on the life and work of John Dee. Working in a variety of fields – intellectual history, history of navigation, history of medicine, history of science, history of mathematics, bibliography and manuscript studies – we had all been drawn to Dee by particular aspects of his work, and participating in the colloquium was to c- front other narratives about Dee’s career: an experience which was both bewildering and instructive. Perhaps more than any other intellectual figure of the English Renaissance Dee has been fragmented and dispersed across numerous disciplines, and the various attempts to re-integrate his multiplied image by reference to a particular world-view or philosophical outlook have failed to bring him into focus. This volume records the diversity of scholarly approaches to John Dee which have emerged since the synthetic accounts of I. R. F. Calder, Frances Yates and Peter French. If these approaches have not succeeded in resolving the problematic multiplicity of Dee’s activities, they will at least deepen our understanding of specific and local areas of his intellectual life, and render them more historiographically legible.

Stephen Clucas

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