Dead heads and humanists

In view of the continuing argument about the 'humanist' arguments of Thomas Churchyard, whether I used the word correctly, and whether a blog is merely 'random jottings' I offer the following quotations from the book with which I began.

Churchyard, for newcomers, was an Elizabethan critic, soldier, journalist and general chancer in life who described the English tactic of lining paths with Irish severed heads in order to terrorise the rebels of Munster.

He defended the actions of Sir Humphrey Gilbert with what the distinguished editors of Edmund Spenser's Selected Letters describe as 'a humanist apology on ethical grounds', arguing that since the dead Irishmen suffered no further harm from the use of their heads the tactic was ethically sound.

This justification is 'humanist' because it relies on rationalistic arguments from classical Greece, in Churchyard's case, those of Diogenes, a philosopher happy that dogs, or anything else,  might eat his body when he was dead. What was it to him who ate or passed by his corpse?

As the Oxford editors continue, 'Churchyard deliberately and elaborately expends his humanist learning not in defence of Gilbert's crime against the living - surely the nub of his cruelty - but rather in defence of his supposed crimes against the dead'.

Churchyard was not a particularly noble human being. Consult Wikipedia for an account of his varied sins. But that did not bar him from using and abusing humanist philosophy.

As the editors of the new Spenser papers continue, 'Churchyard's representation of Gibert's policies may seem extreme, but similar kinds of humanist arguments were adduced to explain and apologise for similar kinds of events - on the English side - throughout Spenser's period in Ireland'. They go on to list them.

The aim of my original blog, like many others here, was to draw attention to some interesting pages in a new book. Since blogs are, indeed, 'random jottings' of a kind, I began by recalling that my first encounter with this issue came in a discussion of Conrad's Heart of Darkness some years ago with an Irish friend.

I am still not sure why this should have puzzled the academic and author, Margarita Stocker. There was no more 'point' in my blog than to draw readers' attention to a book that for one reason or another had caught my attention.

To repeat: Selected Letters and Other Papers by Edmund Spenser, edited by Christopher Burlinson and Andrew Zurcher, published by Oxford University Press, priced rather fiercely at £125.

Comments

[Judith Fitzgerald]

Right on all fronts, Sir Peter.

For the life of me, I cannot see the problem Ms. Stocker purports exists in the post you made concerning the way in which the "severed heads" served as a warning to anyone contemplating the consequences of actions that might turn their living heads into warning beacons of death. Sleight of head, so to speak, and egregiously horrifying, particularly since the argument was based on so-called humanist principles to justify the unjustifiable. What's not to understand?

Odd. For some reason (and, I do mean "reason"), I am thinking of Kipling's "If," specifically the lines: "If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken / Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools . . .."

Keep on randomly jotting (if that is, indeed, what you do although, in all the years I've been reading this blog, "random" isn't a word that comes readily to mind nor, for that matter, would it have, EVER), Sir PS, head planted firmly on shoulders, thank keerist :) . . .

[Dion Per Sona]

Was this fellow Spenser guilty of IpsoFacToryism in other enterprises?

In older news, it had been the practice among Iron Age tribesmen living on this island to place severed heads in a stone niche above their main door. It has been assumed (by the many) that these would have been the heads of enemies and captives, but another contemporary exhibit, from across the channel, might cast doubt on that interpretation.

On a platform in an ancient marsh in northern France the headless, fully armed, bodies of an army were discovered. No discarded skulls were found nearby: they could be anywhere and a systematic search is considered neither urgent nor feasible.

The legend of the Dark Prince and the practice of "threefold death" are intertwined with principles enshrined in pre-Roman belief systems (not unique to the British Isles) in which sacrifices dispatched heroes to struggle with malevolent underworld forces and overthrow their destructive interference in human affairs.

The display of heroic severed heads would therefore be a charm or a spell, binding their protection to the owner of the walls and his tribesmen.

It is not at all certain that by the display of severed heads a predictable inflection could be given to the terror it was intended to inspire among "conquered savages", ingenuously misdirected propaganda notwithstanding.

Some things never change: the ground is sown with dragon's teeth.

[liminal]

Great Read!

http://pitchbendpost.blogspot.com/

[Judith Fitzgerald]

Didn't those dragon's teeth become our alphabet, DPS? You're undoubtedly correct from that side of the fence; but, from the other side, however, I don't think they displayed those severed heads all in a row as an encouragement to join their rank and file, mon ami (indubitably).
p.s. I start thinking in limericks whenever I see your name or variant of same which represents anything but a shame :)

[Dion Per Sona]

There was an old rhymer from Oz
Who limericked only because
It was no use confessing
How very depressing
The figure and form of it was.

[Andrew Kenneally]

On the dubious justification of random jottings I justify the following perhaps apparently random jottings on the basis of their perhaps not even being so random after all. Again from Nicholas Canny's Making Ireoland British 1590-1650:

Mr Justice Robert Gardner in the 1590s listing "the diseases of this commonwealth" which alienated potentially loyal people in Ireland from the government, gave particular attention to abuses of martial law( martial law or absolute power, incidentally according to Machiavelli the goal of all ruling nobility), alluded to the "common allowance of silver to such as bring heads, never knowing or examining whose heads, whether of the best of worst, so no safety for any man to travel."

