Abstract:
What does early modern literature have to say about truth? When Philip Sidney declares that the poet creates “forms such as never were in nature,” he suggests poesy makes something out of nothing. Poiesis, or literary making, thus names the activity of creating an alternate reality—and thereby of constructing a new truth. This talk situates this Sidnean notion of truth in relation to the emergent idea in seventeenth-century England that scientific truth was a construct, dependent on the social credit of witnesses testifying to observed facts.
I turn to William Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing to trace homologies between the social histories of literary and scientific truth. In particular, I excavate how the truth-value of Hero’s chastity in Shakespeare’s play rests upon the words of credible figures who testify to her (non-existent) act of infidelity, and relate this to how, several decades later, the scientific production of truth in the early Royal Society occurred through the testimony of individuals of probity. But Shakespeare’s staging of a sociable model of truth-making does not merely anticipate subsequent developments in the history of science. Rather, by withholding from audiences the event upon which aristocratic witnesses base their judgments—and whose truth they construct—Much Ado exposes the fundamental instability of proof. Ultimately, the play’s mechanics of truth-making reveal why there cannot be a social history of scientific truth divorced from literary history.
The meeting will be held from 7-8:30pm EST, with announcements from 7-7:15pm, the talk 7:15-8:00pm and Q&A from 8-8:30pm. We will also host a casual social/cocktail half hour after the meeting. Since there won't be a dinner and we have no space constraints, an RSVP is not required.
