1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:09,630 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this book at lunchtime event book at lunchtime is as regulars will know Torture's flagship event series, 2 00:00:09,630 --> 00:00:15,360 taking the form of fortnightly bite sized book discussions with a range of commentators. 3 00:00:15,360 --> 00:00:21,000 In normal times, we'd be offering you sandwiches as well. Today, we're offering you food for thought. 4 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:24,960 Please do take a look at our website, a newsletter for the full programme for next term, 5 00:00:24,960 --> 00:00:29,760 and I'll come back at the end of today's event about the very next gig in the series. 6 00:00:29,760 --> 00:00:38,190 My name is Wes Williams. I'm the director here at Torch. I'm also a professor of French literature with a specialism in precisely the period that 7 00:00:38,190 --> 00:00:42,870 we'll be discussing today and therefore especially delighted to welcome my colleague, 8 00:00:42,870 --> 00:00:52,080 Professor Neil Kennie, to speak about his book on Born On Born to Write Literary Families and Social Hierarchy in early modern France. 9 00:00:52,080 --> 00:00:56,790 Also on the panel to ask him questions about it and also to have their own say about this book 10 00:00:56,790 --> 00:01:03,220 are Professor Keri Sullivan and Professor Caroline Warman will be chairing the discussion. 11 00:01:03,220 --> 00:01:04,990 Just a few words about the book, first of all, 12 00:01:04,990 --> 00:01:11,500 Born to Write is a study of the intersection between family and social hierarchy within early modern literary production, 13 00:01:11,500 --> 00:01:18,720 especially in France, from fiction to philosophy, from poetry to history. 14 00:01:18,720 --> 00:01:26,130 The scope is vast and works of all kinds emerged from and through not only individual authors and publishers, 15 00:01:26,130 --> 00:01:33,000 but also what Neal strikingly calls the family function. But maybe I imagine we'll hear more about that later. 16 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:38,700 In a moment, I'll hand over to Professor Woman who will fully introduce the book and the rest of the panel. 17 00:01:38,700 --> 00:01:44,670 This will be followed by a brief reading by Neil Kenny. After this hour, commentators will present their thoughts on the book. 18 00:01:44,670 --> 00:01:49,650 Coming at it from their particular discipline will then give Neal the chance to respond to 19 00:01:49,650 --> 00:01:55,500 some of the points raised before we enter into what promises to be a fascinating discussion. 20 00:01:55,500 --> 00:01:58,830 The event will then conclude with questions from you, the audience. 21 00:01:58,830 --> 00:02:03,990 So please do put them into the question and answer function at the bottom of your screen. 22 00:02:03,990 --> 00:02:07,290 We're going to try and get all of this done within the next hour or so. 23 00:02:07,290 --> 00:02:15,390 Pretty much I better get a move on and all that's left for me to do is to thank you all for coming and to introduce briefly our chair. 24 00:02:15,390 --> 00:02:22,710 Caroline Woman who might like to come on screen now, is a professor of French thought and literature here at Oxford University. 25 00:02:22,710 --> 00:02:26,220 She's president of the British Society for 18th Century Studies. 26 00:02:26,220 --> 00:02:32,010 She specialises in the circulation of ideas and materialist thought and amongst many publications, 27 00:02:32,010 --> 00:02:39,360 has recently completed a book on digital called The Atheist Bible Detro and the Element of Physiology. 28 00:02:39,360 --> 00:02:45,230 I'll hand over to you now, Caroline, and disappear from your screens for a while. 29 00:02:45,230 --> 00:02:54,200 Thank you very much, Wes, and it's absolutely exciting to be here to talk about this book. 30 00:02:54,200 --> 00:03:06,530 Let me first of all introduce Neal Kenny and then Keri Sullivan before we move over to hear directly from Neal, 31 00:03:06,530 --> 00:03:11,630 some of the real stuff, the pages that he's actually written. 32 00:03:11,630 --> 00:03:17,250 And then, yeah, I and Kerry will will will give our responses. 33 00:03:17,250 --> 00:03:21,770 So Professor Neal Kenny is a professor of French Oxford University, 34 00:03:21,770 --> 00:03:28,370 a senior research fellow at Also's College and a lead fellow for languages at the British Academy. 35 00:03:28,370 --> 00:03:38,060 Thank you, Neal. He specialises in early modern French literature and thought, especially from the early 16th to the mid 17th century. 36 00:03:38,060 --> 00:03:44,060 His current focus is on the relation of literature and learning to social hierarchy, 37 00:03:44,060 --> 00:03:50,690 and previous projects have investigated different kinds of knowledge and belief. 38 00:03:50,690 --> 00:03:53,720 So Professor Keri Sullivan is Professor of Literature, 39 00:03:53,720 --> 00:04:01,220 Cardiff University and the author of five books on the literary features that structure early modern texts about religion, 40 00:04:01,220 --> 00:04:09,050 trade, bureaucracy and rhetoric. She is the general editor of the English Association's series, Essays and Studies, 41 00:04:09,050 --> 00:04:16,670 and her most recent publication is Shakespeare and the Play Scripts of Private Prayer. 42 00:04:16,670 --> 00:04:31,860 So on that. May I ask you, Neal, to give us to read out a section from your book. 43 00:04:31,860 --> 00:04:35,850 Sally, thanks very much, Caroline and Wes and also, Terry, 44 00:04:35,850 --> 00:04:45,060 for kindly participating in this event to say this is part of a wider research programme on the 45 00:04:45,060 --> 00:04:51,300 class dimension or the social hierarchy dimension of early modern literature and learning. 46 00:04:51,300 --> 00:05:02,490 And that information has been studied in relation to Europe in a seminar at Also's College to which many people have contributed to this past decades, 47 00:05:02,490 --> 00:05:09,810 and that Europe wide focus is maintained in a collective of collective for the next year with the British 48 00:05:09,810 --> 00:05:17,510 Academy that but this book I'm going to write examines the past question through a more specific angles. 49 00:05:17,510 --> 00:05:27,570 So one country, one social unit, and just one facet of literature that I think, namely the production of works defined very broadly. 50 00:05:27,570 --> 00:05:33,990 And so this is the first of two extracts is from the preface. 51 00:05:33,990 --> 00:05:41,160 Ever more is known about the lives and social conditions of any modern writers in Europe in general and the province in particular. 52 00:05:41,160 --> 00:05:47,520 They were lives dominated by class or less anachronistically by social hierarchy. 53 00:05:47,520 --> 00:05:53,070 But we still understand relatively little about the relation of social hierarchy 54 00:05:53,070 --> 00:05:57,960 to the works of literature produced in this period or indeed any other president. 55 00:05:57,960 --> 00:06:07,140 Studies tended to contribute to our understanding of that relation by focussing on one dimension of the role played by families. 56 00:06:07,140 --> 00:06:18,870 So the military families of the subtitle are those that spawned more than one producer of literary and online works. 57 00:06:18,870 --> 00:06:29,380 Many other families were, of course, literally in the broader sense of including more than one member who was knowledgeable about digital learning. 58 00:06:29,380 --> 00:06:39,570 But they're not the focus here. So this one I connect the so this is still this extract, just summarising what's in the the first one, 59 00:06:39,570 --> 00:06:46,410 I connect the production of works of literature and adding to the broader picture of heredity, 60 00:06:46,410 --> 00:06:52,890 inheritance and familial transmission in the old South Asian. 61 00:06:52,890 --> 00:07:01,260 Secondly, how do I quantify the role of military families within that production and map it 62 00:07:01,260 --> 00:07:07,170 onto the social hierarchy of France from the late 50s to the mid 17th century? 63 00:07:07,170 --> 00:07:14,410 And I survey the ways in which family shaped the production of works. 