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Book Cover
E-book
Author Schmidgen, Wolfram

Title Exquisite mixture : the virtues of impurity in early modern England / Wolfram Schmidgen
Edition 1st ed
Published Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2013]
©2013

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Description 1 online resource
Series Haney Foundation series
Haney Foundation series.
Contents Introduction : England's Mixed Genius -- The Science of Mixture -- The Politics of Deformity -- Locke's Mixed Liberty -- Conclusion : Undividing Modernity
Summary The culture of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Britain is rarely credited with tolerance of diversity. This period saw a rising pride in national identity, the expansion of colonialism, and glorification of the Anglo-Saxon roots of the country. Yet at the same time, the author observes, the concept of mixture became a critical element of Britons' belief in their own superiority. While the scientific, political, and religious establishment of the early 1600s could not imagine that anything truly formed, virtuous, or durable could be produced by mixing unlike kinds or merging absolute forms, intellectuals at the end of the century asserted that mixture could produce superior languages, new species, flawless ideas, and resilient civil societies. This book examines the writing of Robert Boyle, John Locke, Daniel Defoe, and others who challenged the primacy of the one over the many, the whole over the parts, and form over matter. The author traces the emergence of the valuation of mixture to the political and scientific revolutions of the seventeenth century. The recurrent threat of absolutism in this period helped foster alliances within a broad range of writers and fields of inquiry, from geography, embryology, and chemistry to political science and philosophy. By retrieving early modern arguments for the civilizing effects of mixture, the author invites readers to rethink the stories we tell about the development of modern society. Not merely the fruit of postmodernism, the theorization and valuation of hybridity have their roots in centuries past. -- Book jacket
Analysis Cultural Studies
Literature
Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Print version record
Subject Cultural fusion -- England -- History -- 17th century
Cultural pluralism -- England -- History -- 17th century
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
Civilization
Cultural fusion
Cultural pluralism
SUBJECT England -- Civilization -- 17th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85043276
Subject England
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780812207187
0812207181