• With Deep Impression Took (2/2)

    From Dennis@21:1/5 to All on Tue Dec 21 15:20:36 2021
    [continued from previous message]

    Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,

    Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a

    diveling.

    A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,

    French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.

    Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,

    Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,

    In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man,

    For Gallants a brave Mirror, a Primrose of Honour,

    A Diamond for nonce, a fellow peerless in England.

    Not the like discourser for Tongue, and head to be found out,

    Not the like resolute man for great and serious affairs,

    Not the like Lynx to spy out secrets and privities of States,

    Eyed like to Argus, eared like to Midas, nos'd like to Naso,

    Wing'd like to Mercury, fittst of a thousand for to be employ'd,

    This, nay more than this, doth practice of Italy in one year.

    None do I name, but some do I know, that a piece of a twelve month

    Hath so perfited outly and inly both body, both soul,

    That none for sense and senses half matchable with them.

    A vulture's smelling, Ape's tasting, sight of an eagle,

    A spider's touching, Hart's hearing, might of a Lion.

    Compounds of wisdom, wit, prowess, bounty, behavior,

    All gallant virtues, all qualities of body and soul.

    O thrice ten hundred thousand times blessed and happy,

    Blessed and happy travail, Travailer most blessed and happy.



    ****************************************

    Comus, Milton

    Spir. Ile tell ye, 'tis not vain, or fabulous,

    (Though so esteem'd by shallow ignorance)

    What the sage Poëts taught by th' heav'nly Muse, [ 515 ]

    Storied of old in high immortal vers

    Of dire Chimera's and inchanted Iles,

    And rifted Rocks whose entrance leads to hell,

    For such there be, but unbelief is blind.

    Within the navil of this hideous Wood, [ 520 ]

    Immur'd in cypress shades a Sorcerer dwels

    Of Bacchus, and of Circe born, great Comus,

    Deep skill'd in all his mothers witcheries,

    And here to every thirsty wanderer,

    By sly enticement gives his banefull cup, [ 525 ]

    With many murmurs mixt, whose pleasing poison

    The visage quite transforms of him that drinks,

    And the inglorious likenes of a beast

    Fixes instead, unmoulding reasons mintage

    Character'd in the face; this have I learn't [ 530 ]

    Tending my flocks hard by i'th hilly crofts,

    That brow this bottom glade, whence night by night

    He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl

    Like stabl'd wolves, or tigers at their prey,

    Doing abhorred rites to Hecate [ 535 ]

    In their obscured haunts of inmost bowres.

    ****************************************

    Mentis Character - Style is the image of man, for man is but his MIND... (Puttenham)



    No, I am that I am, and they that level

    At my abuses reckon up their own;

    I may be straight, they themselves be bevel.

    *By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown*,

    Unless this general evil they maintain:

    All men are bad, and in their badness reign.



    ************************

    Hamlet



    Fare thee well at once.

    The glowworm shows the matin to be near

    And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

    Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me.



    ****************

    Melville, Billy Budd



    Over him but scarce illuminating him, two battle lanterns swing from two massive beams of the deck above. Fed with the oil supplied by the war contractors (whose gains, honest or otherwise, are in every land an anticipated portion of the harvest of death)
    , with flickering splashes of dirty yellow light they pollute the pale moonshine all but ineffectually struggling in obstructed flecks through the open ports from which the tampioned cannon protrude.



    ***************



    Jeff Westover

    The Impressments of Billy Budd

    For many seamen at Spithead and the Nore, the political and linguistic barriers of literacy entailed a disabling relation of paternalism between the regime with which they negotiated and themselves. In Melville’s novella, Vere’s frequently remarked
    fatherly bearing towards Billy ironically worsens the foretopman’s position. The Captain’s kindness so flusters Billy, whose excessive desire to display his duty momentarily paralyzes him, that he strikes out not only in defense, but in a hapless,
    failed effort to speak. As Susan Mizruchi points out, “Billy suffers at times from...the inability to speak at all, which parallels his illiteracy, his inability to read the signs of his experience. The language available to him as a lower-ranking
    seaman differs from the superior articulation of the educated officers, Vere and Claggart.