64 00:07:14,410 --> 00:07:19,140 And Part three shows how even in the period itself. 65 00:07:19,140 --> 00:07:27,810 Some people survey the whole field of literature in ways that gave prominence to the role of families within it. 66 00:07:27,810 --> 00:07:31,680 And finally, about four or five, I returned to the starting point, three, 67 00:07:31,680 --> 00:07:40,350 two case studies and then on the of family and the decline family to the second extract a little bit, 68 00:07:40,350 --> 00:07:47,590 Richard gives tries to get a flavour on some of the protagonists of the book. 69 00:07:47,590 --> 00:07:54,400 What kind of familial ties were there between the two since you came from the same family? 70 00:07:54,400 --> 00:08:04,460 The two most common types of ties were between fathers and sons, occasionally including illegitimate ones and between brothers. 71 00:08:04,460 --> 00:08:12,230 In a few cases, they were between a sister and a brother, between mothers and daughters, not just the divorce, 72 00:08:12,230 --> 00:08:23,090 but also reached another talk to John Daltrey and the latter's daughter, Captain Bulbul, plus the case of her daughter's. 73 00:08:23,090 --> 00:08:32,950 Or between fathers and daughters, Ella and Suzanne I year Madeleine, my show, and you can. 74 00:08:32,950 --> 00:08:40,680 The same, on the other hand, to be virtually no instances of a sudden becoming a producer when his mother was born, but not his father. 75 00:08:40,680 --> 00:08:50,280 It was also much rather up to both parents of a literally produce a child to be literally produces themselves, but it did happen in at least one case. 76 00:08:50,280 --> 00:08:57,330 That's a community that does not have a daughter and went on to the next one and jumped in the line. 77 00:08:57,330 --> 00:09:01,830 On the other hand, they were not the only husband and wife litterbugs together. 78 00:09:01,830 --> 00:09:07,080 There were at least eight others and factors that seemed to favour both members of 79 00:09:07,080 --> 00:09:14,640 a married couple being producers include Protestantism and especially lability. 80 00:09:14,640 --> 00:09:23,940 One, on the face of it, the closest ties between literally produce to relatives whereabouts between parents, children and spouses. 81 00:09:23,940 --> 00:09:33,190 In many cases, the president ties were between cousins of differing degrees, uncles and nephews, occasionally nieces. 82 00:09:33,190 --> 00:09:40,580 Grandparents or great grandparents and their descendants. All great uncles and dads. 83 00:09:40,580 --> 00:09:50,620 Many of these ties were explicitly or implicitly significant to the military production of the two or more relevant parties concerned. 84 00:09:50,620 --> 00:10:04,620 As were alliances of marriage rather than a plot in which Clinton still likes. 85 00:10:04,620 --> 00:10:13,590 Thank you very much, Neal. So let me I can be heard, Kantai, I hope that I can be heard. 86 00:10:13,590 --> 00:10:18,670 Thank you very much. And so what I'm what I'm about to read follows on. 87 00:10:18,670 --> 00:10:21,930 I think it sort of confirms what it is that you've just heard, 88 00:10:21,930 --> 00:10:30,780 what this book shows via exceptionally careful research in archives and bibliographies via rigourously, 89 00:10:30,780 --> 00:10:42,150 rigorously weighed definition's number crunching and sociological and statistical analysis is that from the late 15th to the mid 17th century, 90 00:10:42,150 --> 00:10:51,270 at least one in five literary producers, probably more, was from a family of literate producers analysing the phenomenon. 91 00:10:51,270 --> 00:10:58,020 Anthropologically, Neil draws out the family's practise of hunting in packs. 92 00:10:58,020 --> 00:11:01,500 Looking at the content of what these families produce. 93 00:11:01,500 --> 00:11:09,480 He shows that much of this family literature comes from the question of heraldry and the question of nobility in general. 94 00:11:09,480 --> 00:11:16,200 Neal concludes that the producers of family literature constituted a crucial, 95 00:11:16,200 --> 00:11:22,980 if overlooked, building block in the emergent edifice of national literary history. 96 00:11:22,980 --> 00:11:34,530 Overlooked in favour of our modern focus on the author function and what Neil will call variously free floating atoms or atomised individuals, 97 00:11:34,530 --> 00:11:38,910 that this is the case that Neil has incontrovertibly established. 98 00:11:38,910 --> 00:11:46,050 It is not in doubt, and the exactitude of the scholarship we encounter on reading his book is one of its many pleasures. 99 00:11:46,050 --> 00:11:50,820 There are quite a few passages I'd like to read out, along with their underpinning footnotes, 100 00:11:50,820 --> 00:11:54,900 to show you this exemplary erudition in the role, as it were. 101 00:11:54,900 --> 00:12:04,800 But Time forces me forwards in some nearly showing that the term literary producers is in fact just said covers editors, re editors, translators, 102 00:12:04,800 --> 00:12:07,770 compilers of different sorts as well as authors, 103 00:12:07,770 --> 00:12:13,710 and that not all of them wish to distinguish themselves as individuals from their other family members. 104 00:12:13,710 --> 00:12:20,340 Although Neil tracks them extremely carefully and all of the cases he looks at, 105 00:12:20,340 --> 00:12:26,790 whether concerning famous and less famous literary producers, are very richly detailed. 106 00:12:26,790 --> 00:12:31,380 They're curious, they're sometimes hilarious or their hair raising. 107 00:12:31,380 --> 00:12:36,660 So am I falling into a trap set by the book for readers in Search of Sensation. 108 00:12:36,660 --> 00:12:42,450 If I draw your attention to the fact that Neil has uncovered a murder that's been hiding 109 00:12:42,450 --> 00:12:49,770 in plain sight all this time in Matthew Abboud's manuscript family book Now in the BNF, 110 00:12:49,770 --> 00:13:00,390 Matthew writes in Latin as follows, and I'm quoting Neil's translation My mother, Zhun, first from Ganush, died when I barely knew her. 111 00:13:00,390 --> 00:13:08,310 When my father either by accident or because of my mother's infidelity, cut her vein or rather her artery. 112 00:13:08,310 --> 00:13:20,130 He was a barber surgeon. Neil modestly continues that this extraordinary statement has not previously been remarked upon to his knowledge. 113 00:13:20,130 --> 00:13:25,290 I'm utterly taken aback by all of this, partly by the sudden drama in the archives, 114 00:13:25,290 --> 00:13:30,480 the sort of thing Nathalie's Evan Davis has drawn our attention to, partly by matchers. 115 00:13:30,480 --> 00:13:35,490 Contrastingly, pedantic and explanatory tone. It's not the vein, it's the artery. 116 00:13:35,490 --> 00:13:41,790 His father was a barber surgeon, which was why he would have been tinkering around with veins or arteries. 117 00:13:41,790 --> 00:13:48,720 I'm also taken aback, by the way, in which Neil takes care not to let this drama get out of hand. 118 00:13:48,720 --> 00:13:55,440 It has its place and that place is carefully embedded in a multilayered demonstration and analysis. 119 00:13:55,440 --> 00:14:00,840 Neales caveat, moreover, is that this passage had not been noticed before, to his knowledge. 120 00:14:00,840 --> 00:14:09,330 This is why we trust Neil. He's careful he won't get things out of proportion or make claims that he isn't sure or true, 121 00:14:09,330 --> 00:14:17,580 even when or especially when those claims are dynamite, as indeed the whole book is in that vein. 122 00:14:17,580 --> 00:14:25,950 Therefore, let us return to the claim to the book as a whole. If, as quoted before, producers of family literature constituted a crucial, 123 00:14:25,950 --> 00:14:32,100 if overlooked, building block in the emergent edifice of national literary history. 124 00:14:32,100 --> 00:14:39,630 What are the implications for our understanding of the same literary history as scholars, historians and teachers? 125 00:14:39,630 --> 00:14:47,820 Should we think more about the extent to which literary production is revealed to be a tool for the reinforcement of social status? 