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heron stone - 09 Dec 2005 06:54 GMT

What does date from the Renaissance is the appearance of men [and women]
who made a considerable point about their individuality - who were
even, one might say, rather theatrical about it. The men and women of
the Renaissance found that it was exciting not only to be an individual
but to talk about it, to preen one's self on it and to build a life
around it.
- John Gardner

gendo: a way of thinking...
language as a path to liberation...

.unconscious, erroneous assumptions imposed upon our thinking
by the structure of the language (english) running in our
skulls are responsible for most of what is wrong with the
world in both the personal and planetary domains

when: wednesday and saturday afternoons, between 3 and 5
where: the cafe at Borders Books (91 at Bloomfield in Cerritos)

.look for the black and red gendo logo on my dark blue notebook
on the table

heron

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Nature, heron stone
to be commanded, http://www.gendo.net
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Mike Lyle - 09 Dec 2005 14:42 GMT

> What does date from the Renaissance is the appearance of men [and
> women] who made a considerable point about their individuality -
> who were even, one might say, rather theatrical about it. The men
> and women of the Renaissance found that it was exciting not only to
> be an individual but to talk about it, to preen one's self on it

and

> to build a life around it.
> - John Gardner

[...]

This is the kind of thing we were brought up to believe about the
Renaissance; but, as with some other such beliefs, I'm inclined to
question it. It just sounds too easy; and I wonder about the
sub-text. Maybe it doesn't mean anything at all about what it's
purportedly referring to.

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Mike.

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Chess One - 09 Dec 2005 15:39 GMT

>> What does date from the Renaissance is the appearance of men [and
>> women] who made a considerable point about their individuality -
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> sub-text. Maybe it doesn't mean anything at all about what it's
> purportedly referring to.

Its interesting that there is not quite enough there to campel with. Marilyn
Yalom wrote well on gender parity in History of the Wife, and continued the
theme with Birth of the Chess Queen, a title which addresses European women
as leaders and progressive intellectuals factoring to a point of equity with
men, from about 1000-1600; all this with a parallel and symbolic development
of the Queen in chess.

Interestingly, the 'Queen' piece was originally male, 'a Minister', and
weak. Yalom says that women's engagement in the world as intellectual equals
actually terminated at the time of the Renaissance, and declined somewhat
thereafter.

The first writing above indicates rather than demonstrates that Elizabethan
life was less self-conscious than is our own, and mostly lacking in ironical
forms of expression, while gaining a directness to expression to which we
would be unaccustomed.

Phil

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Mike Lyle - 09 Dec 2005 17:08 GMT

>>> What does date from the Renaissance is the appearance of men [and
>>> women] who made a considerable point about their individuality -
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>>> to build a life around it.
>>> - John Gardner

[...]

> The first writing above indicates rather than demonstrates that
> Elizabethan life was less self-conscious than is our own, and

mostly

> lacking in ironical forms of expression, while gaining a directness
> to expression to which we would be unaccustomed.

You puzzle me. If, that is, we are to take the very individualistic
Elizabethans as Renaissance figures. (To that extent I see Gardner's
position, without conceding it: what I'm not happy with is the
implicit notion that the Middle Ages lacked individualism.) And, of
course, the time of the first Elizabeth was a great age of irony,
sarcasm, word-play, and visual and verbal mazes.

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Mike.

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Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / December 2005

gendo: informal study group in southern california