Anthony Ossa-Richardson - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Books by Anthony Ossa-Richardson

Et Amicorum: Essays on Renaissance Humanism and Philosophy, 2018

This volume is offered as an affectionate tribute to Professor Jill Kraye, long one of the intell... more This volume is offered as an affectionate tribute to Professor Jill Kraye, long one of the intellectual lights of the Warburg Institute, London, as well as one of the world's leading scholars of Renaissance philosophy and humanism, the two interconnected subjects of this volume. Jill supervised each of our doctoral dissertations, Margaret's in 1997-2001, and Anthony's in 2007-10, and has remained close to us since then, continuing to offer her friendship, professional guidance, and expertise, not to mention stepping in now and then to solve Latin quandaries. Of course, Jill has had a host of other students at both the master's and doctoral levels, all of whom have fond memories and the deepest respect for her. For this volume we have assembled as many of them as were able to participate:

A History of Ambiguity

Not a history of ambiguous texts per se, but rather a quixotic attempt at a history of the ways t... more Not a history of ambiguous texts per se, but rather a quixotic attempt at a history of the ways that interpreters, and theorists of interpretation, have posited, confronted, denied, conceptualised and argued over the existence of multiple meanings in texts. The major fields discussed in the book are: linguistics (including rhetoric, semantics, poetics), law, theology (or rather the interpretation of Scripture), and literary criticism, although I also take forays into diplomacy, psychology, and other areas. Mostly Western, though there is a touch of mediaeval Sanskrit poetry and poetics, and a sprinkle of mediaeval Arabic semantics. (I do not read Sanskrit or Arabic. Things will work out, somehow.)

The Devil's Tabernacle: The Pagan Oracles in Early Modern Thought

Papers by Anthony Ossa-Richardson

English Literary Renaissance, 2021

Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A judgement on a work of art, if it is not itself a... more Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A judgement on a work of art, if it is not itself a work of art. .. has no civil rights in the realm of art.-Friedrich Schlegel, Critical Fragment 117 For their comments on earlier drafts of this essay, I would like to thank David Colclough and Elizabeth Swann. My thanks also to Dilwyn Knox for advice on Plotinus.

Proust, Typical Novelist: Literary Context as Type

Modern Language Quarterly, 2022

A decade ago Rita Felski argued that reliance on context shuts down a text’s meaning by enclosing... more A decade ago Rita Felski argued that reliance on context shuts down a text’s meaning by enclosing it in a restrictive historical “box” and alienating its individuality. This essay offers a rebuttal to Felski’s critique, first by delineating the genealogy of her concerns in literary, philosophical, and architectural thought of the late nineteenth century, and second by exploring an alternative model of context as type, as revealed by a close reading of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Proust’s novel repeatedly makes use of a notion of the type (a person, an artwork, a battle) that prioritizes the act of typifying, an act that does not sacrifice but discloses, or even constitutes, the individual. Like the Proustian type, context is best understood not as an alienation from, but as a route to, the particularity of the literary object.

Modern Intellectual History, 2021

This article tells the story of the eccentric and unknown writer Albert William Alderson (1880–19... more This article tells the story of the eccentric and unknown writer Albert William Alderson (1880–1963), a British South African office clerk whose father had helped found the De Beers diamond mining corporation with Cecil Rhodes. Alderson, despite having no academic background, wrote two books and several pamphlets arguing that world peace could be achieved by eliminating all the languages in the world other than English; he buttressed this claim with an elaborate account of the causes of war taken from his reading in world history, but also with extraordinary statements on the relation of language to personal agency. Although Alderson's arguments cannot be taken seriously, they are illuminating as an example of “naïve” liberalism pushed to its limit; that is, as a case-study in heterodoxy comparable to Carlo Ginzburg's Menocchio. I conclude by suggesting that his work helped inspire one influential reader—C. K. Ogden, the founder of Basic English.