    The political arbitrations wrought by writing align plebeian illiteracy with regimental paternalism. Paternalism predicates inferiority, and that predication is implemented by an administrative literacy. The same paternalism that Vere shows toward
    Billy also prevails in a note addressed by one of the mutinous crews at Spithead to the Lords of the Admiralty on August 19, 1795: “the ill-usage we have on board this ship forced us to fly to your Lordships the same as a child to its father. It is
    almost impossible for us to put it down in [sic] paper as cruel as it really is with flogging and abusing above humanity.” The Spithead Delegates wrote another letter to Admiral Lord Bridport, addressing him as “the father of the Fleet.” For their
    part, the Nore mutineers similarly evoked the king’s title “Father of your People” in a petition. The tender though sentimentalizing image of a child seeking adult protection both reveals the pathos of the seamen’s plight and the apparently
    inherent union between administrative paternalism and proletarian illiteracy. Such language asserts the hierarchy that informs the military, but it does so by means of an ideology that posits military relations as familial; it thereby mystifies the real
    quality of the relations it constitutes. Hence Vere’s paternal regard for Billy masks the fact that he acts from an idiosyncratic interpretation of military requirements.



    *******************

    Writing Britain: James VI & I and the National Body

    Samantha Murphy

    (...)Charnes’ description of narrative imperialism, especially in relation to its ability to create an absolute identity which structures the identity of others, is similar to Slavoj Žižek’s notion of the ‘nodal point’ or ‘master-signifier’.
    Since an ideology is “a network of elements whose value wholly depends on their respective differential positions within the symbolic structure” (Tarrying 231), Žižek posits that ideological space is composed of “floating signifiers” whose
    identity is ultimately anchored through “the intervention of a certain ‘nodal point’ … which ‘quilts’ them, stops their sliding and fixes their meaning” (Sublime 87). By affixing an ideological field, the nodal point effectuates its
    identity. Thus, it is not only the point through which the subject is attached to the signifier, but also “the point that interpolates individual into subject by addressing it with the call of a certain master-signifier (‘Communism’, ‘God’, ‘
    Freedom,’ ‘America’)” (Sublime 101). This master-signifier embodies the ideological field and supplies the identity of each component part. As the consolidation and naturalization of power is due, in no small part, to the manipulation of
    rhetorical signs and symbols, literacy can be defined as the act of learning signifiers in relation to the nodal point. Critical literacies enable us to step back from that point and deconstruct the absolute identity around which meaning is formed.
    Returning to Žižek, if we “see it [the master-signifier] in the light of day, it changes into an every day object, it dissipates itself, precisely because in itself it is nothing at all” (Sublime 170).[1]

    As my contribution to this discussion of cultural studies and critical literacies, I offer a reading of the nation-building literacies produced during the reign of England’s first Stuart monarch, James I. Beginning a new dynasty with new cultural
    imperatives, James presided over England during a period of rapid growth and expansion. His vision, expressed through a paternally absolute discourse, sought to redefine England, both to others and herself, as a consolidated Great Britain. Courtier
    Francis Bacon observed that James’ policies endeavored to “IMPRINT and inculcate into the hearts and heads of the people, that they are one people and one nation” (qtd. in Ivic 135). Fostering a British national consciousness, Christopher Ivic
    notes, caused “[m]any of James’ subjects . . . [to find] themselves rethinking their place within an emergent multi-national British polity” (135). James, unlike his predecessors, viewed himself as head of a geographically and politically unified
    state and his rhetorical productions strove to create an indivisible nation-state centered around the conjoined body of king and subjects. This hybrid body situated James as an all-inclusive “louing nourish-father” (“Basilikon Doron” 27) who
    sustained and unified the subjects of his nation.

