Authorizing Experience: Refigurations of the Body Politic in Seventeenth-Century New England Writing

2000 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 321
Author(s):  
Jonathan Beecher Field ◽  
Jim Egan ◽  
Philip Round
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body

"Prodigious Poop": Comic Context and Psychological Subtext in Irving's Knickerbocker History

1995 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-512
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Cook
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Psychological Development ◽  
Human Reproduction ◽  
New Amsterdam ◽  
History Of

This essay attempts to elucidate the structual principles of Irving's "low" humor in the Knickerbocker History of New York by showing that the History is predicated on a schema of human development. In this comprehensive comic allegory the "peopling" of North America suggests the process of human reproduction while the "infant history" of seventeenth-century New York parallels the process of childhood psychological development according to a Freudian psychoanalytic model. As clusters of comic imagery and episode reveal, the reigns of Irving's three Dutch governors-Walter the Doubter, William the Testy, and Peter the Headstrong-embody the oral, anal, and genital (phallic) stages of child development. Similarly, the instinctual orientation of the gubernatorial body is mirrored in the body politic. The reign of Peter Stuyvesant, which occupies the most space in the History, is also notable for a pair of allegorical doublets, Jacobus Von Poffenburgh and Antony Van Corlear, who represent Peter's false and true phallic heroes, respectively. During Peter's reign, an implied contest between these two phallic personages transpires, ending with the English takeover of New Amsterdam.

The Crown Lands and the Financial Dilemma in Stuart England

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel W. Hollis
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
National Policy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
Traditional Structures ◽  
Crown Lands

One of the few remaining points of agreement among Stuart scholars is that the Crown's political difficulties, especially the conduct of foreign affairs and wars, stemmed in large part from inadequate revenues. The Crown's “ordinary income”—so named by scholars but not by law or tradition—was eroded in the early seventeenth century by inflation, royal extravagance, and increased demands upon government. The bulk of the ordinary income came from the Crown lands whose traditional structures and management were unable to compensate for inflation. B. P. Wolffe has shown that medieval monarchs had never viewed Crown lands as a source of revenue in the same manner as parliamentary taxes or the customs. Rather, Crown lands were used primarily for the uneconomical purpose of providing royal bounty to political elites. Wallace MacCaffrey has argued that the royal clients in the bounty system shifted during the Tudor era from the feudal barons to an emerging state bureaucracy. Moreover, by the seventeenth century the list of clients grew again to include members of Parliament, especially the Commons which increasingly held the fate of royal finances in their hands. Finally, Linda Levy Peck has emphasized another profoundly entrenched English attitude, modeled after classical Roman authorities: the Crown must husband its resources against waste or corruption lest it become impoverished and the body politic decay. A monarch without ample treasure could command neither private (i.e., clients) nor public (i.e., national policy) authority.

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