Joanna wrote:
>
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > But with respect to Donne, you have to recall that the scientific revolution was not very far advanced when he wrote the poems people write about.
> >
> Yes, you're absolutely right, which is why a whole generation of Donne
> criticism was basically brain dead.
Well I read some of the earlier material of that generation, and they were by no means brain dead. They were, I think, quite wrongon the impact of "science" on the Elizabethan/Jacobean 'imagination.' Magic had far more of an impact, and as was discussed earlier on this list, magic & other superstitions were perhaps the more characteristic features of the late 16th & 17th centuries. Christopher Hill sharpy attacks Robert Adams for dismissing the importance of Fludd (?). That 'mystic' material had an impact of Pound 400 years later. Alchemy of course was still dominant in what was to become chemistry, and geology was dominated by the concept of the earth as a living organism, and the early geologists wasted a lot of time trying to use Harvey's discoveries of the circulation of blood to explain the circulation of water in the earth/atmosphere.
Carrol
P.S. It's been so long since I read Marjorie Nicolson that I have not the slightest idea what she had to say on all this.