    Crucially, James exhibited his body to his subjects through writing. Textuality, the book to be studied, is as much a means to power as direct political action. Jeffrey Masten cogently describes James’ position as “a figure situated at the
    intersection of contemporaneous meanings of author: authority, father, instigator, ruler, writer” (66).[2] James recognized that to narrate is not simply to produce words, it is to produce the parameters of being; thus, he used his published material
    as a forum to implement his own narrative imperialism. In the process, he raised issues of author/ity[3] and paternity in order to position the kingly body as his ideal of parens patriae.[4] One metaphor frequently used by James in this figuration is the
    mirror image. Calling his writing the “mirrour . . . / Which sheweth the shaddow of a worthy King,” James commands that it act as a “patterne” for his subjects (“Basilikon Doron” 1). In this, his rhetorical and material strategy is clear. The
    king’s body, replicated through his words, serves as the template for the bodies of his children-subjects. In the policy this analogy promotes, the king’s reflected image serves as the point of reference for each subject(ed) body.

    (snip)

    In consistently returning to the dangers of misinterpretation, James displays an understandable anxiety over the possibility of absolute authorship. In the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries, collaboration was the prevalent mode of textual production.
    The assignment of sole authorship was prescribed by neither law nor custom. Even when individual authorship was claimed, of course, texts did not emerge from a vacuum. As seen by James’ critique of his misreaders, his words do not simply or absolutely
    assign meaning. Responding to this danger, James took the unusual step of authorizing the collation and publication of his texts in 1616’s The Workes of the Most High and Mighty Prince, James. This was a crucial move in James’ establishment of
    narrative imperialism. In the words of historian Kevin Sharpe, Workes marks the “moment when the authority of the text resided in the name of the creator” (17).

    How was James’ author/ity effectuated? In his preface to Workes, the Bishop of Winton describes the collection as “divers Off-springs . . . proceeded[ing] from one braine.” He continues that, in re-membering the scattered corpus, Workes “give[s]
    euery childe [its] owne Father; [and] euery Booke [its] trew Author.” In this, Winton echoes James’ rhetoric of benevolent paternal author/ity. The readers are prepared to view James as the generative father, birthing his textual offspring. As
    children of the true father, they properly reflect his image. Then Winton’s language takes a darker turn: the kingly text has been divorced from the royal body, resulting in the need to “recover those that have bene lost.” The lost offspring,
    separated from the king, are “abused by false copies” (qtd. in Masten 72). The reproductive metaphor has morphed into malevolence. Workes attempts to contain that malevolence and place rhetorical reproduction firmly into the king’s hands.

    What James’ work rhetorically reproduces is a hybrid body encompassing himself and his subjects. Agreeing with Peter Sloterdijk’s contention that “[t]o embody a doctrine means to make oneself into its medium” (102), I argue that James sought to
    discursively and materially embody the doctrine of paternally generative author/ity. Exhibiting his body through writing, he creates a new literacy—a new common-sense map of meaning that consolidates his vision of absolute monarchy. As part of this
    process, James’ rhetoric extends out from the page to the material body. Calling his “life” a “law-booke and a mirrour to [his] people,” James insists that subjects “read” in him “the practice of their owne Lawes; [that] therein they may
    see, by [his] image, what life they should lead” (BD 34). Authorship goes beyond the written word when the body of the king is the “law-booke” for his people. Stressing the conjoined nature of monarch and subject, James acknowledges that any “
    sinne” committed by the king is not “a single sinne procuring but the fall of one; but . . . an exemplare sinne . . . draw[ing] with it the whole multitude to be guilty of the same” (BD 12-13). As a mirror to his people, a monarch’s sin is never
    singular; it is reflected back by the “whole multitude” of his subjects.

    For James, the power relations inherent in patriarchal absolutism demand a hybridized kingly body; one that is antithetical to democratic principles. Acting as a hybridized network composing the body of the state, the king’s body is not only joined to,
    but symbiotic with, the body of his nation. All life flows from James, and in him there is all life. In Speach to the Lords and Commons, James states, “For the King that is Parens Patriae, telles you of his wants. Nay, Patria ipsa by him speaks to you.
    For if the King wants, the state wants, and therefore the strengthening of the King is the preservation and standing of the state; And woe be to him that divides the weale of the King from the weale of the kingdom” (195). Sharing a body, king and
    country are indivisible. With his hybrid body, James sustains his state with his voice containing all voices and his welfare translating into national welfare. Constructing a hierarchy of paternal author/ity, James displays his body through the written
    word as a means of creating a new national literacy. In these terms, the maps of meaning created by James place him as the fecund father, the literal embodiment of the law, the mirror for his subjects, and the boundary of the national body.