Studies in Philology, 2016

Journal of the History of Ideas, 2013

During the Enlightenment, the widespread belief in demonic possession gradually gave way to the m... more During the Enlightenment, the widespread belief in demonic possession gradually gave way to the medical view of pathological insanity. This process was well underway in the seventeenth century, and the latter view was no longer a specialist position in the eighteenth. The physician Richard Mead, writing in 1749, denied the existence of possession, and prescribed medical treatment for the insane: blood-letting, emetics, purgatives and other drugs, diet, and exercise. He also prescribed a sort of psychological treatment: the doctor should, he said, ''keep the patient's mind employed in thoughts directly contrary to those which possessed it before.'' 1 The old language of possession was still present, now as metaphor. Mead was unusual in his time for recommending a moral, as well as a physical approach; one may contrast, for instance, the purely physical treatment offered in Peter Shaw's much-reprinted textbook, A New Practice of Physic. 2 But by the end of the century, this moral treatment started to be introduced into lunatic hospitals in Italy, England, and France. The traditional hero of this movement was the French clinician, Philippe Pinel, celebrated across the Continent for his humane handling of the insane; he I would like to thank two anonymous referees of the Journal of the History of Ideas for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

Angels of Light? Sanctity and the Discernment of Spirits in the Early Modern Period , 2013

From the start, the basis of philosophy has been a distinction between truth and appearances. The... more From the start, the basis of philosophy has been a distinction between truth and appearances. The philosopher has always sought to discern the true from the false, and especially from the specious false: true generosity from specious extravagance, the true friend from the specious flatterer, and true universals from the specious coming and going of sensory particulars. 1 Modernity, the age of the individual, has given centre stage to the problems raised in antiquity about the reliability of private experience and private judgment: how can we be sure that our senses are accurate and our reasons well founded? These were the first questions addressed by René Descartes in his Meditations of 1641, in response both to prevailing scholastic theories of knowledge, and to the challenge offered by the Pyrrhonist scepticism uncorked in the previous century. 2 The first Meditation seeks a foundation for knowledgesomething which cannot be doubted. The material world is out of the question, since our senses deceive us every day. To give the case put forward in the sixth Meditation, and recycled today in undergraduate textbooks, square towers look round in the distance-a standard example from early modern scholastic philosophy. 3 Moreover, very often we think we are awake, when in fact we are * The author thanks Stuart Clark and Theo Verbeek for their helpful discussions of this paper's theoretical and historical aspects.

Erudition and the Republic of Letters, 2016

This long article explores the life, career, library, scholarly connections and intellectual acti... more This long article explores the life, career, library, scholarly connections and intellectual activity of the forgotten Huguenot preacher and biblical critic César de Missy, based in London from 1731 until his death in 1775. I focus on three main areas: (a) his collection and collation of Greek New Testament manuscripts and correspondence on this matter with Johann Jakob Wetstein, (b) his amazingly minute reconstructions of error in these manuscripts, thinking through processes of scribal ductus and dictation, as well as mistakes caused by the imperfect grasp of Greek, and (c) his controversies in Huguenot journals of the 1750s, chiefly concerning the Johannine Comma, and taking into consideration De Missy's translation of Isaac Newton's infamous letter on that subject. Despite being almost entirely unstudied, De Missy offers us an insight into the activity of biblical scholars in England in the generation after Bentley.

Missy, César de (1703–1775)

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Eighteenth-Century Thought, 2015

This paper discusses Edward Harwood’s eccentric translation of the New Testament, published in 17... more This paper discusses Edward Harwood’s eccentric translation of the New Testament, published in 1768, presenting it as a response to the Enlightenment challenge to the authority and authenticity of the Bible. I examine Harwood's theology, as expressed in his other works, and argue that the much-noted stylistic peculiarities of his translation disguised an attempt to refigure the Bible according to Arian principles—an attempt of which Harwood’s contemporaries, both in Britain and on the Continent, were fully aware. Harwood’s version is used, ultimately, as a test case to ask what the Enlightenment really wanted from its Biblical text.

This article discusses the interrelation between the history of science (in this case the anatomy... more This article discusses the interrelation between the history of science (in this case the anatomy and physiology of the skull) and the history of social behaviour, using the case of the sneeze and the customs surrounding it, as discussed in early modernity (here approximately 1543–1756) – a subject absent from existing scholarship. In the first main section, I examine the redescription of skull anatomy by Conrad Victor Schneider (1655) and its implications for the sneeze, previously assumed to be a function of the brain. In the second, I analyse moral and religious discourses about the propriety of blessing those who sneeze, discourses which ostensibly turn on claims about the nature of the sneeze itself. These two aspects are brought together most vividly in a monograph on sneezing (1664) by the Dutch professor Marten Schoock. In conclusion I argue that the interrelation between ‘scientific’ and ‘moral’ discussions of sneezing was an early modern illusion which began to be dispelled in the eighteenth century.

