Tag Archives: reading
Mistaken Rhetoric: Cavendish’s Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy
Our reading group this week tackled Margaret Cavendish’s Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy (1666). Since I started reading Cavendish (many years ago, now), I’ve always been struck by her prefatory material—first, just the sheer amount of it for any given text and, second, her emphasis on mistakes. Many of her prefaces include warnings and comments on […]
Exam Reading – What Is Love?
In 1691 a reader of John Dunton’s Athenian Mercury (also called Athenian Gazette and Casuistical Mercury) posed this question for the periodical’s writers: “What is love?” Since the question was included in one of the early issues of the periodical dedicated solely to “ladies’ questions,” we can presume that this question was, indeed, posed by […]
spinning with the braine 