    *************************

    Jeff Westover

    The Impressments of Billy Budd

    Text as Impress



    In concluding his novella with two contradictory reports of Billy Budd’s demise, Melville both explicitly addresses the subjective nature of history and demonstrates the complex character of hegemony. As “an inside narrative,” the novella
    presents itself as a framework from which to assess the information in the different texts, even though the ambiguity that permeates the novellas suggest that its textual authority, like that of its concluding texts, cannot prove ultimately comprehensive.
    From this perspective, the narrator’s juxtaposition of the official naval account and the populist ballad invites a skeptical response to the authoritative truth of the novella.



    Moreover, to the extent that Melville’s narrative renders “Billy in the Darbies,” both as a scene in its plot and ad the text of the closing ballad, it pre-presents and to some extent repeats the compulsion of impressment. The depictions of
    Billy in manacles form a composite “imprese,” or emblem, for the novella as a whole. Yet the image of Billy in chains functions as an impress in a more familiar sense, for this iconic posture represents the “characteristic or distinctive mark” of
    the text, figuring the impressed man par excellence. In this sense, military impressment is repeated in print form.



    That repetition is not a simple matter, however. Although the dominant class of a society asserts its control partly through its recourse to a governing, constitutive ideology, the ascendancy of that class is by no means static and impenetrable. As
    Raymond Williams insists, “hegemony is not singular; indeed...its own internal structures are highly complex, and have continually to be renewed, recreated and defended; and by the same token,...they can be continually challenged and in certain
    respects modified.”

    *************************************

    Melville, Billy Budd, Ch. 7

    With minds less stored than his and less earnest, some officers of his rank, with whom at times he would necessarily consort, found him lacking in the companionable quality, a dry and bookish gentleman, as they deemed. Upon any chance withdrawal from
    their company one would be apt to say to another, something like this: "Vere is a noble fellow, Starry Vere. Spite the gazettes, Sir Horatio" (meaning him with the Lord title) "is at bottom scarce a better seaman or fighter. But between you and me now,
    don't you think there is a queer streak of the pedantic running thro' him? Yes, like the King's yarn in a coil of navy-rope?"

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From marc hanson@21:1/5 to Dennis on Tue Jan 11 07:47:41 2022
    [continued from previous message]

    But I am affraide, that ouer many of our trauelers into Italie, do not exchewe the way to CIRCES Court: but go, and ryde, and runne, and flie thether, they make great hast to cum to her: they make great sute to serue her: yea, I could point out some
    with my finger, that neuer had gone out of England, but onelie to serue CIRCES, in Italie. Vanitie and vice, and any licence to ill liuyng in England was counted stale and rude vnto them. And so, beyng Mules and Horses before they went, returned verie
    Swyne and Asses home agayne: yet euerie where verie Foxes with suttle and busie heades; and where they may, verie wolues, with cruell malicious hartes. A meruelous monster, which, for filthines of liuyng, for dulnes to learning him selfe, for wilinesse
    in dealing with others, for malice in hurting without cause, should carie at once in one bodie, the belie of a Swyne, the head of an Asse, the brayne of a Foxe, the wombe of a wolfe. If you thinke, we iudge amisse, and write to sore against you, heare,
    what the Italian sayth of the English man, what the master reporteth of the scholer: who vttereth playnlie, what is taught by him, and what learned by you, saying, Englese Italianato, e vn diabolo incarnato, that is to say, you remaine men in shape and
    facion, but becum deuils in life and condition. This is not, the opinion of one, for some priuate spite, but the iudgement of all, in a common Prouerbe, which riseth, of that learnyng, and those maners, which you gather in Italie: a good Scholehouse of
    wholesome doctrine: and worthy Masters of commendable Scholers, where the Master had rather diffame hym selfe for hys teachyng, than not shame his Scholer for his learning. A good nature of the maister, and faire conditions of the scholers. And now chose
    you, you Italian English men, whether you will be angrie with vs, for calling you monsters, or with the Italianes, for callyng you deuils, or else with your owne selues, that take so much paines, and go so farre, to make your selues both. If some yet do
    not well vnderstand, what is an English man Italianated, I will plainlie tell him. He, that by liuing, & traueling in Italie, bringeth home into England out of Italie, the Religion, the learning, the policie, the experience, the maners of Italie. That is
    to say, for Religion, Papistrie or worse: for learnyng, lesse commonly than they caried out with them: for pollicie, a factious hart, a discoursing head, a mynde to medle in all mens matters: for experience, plentie of new mischieues neuer knowne in
    England before: for maners, varietie of vanities, and chaunge of filthy lyuing. These be the inchantementes of CIRCES, brought out of Italie, to marre mens maners in England: much, by example of ill life, but more by preceptes of fonde bookes, of late
    translated out of Italian into English, sold in euery shop in London, commended by honest titles the soner to corrupt honest maners: dedicated ouer boldlie to vertuous and honorable personages, the easielier to begile simple and innocent wittes. It is
    pitie, that those, which haue authoritie and charge, to allow and dissalow bookes to be printed, be no more circumspect herein, than they are. Ten Sermons at Paules Crosse do not so moch good for mouyng men to trewe doctrine, as one of those bookes do
    harme, with inticing men to ill liuing. Yea, I say farder, those bookes, tend not so moch to corrupt honest liuyng, as they do, to subuert trewe Religion. Mo Papistes be made, by your mery bookes of Italie, than by your earnest bookes of Louain.