The Bible and the Arts, ed. Stephen Prickett, 2013

This article attempts to reinstate the theological underpinnings of the notion of the 'sublime' i... more This article attempts to reinstate the theological underpinnings of the notion of the 'sublime' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing on the rich and many-layered discourse (predominantly in France, but also in Italy, Germany and England) about Gen. 1:3, 'fiat lux', a passage notoriously cited by Longinus. I re-evaluate the well-known controversy over this citation between Nicolas Boileau and Pierre-Daniel Huet in the light of earlier theological commentary at Saumur, and trace its later influence down to Robert Lowth and, ultimately, Erich Auerbach, via Schiller and Kierkegaard.

Space and Place in Higher Education, ed. Paul Temple, 2013

An account of the philosophical and aesthetic choices behind the designs of three British univers... more An account of the philosophical and aesthetic choices behind the designs of three British university campuses of the early 1960s: Sussex, UEA and York, drawing on the archives of Denys Lasdun (UEA), published articles of Basil Spence (Sussex) and unstudied recordings of Sir Andrew Derbyshire (York). I trace these architects' design choices to a pedagogical idealism deriving ultimately from mediaeval theology via the mediation of Cardinal Newman and his readers in postwar Britain.

Journal of the History of Ideas, 2013

Method and Variation: Narrative in Early Modern French Thought, eds Emma Gilby and Paul White, 2013

It is not uncommon for historians, faced with the print controversies of early modernity, to evin... more It is not uncommon for historians, faced with the print controversies of early modernity, to evince a distaste for their acrimony and apparent futility; one is often told that disputants were 'speaking past each other', and that their points of disagreement, often theological in nature, were simply intractable. Nonetheless, argument reveals assumptions on each side, embodied in a language given as literal, but received as 'mere' metaphor. This is well exhibited in confessional exchanges about idolatry -a cloud of theological issues to which the slippery concepts of representation and metaphor were central, and which in turn underpinned many specific conf licts of doctrine, notably on the Eucharist and the worship of saints.

Angels of Light? Sanctity and the Discernment of Spirits in the Early Modern Period, eds Jan Machielsen and Clare Copeland, Dec 2012

Journal of the …, Jan 1, 2011

Pietro Pomponazzi and the Rôle of Nature In Oracular Divination

Intellectual History Review, Jan 1, 2010

Since the early decades of the sixteenth century, Pomponazzi has been a name to conjure with: to ... more Since the early decades of the sixteenth century, Pomponazzi has been a name to conjure with: to some, the first of the modern atheists; to others, a hero of the new philosophy. But how much direct influence did his work have? This question is explored in terms of the way in ...

Et Amicorum: Essays on Renaissance Humanism and Philosophy, 2018

This volume is offered as an affectionate tribute to Professor Jill Kraye, long one of the intell... more This volume is offered as an affectionate tribute to Professor Jill Kraye, long one of the intellectual lights of the Warburg Institute, London, as well as one of the world's leading scholars of Renaissance philosophy and humanism, the two interconnected subjects of this volume. Jill supervised each of our doctoral dissertations, Margaret's in 1997-2001, and Anthony's in 2007-10, and has remained close to us since then, continuing to offer her friendship, professional guidance, and expertise, not to mention stepping in now and then to solve Latin quandaries. Of course, Jill has had a host of other students at both the master's and doctoral levels, all of whom have fond memories and the deepest respect for her. For this volume we have assembled as many of them as were able to participate:

A History of Ambiguity

Not a history of ambiguous texts per se, but rather a quixotic attempt at a history of the ways t... more Not a history of ambiguous texts per se, but rather a quixotic attempt at a history of the ways that interpreters, and theorists of interpretation, have posited, confronted, denied, conceptualised and argued over the existence of multiple meanings in texts. The major fields discussed in the book are: linguistics (including rhetoric, semantics, poetics), law, theology (or rather the interpretation of Scripture), and literary criticism, although I also take forays into diplomacy, psychology, and other areas. Mostly Western, though there is a touch of mediaeval Sanskrit poetry and poetics, and a sprinkle of mediaeval Arabic semantics. (I do not read Sanskrit or Arabic. Things will work out, somehow.)

