M&D Deep Duck: "when the world was yet feudal"
Mark Kohut
mark.kohut at gmail.com
Mon Jan 12 10:22:51 CST 2015
This is EXACTLY the kind of thought without much substance--and ne'er
so well-expressed---I had when I read the word 'feudal"
That word makes it almost seem as if Cherrycoke expresses an abrupt
leap from the Middle ages to his present. Again, that undisciplined
scholar manqué in me would suggest in a footnote---were I annotating
the Arden edition of Pynchon, so to speak, that P shows Becker's
HEAVENLY CITY influence because he, dealing with Zeitgeist history,
does do that. I.e. contrast the 1700s with the Middle Ages
in...'climate of opinion"----from Whitehead and not precise enough for
me these days...(that is over 80 years from Becker's book now).
On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> So on p. 5 Cherrycoke characterizes 1632 (when Charles I issued the charter
> for Maryland to Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore) and 1681 (when Charles
> II issued that for Pennsylvania to William Penn, Esq.)
>
> It's interesting that from a century later and a newly-forged American PoV,
> the whole span -- encompassing the English Civil War(s), Commonwealth,
> Protectorate, and Restoration -- is "feudal." Historically, the political
> thought and rhetoric of US independence was by no means all from the
> 18th-century Enlightenment: a lot of it had been in play since those
> 17th-century Parliamentary challenges to the monarchy, and the constraints
> on royal power (explicit and tacit) that the restored Charles II and his
> successors had been forced to accept.
>
> Naturally, the rebellious colonists cast George III as an absolutist tyrant,
> and their own divided government, checks & balances, etc. as a wholly new
> thing in the world. That's what national creation myths do. But in fact, the
> rebels borrowed ideas and arguments wholesale from 150 years of decidedly
> post-feudal British political evolution.
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