Series I, Chapter 7: Why All the Footnotes? Shakespeare's Mental Furniture, Session 1:
Words We Know
Words We Don't Know
Shakespeare and Electricity
The Medieval Synthesis
The Cosmic Hierarchy
Notes:
The reference to Lewis is to C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964, rpt. 1988), pp. 10–13.
For the source of the idea of hierarchy in Plato’s Timaeus and its extension in Aristotle’s De Anima and Metaphysics, see Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, William James Lectures at Harvard University, 1933 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936, 1964), Ch. 2. The most valuable modern discussion of the Renaissance ideas of hierarchy and correspondence, and a source for some of the information in these podcasts, is E.M.W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (New York: Vintage, 1959).
The reference to St. Benedict is to St. Benedict’s Rule for Monasteries, tr. Leonard J. Doyle (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, St. John’s Abbey, 1948), p. 88.
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