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John Evelyn and the Political Uses of Curiosity

John Evelyn and the Political Uses of Curiosity Thomas E. Moisan Invoked as herald of the experimentalism and attention to taxonomy that marked the emergent scientism of Restoration and later seventeenth-century England, John Evelyn has as much to tell about that cultural moment in the mid-seventeenth-century when accounts of experience bore the inflections of curiosity and wonder and wrought a "curious" alliance between the artful and natural. In Evelyn's Diary nature is something not only to be analyzed but wondered at and transformed into objects of aesthetic pleasure. Deriving aesthetic pleasure from "things" provided armor for Evelyn's sojoums in alien cultures both abroad and home during the upheavals of the English Civil War. Expressing wonder at the incomparable rarities of his exceptional experience, Evelyn nonetheless came to follow the marketplace in affixing monetary values to his "rarities" and comparing the "incomparable." A prolific writer, Evelyn puts his appetites and convictions--and those of the moment he embodied--most conspicuously on display in his copious Diary, a document which, begun in middle age, was retroactively extended to his early childhood in the reign of James land then ends but a few days short of his death at eighty-four in the reign of Anne. Given access by birth to elite http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Explorations in Renaissance Culture Brill

John Evelyn and the Political Uses of Curiosity

Explorations in Renaissance Culture , Volume 34 (2): 217 – Dec 2, 2008

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0098-2474
eISSN
2352-6963
DOI
10.1163/23526963-90000357
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Thomas E. Moisan Invoked as herald of the experimentalism and attention to taxonomy that marked the emergent scientism of Restoration and later seventeenth-century England, John Evelyn has as much to tell about that cultural moment in the mid-seventeenth-century when accounts of experience bore the inflections of curiosity and wonder and wrought a "curious" alliance between the artful and natural. In Evelyn's Diary nature is something not only to be analyzed but wondered at and transformed into objects of aesthetic pleasure. Deriving aesthetic pleasure from "things" provided armor for Evelyn's sojoums in alien cultures both abroad and home during the upheavals of the English Civil War. Expressing wonder at the incomparable rarities of his exceptional experience, Evelyn nonetheless came to follow the marketplace in affixing monetary values to his "rarities" and comparing the "incomparable." A prolific writer, Evelyn puts his appetites and convictions--and those of the moment he embodied--most conspicuously on display in his copious Diary, a document which, begun in middle age, was retroactively extended to his early childhood in the reign of James land then ends but a few days short of his death at eighty-four in the reign of Anne. Given access by birth to elite

Journal

Explorations in Renaissance CultureBrill

Published: Dec 2, 2008

There are no references for this article.