I suppose I could bulk this out into a fuller miscellany, but January's almost over and these go quite well together.
I acquired two bits of reading which I only got round to in the last month or so. Both have a nice connection to the Magical Enlightenment stuff I've been putting together under the name The Rest of All Possible Worlds.
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No. 1 : The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
These were a chance find in a book giveaway. I picked up the Everyman edition.
Lady Wortley Montagu was alive from 1689-1762. She's perhaps most famous for having gone with her husband as part of an embassy to Constantinople and brining back smallpox vaccination. That's impressive, but forms only one part of her letters.
She writes sending back reports of her travels - to her lady friends in Britain, to the Abbe Conti in France. These are a mix of responses to their letters, personal news and her discussions of the places she visits. Her journey across Europe takes her through Amsterdam, Prague, Genoa, Leipzig and such places - and she finds time to comment on the local habits, the doing of the aristocracy and so forth. It's when she reaches Ottoman territory that things become more interesting (though comparisons of 18th C London and Amsterdam have their purposes).
Thus, then to Belgrade, Adrianople, then Constantinople. We are given her impressions of these territories quite closely, with the consciousness of being 'outside of Christendom' (however many Greek or Armenian Christians she encounters). Aside from how observant and discerning Lady Wortley Montagu may herself be, she also has the advantage of being able to enter the women's quarters - to go into the bathhouse and harem and report back. This isn't exactly untitillating, though I note her discussions of Western Europe weren't shy of mentioning dalliances. But it does give her a different insight into the ways and means of another culture - which she uses to pass comment on European customs, be they Catholic or Protestant.
Indeed, Lady Wortley Montagu is sufficiently questing, sufficiently outspoken and well-connected to make her something of a proto-feminist. She's not the model of a Bluestocking - that would come later in the 18th Century - but her remarks on women's education and status certainly indicate a dissatisfaction with the status quo (at least for her class) and places value on the work and wisdom of her sex.
She wrote throughout her life, and her letters from Turkey only form part of this. Indeed, once she gets past reports from abroad, she is able to write in a more focused way on the place of women - especially to her daughter. Lady Wortley Montagu would live apart from her husband in Avignon and northern Italy toward the end of her life; her letters are still undulled by a long stay and full of the observations of another country.
None of this is crucial reading, of course. But I found it valuable to read the sort of accounts that would fuel what we think of as the Enlightenment; read them in their original mix of the dull, the obvious, the prejudiced, the now-remarkable and the exciting. If you are the sort of person to have read your way to this blog, I think I would suggest reading a similar set of letters at some point.
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No. 2 - Terra Ignota
A recent series of four novels (published 2016-2021) by Ada Palmer, Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Chicago (I've approvingly linked before now to her blog, Ex Urbe). It's a semi-Utopian society in the year 2454 and a series of tensions and conflicts within it.
First things first: this is embedded with - shall we say - culture war lightning rods. Nation-states as we know them are abolished, courtesy of rapid transport in the form of flying cars. Citizens present themselves in as gender-neutral; that the narrator is going back through apply 'He' and 'She' is controversial. The nuclear family has fallen so far out of favour as it may be said to be abolished. Public religion has been banned, following a period in the 21st century called 'the Church Wars'. Reservations for religion still exist, as do private counsellors called senssayers. Censorship is widespread, if sensitively applied. There is an ongoing in-world controversy about childrearing and cybernetics which is akin to other debates about home education and significant surgery for minors.
Hence my image of lightning rods. I don't know if anyone was jumping up and down hoping to burn these books, but this is clearly inflammable stuff. Which, naturally, makes it fascinating.
I've seen Terra Ignota referred to as a dizzying mix of heaven and hell to a 21st century reader, rather like 2025 would be to a human being of the 16th century. This is not wrong, though clearly some would find it far more heavenly than others. And, indeed, you should likely prepare for something to bother you unpredictably in Terra Ignota.
The world of Terra Ignota has been divided into Hives. These have coalesced over time into several large entities, more akin to culture-blocs than nations - and certainly not geographically contiguous. Wikipedia's guide to these is quite good, laying out the nurturing Cousins and ambitious Humanists.
It is a world of solid freedoms, drawing from the Enlightenment - and deliberately written to evoke the 18th century. Thinkers of the period are quoted - Voltaire especially - and the writing style is composed to match. There is a focus on the correct form of government, of conflict bounded by a sense of goodwill, of plenty, of debate, of competition among elites. This last part is rather characteristic; it is both delightful that we get such a top-down and wide-ranging view of things, from characters who can and who want to learn all they can about a situation - but one does sometimes have to wonder what the lowest members of the Hives do with themselves.
I think that this is especially the case with some groups. Palmer seems to have a moderately good idea of who the Cousins are, what sort of person joins the Utopians, and so forth. But while I can see that she knows that there are the sort of people (who aren't Princes or wunderkind) who would join the orderly Masonic Empire I don't get the impression she has a notion of how they think or act. Which is a problem if part of the conditions for later conflict is that the Masons have become the largest hive, with no sign of stopping!
One can certainly take the whole series as an extended meditation and discussion of the Enlightenment, and how it might shake out if sufficiently embraced and extended. There's a set of scenes toward the end which could certainly be read as referential of A) Postcolonial thought and B) A transition from Liberal Democracy to Social Democracy. That is, the end of the Enlightenment, or perhaps a phase thereof.
I won't delve into the plot here (really). I was more often appreciative of it than swept up in it. The main point I have is that I was not quite satisfied by Terra Ignota, and you should probably read it. It is doing the things that one would wish Science Fiction to do, and it is doing them from a well-read informed position.
Certainly, it sometimes tries too much - the elements of theodicy are not what they could be (but then, perhaps they are as good or as informed as our theologically innocent [or, perhaps, theologically sophomoric] narrators). The vast list of characters is benefit and hazard both. The extensive reference to the Iliad and Odyssey are apt, but liable to flap a little too loose. There are elements that clearly point forward from present debates - but then the approach to them and the framing feels a little too like the early 2010s, at least in rhetoric, and it turns out that this is exactly when this was written. This can make it feel...late to the party. (The art, culture and sensibilities of the Utopians feel especially guilty of this. It's not un-sensical in universe, but it really does have something too much of Tumblr in it. Though paradoxically, Terra Ignota doesn't feel that 'online', really. Thank the 18th century and the flying cars.)
There are other ways Terra Ignota undercuts itself. I've highlighted the Masons above. There's a sense in which the Mitsubushi are having their cake and eating it by being so based in East Asia without being formally a national or regional culture (also, though it almost certainly isn't the intention, it's difficult to un-see a Yellow Peril element). Religion is private, but there are lines in the fourth book, Perhaps the Stars, of it being unspoken general knowledge that certain hives have a reputation for having many members from a certain faith. And that the religious reservations are freely accessible. This reframes things awkwardly, and if it was going to appear, should have done so earlier.
There's an anime-esque cast of thousands, along with long scenes of back-and-forth dialogue in moments of vital action. A little cumbersome, but not objectionable - and better than the alternative. There are one or two moments of smug, glib, triumphalist anti-authoritarianism that I associate with the (movement? subgenre? tendency?) tendency Hopepunk, but these are happily few and far between. Palmer has explicitly linked Terra Ignota and Hopepunk in essays and such material, but that doesn't distress me.
I suppose my reaction to Terra Ignota is largely that I wish to like it more. The flaws it possesses are not severe, but they are flaws. But it is undeniably of such a substance that one can grapple with.
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