The Devil's Tabernacle: The Pagan Oracles in Early Modern Thought

English Literary Renaissance, 2021

Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A judgement on a work of art, if it is not itself a... more Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A judgement on a work of art, if it is not itself a work of art. .. has no civil rights in the realm of art.-Friedrich Schlegel, Critical Fragment 117 For their comments on earlier drafts of this essay, I would like to thank David Colclough and Elizabeth Swann. My thanks also to Dilwyn Knox for advice on Plotinus.

Proust, Typical Novelist: Literary Context as Type

Modern Language Quarterly, 2022

A decade ago Rita Felski argued that reliance on context shuts down a text’s meaning by enclosing... more A decade ago Rita Felski argued that reliance on context shuts down a text’s meaning by enclosing it in a restrictive historical “box” and alienating its individuality. This essay offers a rebuttal to Felski’s critique, first by delineating the genealogy of her concerns in literary, philosophical, and architectural thought of the late nineteenth century, and second by exploring an alternative model of context as type, as revealed by a close reading of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Proust’s novel repeatedly makes use of a notion of the type (a person, an artwork, a battle) that prioritizes the act of typifying, an act that does not sacrifice but discloses, or even constitutes, the individual. Like the Proustian type, context is best understood not as an alienation from, but as a route to, the particularity of the literary object.

Modern Intellectual History, 2021

This article tells the story of the eccentric and unknown writer Albert William Alderson (1880–19... more This article tells the story of the eccentric and unknown writer Albert William Alderson (1880–1963), a British South African office clerk whose father had helped found the De Beers diamond mining corporation with Cecil Rhodes. Alderson, despite having no academic background, wrote two books and several pamphlets arguing that world peace could be achieved by eliminating all the languages in the world other than English; he buttressed this claim with an elaborate account of the causes of war taken from his reading in world history, but also with extraordinary statements on the relation of language to personal agency. Although Alderson's arguments cannot be taken seriously, they are illuminating as an example of “naïve” liberalism pushed to its limit; that is, as a case-study in heterodoxy comparable to Carlo Ginzburg's Menocchio. I conclude by suggesting that his work helped inspire one influential reader—C. K. Ogden, the founder of Basic English.

Studies in Philology, 2016

Journal of the History of Ideas, 2013

During the Enlightenment, the widespread belief in demonic possession gradually gave way to the m... more During the Enlightenment, the widespread belief in demonic possession gradually gave way to the medical view of pathological insanity. This process was well underway in the seventeenth century, and the latter view was no longer a specialist position in the eighteenth. The physician Richard Mead, writing in 1749, denied the existence of possession, and prescribed medical treatment for the insane: blood-letting, emetics, purgatives and other drugs, diet, and exercise. He also prescribed a sort of psychological treatment: the doctor should, he said, ''keep the patient's mind employed in thoughts directly contrary to those which possessed it before.'' 1 The old language of possession was still present, now as metaphor. Mead was unusual in his time for recommending a moral, as well as a physical approach; one may contrast, for instance, the purely physical treatment offered in Peter Shaw's much-reprinted textbook, A New Practice of Physic. 2 But by the end of the century, this moral treatment started to be introduced into lunatic hospitals in Italy, England, and France. The traditional hero of this movement was the French clinician, Philippe Pinel, celebrated across the Continent for his humane handling of the insane; he I would like to thank two anonymous referees of the Journal of the History of Ideas for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

Angels of Light? Sanctity and the Discernment of Spirits in the Early Modern Period , 2013

From the start, the basis of philosophy has been a distinction between truth and appearances. The... more From the start, the basis of philosophy has been a distinction between truth and appearances. The philosopher has always sought to discern the true from the false, and especially from the specious false: true generosity from specious extravagance, the true friend from the specious flatterer, and true universals from the specious coming and going of sensory particulars. 1 Modernity, the age of the individual, has given centre stage to the problems raised in antiquity about the reliability of private experience and private judgment: how can we be sure that our senses are accurate and our reasons well founded? These were the first questions addressed by René Descartes in his Meditations of 1641, in response both to prevailing scholastic theories of knowledge, and to the challenge offered by the Pyrrhonist scepticism uncorked in the previous century. 2 The first Meditation seeks a foundation for knowledgesomething which cannot be doubted. The material world is out of the question, since our senses deceive us every day. To give the case put forward in the sixth Meditation, and recycled today in undergraduate textbooks, square towers look round in the distance-a standard example from early modern scholastic philosophy. 3 Moreover, very often we think we are awake, when in fact we are * The author thanks Stuart Clark and Theo Verbeek for their helpful discussions of this paper's theoretical and historical aspects.