    ********************

    Gabriel Harvey's satirical portrait of the Earl of Oxford:



    Speculum Tuscanismi



    Since Galatea came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp,

    Vanity above all: villainy next her, stateliness Empress

    No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:

    No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.

    For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,

    In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.

    His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy smirking,

    With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.

    Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,

    Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a

    diveling.

    A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,

    French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.

    Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,

    Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,

    In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man,

    For Gallants a brave Mirror, a Primrose of Honour,

    A Diamond for nonce, a fellow peerless in England.

    Not the like discourser for Tongue, and head to be found out,

    Not the like resolute man for great and serious affairs,

    Not the like Lynx to spy out secrets and privities of States,

    Eyed like to Argus, eared like to Midas, nos'd like to Naso,

    Wing'd like to Mercury, fittst of a thousand for to be employ'd,

    This, nay more than this, doth practice of Italy in one year.

    None do I name, but some do I know, that a piece of a twelve month

    Hath so perfited outly and inly both body, both soul,

    That none for sense and senses half matchable with them.

    A vulture's smelling, Ape's tasting, sight of an eagle,

    A spider's touching, Hart's hearing, might of a Lion.

    Compounds of wisdom, wit, prowess, bounty, behavior,

    All gallant virtues, all qualities of body and soul.

    O thrice ten hundred thousand times blessed and happy,

    Blessed and happy travail, Travailer most blessed and happy.



    ****************************************

    Comus, Milton

    Spir. Ile tell ye, 'tis not vain, or fabulous,

    (Though so esteem'd by shallow ignorance)

    What the sage Poëts taught by th' heav'nly Muse, [ 515 ]

    Storied of old in high immortal vers

    Of dire Chimera's and inchanted Iles,

    And rifted Rocks whose entrance leads to hell,

    For such there be, but unbelief is blind.

    Within the navil of this hideous Wood, [ 520 ]

    Immur'd in cypress shades a Sorcerer dwels

    Of Bacchus, and of Circe born, great Comus,

    Deep skill'd in all his mothers witcheries,

    And here to every thirsty wanderer,

    By sly enticement gives his banefull cup, [ 525 ]

    With many murmurs mixt, whose pleasing poison

    The visage quite transforms of him that drinks,

    And the inglorious likenes of a beast

    Fixes instead, unmoulding reasons mintage

    Character'd in the face; this have I learn't [ 530 ]

    Tending my flocks hard by i'th hilly crofts,

    That brow this bottom glade, whence night by night

    He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl

    Like stabl'd wolves, or tigers at their prey,

    Doing abhorred rites to Hecate [ 535 ]

    In their obscured haunts of inmost bowres.