Sir Henry Wallopp, treasurer and treasurer at war, 1579-99, also briefly joint lord chief justice, and ideological colleague of Spenser's, was by 1584 impressed by the heavy mortality that had fallen on Munster through war and its inevitable shadow of famine, pointed to the consequent need "to repeople it again with a better race and kind of people than the former were."

So here again can be clearly seen how on 'humanist' grounds a philosophy of untermenschen can be justified. If someone is less than human then their absence, through the means of severed heads, famine, or whatever, is actually a blessing, and opportunity to accelerate cultural improvement. Spenser, incidentally, like similar ideologues, was the recipient of large estates in Munster, so the ideology wasn't entirely disinterested. Also much of the value of the notion of lebensraum is also perfectly in evidence here; i.e. the most fervent supporters of the empire or reich being made wealthy in foreign lands, thus rewarding and encouraging such subservience of the individual will to the geater will, all the avaliable host British territory already of course carved up.

Queen Elizabeth was, by the way, very uneasy with the new level of ideological imperialist zealotry formulated by people like Spenser, whether on ethical grounds or the practicalities of government- alienating subjects whose culture you are actively destroying as an in this sense being that you are 'humanising' them and their land- otherwise in their former or native state they are less than human. All linked in people like Spenser's case with notions of man's original fall against which degeneracy you are battling.

[Judith Fitzgerald]

Andrew, that book sounds amazing. The eye-opening aspect of all of this? The fact Spenser had his hand in such dastardly doings and undoings. I'm not going to be able to read his poetry the same way, eh?

But: Ooooh, DPS. That's one of the best of yours I've seen yet. Stop it right now! Next thing we know, you'll be publishing the world's best-selling book of commentarian limericks EVER and you'll turn so famous and important we won't be able to visit and enjoy your bon mots no mo' . . . Any agents reading this, just look away right now. Move along; nothing to see here . . .

There was once this Oz-Guy, you know
He wrote a mean limerick and so
He became ruler of the planet
And so bloody well he ran it
That all things sparkled with glow

No?

Didn't think so . . .

Back to square none for me . . .

Which explains why I consider you the greatest limerickster, er, Limerickier . . . Limericka-racka?

Never mind :) . . .

[Dion Per Sona]

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/treasury_department_issues

[Andrew Kenneally]

It's an excellent & very eye-opening book Judith, but just in case my extracts give something of a misleading impression, it is extremely thorough, academic & fair-minded. Linked here. A couple of descriptions being:

Let there be no mistake: Making Ireland British is an extraordinary book, a major feat of scholarship, and probably the single most important study of early modern Ireland to appear for a generation or more. (Wiliam and Mary Quarterly )

wonderful work, richly layered and contextualised ... a masterly study and an unmitigated triumph ... a masterpiece of painstaking research ... [a] splendid volume. (History Today )

[Andrew Kenneally]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Ireland-British-1580-1650-Nicholas/dp/0199259054/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240134074&sr=8-2

[Andrew Kenneally]

Actually, in terms of humanist logic, the following is very interesting, "considered as essential justification for the English purpose to fashion a completely new order through a process of plantation in preference to reforming the existing society in Munster.(Canny) This being the Roman law known as res nullius which maintained that all 'empty things', particularly unoccupied or under-utilised land, remained the common property of humanity until brought into efficient use by an enterprising people who might then become its owners.

The wonder of this being that thanks to the wars and attendant famines visited on particularly Munster, according to Spenser 'a most populous and plentiful counry was suddenly left void of man and beast' and according to Sir Valentine Browns "not one of thirty persons" had survived the wars and "those for the most part starvelings."
And so, since, according to the colonisers themselves, a genocide had been effected, then the queen could overcome with ease of mind any scruples regarding the repeopling of the land with English people and 'making Ireland British,' since there was virtually noone left to dispossess.

[Dion Per Sona]

NOT THAT WILLING TO BE WHAT TODAY PASSES FOR "FAIR MINDED":

Now all the Spanish gold's gone glum,
And silver's aluminium,
And paper's chasing papers' trail,
The dog of war wagged by its tail,
The Wealth of Nations come undone
Our Smithless forge's conundrum,
A kingdom won on borrowed horse
Bereft by bailiffs backed by force,
A sight we thought we'd never see:
What's been Red so long, looks Brown to me.

[Judith Fitzgerald]

Have just spent time looking through the book and notice, on the back cover, even the TLS thought Canny's work an achievement. Had we but cash enough and time . . .

But, I'm glad to know it's not all gruesome-glum going, Andrew. I've bookmarked the volume; now, for obvious reasons, if I can someday afford it, will acquire it and am happy to know it exists.

The things we -- the so-called human race -- do, though (especially when one remember nationalism's a rather more modern invention than we tend to recall, generally, in the grand scam of things). The book's cover's disconcerting; and, I think it has something to do with the brown cross in the background of the illustration.

