Philosophy and Poetry: Continental Perspectives by Ranjan Ghosh

Abstract

MLR, .,   Judy A. Hayden and Daniel J. Worden put Emperor into the context of contemporary mockery at the seriousness of men of letters (rather than the Royal Society itself), interpreting the play as an attack on the belief in a plurality of worlds. Behn references Lucian’s Icaromenippus, Godwin’s e Man in the Moone, de Villars ’s Count of Gabalis, and Wilkins’s e Discovery of a World in the Moon, and knew Fontenelle’s Entretien sur la pluralité des mondes, which she translated in the following year. ere she may criticize Fontenelle’s failure ‘to recognise scripture and church authorities on the issue’ (p. ), but the editors do not mention her questioning of biblical authority in matters of science in the preface to her translation, nor the common strategy of avoiding charges of blasphemy by paying lip-service to religious orthodoxy. Importantly, they highlight the play’s gender aspect, drawing attention to Behn’s belief in women’s intellectual equality with men, and to Emperor’s commonsensical female and foolish male characters. However , Balliardo’s fantastic theories also illustrate the fact that art, science, alchemy, and magical thinking did not yet occupy separate realms in Restoration thinking, as Elaine Hobby and James Hogarth point out in their forthcoming edition of Emperor (e Cambridge Edition of the Works of Aphra Behn,  vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), vol. ). Whether ‘Behn’s political voice resounds loudly’ (p. ) in this farce is a matter of contention among scholars. Hayden and Worden interpret Balliardo’s patriarchal ‘autocracy’ as a ‘trope’ for the ‘tyranny’ of the royal ‘patriarch’, James II, whose promotion of Catholics and attempts at religious toleration ‘miscalculated his people’s wishes’ and threatened to rush him ‘headlong towards self-destruction’ (p. ). Behn, however, was generally not a follower of Filmer’s ideology which likened the monarch’s power over his subjects to that of a father over his family. Two appendices give brief biographical information about Behn and Fatouville. As the volume is addressed to both students and scholars (p. ), the annotations might have benefited from more explanations of obsolete words, and especially of changes in the meaning of words confusing to modern readers. ere are also some unfortunate errors, such as the misdating of the Rye House Plot (p. ), or the false attribution of the humorous completion of Bellemante’s verse-lines in Emperor .  to Scaramouch instead of Harlequin (p. ). Notwithstanding, the edition offers numerous fresh insights and is sure to be a valuable resource and guide for all those interested in Behn’s intriguing rewriting of commedia elements, and her amusing satire of texts about lunar travel. U  V M R Philosophy and Poetry: Continental Perspectives. Ed. by R G. New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press. . viii+ pp. £. ISBN ––––. e essays in this ambitious volume combine depth and breadth, and include contributions from leading scholars in the fields of philosophy and literature. Its  Reviews consideration of nineteen important figures means that the volume will be of interest both to those researching individual philosophers’ work and its relationship to poetry, and also to readers wishing to gain an overview of ‘continental’ approaches. e thinkers discussed are the following: Heidegger, Benjamin, Bataille , Arendt, Gadamer, Lacan, Adorno, Sartre, Levinas, Blanchot, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Irigaray, Derrida (the only one not to be named in the title of the chapter devoted to him by Leslie Hill), Badiou, Nancy, Rancière, Kristeva, and Agamben. Placed first in the volume, Heidegger is the anchor because his interpretation of Hölderlin was so influential, in the French context in particular. Subsequent thinkers engage with Heidegger as they reflect on poetry; for instance, Bruno Bosteels situates Badiou’s thought ‘with and Against Heidegger’ (p. ). Among the many clear essays are James Risser’s discussion of Gadamer, for whom poetry is ‘a quiet word’ that offers intimacy in a world of estrangement (p. ), Ian James’s concise presentation of Nancy’s imprecise view of poetry, perhaps hard to pin down because it involves the senses as well as affect, and the suggestion by Cecilia Sjöholm that philosophy, for Arendt, can engage with the world ‘as if’ when it ‘listens’ to poetry...