    ****************************************

    Mentis Character - Style is the image of man, for man is but his MIND... (Puttenham)



    No, I am that I am, and they that level

    At my abuses reckon up their own;

    I may be straight, they themselves be bevel.

    *By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown*,

    Unless this general evil they maintain:

    All men are bad, and in their badness reign.



    ************************

    Hamlet



    Fare thee well at once.

    The glowworm shows the matin to be near

    And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

    Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me.



    ****************

    Melville, Billy Budd



    Over him but scarce illuminating him, two battle lanterns swing from two massive beams of the deck above. Fed with the oil supplied by the war contractors (whose gains, honest or otherwise, are in every land an anticipated portion of the harvest of
    death), with flickering splashes of dirty yellow light they pollute the pale moonshine all but ineffectually struggling in obstructed flecks through the open ports from which the tampioned cannon protrude.



    ***************



    Jeff Westover

    The Impressments of Billy Budd

    For many seamen at Spithead and the Nore, the political and linguistic barriers of literacy entailed a disabling relation of paternalism between the regime with which they negotiated and themselves. In Melville’s novella, Vere’s frequently remarked
    fatherly bearing towards Billy ironically worsens the foretopman’s position. The Captain’s kindness so flusters Billy, whose excessive desire to display his duty momentarily paralyzes him, that he strikes out not only in defense, but in a hapless,
    failed effort to speak. As Susan Mizruchi points out, “Billy suffers at times from...the inability to speak at all, which parallels his illiteracy, his inability to read the signs of his experience. The language available to him as a lower-ranking
    seaman differs from the superior articulation of the educated officers, Vere and Claggart.

    The political arbitrations wrought by writing align plebeian illiteracy with regimental paternalism. Paternalism predicates inferiority, and that predication is implemented by an administrative literacy. The same paternalism that Vere shows toward
    Billy also prevails in a note addressed by one of the mutinous crews at Spithead to the Lords of the Admiralty on August 19, 1795: “the ill-usage we have on board this ship forced us to fly to your Lordships the same as a child to its father. It is
    almost impossible for us to put it down in [sic] paper as cruel as it really is with flogging and abusing above humanity.” The Spithead Delegates wrote another letter to Admiral Lord Bridport, addressing him as “the father of the Fleet.” For their
    part, the Nore mutineers similarly evoked the king’s title “Father of your People” in a petition. The tender though sentimentalizing image of a child seeking adult protection both reveals the pathos of the seamen’s plight and the apparently
    inherent union between administrative paternalism and proletarian illiteracy. Such language asserts the hierarchy that informs the military, but it does so by means of an ideology that posits military relations as familial; it thereby mystifies the real
    quality of the relations it constitutes. Hence Vere’s paternal regard for Billy masks the fact that he acts from an idiosyncratic interpretation of military requirements.



    *******************

    Writing Britain: James VI & I and the National Body

    Samantha Murphy

    (...)Charnes’ description of narrative imperialism, especially in relation to its ability to create an absolute identity which structures the identity of others, is similar to Slavoj Žižek’s notion of the ‘nodal point’ or ‘master-signifier
    . Since an ideology is “a network of elements whose value wholly depends on their respective differential positions within the symbolic structure” (Tarrying 231), Žižek posits that ideological space is composed of “floating signifiers” whose
    identity is ultimately anchored through “the intervention of a certain ‘nodal point’ … which ‘quilts’ them, stops their sliding and fixes their meaning” (Sublime 87). By affixing an ideological field, the nodal point effectuates its
    identity. Thus, it is not only the point through which the subject is attached to the signifier, but also “the point that interpolates individual into subject by addressing it with the call of a certain master-signifier (‘Communism’, ‘God’, ‘
    Freedom,’ ‘America’)” (Sublime 101). This master-signifier embodies the ideological field and supplies the identity of each component part. As the consolidation and naturalization of power is due, in no small part, to the manipulation of
    rhetorical signs and symbols, literacy can be defined as the act of learning signifiers in relation to the nodal point. Critical literacies enable us to step back from that point and deconstruct the absolute identity around which meaning is formed.
    Returning to Žižek, if we “see it [the master-signifier] in the light of day, it changes into an every day object, it dissipates itself, precisely because in itself it is nothing at all” (Sublime 170).[1]

