The Lost Library of Anne Conway

The philosopher Anne Conway (1631-1679) owned a large library, and her reading and book ownership shaped her intellectual life in distinctive ways. Until now, however, almost nothing has been known about the details of her reading or her book collection. Current scholarship assumes that her library, like that of her husband, the third Viscount Conway (c. 1623–1683), was lost or dispersed after her death. This article presents previously unrecognised evidence of Conway’s book ownership, and identifies, for the first time, the only books currently known to survive from her personal library. It traces their path to their current location in the Old Library of Jesus College, Cambridge, through the library of the soldier, book collector, and Cambridge Fellow Francis Sterling (c. 1652-1692). The article demonstrates that the newly identified books reveal previously unknown patterns of intellectual exchange amongst Conway’s family, and argues that they have significant implications for our understanding of her early intellectual development

The Theocratic model

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Catching ‘the Genius of the Age’ : Margaret Cavendish, Historian and Witness

Although Margaret Cavendish is probably better known today for her texts on natural philosophy and her plays, she was first made famous by the biography of her husband, published in London in 1667. The Life of William Cavendish, which recounts Newcastle’s actions in the Civil Wars, then appeared in a Latin translation as early as 1668. Not only is this text one of the very few « history books » published by a woman in seventeenth-century England, but it is also a contribution to the Restoration debate on historiography. The biography of William Cavendish as well as The World’s Olio (1655) – in which long passages are devoted to English history – both reveal the evolution from the Renaissance chronicle to modern practices of history writing and a new consciousness of the past. These texts also tend to show that there was no such thing as a « historical revolution », although changes were actually taking place and progressively leading to the emergence of a new historiography. Finally, these texts provide information on how women wrote history in early modern England : they reveal that only a « particular history », a recollection of the immediate past, was then allowed to them.Margaret Cavendish est sans doute plus connue aujourd’hui grâce à ses textes de philosophie naturelle et ses pièces de théâtre ; pourtant, c’est la biographie de son époux, publiée à Londres en 1667, qui la rendit célèbre au XVIIe siècle. The Life of William Cavendish, qui relate le rôle de Newcastle pendant les guerres civiles, paraît à nouveau dans une traduction latine dès 1668. Le texte est à la fois l’un des rares ouvrages d’histoire publiés par une femme en Angleterre au XVIIe siècle et une contribution au débat historiographique de la Restauration. Cette biographie, ainsi que The World’s Olio (1655), texte dans lequel Cavendish consacre de longs passages à l’histoire anglaise, reflètent l’évolution qui conduit des chroniques de la Renaissance aux pratiques modernes d’écriture de l’histoire et à une nouvelle conscience du passé. Ces textes tendent aussi à montrer que la « révolution historique » n’a pas eu lieu, malgré des changements qui conduisent progressivement à l’émergence d’une nouvelle historiographie. Enfin, ces textes enseignent la manière dont les femmes écrivent l’histoire dans l’Angleterre de la première modernité ; ils montrent notamment que seule une « histoire particulière », qui rende compte du passé immédiat, leur était autorisée

"Play, Utopia or Anguish"?: Accounting for the Persistence of the Discourse against Slander from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period

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Cavendish et Conway à la recherche de l’harmonie perdue

And new philosophy calls all in doubt,The element of fire is quite put out; The sun is lost, and th’earth, and no man’s witCan well direct him where to look for it. JOHN DONNE, An Anatomy of the World, 1611 L’unité et l’utilité du savoir sont une préoccupation constante de l’époque moderne, en réaction à l’accroissement sans précédent des connaissances et au scepticisme qui l’accompagne. L’approche éclectique, ainsi que la conception même de la philosophie naturelle, révèlent un idéal encycl..

Les représentations de la nature dans les philosophies de Cavendish et de Conway

Cavendish et Conway élaborent des doctrines philosophiques qui visent d’abord à illustrer et à conforter leur propre représentation de la nature, née de l’observation de cette dernière, mais aussi de ce qu’elle doit être pour que soient respectés Dieu et l’ordre. Les deux femmes construisent ainsi leurs philosophies de manière à ce qu’elles correspondent à des exigences métaphysiques qui s’expriment dans l’image d’une nature ordonnée et harmonieuse. Sur le modèle de l’argument normatif, qui e..

A Defence of the Essay of Human Understanding (1702) par Catharine Trotter, ou comment la théorie lockienne de l'identité personnelle sied aux femmes

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Des philosophies vitalistes ?

Si elle est éternelle, infinie et variée, la nature présentée par Cavendish et par Conway est aussi vivante, animée d’un principe vital défini de manière différente par les deux femmes. Selon Lisa Sarasohn, c’est la perception des liens entre la nature et la femme qui conduirait Cavendish à une doctrine vitaliste : Cavendish’s gender may have acted as an heuristic device, causing her to be sympathetic toward those ideas which substantiated and supported a fuller role for women in the social a..

The emergence of a modern nation (1534-1688) ?

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La satire des sciences dans Observations upon Experimental Philosophy et The Blazing World (1666) de Margaret Cavendish

Ignoring the satire of learned women, a topos of classical drama at the end of the 17th century, Magaret Cavendish published several treatises of natural philosophy between 1653 and 1668. This article aims at reversing the topos to show how a woman could use the linguistic strategies of satire. Focusing on two complementary treatises of 1666, The Blazing World and Observations upon Experimental Philosophy I try to show that the scientific theories of the duchess of Newcastle are built against renascent mechanism but also against more traditional doctrines. Cavendish’s satire first targets the hybris of conceited contemporary philosophers who intend to become « as masters and possessors of nature ». Cavendish’s criticism of philosophy as a whole stems from her political conservatism – the division of knowledge might lead to factions in the civil society – and from her mitigated scepticism which maintains that man can grasp only a probable truth about nature. Finally, not only does Cavendish make the most of the techniques of satire in her scientific and social criticism, but the concept of satura itself seems to be the very basis of her writing which may be defined by disorder and miscellany, while her natural philosophy is informed by the method of 17th century eclecticism