Thomas Traherne,Thomas Hobbes,and the Rhetoric of Realism

Abstract

Thomas Traherne has often been seen as a mystic detached from the turbulence of his period. Recent scholarship has attempted to place him more firmly in context. This article contributes to this trend in arguing that Traherne's late works, especially Commentaries of Heaven, were shaped by the pressure of responding to Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. Though Traherne makes only one direct reference to Hobbes, his idiosyncrasies in thought, argument, and mode of expression are all fundamentally influenced by the need to counter Hobbes's account of ethics, metaphysics, and language. Traherne is particularly concerned to assert and display an ardent realism against Hobbes's nominalism. In doing so, he creates a complicated play of rhetorical figures, especially abusio or catachresis, as embodying theological commitments. This both places Traherne more clearly against the background of the intellectual history of the period in which he lived, and demonstrates his particularity as a writer.     

Secular apocalyptic and Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (1895) makes ironically secular use of the imagery of the New Jerusalem and of unregenerate Babylon in the Book of Revelation. His purchase on the text is mediated both by Bunyan's Pilgrim’s Progress, a childhood favourite, and hymns such as ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ translated from Bernard of Cluny's De Contemptu Mundi. Avoiding the traditions of anti-Catholic interpretation, and of explicitly political readings which identify Babylon and the mysterious ‘number of the beast’ with particular historical adversaries and tyrants, Hardy uses the biblical text sardonically to demonstrate the inadequacy of escapist dreams and institutional religion and to explore problems of poverty and ambition complicated by sexuality and its cynical exploitation.     

Blind Musician and His Songs

In the first part of the 20th century, Wuxi in Jiangsu Province saw the birth of a blind musician named A Bin.     

茶已熟菊正开赏秋人来不来--陈鸿寿其人其事论

陈鸿寿的诗文书画乃至金石篆刻,虽精妙逸脱,但未能开宗列祖。其与名流陶工捏制砂壶则大开风尚,为艺林后世留下了佳话。