Erudition and the Republic of Letters, 2016

This long article explores the life, career, library, scholarly connections and intellectual acti... more This long article explores the life, career, library, scholarly connections and intellectual activity of the forgotten Huguenot preacher and biblical critic César de Missy, based in London from 1731 until his death in 1775. I focus on three main areas: (a) his collection and collation of Greek New Testament manuscripts and correspondence on this matter with Johann Jakob Wetstein, (b) his amazingly minute reconstructions of error in these manuscripts, thinking through processes of scribal ductus and dictation, as well as mistakes caused by the imperfect grasp of Greek, and (c) his controversies in Huguenot journals of the 1750s, chiefly concerning the Johannine Comma, and taking into consideration De Missy's translation of Isaac Newton's infamous letter on that subject. Despite being almost entirely unstudied, De Missy offers us an insight into the activity of biblical scholars in England in the generation after Bentley.

Missy, César de (1703–1775)

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Eighteenth-Century Thought, 2015

This paper discusses Edward Harwood’s eccentric translation of the New Testament, published in 17... more This paper discusses Edward Harwood’s eccentric translation of the New Testament, published in 1768, presenting it as a response to the Enlightenment challenge to the authority and authenticity of the Bible. I examine Harwood's theology, as expressed in his other works, and argue that the much-noted stylistic peculiarities of his translation disguised an attempt to refigure the Bible according to Arian principles—an attempt of which Harwood’s contemporaries, both in Britain and on the Continent, were fully aware. Harwood’s version is used, ultimately, as a test case to ask what the Enlightenment really wanted from its Biblical text.

This article discusses the interrelation between the history of science (in this case the anatomy... more This article discusses the interrelation between the history of science (in this case the anatomy and physiology of the skull) and the history of social behaviour, using the case of the sneeze and the customs surrounding it, as discussed in early modernity (here approximately 1543–1756) – a subject absent from existing scholarship. In the first main section, I examine the redescription of skull anatomy by Conrad Victor Schneider (1655) and its implications for the sneeze, previously assumed to be a function of the brain. In the second, I analyse moral and religious discourses about the propriety of blessing those who sneeze, discourses which ostensibly turn on claims about the nature of the sneeze itself. These two aspects are brought together most vividly in a monograph on sneezing (1664) by the Dutch professor Marten Schoock. In conclusion I argue that the interrelation between ‘scientific’ and ‘moral’ discussions of sneezing was an early modern illusion which began to be dispelled in the eighteenth century.

The Bible and the Arts, ed. Stephen Prickett, 2013

This article attempts to reinstate the theological underpinnings of the notion of the 'sublime' i... more This article attempts to reinstate the theological underpinnings of the notion of the 'sublime' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing on the rich and many-layered discourse (predominantly in France, but also in Italy, Germany and England) about Gen. 1:3, 'fiat lux', a passage notoriously cited by Longinus. I re-evaluate the well-known controversy over this citation between Nicolas Boileau and Pierre-Daniel Huet in the light of earlier theological commentary at Saumur, and trace its later influence down to Robert Lowth and, ultimately, Erich Auerbach, via Schiller and Kierkegaard.

Space and Place in Higher Education, ed. Paul Temple, 2013

An account of the philosophical and aesthetic choices behind the designs of three British univers... more An account of the philosophical and aesthetic choices behind the designs of three British university campuses of the early 1960s: Sussex, UEA and York, drawing on the archives of Denys Lasdun (UEA), published articles of Basil Spence (Sussex) and unstudied recordings of Sir Andrew Derbyshire (York). I trace these architects' design choices to a pedagogical idealism deriving ultimately from mediaeval theology via the mediation of Cardinal Newman and his readers in postwar Britain.

Journal of the History of Ideas, 2013

Method and Variation: Narrative in Early Modern French Thought, eds Emma Gilby and Paul White, 2013

It is not uncommon for historians, faced with the print controversies of early modernity, to evin... more It is not uncommon for historians, faced with the print controversies of early modernity, to evince a distaste for their acrimony and apparent futility; one is often told that disputants were 'speaking past each other', and that their points of disagreement, often theological in nature, were simply intractable. Nonetheless, argument reveals assumptions on each side, embodied in a language given as literal, but received as 'mere' metaphor. This is well exhibited in confessional exchanges about idolatry -a cloud of theological issues to which the slippery concepts of representation and metaphor were central, and which in turn underpinned many specific conf licts of doctrine, notably on the Eucharist and the worship of saints.