126 00:14:47,820 --> 00:14:53,370 Do we need to redefine literature? And what do we do with our anxious questions about elitism, 127 00:14:53,370 --> 00:15:02,160 whereby what we do as academics is revealed ever more clearly to be tightly connected not just to the elite but to its replication? 128 00:15:02,160 --> 00:15:09,510 Perhaps one answer, as we discover from your book, is that we need to understand much better what elite means. 129 00:15:09,510 --> 00:15:17,760 The sensation I had for reading it was not one of the complacent replication of privilege, but of constant instability. 130 00:15:17,760 --> 00:15:21,900 This also was surprising, but I don't want to end with those questions. 131 00:15:21,900 --> 00:15:28,200 I want to return to the research. I noticed, of course, what Neil said about it being, I quote, 132 00:15:28,200 --> 00:15:34,230 likely that the production of works from within families of literary producers continued to be salient, 133 00:15:34,230 --> 00:15:39,750 especially up to the revolution, though that would need to be verified by further research. 134 00:15:39,750 --> 00:15:47,130 So I did some thinking with my hat on and have some 18th century examples for you to comment on. 135 00:15:47,130 --> 00:15:53,430 One, which is a literary work which thinks about the question of family, family structures and social status, 136 00:15:53,430 --> 00:16:00,270 and another which is a case the family of a family of literary producers that very much, I think fits your model. 137 00:16:00,270 --> 00:16:09,660 So the first case is details Ramos' nephew written in the 1960s and 1970s. 138 00:16:09,660 --> 00:16:16,680 So you talk in your book, Neal, about the ferment in thinking about social status of the period you're looking at. 139 00:16:16,680 --> 00:16:21,780 And this work also expresses and explores that ferment with the Neveu Damo. 140 00:16:21,780 --> 00:16:26,100 Of course, you've got the issue in the title and the nephew, the grandson, 141 00:16:26,100 --> 00:16:33,000 the descendant more generally and neatly, the two towering achievers discussed in relation to their families. 142 00:16:33,000 --> 00:16:39,120 In this work, the composer Rameau and the playwright Hassin both have tree names, 143 00:16:39,120 --> 00:16:45,960 branch and Root, which helpfully underscore the family tree aspect of the discussion. 144 00:16:45,960 --> 00:16:54,090 And specifically what Daedra is exploring in relation to them is how inadequate RAYMO and Hassin were in terms of supporting their families. 145 00:16:54,090 --> 00:16:58,980 This perhaps moves away from what Neil is looking at, towards something more connected to virtue. 146 00:16:58,980 --> 00:17:06,960 But in the case of RAYMO, the nephew himself is an artistic producer, if not a literary one, and not in a prestigious genre. 147 00:17:06,960 --> 00:17:16,530 He produces mimes and the instability of his social status and the concomitant necessity of toadying is a perpetual theme in the book. 148 00:17:16,530 --> 00:17:22,710 Perhaps one might add also that Deidre's daughter counts as a literary producer under Neil's definition, 149 00:17:22,710 --> 00:17:30,150 as she wrote A Life of her father and was also literary controller and withholder of his archive. 150 00:17:30,150 --> 00:17:36,240 I was wondering if this is a new aspect of what Neil calls the family function and when does this aspect, 151 00:17:36,240 --> 00:17:42,930 which continues to this day in literary estates, commence with the Pascal family? 152 00:17:42,930 --> 00:17:47,980 So my second case is an awkward one, yet in many ways it fits perfectly. 153 00:17:47,980 --> 00:17:55,140 An uncle who writes a famous study that in many ways is genealogical and compiled literary grafting. 154 00:17:55,140 --> 00:18:02,250 It's already ancient warrior, noble family onto an even more glorious literary past. 155 00:18:02,250 --> 00:18:10,050 Plus a nephew. He's certainly a very well known writer. So I'm talking, of course, about the Abbey de Sade, who wrote a much more. 156 00:18:10,050 --> 00:18:20,420 Reprinted and translated study of Petrarch and his ancestor Lore Dussart, supposedly Petrarch louder, and about his nephew, 157 00:18:20,420 --> 00:18:26,990 Donnacha Alpha Wasswa, Marquis de Sade, the author of a number of famous works that you have probably heard of. 158 00:18:26,990 --> 00:18:34,280 The Abadazad memoir Pallavi Up Ithaka came out in 1764, was instantly popular. 159 00:18:34,280 --> 00:18:43,310 There were four original French copies in Oxford alone, not counting the abridged and also very popular translation by Mrs Dobson, 160 00:18:43,310 --> 00:18:48,230 which went into seven editions by seven certain preoccupations. 161 00:18:48,230 --> 00:18:52,970 Neal identifies as recurrent across his corpus of family literature. 162 00:18:52,970 --> 00:19:02,540 That is, the focus on nobility and its warrior values or on establishing status are just as present in the work of the Ubaid, Assad's nephew. 163 00:19:02,540 --> 00:19:09,810 One might say that the violence of warrior class values finds renewed expression in Assad's work. 164 00:19:09,810 --> 00:19:19,130 Neil talks of the social prestige of violence, and certainly this is what the Sadan heroes emanate and embody in the most literal way. 165 00:19:19,130 --> 00:19:24,320 One might say that having lost the prestige of his nobility suffered through imprisonment. 166 00:19:24,320 --> 00:19:31,430 Right? And then the revolution Assad sought to replace that lost prestige by becoming a literary producer. 167 00:19:31,430 --> 00:19:40,190 Would he have become a writer without the example of his famous uncle, cherished friend of Voltaire and immediately all the Assad family? 168 00:19:40,190 --> 00:19:42,920 In fact, the perfect example of Neo's thesis, 169 00:19:42,920 --> 00:19:49,670 one might even say current members of the Assad family are still demonstrating the unpredictable power of the family function. 170 00:19:49,670 --> 00:19:53,150 Tipo Assad, one of the brothers of the current head of the family, 171 00:19:53,150 --> 00:20:01,880 wrote a post graduate thesis on his ancestor entitled Lalich to Your Political Ideology Dear Marquis de Sade 1982, 172 00:20:01,880 --> 00:20:09,980 which probably has added to his status in one way or another, while the Assad family in general make energetic capital, 173 00:20:09,980 --> 00:20:14,990 both cultural and financial, out of the writings of their forebears. 174 00:20:14,990 --> 00:20:16,310 So in some, 175 00:20:16,310 --> 00:20:25,400 I'd love to hear whether Neal thinks these 18th century cases are in a clear continuity with the earlier period he looks at or not or something else. 176 00:20:25,400 --> 00:20:31,490 Again, in any case, Neal, many thanks for this opportunity to engage with your work. 177 00:20:31,490 --> 00:20:40,580 And what I'll do now is ask me to come on and tell and talk about what she's her thoughts. 178 00:20:40,580 --> 00:20:46,760 Thank you very much. I, I found three areas of Neales analysis of particular interest. 179 00:20:46,760 --> 00:20:49,250 I come from English literature, literary criticism. 180 00:20:49,250 --> 00:20:58,730 Firstly, the idea that family is a cognitive gadget, then the idea of the family as a collaborative narrative which is never finished. 181 00:20:58,730 --> 00:21:05,840 And finally, a sort of contrast with the English situation. We get quite a lot of metaphorical families being claimed. 182 00:21:05,840 --> 00:21:10,970 So the first the family as cognitive gadget. 183 00:21:10,970 --> 00:21:15,590 You're probably aware of the buzz there is at the moment about the extended mind, 184 00:21:15,590 --> 00:21:23,660 the idea that both the human mind and its environment cause cognitive processing so should have parity of status. 185 00:21:23,660 --> 00:21:33,110 And cognition is not a brain bound activity, but unevenly distributed across social, technological and biological realms. 186 00:21:33,110 --> 00:21:37,850 Now, you don't get behind that. I mean, if you look behind Nehal, for instance, you'll see his mind behind him. 187 00:21:37,850 --> 00:21:41,690 It's all laid out in little piles behind and this is on his cupboard in his desk. 188 00:21:41,690 --> 00:21:45,620 So we all have a good look at Neil's mind when he switches his camera so easy up. 189 00:21:45,620 --> 00:21:53,510 But what we don't have often is case studies of how cognitive tasks can be distributed by system. 