Philobiblon

On a more cheerful note, I’ve just finished a fascinating book of this title, by C.G. Brown.

Its thesis is that what it calls the “secularisation” theory, that Britain, and indeed most of the West, has gradually been becoming less and less “Christian”, a trend claimed to date back at least to the beginnings of industrialisation and significant urbanisation, is wrong.

Instead, it argues that while there was a significant change about 1800, when piety became “feminised”, Christianity continued to have a stranglehold, in large part through its ability to define “respectable” femininity. In fact it was at its strongest in the first decade of the 20th century, and enjoyed a post-WWII resurgence that took it to only just below that peak again, a reflection of and adjunct to the attempt to push women back into the home.

This only, suddenly, broke down during the 1960s, with a “cultural revolution”, which it lays down to “the pop record” and later feminism. It makes an interesting point: “The lyrics of all of the 49 songs copyrighted by the Beatles during 1963-4 were about boy-girl romance. Beatles lyrics then changed radically, with romance dropping to … a mere 5 per cent of 1967 output … displaced by lyrical themes influenced by amongst other things the anti-war movement, drugs, nihilism, existentialism, nostalgia and eastern mysticism.” (p. 178)

It quotes the Moral Welfare Committee of the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, which initially was quite optimistic about sexual permissiveness: “If the sanctions of commandment and convention are gone, people are set free to respond to goodness for its own sake … not by the fear of lost respectability.” Finally, however, it concluded: “It is the promiscuous girl who is the real problem here.” (p. 180)

The book says, broadly, the church was right in that conclusion. Go girl!

(Routledge, 2001)

Just came across a really annoying article, about “Single Professional Women: A Global Phenomenon Challenges and Opportunities”. Sounds all right, and it is in the Journal of International Women’s Studies (Vol. 5, No 5, June 2004).

But the theme is: Gosh, isn’t it terrible all these educated women are not getting married and having babies, and it’s all because they’re too picky about husbands. What can we do to change this?

Really, you expect it in the Daily Mail, but in an academic journal of women’s studies?!

A raging row (whoops, discussion) on C18-L has provided direction to an interesting essay on the Marquis and “Newtonian virtue”.

A sixteenth-century scholar, one Nicolas Cardan, saw on awakening one morning the “sun shining though shutters, showing dancing flecks of dust. Imagining he saw a monster in the dust biting off heads with its bloody fangs, he panicked, jumped out of bed and fled the house in only his shirt”. (p. 62)

Nothing new about public hysteria then.

From Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millenial Beliefs through the Ages, E. Weber, Hutchinson, London, 1999, p. 62.

From the Times Literary Supplement of October 8
“Shamateurs”, by L.G. Mitchell, a review of the lives of Pitt the Younger by Hague and Turner

“Hague identifies pragmatism as an essential Pittite virtue, and this, combined with hard work, made Britain the fiscal wonder of the world. It was the bills of credit, commercial proposals and tax reforms littering Pitt’s desk that defeated the French Revolution. Who would exchange a rising standard of living for the lowly delights of liberty, equality and fraternity?”

Perhaps a small comfort to the mourning Australians I know; you’re not alone.

No, don’t take it personally. I’ve just discovered, via Purple Pen, the delightful Shakespeare Insulter.

In case you were wondering: Giglet (n.) A wanton; a lascivious or light, giddy girl. (From Brainy Dictionary, which looks rather useful.)

Try that, thou churlish hell-hated measle!

Or alternatively, the full text of the 1970’s Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Very much of its time, but useful nonetheless.