The particularisation of error within the 'culture of fact', 1600-1650

Thesis

Barbara Shapiro's A Culture of Fact argued that a fact-orientated culture emerged in seventeenth-century England. Fact, formerly a legal category, was absorbed by a range of other discourses and became a crucial component of the epistemological shifts of the period. The question of how the culture of fact altered the articulation of the related concept of error has not been investigated.

This thesis analyses the changing concept of error against the emergence of the culture of fact, arguing for a shift from the personified and allegorised representation of error to a status as the particularised counterpart and opposite to the establishment of fact. The epistemological, religious, and cultural contexts informing notions of error and its particularisation are established. This particularisation is exemplified in the introduction by an account of the incorporation of the language of fact into the titles of texts concerning error. The chapters build on the critically established narrative of the permeation of evidential concerns surrounding matters of fact into drama, pioneered by Lorna Hutson, to examine plays and non-dramatic literary texts which offer perspectives on error as a mistake in matter of fact. Plays engage with the contexts of error, the conventions of fact, and stage how mishandling these conventions results in error. Poems by Spenser and Fletcher, and masques by Middleton and Campion reflect the shifting status of Protestant Truth, a key context of error, and its consequences for the representation of error. Jonson addresses error in forms scrutinised by seventeenth-century cultura animi authors and considers how they engender factual errors; whilst Ford and Brome, reacting to specific medical subgenres of error writing, conceived of error’s utility in a curative theatre. These playwrights unite a cultural concern with error as a specific sense of being mistaken in matters of fact with drama’s historical prerogative to exploit error in plots which may reflect a seventeenth-century recognition of error’s utility in the pursuit of fact.

Authors: Penge, ELN

• Publication date: 2014
• Type of award: MLitt
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: history of fact; early modern english literature; History of error seventeenth-century; early modern english drama
• Subjects: English Language and Literature; Early modern English literature (1550 ? 1780)