DPS? What oft was thought but ne'er so succinctly suppressed. Glad I returned to see what had transpired. I would hazard a guess you're rather more inclined to express a little bloodless bloody-mindedness? Right or wrong, those ten lines may well live forever, if only in my mind. They ought to be required reading for anyone considering leading any country on this utterly pragmatic global ball, a horrorcoaster ride where one size fits all. Thank you both for this grim-grimely reminder and that tiny perfect poetic encapsulation of the bases we cover in our scramble to make (or unmake) a nation.

Colour be throroughly tired-but-true blue.

[Andrew Kenneally]

Though I think, having dipped into, at my local library, James Shapiro's '1599 A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare', and chanced upon the following, I may have done the fair poet Edmund Spenser a disservice, in that he was far more homicidally inclined than I imagined:

Subsequent to writing his 'View of Ireland', he reitereated the main point in 'A Brief Note of Ireland':

"Great force must be the instrument but famine must be the mean(s), for til Ireland is famished it cannot be subdued."

Spenser knew the consequences of the starvation he advocated. The most powerful paragraph in his View renders in graphic detail the effects of a starved and cannibalistic Irish population who 'consume themselves and devour each other':

"Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them, they looked like anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves, they did eat their carions, happy where they could find them. Yea, and one another soon after, inasmuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves."

Having seen its effects first-hand, Spenser vigorously advocated mass starvation as proven policy.'( J Shapiro)

But yes, Judith, the idolatrous worship of imperialising false gods shows little sign of letting up. But now, of course, these idealists are genuinely good and trustworthy.

[Dion Per Sona]

You deserve a special treat, Ms Fitzgerald:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_GGSS1FGUc&NR=1

[Judith Fitzgerald]

Andrew? Your concluding sentences provide one heckuva word's-eye view of what Spenser wished to screw and undo. Whew . . . all'swell on the deck of the good ship Tappy-Tip; or, in plain anguish? Terminally jellis? Erm, yes :). Embedded eloquence, compressed elegance, the horribly worrisome works, all built up for the inevitable dumb-down come-round. You possess an enviable slay-way with words when passion's at play, eh? K.

What I mean to convey? I think you could (or should) consider your kick-in-the-head closer telegraphing everything we know -- about economy (Adams, Ricardo, Smith, et.al.), efficiency (Conrad), and benevolence (Kipling / Stothard) -- the opening pair for your book on the whole affair:

"[T]he idolatrous worship of imperialising false gods shows little sign of letting up. But now, of course, these idealists are genuinely good and trustworthy."

I love the swell of it, the fact it expands till blip-zap, nano-slap, diddly splat, the sonic turn rears its full-frontal ughlies showing "little sign of letting up." If this were the gravy train, it's fairly safe to assert you didn't miss the boat. I'd buy your book, anyway.
p.s. Sorry it took me so long to respond . . . knew if I came over here looking for trouble (or an escape from the relentless NA rubble, I'd never finish my work; and, I was right, looks like). Hope yours goes as fine as you've made mine
--
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/Booksblog/

[Judith Fitzgerald]

Incroyable, DeePS! What a gift (regardless of the content, the form's clearly astonishing). I don't want to say too much because it will ruin the drop-dread stunnification of what anyone caring to see at YouBoob will be privileged enough to see. He's been doing it for a while, it would seem. I see he decided to let his hair grow, anyway. But, you (and it) made my day. I was just over here seeing if there were any more limericks about which I needed to be aware; and, then?

I got caught in his presentation and what's going to happen to him when he grows up? I hope he can maintain the momentum; but, what an angelic gift. Thank you! (Susan Boyle might feel a little worried about this, eh?)

Welp, I have no idea how it happened nor why; but, I was creating a post for our new Parliamentary Poet Laureate just announced in Canada; and, I'll be darned (an old sock) if four — count 'em — four limericks just sprang fully formed from my tips and you had better go see 'em because you provided the courage and inspiration for me to make a fool of myself (in the post entitle, "Magnifique!"). I kept thinking, What would Dion Per Sona do? (Better than I could, that much is indubitably true.) If you could fix 'em and post the better versions, I'd kiss your cyber-feats!

I hope I don't disappoint you too much. Later, I realised, too, I ought to have made one for the Bloq Quebecois. (I mean, my biological father was born in Montreal and I am half-French, half-Swedish with no Irish whatsoever . . ..)

Now? I am nerviss since I know I'll never attain your poeta-limerick heights; and, the next time this happens, I'm just gonna hafta dedicate same to you so peep-squeaks whining about how they ain't as good as yours can up-shut a priori :) . . .
--
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/Booksblog/

[Dion Per Sona]

I immediately recognised our venerated Editor, done up as a floppy-haired cherub.

[Judith Fitzgerald]

LOL. Too droll, DPS. Best spontaneously combusting slow-dawnin' dazzler of a comment I've read this year :). Hehehehe . . .

Makes me think: If you can't say something nice about someone, come to Canada!