An electronic, international, peer-reviewed, MLA-indexed, EBSCO-distributed journal for studies in Renaissance/early modern literature & culture. APPOSITIONS publishes under a Creative Commons License and is an open-access, independently managed journal. ISSN: 1946-1992. APPOSITIONS will be on hiatus beginning October, 2017.
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EDITORIAL BOARD
EDITOR
W. SCOTT HOWARD
Department of English
University of Denver
EDITORIAL ADVISORS
CHRISTOPHER BAKER
Languages, Literature & Philosophy
Armstrong State University
RAPHAEL FALCO
Department of English
University of Maryland,
Baltimore County
ELIZABETH H. HAGEMAN
Department of English
University of New Hampshire
BRETT D. HIRSCH
Centre for Medieval &
Early Modern Studies
University of Western Australia
MATTHEW STEGGLE
Humanities Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University
SARA J. van den BERG
Department of English
Saint Louis University
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
CHRISTINA ANGEL
Department of English
Metropolitan State College, Denver
ERIK ANKERBERG
Department of English
Wisconsin Lutheran College
CRISTELLE BASKINS
Art & Art History Department
Tufts University
GARY R. ETTARI
Department of Literature & Language
University of North Carolina, Asheville
ANNE GREENFIELD
Department of English
Valdosta State University
JUTTA SPERLING
Social Sciences, History
Hampshire College
AMY D. STACKHOUSE
Department of English
Iona College
ASSISTANT EDITORS
JENNIFER L. AILLES
Department of English
Rollins College
LOUISE DENMEAD
Department of English
University College, Cork
THOMAS J. MORETTI
Department of English
Iona College
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APPOSITION:
1. A public disputation by scholars; a formal examination by question and answer; still applied to the ‘Speech day’ at St. Paul's School, London. [1659-60 PEPYS Diary 9 Jan., “My brother John’s speech, which he is to make the next apposition.” 1864 Press 18 June 588, “St. Paul’s School . . . celebrated its annual Apposition on Wednesday.”]
2. The action of putting or placing one thing to another; application. [1541 R. COPLAND Guydon’s Quest. Cyrurg., “Yf after the fyrste apposycyon . . . it blede nat wel.” 1559 MORWYNG Evon. 367, “All suche thinges as . . . fomentacions, apposicions, embroches, etc.” 1650 FULLER Pisgah IV. vi. 117, “By apposition, or putting of sweet odours to the dead body.” 1726 AYLIFFE Parergon 308, “By the Apposition of a Publick Seal.” 1875 POSTE Gaius II. 220, “The apposition of the seals of seven attesting witnesses.”]
3. That which is put to or added; an addition. [1610 J. GUILLIM Heraldry §1. i. (1660) 10, “For distinction sake, to annex some apposition over and above their paternall Coat.” 1655 FULLER Ch. Hist. II. 67, “The Place is plainly written Cern, without any paragogical apposition.”]
4. The placing of things in close superficial contact; the putting of distinct things side by side in close proximity. [1660 STANLEY Hist. Philos. 64/2, “The mistion of the Elements is by apposition.” 1669 GALE Crt. Gentiles I. I. vi. 35, “[The word] according to the various apposition of the leters, may signifie either a foot, or a river.” 1830 LYELL Princ. Geol. (1875) I. II. xix. 488, “These layers must have accumulated one on the other by lateral apposition.” 1850 DAUBENY Atom. The. iv. 121, “The result of the apposition of an assemblage of smaller crystals.”]
5. The fact or condition of being in close contact, juxtaposition, parallelism. [1606 G. CARLETON Tithes Exam. iv. 21b, “There is an apposition betweene things of the same kinde.” a1. 652 J. SMITH Sel. Disc. v. 160, “A mere kind of apposition or contiguity of our natures with the divine.” 1801 FUSELI Lect. Art. (1848), “The true medium between dry apposition and exuberant contrast.” 1824-8 LANDOR Imag. Conv. (1846) 159, “He places strange and discordant ideas in close apposition.” 1878 T. BRYANT Pract. Surg. I. 145, “The cut surfaces and edges of the wounds are to be brought into apposition.”]
6. Rhet. The addition of a parallel word or phrase by way of explanation or illustration of another. Obs. [1561 T. [ORTON] Calvin’s Inst. III. 187, “Calling faith the worke of God, and geuing it that title for a name of addition, and calling it by figure of apposition Gods good pleasure.” a1. 638 MEDE Wks. I. xxiv. 93, “It is an Apposition, or παράθεση, and ειρήνη στη γη, the latter words declaring the meaning of the former; ‘Peace on earth,’ that is, ‘Good will towards men.’”]