190 00:21:53,510 --> 00:22:00,620 So we've got ideas about how it works for an individual, but very few case studies about a system doing it in English. 191 00:22:00,620 --> 00:22:04,670 We've got Evelin triple doing it for the globe. But this is this. 192 00:22:04,670 --> 00:22:16,400 This is. This is. So few and here we got one, so here we got Neil scoping family histories as a cognitive ethnographer. 193 00:22:16,400 --> 00:22:21,290 He's showing how the extended family acted as an extended mind. 194 00:22:21,290 --> 00:22:28,550 And specifically what he's showing is three things how they actually that actually changes the texts. 195 00:22:28,550 --> 00:22:34,550 Firstly, collaboration between authors from different generations tends to call out a content 196 00:22:34,550 --> 00:22:38,480 that preoccupation about how the work started with the family and travelled out. 197 00:22:38,480 --> 00:22:44,420 And it's seen as the child of the family and given messages to the world outside. If the child is legitimate, it's respectful. 198 00:22:44,420 --> 00:22:51,230 It talks in a register, which respectfully didactic, and if it's illegitimate, it's satirical. 199 00:22:51,230 --> 00:22:56,660 Then the notion that family collectives produced works rather than individuals tended to 200 00:22:56,660 --> 00:23:01,610 encourage those people who collaborated to think big on the assumption that they'd start in. 201 00:23:01,610 --> 00:23:09,860 Somebody else would finish it up and keep it going, keep up the intellectual, keep up amongst a family. 202 00:23:09,860 --> 00:23:17,660 And what you get is such hopes being registered in extensive texts, laying out this transgender gender and generational relationship. 203 00:23:17,660 --> 00:23:24,320 And then finally, collective collabo creation tended to create a sort of bricolage very often. 204 00:23:24,320 --> 00:23:32,300 So that's what a perennial showing where stuff is inserted and rearranged and reassembled is constantly fiddling. 205 00:23:32,300 --> 00:23:37,370 So I was really into this. I love extended mind. This is a massive case regret. 206 00:23:37,370 --> 00:23:42,770 And then I started getting a bit itchy. So this is the second angle. 207 00:23:42,770 --> 00:23:50,360 This is the sense of the family as a narrative itself. Now, each family's myth, as we all know from our own families, has affordance. 208 00:23:50,360 --> 00:23:57,140 You can do certain sorts of interpretations, say certain things or you can't be. 209 00:23:57,140 --> 00:24:05,240 One of the tellers of those histories allows writers to place themselves as narratives of the story and as characters in it. 210 00:24:05,240 --> 00:24:09,680 See that? Oh, no, that's that's well, that's a great idea. And your great, great, great idea. A great idea. 211 00:24:09,680 --> 00:24:13,760 And then he said, well, the problem is that means the work is never finished. 212 00:24:13,760 --> 00:24:22,670 There was always stuff to be done on the family texts and updating, editing, imitating, co-authoring, translating, prefacing. 213 00:24:22,670 --> 00:24:25,550 And there's always work to be done on using the texts outside. 214 00:24:25,550 --> 00:24:30,440 The family knew dedications to other patrons commenting on them in a new political situation, what have you. 215 00:24:30,440 --> 00:24:36,570 So the material, he says, is free for heirs to upcycling. It will. 216 00:24:36,570 --> 00:24:45,450 When I started getting twitchy, you know, this unending reworking of a text reader becomes writer, becomes character. 217 00:24:45,450 --> 00:24:50,950 I mean, I know we're supposed to murmur wistfully with Yates'. How can we know the dancer from the dance? 218 00:24:50,950 --> 00:24:57,120 But I've always found it very easy to tell from my seat and stools I pay, they move and then we all go ahead. 219 00:24:57,120 --> 00:25:02,430 There's a move in English literature for the moment to rewrite the classics, the critical creative movement. 220 00:25:02,430 --> 00:25:09,420 I'm so contemptuous of this cotton which spices up Pride and prejudice for the few zombies. 221 00:25:09,420 --> 00:25:13,960 Okay, there are more sophisticated versions of it than Neil's work. 222 00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:19,890 How shows how horribly free literary errors felt claimed they were acting with the deepest 223 00:25:19,890 --> 00:25:26,010 respect towards their literary forebears while reanimating the remains in order to dominate them. 224 00:25:26,010 --> 00:25:33,150 In other words, I think what he's showing us is an uncanny, the uncanny aspect of family piety, 225 00:25:33,150 --> 00:25:39,700 that class of the frightening, which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar. 226 00:25:39,700 --> 00:25:45,410 Now, my third point, this, I think, is a difference between the English and French situations, 227 00:25:45,410 --> 00:25:54,160 or maybe it's just an area that that's that's not commenting on English all the time, 228 00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:57,640 regularly create metaphorical families for themselves from previous writers. 229 00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:03,490 But we've all done that. We the orphan fantasy, if you're not my parents. 230 00:26:03,490 --> 00:26:09,300 But. English writers do it, so take, for instance, the latest group of poets, 231 00:26:09,300 --> 00:26:15,390 playwrights and literati around Johnson and Johnson who call themselves the tribal sons of Ben. 232 00:26:15,390 --> 00:26:25,410 Now, some are intimate with him personally, meeting so regularly in the 16 twenties in the Apollo room of the Devlins Dunstan Tavern on Fleet Street 233 00:26:25,410 --> 00:26:31,650 that they even get their society's social rules painted on the on the wall to get real regulars. 234 00:26:31,650 --> 00:26:39,660 Others, though, while not knowing Johnson personally, was so heavily influenced by his philosophy and style that they also call themselves sons Ben. 235 00:26:39,660 --> 00:26:47,370 And the group includes playwrights like Richard Broome and William Davenant and poets like Thomas Carey and Robert Herek. 236 00:26:47,370 --> 00:26:52,800 Johnson celebrates his gathering's in an epistle answering to one that asked to be sealed off the tribe of Ben, 237 00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:56,010 where he says his friends must be trustworthy, loyal and real. 238 00:26:56,010 --> 00:27:01,830 And in return, his literary sons write poems celebrating his paternity, such as Thomas Randall's poem, 239 00:27:01,830 --> 00:27:10,860 a gradually treat master Ben Johnson for his adopting of him to be his son unless his care is too poetic epistles to his noble father. 240 00:27:10,860 --> 00:27:16,200 Such fantasy families are conspicuously cross-class, so I'd like to hear. 241 00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:26,490 Do they exist in the early modern French literary scene? And how might members of a bloodline literary family respond to the English sense that the 242 00:27:26,490 --> 00:27:35,500 family can also be an imaginative creation that crosses rather than enforces social boundaries? 243 00:27:35,500 --> 00:27:48,250 Good for you. Thank you very much, Kerry, and I think Kerry, in fact, you might want to keep your yeah, yeah. 244 00:27:48,250 --> 00:27:59,590 Come back so that we could we can look Baddiley at Neil as he begins to respond to some of the things that we've been talking about. 245 00:27:59,590 --> 00:28:02,290 Yeah. Neal, over to you. 246 00:28:02,290 --> 00:28:14,470 He said that they are clearly very self-conscious here with all my touches and it's in my mind around a bit that I so really actually teach me a lot. 247 00:28:14,470 --> 00:28:24,010 Reflecting back a lot with interest, I really have to be a lot of to stop to think about putting some points better than I have done in the past. 248 00:28:24,010 --> 00:28:25,030 Thank you very much. 249 00:28:25,030 --> 00:28:35,510 Just adding insult and and and it's good that I had my camera and my car because you also managed to make me laugh out loud and very, 250 00:28:35,510 --> 00:28:41,260 very friendly, very challenging and very, very funny points as well. 251 00:28:41,260 --> 00:28:47,680 And I cannot do justice to the all. But but he goes so and. 252 00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:57,790 Caroline Kennedy put it better than the trauma in the archives with that murder and. 253 00:28:57,790 --> 00:29:01,720 Yeah, it's it's a very exciting discovery, 254 00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:13,720 one that I neurotically checked with a whole bunch of Latinist to is Latin is better than mine to match and to make sure I'm not imagining things. 