    As my contribution to this discussion of cultural studies and critical literacies, I offer a reading of the nation-building literacies produced during the reign of England’s first Stuart monarch, James I. Beginning a new dynasty with new cultural
    imperatives, James presided over England during a period of rapid growth and expansion. His vision, expressed through a paternally absolute discourse, sought to redefine England, both to others and herself, as a consolidated Great Britain. Courtier
    Francis Bacon observed that James’ policies endeavored to “IMPRINT and inculcate into the hearts and heads of the people, that they are one people and one nation” (qtd. in Ivic 135). Fostering a British national consciousness, Christopher Ivic
    notes, caused “[m]any of James’ subjects . . . [to find] themselves rethinking their place within an emergent multi-national British polity” (135). James, unlike his predecessors, viewed himself as head of a geographically and politically unified
    state and his rhetorical productions strove to create an indivisible nation-state centered around the conjoined body of king and subjects. This hybrid body situated James as an all-inclusive “louing nourish-father” (“Basilikon Doron” 27) who
    sustained and unified the subjects of his nation.

    Crucially, James exhibited his body to his subjects through writing. Textuality, the book to be studied, is as much a means to power as direct political action. Jeffrey Masten cogently describes James’ position as “a figure situated at the
    intersection of contemporaneous meanings of author: authority, father, instigator, ruler, writer” (66).[2] James recognized that to narrate is not simply to produce words, it is to produce the parameters of being; thus, he used his published material
    as a forum to implement his own narrative imperialism. In the process, he raised issues of author/ity[3] and paternity in order to position the kingly body as his ideal of parens patriae.[4] One metaphor frequently used by James in this figuration is the
    mirror image. Calling his writing the “mirrour . . . / Which sheweth the shaddow of a worthy King,” James commands that it act as a “patterne” for his subjects (“Basilikon Doron” 1). In this, his rhetorical and material strategy is clear. The
    king’s body, replicated through his words, serves as the template for the bodies of his children-subjects. In the policy this analogy promotes, the king’s reflected image serves as the point of reference for each subject(ed) body.

    (snip)

    In consistently returning to the dangers of misinterpretation, James displays an understandable anxiety over the possibility of absolute authorship. In the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries, collaboration was the prevalent mode of textual production.
    The assignment of sole authorship was prescribed by neither law nor custom. Even when individual authorship was claimed, of course, texts did not emerge from a vacuum. As seen by James’ critique of his misreaders, his words do not simply or absolutely
    assign meaning. Responding to this danger, James took the unusual step of authorizing the collation and publication of his texts in 1616’s The Workes of the Most High and Mighty Prince, James. This was a crucial move in James’ establishment of
    narrative imperialism. In the words of historian Kevin Sharpe, Workes marks the “moment when the authority of the text resided in the name of the creator” (17).

    How was James’ author/ity effectuated? In his preface to Workes, the Bishop of Winton describes the collection as “divers Off-springs . . . proceeded[ing] from one braine.” He continues that, in re-membering the scattered corpus, Workes “give[s]
    euery childe [its] owne Father; [and] euery Booke [its] trew Author.” In this, Winton echoes James’ rhetoric of benevolent paternal author/ity. The readers are prepared to view James as the generative father, birthing his textual offspring. As
    children of the true father, they properly reflect his image. Then Winton’s language takes a darker turn: the kingly text has been divorced from the royal body, resulting in the need to “recover those that have bene lost.” The lost offspring,
    separated from the king, are “abused by false copies” (qtd. in Masten 72). The reproductive metaphor has morphed into malevolence. Workes attempts to contain that malevolence and place rhetorical reproduction firmly into the king’s hands.