Angels of Light? Sanctity and the Discernment of Spirits in the Early Modern Period, eds Jan Machielsen and Clare Copeland, Dec 2012

Journal of the …, Jan 1, 2011

Pietro Pomponazzi and the Rôle of Nature In Oracular Divination

Intellectual History Review, Jan 1, 2010

Since the early decades of the sixteenth century, Pomponazzi has been a name to conjure with: to ... more Since the early decades of the sixteenth century, Pomponazzi has been a name to conjure with: to some, the first of the modern atheists; to others, a hero of the new philosophy. But how much direct influence did his work have? This question is explored in terms of the way in ...

The Modern Language Review, Jan 2006

Ethan Shagan, The Birth of Modern Belief: Faith and Judgment from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment

Erudition and the Republic of Letters, 2021

Sarah Hutton,British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century

Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 2016

Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science, 2015

Seventeenth-century England has long been heralded as the birthplace of a so-called 'new'... more Seventeenth-century England has long been heralded as the birthplace of a so-called 'new' philosophy. Yet what contemporaries might have understood by 'old' philosophy has been little appreciated. In this book Dmitri Levitin examines English attitudes to ancient philosophy in unprecedented depth, demonstrating the centrality of engagement with the history of philosophy to almost all educated persons, whether scholars, clerics, or philosophers themselves, and aligning English intellectual culture closely to that of continental Europe. Drawing on a vast array of sources, Levitin challenges the assumption that interest in ancient ideas was limited to out-of-date 'ancients' or was in some sense 'pre-enlightened'; indeed, much of the intellectual justification for the new philosophy came from re-writing its history. At the same time, the deep investment of English scholars in pioneering forms of late humanist erudition led them to develop some of the most ...

Paul Kléber Monod, Solomon’s Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 412, $45.00, ISBN 978 0300 12358 6

Early Science and Medicine, 2013

The Birth of the Past

Intellectual History Review, 2013

too numerous to detail here, including powerful remarks about Boyle and Locke’s reliance on the o... more too numerous to detail here, including powerful remarks about Boyle and Locke’s reliance on the ontology bound up with the idea of the ‘chain of being’ and about their understanding of how far human reason could be perfected given its obvious limits. Yet Regimens of the Mind throws up difficulties – to be anticipated given Corneanu’s radical reading of well-known sources – that will only be resolved with more research. Although she shows that Boyle and Locke relied on older cultura animi sources, mediated by Francis Bacon, for their conception of philosophy’s power to shape the mind, we do not get a clear sense of how they re-shaped them to meet the needs of new models of inquiry. Nor is it clear how they responded to new ideas about the workings of mind that must surely have influenced their thinking – the neurological works of Descartes and Willis, for example. The most fundamental problem, however, concerns the two arguments referred to in the first paragraph. While Corneanu’s case is persuasive, it by no means invalidates the argument that Boyle (in particular) saw method as a means of effacing the prejudices of individual inquirers. There will need to be a wider inquiry that seeks to understand how the early Royal Society reconciled (if it did at all) the apparently competing and hard-to-reconcile claims made for its epistemological programmes with respect to the workings of the philosophical community and the minds of individuals. That Regimens of the Mind suggests such stimulating lines of inquiry is a testament to the industry and inquiry of its author in furnishing us with a persuasive and new argument about the nature of seventeenth-century natural philosophy. It is a fine work that will hopefully provoke responses from inquirers just as attentive and industrious as Sorana Corneanu.

Paul Kléber Monod, Solomon's Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment

European History Quarterly, 2014

Tragedy in the History of Scholarship: John William Donaldson's "The Theatre of the Greeks"

Homer, Pope, and the Neoclassical Invention of Ambiguity

Shooting at Father's Corpse: Francis Bacon and his Readers on Legal Ambiguity

A Parcel of Pipes and Friggling Maggots: Metaphor and the Critique of Materialism in Thomas Emes' Vindiciae Mentis

Constructing the Devil of a History

'Have recourse of course to poetry': Joyce and the End of American Modernism?

Tau's Revenge: The Greek Alphabet in Humanist Italy