255 00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:24,130 And I think, you know, in the context of this, because it's it's it's sort of there in the detail. 256 00:29:24,130 --> 00:29:27,280 And so it doesn't take over everything. 257 00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:36,070 But but I think I'm glad that you picked up on it, because for me, it's one of the more exciting parts of the research. 258 00:29:36,070 --> 00:29:44,970 And actually through Connexions with a research group that's interested in literature and trauma. 259 00:29:44,970 --> 00:29:47,920 I did have the opportunity to publish that. 260 00:29:47,920 --> 00:30:00,190 But to to present it in a more sort of Latin rich format, really to explore what is, I think in that case, a very, 261 00:30:00,190 --> 00:30:06,730 very indirectly felt and expressed trauma that runs on for a couple of generations from from 262 00:30:06,730 --> 00:30:12,340 whether from the media or from the uncertainty as to whether it was a matter or a mixture of both. 263 00:30:12,340 --> 00:30:19,230 Thank you for that. And on the question of what is an elite, it's absolutely key question, 264 00:30:19,230 --> 00:30:26,990 and I'm not going to sit here and pronounce what an elitist because I think it's one of those ordinary language terms. 265 00:30:26,990 --> 00:30:31,590 It depends on what context or purpose you're using it for. 266 00:30:31,590 --> 00:30:38,910 I simply would say that although I'm I you're absolutely accurate in saying that. 267 00:30:38,910 --> 00:30:42,600 Nobility is a big part of this, and then the mighty again. 268 00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:48,060 I don't know whether England sort of contrasted points because the nobility was 269 00:30:48,060 --> 00:30:54,960 much wider and much more numerous than in the English aristocracy in France. 270 00:30:54,960 --> 00:31:05,800 And so a lot of this is going on and I think I estimate roughly 40 percent of these distributions from families of distributers. 271 00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:11,620 When they pull in one way or another, but that does still leave the other 50, 60 percent. 272 00:31:11,620 --> 00:31:25,150 So still elites, in the sense of my my argument is that this this this phenomenon of family nature actually happens. 273 00:31:25,150 --> 00:31:31,840 On the whole, it's an even higher level than literally than what's happening in general. 274 00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:41,170 I think that that's a probable conclusion, not a definite one. But despite that, there were quite a lot of 60 percent of combatants involved in it, 275 00:31:41,170 --> 00:31:45,990 a lot of them on the cusp of instability, trying to get in there and bits. 276 00:31:45,990 --> 00:31:51,430 But some of them, not one particular group actually that often had accomplished sergeants. 277 00:31:51,430 --> 00:31:56,290 Was that so? The Regents, cheetahs, secretaries and so on. 278 00:31:56,290 --> 00:32:04,870 And that was a group that was very difficult for communities to play socially because of its reliance on this extent of its 279 00:32:04,870 --> 00:32:11,320 unusual new extent to provide something that should be different states and simply weren't quite sure what to make of that. 280 00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:24,130 And and in terms of the incredible instability, social instability, a kind of melting pots that that you talked about again. 281 00:32:24,130 --> 00:32:28,850 Absolutely. I suppose I qualify that by saying that. 282 00:32:28,850 --> 00:32:34,970 You know, as as an historian's consti reminds us, nonetheless, 283 00:32:34,970 --> 00:32:44,990 this was an extremely hierarchical society in which the vast majority of people could not move from the status into which they've been born. 284 00:32:44,990 --> 00:32:51,200 However, you define that, whether the father's status or whatever it was, but the vast majority of people, that was not possible. 285 00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:59,400 So I think you perhaps get. And a lot of this ferment is particularly on the cusp of certain crossover points, 286 00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:07,270 in particular actually on the cusp of crossing over into the ability that group officeholders often just below, 287 00:33:07,270 --> 00:33:11,670 you know, buying offices and so on and sometimes becoming the. 288 00:33:11,670 --> 00:33:16,910 So there's a lot lot of movement around that. But even that may have been. 289 00:33:16,910 --> 00:33:26,090 Slowed down, I think, as you got further into the 17th century and what are the barriers came up quite a bit. 290 00:33:26,090 --> 00:33:29,930 Having said that, the 18th century samples are actually brilliant. 291 00:33:29,930 --> 00:33:39,140 I said having said that, because still, on the question of the ability with the digital example, if a fantastic example and yes. 292 00:33:39,140 --> 00:33:45,650 So I think my short answer is yes, both fit the bill in new ways entirely. 293 00:33:45,650 --> 00:33:54,530 And I think that that kind of nephew shows that illustrates that problem that recurs again and again and again. 294 00:33:54,530 --> 00:34:01,250 And in this book, which is part of because there's this whole system that but it's really hard to pull it off. 295 00:34:01,250 --> 00:34:05,960 And typically companies with only put of the two or perhaps three generations. 296 00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:13,790 And then you've got particularly some social groups, disintegration and evaporation of all that using that, 297 00:34:13,790 --> 00:34:18,140 should they need to get the social back up and back to where they were before or even lower? 298 00:34:18,140 --> 00:34:21,920 So I think that's that's that's really coming on. 299 00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:29,840 And I suppose whether Tito's daughter, again, absolutely fundamental change is really important, 300 00:34:29,840 --> 00:34:37,370 whether that's part of the family function or my colleagues or family literature and certainly is family literature, 301 00:34:37,370 --> 00:34:43,720 because from the literature, I used to mean where there was some kind of. 302 00:34:43,720 --> 00:34:54,070 Real calibration, coworking, whatever it coinciding at different production by different people within a family with family function. 303 00:34:54,070 --> 00:35:05,050 I'm suggesting using that when to pinpoint the attributing of of that agency to a family or to family members. 304 00:35:05,050 --> 00:35:11,680 So in other words, you could have a lot of things going on, but they're not visible below the radar of the family function, 305 00:35:11,680 --> 00:35:17,440 which, like the author Alexis de Fuca, is the act of attributing whatever the underlying realities are. 306 00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:25,050 So there's two things at the level of representation of actually attributing this work, like help to this work by my grandfather on it. 307 00:35:25,050 --> 00:35:30,940 But then it's the most silent stuff, which often the women would be involved in a lot as well. 308 00:35:30,940 --> 00:35:35,710 That might not come onto the family function because it's not attributed, 309 00:35:35,710 --> 00:35:43,360 but it's still actually part of what I'm calling family that I'm trying to distinguish in attempts to capture that. 310 00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:49,260 So the distinction and yeah, the third example, I didn't know that's that's incredible. 