Description
Title"Fortune's ever-changing face" in early modern literature and thought
Date Created2015
Other Date2015-10 (degree)
Extent1 online resource (v, 229 p.)
DescriptionAlthough fortune is ubiquitous in Renaissance literature, treatments of it rarely agree about precisely what it is. “Fortune” often seems self-contradictory, at times associated with unpredictable chance and at other times with the inexorable unfolding of Providential design. Some writers treat it as a force of change beyond human control; others, as a pattern that reveals itself to those cunning enough to seize the opportunity. But what all of these “faces” of fortune have in common is a preoccupation with different ways of knowing: is randomness a feature of the world itself, or a reflection of one’s limited ability to understand causes that come about by necessity? The early modern period was characterized by a burgeoning interest in the problem of contingent knowledge: the Reformation sparked debates about the necessity or contingency of salvation, the rise of modern statecraft necessitated new strategies for governance, exploration opened new markets and challenged wisdom about how trade works, and the New Science used empirical data to back up tentative hypotheses. The question early moderns confronted when they debated the nature of fortune, I argue, was more complicated than whether an actual entity called “Fortune” exists and controls some outcomes; it was about how a concept called “fortune” could be a useful category for navigating contingent knowledge in these various fields. My dissertation claims that fortune enabled Renaissance thinkers and writers, including Shakespeare, Spenser, Bacon, and Jonson, to confront questions about contingency and the extent of human agency. My focus on fortune as an integral feature of literary narratives contributes to a growing body of criticism about literature’s philosophical purchase. In particular, the issues fortune raises regarding certainty, time, and perspective serve as a fulcrum of literary plotting, demanding that audiences constantly reevaluate what constitutes chance or necessity and interpret order and chaos as relative to one’s frame of reference. Literature serves as a crucial site for speculative inquiry that suspends questions of certainty, thereby revealing an alternate history of uncertainty that resists triumphalist narratives of the rise of rational modernity.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Noteby Erin Kathleen Kelly
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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