7. Gram. The placing of a word beside, or in syntactic parallelism with, another; spec. the addition of one substantive to another, or to a noun clause, as an attribute or complement; the position of the substantive so added. [c. 1440 Gesta Rom. (1879) 416, “Yonge childryn that gone to the scole haue in here Donete this question, how many thinges fallen to apposicion?” 1591 PERCIVALL Span. Dict., “A Preposition . . . either in Composition, as, Contrahecho . . . or in Apposition, as, En la casa.” 1657 J. SMITH Myst. Rhet. 191, “Apposition is a figure . . . whereby one Noune Substantive is for Declaration and distinction sake added unto another in the same case.” 1860 JOWETT Ess. & Rev. 398, “In the failure of syntactical power . . . in various forms of apposition, especially that of the word to the sentence.”]
--OED
3 comments:
I'm wondering if it might not be a good idea to put the literary republic back into the world. The Reformation itself was a kind of utopian project, as was the eventual Catholic Reformation, and the stern cost of the former, at least, was visible to More!
I agree that the meaning of More's Utopia is never really "solved." I have taught this text numerous times in freshman English courses and have been awe struck by its relevance to young, contemporary audiences (who don't typically consider themselves avid readers). I have found it useful to stray away from political structures (communism vs. capitalism) and think about smaller, tangential concepts that open up the text as you advocate. For example, I have been thinking about how More's critique of private property can be read (tangentially) as a critique of our very modern problem of a lack of leisure. More included leisure as part of the equation of a model society, but what happens to a society in its absence?
Kathleen A.
Ian,
I agree with your reservations about reintroducing the ‘literary republic’ into the world. Like you say, More was very aware of the utopian problems of the Reformation. In his _Responsio Ad Lutherum_, for instance, More uses variations of "nowhere" and "nonsense" to pejoratively describe Luther’s church and Luther himself. After giving a frankly one-sided and reductive account of Luther's views on sin, the flesh, and the church, in which Luther is painted as having hopeless mired himself in a paradox of on the one hand saying that no one is without sin and on the other stressing that the church – made up of people – is sinless, More dismisses his theological nemesis as merely "talking nonsense (absurde diceret)" (The Complete Works of Thomas More, Vol. 5, part 1, 160/161). And Luther’s church, More says, is “imperceptible and mathematical --like Platonic ideas-- [and it] is both in some place and no place (et in loco sit, et in nullo loco sit)" (Complete Works, Vol. 5, 166/167).
However, at the same time as we have to be hesitant about returning to literary utopias, the utopian impulse may be an indispensable one. At least that’s the point I see Ernst Bloch making (a point later taken up by Jameson, who I deal with in my paper). In _The Spirit of Utopia_, for example, Bloch argues that without some utopian future to motivate progress “human beings collapse into themselves, without a path…beyond the quotidian” (167). So it may be that danger exists on both sides. There are the consequences of promoting a state, or a church, or a whole world that et in loco sit, et in nullo loco sit. On the other hand, tearing down all those “castles in the air,” as Marx calls them, may pose equally serious problems.
Kathleen,
You pose an interesting (and difficult) question! I like the idea of reading (tangentially) More’s critique of private property as commentary on our very modern problem of “a lack of leisure.” And you’re certainly right, More stresses the importance of leisure: wouldn’t it be nice if we could have, like the Utopians, a six hour workday? The difficulty though, for me at least, is in defining “leisure,” since, for the Utopians, it did not mean “idleness.” Hythloday tells us that among the Utopians “nowhere is there any chance to be idle; there is no excuse for laziness…with the eyes of everyone upon them, they have no choice but to do their work or enjoy pastimes which are not dishonorable” (p. 73 in C.H. Miller’s translation). These “honorable pastimes” include predawn classroom lectures, religious services, community meals, morally instructive games, intellectual activities, and a bedtime no later than 8 o’clock. Except for an hour devoted to recreational music or conversation—in the gardens in the summer, in the common rooms in the winter—there is very little time for a Utopian to simply take his or her ease. That, combined with the emphasis placed on vigilance (“with the eyes of everyone upon them…”), makes the issue of “leisure” a complicated one. If leisure is “The state of having time at one's own disposal; time which one can spend as one pleases; free or unoccupied time” (OED), I don’t know how leisurely a life the Utopians actually lead! Once again More problematizes what at first glance appears simple: the Utopians can spend “the intervals between work, meals, and sleep…however they like” (61), except that “however they like” turns out to mean within a fairly limited set of options.
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