311 00:35:49,260 --> 00:35:57,430 And and and I love the fact that people decide and this perhaps feeds into Kerrie's 312 00:35:57,430 --> 00:36:03,640 anxieties about his ability to decide is still getting his own control in 1982, 313 00:36:03,640 --> 00:36:09,280 writing his thesis over the whole business for his own completely separate purposes 314 00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:14,680 by telling us what exactly all this all this stuff done by his ancestors, 315 00:36:14,680 --> 00:36:20,540 men say I think that. But that illustrates to me nineteen point as well. 316 00:36:20,540 --> 00:36:28,540 The the family function, just like you affection for Tucker is not something that it's just a historical phenomenon came to an end. 317 00:36:28,540 --> 00:36:36,610 It's something that continues into the present. Whether we choose to attribute words to authors, to families tonight, to neither of them, 318 00:36:36,610 --> 00:36:46,660 it's something that you can't really separate modern scholarship and scholarship from its continuing process and carry on to other points. 319 00:36:46,660 --> 00:36:54,340 I mean, I take the like you're interpreting what I think in terms of extended mind, 320 00:36:54,340 --> 00:37:00,220 but although his cognitive framework to some extent, I didn't particularly explicitly use extended mind. 321 00:37:00,220 --> 00:37:04,180 But I think that works very well to describe what I could trying to do. 322 00:37:04,180 --> 00:37:12,160 I do use a bit more the concept of 14 cents and which which you mentioned as well. 323 00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:14,570 And I'm. 324 00:37:14,570 --> 00:37:25,910 I think that and yes, I say that I think that there's an inherent kind of teacher facing openness and in all this material generated by companies, 325 00:37:25,910 --> 00:37:31,760 whether they're trying to control or not, how future generations, including their family, use it, 326 00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:41,810 it's de facto it's it's it's open and does get skewed and used for subsequent generations purposes constantly, I suppose, to try. 327 00:37:41,810 --> 00:37:44,950 And I love your. 328 00:37:44,950 --> 00:37:57,160 Characterisation of that kind of sinister control that might take only a mature excuse from the family way away from its original intended purpose. 329 00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:05,800 For example, Protestant stuff used by Catholic descendent or vice versa and so on, as an uncanny, as horribly free, 330 00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:10,750 as an uncanny aspect of the party and the class of the frightening, 331 00:38:10,750 --> 00:38:16,300 I think that really brings out its energy and its real dynamism really, really well. 332 00:38:16,300 --> 00:38:26,320 Much better than I've done, actually. But I suppose I'd say that someone can always come along and try to get them by falsifying some of the claims. 333 00:38:26,320 --> 00:38:33,250 So there's always that vulnerability in the later uses that the claims and ability can be falsified, if you like. 334 00:38:33,250 --> 00:38:43,010 So it doesn't diffuse entirely these free, often very self recounting, subsequent recycling of the material. 335 00:38:43,010 --> 00:38:47,060 They can have their own vulnerability and so on. 336 00:38:47,060 --> 00:38:50,430 And and in terms of your. 337 00:38:50,430 --> 00:39:00,700 Your metaphors, familiar metaphors, in particular, England and tribal or sons of Ben Johnson, I think that's absolutely fascinating. 338 00:39:00,700 --> 00:39:10,820 I suppose I myself situate that sort of phenomenon in the realm of what I call other activities that impinge upon family or contiguous with it, 339 00:39:10,820 --> 00:39:17,380 whether household or or institutional college based on those networks and so on. 340 00:39:17,380 --> 00:39:24,960 And that explains what's different about this is that some of the strong metaphorical connexions to this much stronger thing, 341 00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:30,860 which I suppose you do get a little bit with, with phrases like La Familia and for for a household as well, 342 00:39:30,860 --> 00:39:37,290 we do got that metaphor extension that might include household secretaries and so on in other directions as well. 343 00:39:37,290 --> 00:39:43,690 I don't know of examples. I think with other people on the committee are really interested in their performance, 344 00:39:43,690 --> 00:39:49,980 for example, of that, the French equivalent of the tribal sons of bad. 345 00:39:49,980 --> 00:39:59,310 In that way, I suppose the closest kind of example might be in the book, something like one of my biggest case studies. 346 00:39:59,310 --> 00:40:05,520 I'm not sure that allowed to be the son of the murderer. 347 00:40:05,520 --> 00:40:09,210 And his his hadn't given up on the. 348 00:40:09,210 --> 00:40:19,320 He gets adopted within a college institutional homosexual framework affected by this very leading scholar at that time. 349 00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:24,550 And, you know, and he's not really calling his father, but there's a kind of crazy something going on there. 350 00:40:24,550 --> 00:40:28,650 So you do get that sort of thing that you imagine that was probably quite community colleges. 351 00:40:28,650 --> 00:40:35,040 And it may not stop in the comparative perspective looking across Europe, 352 00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:43,470 perhaps the extent that varied, depending on how important colleges were culturally and in education, 353 00:40:43,470 --> 00:40:49,980 so say perhaps more in some countries like Germany and and the other countries can benefit from it the way colleges, 354 00:40:49,980 --> 00:40:52,860 but not quite the same same cultural importance. 355 00:40:52,860 --> 00:41:01,080 And the redefined focus on that is that perhaps in the sense of interest he talks mediaevalists are there many mediaeval and tribal sons, 356 00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:11,100 10 or whatever he was called in the Middle Ages? Because the phenomena phenomenon I've been trying to describe is is a fairly historically new 357 00:41:11,100 --> 00:41:16,590 one in some respects because of this thing about scholars suddenly began to marry and whether 358 00:41:16,590 --> 00:41:23,100 because that their their Protestants or because the figure of the late married scholar became 359 00:41:23,100 --> 00:41:28,540 much more of a possibility than it had been through through so much of the Middle Ages. 360 00:41:28,540 --> 00:41:34,190 So there you can imagine that that said that that twin transmission of, you know. 361 00:41:34,190 --> 00:41:40,040 Procreation, but also transmission within the family became much more intense and shocking thing 362 00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:47,750 in this in this humanistic period and that had often been in the in the monastery. 363 00:41:47,750 --> 00:41:51,640 I'll stop that. Thanks very much, Adam. 364 00:41:51,640 --> 00:42:02,020 And you, Neal, what an amazing series of, you know, coherent responses to our many points career, would you like to come back to something? 365 00:42:02,020 --> 00:42:10,660 I seemed I could see that you were having some thoughts I could see or your mind was was doing a lot of stuff. 366 00:42:10,660 --> 00:42:16,240 That's right. Neal Tucker, to discuss what I was thinking, just write in English. 367 00:42:16,240 --> 00:42:21,700 We spend a lot of time talking about manuscript publication. You know, it's now equivalent to book publication or Ettlin. 368 00:42:21,700 --> 00:42:33,940 Anyway, it's going for the right group of people. The influential group of people given manuscripts are cheaper to produce than published books does. 369 00:42:33,940 --> 00:42:39,840 Would your conclusions about. Social mobility. 370 00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:46,890 And what about the way these are being used to shove a family into the limelight? 371 00:42:46,890 --> 00:42:55,770 Wouldn't that be varied if you considered manuscript publication as well? 372 00:42:55,770 --> 00:43:04,660 In other words, would you have more of a wider range of people from different social classes or maybe from different genders? 