    What James’ work rhetorically reproduces is a hybrid body encompassing himself and his subjects. Agreeing with Peter Sloterdijk’s contention that “[t]o embody a doctrine means to make oneself into its medium” (102), I argue that James sought to
    discursively and materially embody the doctrine of paternally generative author/ity. Exhibiting his body through writing, he creates a new literacy—a new common-sense map of meaning that consolidates his vision of absolute monarchy. As part of this
    process, James’ rhetoric extends out from the page to the material body. Calling his “life” a “law-booke and a mirrour to [his] people,” James insists that subjects “read” in him “the practice of their owne Lawes; [that] therein they may
    see, by [his] image, what life they should lead” (BD 34). Authorship goes beyond the written word when the body of the king is the “law-booke” for his people. Stressing the conjoined nature of monarch and subject, James acknowledges that any “
    sinne” committed by the king is not “a single sinne procuring but the fall of one; but . . . an exemplare sinne . . . draw[ing] with it the whole multitude to be guilty of the same” (BD 12-13). As a mirror to his people, a monarch’s sin is never
    singular; it is reflected back by the “whole multitude” of his subjects.

    For James, the power relations inherent in patriarchal absolutism demand a hybridized kingly body; one that is antithetical to democratic principles. Acting as a hybridized network composing the body of the state, the king’s body is not only joined
    to, but symbiotic with, the body of his nation. All life flows from James, and in him there is all life. In Speach to the Lords and Commons, James states, “For the King that is Parens Patriae, telles you of his wants. Nay, Patria ipsa by him speaks to
    you. For if the King wants, the state wants, and therefore the strengthening of the King is the preservation and standing of the state; And woe be to him that divides the weale of the King from the weale of the kingdom” (195). Sharing a body, king and
    country are indivisible. With his hybrid body, James sustains his state with his voice containing all voices and his welfare translating into national welfare. Constructing a hierarchy of paternal author/ity, James displays his body through the written
    word as a means of creating a new national literacy. In these terms, the maps of meaning created by James place him as the fecund father, the literal embodiment of the law, the mirror for his subjects, and the boundary of the national body.



    *************************

    Jeff Westover

    The Impressments of Billy Budd

    Text as Impress



    In concluding his novella with two contradictory reports of Billy Budd’s demise, Melville both explicitly addresses the subjective nature of history and demonstrates the complex character of hegemony. As “an inside narrative,” the novella
    presents itself as a framework from which to assess the information in the different texts, even though the ambiguity that permeates the novellas suggest that its textual authority, like that of its concluding texts, cannot prove ultimately comprehensive.
    From this perspective, the narrator’s juxtaposition of the official naval account and the populist ballad invites a skeptical response to the authoritative truth of the novella.



    Moreover, to the extent that Melville’s narrative renders “Billy in the Darbies,” both as a scene in its plot and ad the text of the closing ballad, it pre-presents and to some extent repeats the compulsion of impressment. The depictions of Billy
    in manacles form a composite “imprese,” or emblem, for the novella as a whole. Yet the image of Billy in chains functions as an impress in a more familiar sense, for this iconic posture represents the “characteristic or distinctive mark” of the
    text, figuring the impressed man par excellence. In this sense, military impressment is repeated in print form.



    That repetition is not a simple matter, however. Although the dominant class of a society asserts its control partly through its recourse to a governing, constitutive ideology, the ascendancy of that class is by no means static and impenetrable. As
    Raymond Williams insists, “hegemony is not singular; indeed...its own internal structures are highly complex, and have continually to be renewed, recreated and defended; and by the same token,...they can be continually challenged and in certain
    respects modified.”

    *************************************

    Melville, Billy Budd, Ch. 7

    With minds less stored than his and less earnest, some officers of his rank, with whom at times he would necessarily consort, found him lacking in the companionable quality, a dry and bookish gentleman, as they deemed. Upon any chance withdrawal from
    their company one would be apt to say to another, something like this: "Vere is a noble fellow, Starry Vere. Spite the gazettes, Sir Horatio" (meaning him with the Lord title) "is at bottom scarce a better seaman or fighter. But between you and me now,
    don't you think there is a queer streak of the pedantic running thro' him? Yes, like the King's yarn in a coil of navy-rope?""

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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