373 00:43:04,660 --> 00:43:11,690 Judges is attempting to do that shelf. 374 00:43:11,690 --> 00:43:21,900 I'm sure that's right. And the. I mean, so many dimensions of this that one could actually pursue, and that's obviously one of them, 375 00:43:21,900 --> 00:43:32,220 I should just, I suppose just clarify that in works is is quite broadly defined. 376 00:43:32,220 --> 00:43:40,530 So I absolutely mean manuscript works amongst those. So so this is not confined to to to print. 377 00:43:40,530 --> 00:43:46,530 But it's true that a lot of my examples of case studies are more print based. 378 00:43:46,530 --> 00:43:52,540 But it'd be great to look at the numbers intent doing the counting the. 379 00:43:52,540 --> 00:43:55,870 To find aspect of it, I have, you know, 380 00:43:55,870 --> 00:44:09,130 included a manuscript work destined for some kind of seems like some kind of very limited circulation as a work in mind by my criteria. 381 00:44:09,130 --> 00:44:15,730 And one example of access along with something, pick this up at the top end of the reading. 382 00:44:15,730 --> 00:44:20,920 They tend to be kind of like mentioned genealogies. 383 00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:28,240 So it's true that this is paid for shifting from the manuscript genealogies that a lot of, you know, 384 00:44:28,240 --> 00:44:34,210 quite grand, noble families kept shifting those into print much, much more in the 17th century. 385 00:44:34,210 --> 00:44:36,310 So that doesn't exactly answer your question. 386 00:44:36,310 --> 00:44:43,840 And I think that that that shows a lot of work to do about the changing access relationship between printed manuscript on this point, 387 00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:49,990 but doesn't really answer your questions. I don't know the answer to that about the extent to which really looking in 388 00:44:49,990 --> 00:44:56,860 detail at examples of manuscript works might take you into a wider social range. 389 00:44:56,860 --> 00:45:01,840 I'm sure it would. For women, I'm absolutely sure. Which we're. Yeah, no. 390 00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:11,110 Yeah. I mean, you talk very well about the Margarita Diva and her have the very limited number of manuscript copies. 391 00:45:11,110 --> 00:45:19,210 And so being able to read her work meant proximity to her, which is proximity to the queen. 392 00:45:19,210 --> 00:45:26,080 So that that's a very neat example of that. I suppose it it changes over time. 393 00:45:26,080 --> 00:45:27,710 I see that in the in the chat. 394 00:45:27,710 --> 00:45:41,620 So Dave, Dave Postles has has put an example in for as of late 70s with chrysotile and produce as potential sons for very nicely. 395 00:45:41,620 --> 00:45:50,260 Thank you. Yeah. I mean I suppose my only then you sort of follow up question that, that I'd like to sort of ask while I, 396 00:45:50,260 --> 00:45:59,560 while I can before opening up to the to the audience generally is do you think we ought to teach differently, 397 00:45:59,560 --> 00:46:08,770 teach some of these sorts of what sort of teach in relation to what you're revealing here, sort of so that a fifth, let's say, 398 00:46:08,770 --> 00:46:20,280 of the works that we're teaching from the early modern period are from the from these from these families, these military families, family literature. 399 00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:29,670 Oh, that would be that would be great. I think that I think a couple of sort of examples from the agricultural implications. 400 00:46:29,670 --> 00:46:34,650 One is that the Dutch are going to wait until the tax cut. 401 00:46:34,650 --> 00:46:38,870 But, you know, French style textbooks, 402 00:46:38,870 --> 00:46:48,630 some century by century introduction to literature or dictionaries of literature separates a lot of these characters. 403 00:46:48,630 --> 00:46:54,330 So, I mean, this is one that has already gone a long way beyond the. 404 00:46:54,330 --> 00:46:57,540 Very, very rigid, essentially based focus, 405 00:46:57,540 --> 00:47:05,130 but I think the centrally based focus that dominates a lot of teaching and still does to some extent, I suppose in France, 406 00:47:05,130 --> 00:47:17,550 for example, and it's not very friendly to bringing out these often quite long, long delayed family, but still very significant family connexions. 407 00:47:17,550 --> 00:47:28,140 So you even get the same really important righteous rights to the thoughts in this group claimed to love him and his son, Bookclub, Desisto. 408 00:47:28,140 --> 00:47:30,540 It's not at all obvious from work from them, 409 00:47:30,540 --> 00:47:37,470 from from looking at them in dictionaries that they are father and son with this incredibly antagonistic relationship. 410 00:47:37,470 --> 00:47:49,620 So I think moving away from some focus can help. Nozette Really, it's part of the much wider attention to politics that history has taught us to have. 411 00:47:49,620 --> 00:47:55,980 I think it's more the other way around. I think that has helped me in my research be attentive to both. 412 00:47:55,980 --> 00:48:05,090 So, yeah, if capacity that can then help. Encourages all women teaching and learning to, you know, take the protests really, 413 00:48:05,090 --> 00:48:12,000 really seriously rather than something to get out of the way before you get to the meat or not. 414 00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:18,200 That would be great. No, thank you. Well, I think we probably should allow everybody else in now. 415 00:48:18,200 --> 00:48:24,680 So I'm going to hand over to to West to to help the audience ask their questions. 416 00:48:24,680 --> 00:48:32,050 Thank you. Yep, I was on mute. 417 00:48:32,050 --> 00:48:38,680 Okay, thanks, Caroline. Don't disappear from the screen, Caroline or Carrie, unless you feel you really need to, 418 00:48:38,680 --> 00:48:45,790 because I think questions will come to you as well as to Neal. I think, first of all, I'd like to pick up just on a comment in the in the Q&A, 419 00:48:45,790 --> 00:48:54,550 which is in Latin familiar included not only relatives by blood or marriage, but also clients and even slaves. 420 00:48:54,550 --> 00:49:01,120 And Neal, you talk about John O'Brien and other people's work on the family at the Montana. 421 00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:07,510 And I wondered if that was a way of extending or approaching Kerry's question about fantasy families. 422 00:49:07,510 --> 00:49:12,970 In other words, is there a way in which one can think of the family? 423 00:49:12,970 --> 00:49:23,170 Yes. In relation to blood, but also in relation to service and patronage and a kind of larger network of people, 424 00:49:23,170 --> 00:49:29,170 because I think that that's also emerging, if you like, in certainly in early modern publication history. 425 00:49:29,170 --> 00:49:36,460 I wonder if anybody in the call might want to say a bit more about that Kerry or Neil or Caroline Kerry, 426 00:49:36,460 --> 00:49:42,710 since you brought it up, perhaps you could say a thing or two more about that. Whether, you know, somebody called Robertson, 427 00:49:42,710 --> 00:49:49,840 I think is Richard Robinson Robertson in the 1980s who claims that various people have 428 00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:53,770 inspired our fathers of his work and his work is absolutely awful popular writer. 429 00:49:53,770 --> 00:49:58,230 And he writes masses and he eventually gets so cross. 430 00:49:58,230 --> 00:50:06,160 He writes a tract of all the people he sent his fantasy, his work to his fantasy family. 431 00:50:06,160 --> 00:50:14,440 And why haven't they given him anything in return? And I wonder that sense of I very much like not to be part of your family. 432 00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:25,300 Thank you very much indeed. That claims to family and family and repudiating [INAUDIBLE] sons. 433 00:50:25,300 --> 00:50:35,070 Thank you, Gary Neal, to pick up on that. I think it's a really interesting line to pursue and the. 434 00:50:35,070 --> 00:50:39,360 I suppose just to start with, pushing back a little bit in this period, 435 00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:50,310 people were so obsessed with blogs and that kind of physiological heredity as part of all this that I think. 436 00:50:50,310 --> 00:50:59,400 But but but keep something quiet, fairly specific in their minds about blood relations. 437 00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:03,430 But that's certainly not the whole story, as you said. 438 00:51:03,430 --> 00:51:11,480 And and the you know, the thinking about these twins, 439 00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:21,330 perhaps I give you some examples of this where there is a someone is is is dedicated to to a person. 440 00:51:21,330 --> 00:51:27,660 I'm saying just as my father said, your father wrote about the case on actually. 441 00:51:27,660 --> 00:51:38,680 So this is the two fathers sometimes. But the relationship of one pair to the to the patient, that is actually a figure one as well. 442 00:51:38,680 --> 00:51:43,600 So that it's quite complicated. So I think that does prove your point. 443 00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:47,940 And another couple of thoughts on that would be the clinical level. 444 00:51:47,940 --> 00:51:55,110 So really, you might throw a lot of space in the book. 445 00:51:55,110 --> 00:52:02,940 You know, his relation to his very famous father is very often, you know, imagine the relation of of of a one sometimes, really. 446 00:52:02,940 --> 00:52:08,700 But sometimes that is actually other father figures come to be more important to him at certain points, 447 00:52:08,700 --> 00:52:13,680 particularly the French came from you very much like a father figure. 448 00:52:13,680 --> 00:52:20,940 Say that. So there's a slippage. It's quite easy to make. I think he has make one because he's at his social level. 449 00:52:20,940 --> 00:52:25,590 It's is not going to get what he needs from his own father. He needs another father. 450 00:52:25,590 --> 00:52:27,870 And ultimately, actually, another dimension, again, 451 00:52:27,870 --> 00:52:37,020 would be take a very religious turn when worldly rungs on the ladder and awful in the way it's God that takes that role as well. 452 00:52:37,020 --> 00:52:42,000 So I think this can be displaced in multiple directions. I quite agree. 453 00:52:42,000 --> 00:52:49,080 I'm going to take the notion that none of us get all we need from our biological fathers away from this conversation. 454 00:52:49,080 --> 00:53:00,750 But within that chat, again, there's a good load of stuff going on about the extension of family into patronage and into into other fields. 455 00:53:00,750 --> 00:53:07,200 So Jonathan's got a question about patronage and how you might end up Jonathan Patterson and how you might end up, in a sense, working, 456 00:53:07,200 --> 00:53:13,050 producing something for the family to which you're attached and even an extension of that to the family finances, 457 00:53:13,050 --> 00:53:22,840 which again, is a really interesting example. Gemma Teitelman has suggested that I sort of analogy might be Voltaire and the patriarch, the patriarch, 458 00:53:22,840 --> 00:53:36,990 the felony akin to the Johnson question, although, as Gemma points out there, it's also about a contrast with the rival also. 459 00:53:36,990 --> 00:53:45,840 And I mean, that may be true of Johnson as well. There's a kind of rivalry in the whole family have been seen. 460 00:53:45,840 --> 00:53:51,270 And that's. Yeah. So you might you might signal a father not only for your own sake, 461 00:53:51,270 --> 00:54:00,240 but also as a rival to another one within a kind of competitive literary field, I suppose. 462 00:54:00,240 --> 00:54:04,050 One other question to shift the come back to the question of gender. 463 00:54:04,050 --> 00:54:17,990 Again, Kerry raised jessalyn just right at the beginning to do these literary practises, produce conventions, who who uses the conventions. 464 00:54:17,990 --> 00:54:24,870 And it may be used by them. And in a way, it might depend on what just mean to say by convention. 465 00:54:24,870 --> 00:54:29,190 But certainly one of the things you show in your book is that satire, for example, 466 00:54:29,190 --> 00:54:36,000 is one sort of generic convention that emerges from this kind of analysis. 467 00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:44,070 Let's imagine that that might be what just means by convention, in other words, some sense of genre or working within a particular way. 468 00:54:44,070 --> 00:54:50,430 And again, you have a notion of why that why that's useful to think about that, Neal, 469 00:54:50,430 --> 00:54:55,830 I think that the examples of Sativex that Kerry hasn't mentioned really nicely, 470 00:54:55,830 --> 00:55:00,660 the way I find very helpful in relation to legitimacy is a really important one. 471 00:55:00,660 --> 00:55:08,760 So it's part of the sort of exceptions, very interesting exceptions to prove the rule that when things go wrong, 472 00:55:08,760 --> 00:55:12,390 it's sort of turning against these family frameworks. 473 00:55:12,390 --> 00:55:22,530 But also satire has a much more conventional role here as emerging from family, as in one of the biggest. 474 00:55:22,530 --> 00:55:34,460 I mentioned a moment ago Lukla do not find it so late 16th century poet, but say that the time just to really get from the magistrates and. 475 00:55:34,460 --> 00:55:46,340 A local leader, he Satie's, that really made very clear that that that was the wrong way to do things safely is what people in other families do, 476 00:55:46,340 --> 00:55:53,300 and particularly people in and outside the network of families that inhabitants of magistrates in his part, 477 00:55:53,300 --> 00:55:56,960 Normandy, that all the people who such rights are outside that. 478 00:55:56,960 --> 00:56:00,410 So so it's part of this against a different kind. 479 00:56:00,410 --> 00:56:05,200 The tribal metaphor is part of this is trying to be the very, 480 00:56:05,200 --> 00:56:15,020 very kind of nasty and genre really for for for excluding people from from your from your tribe, if you like. 481 00:56:15,020 --> 00:56:23,510 But, yeah, there are other examples, I suppose. I think certain points to what Terry picked up on the conventions about the sorts of 482 00:56:23,510 --> 00:56:30,470 kinds of stuff that tends to be produced as family literature that involves massive 483 00:56:30,470 --> 00:56:36,360 scale works at conventions of of cutting and pasting basically from all sorts of 484 00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:42,380 previous stuff to make new uses of your family's materials that you've inherited. 485 00:56:42,380 --> 00:56:52,880 So, yeah, she's no recommendations yet. The collage Kerry said and as you say in your book as well, just the Sentinel little a kind of clarification. 486 00:56:52,880 --> 00:56:59,880 Yes. Generic conventions, also modes of address, salon practises, greetings in letters, attacks of various kinds and so on. 487 00:56:59,880 --> 00:57:03,950 So, yeah, I also misrepresented Gemma's questions slightly. 488 00:57:03,950 --> 00:57:14,960 And it might be worth just following through on that because it seems the Voltaire Rousseau competition, 489 00:57:14,960 --> 00:57:21,590 if you like, is not so much between two fathers as between a father and a friend. 490 00:57:21,590 --> 00:57:25,070 Let me also and the patriarch, the Voltaire. 491 00:57:25,070 --> 00:57:32,600 And again, I just again, I know that friendship is part of your story and the degree to which somebody refers to, you know, I mean, Lechter and so on. 492 00:57:32,600 --> 00:57:34,430 And there are a number of examples. 493 00:57:34,430 --> 00:57:43,550 I wondered if you wanted to just reflect on on the sort of friendship question in relation to I want to I don't want to generate too many functions, 494 00:57:43,550 --> 00:57:47,780 but we could have the friendship function as well. But there's the sort of w. 495 00:57:47,780 --> 00:57:53,630 Yeah. Have you got a thought on that. I think, I think that's been really good work on that, 496 00:57:53,630 --> 00:57:59,900 that I think things like for example looking at something like well like this book on the idea of perfect friendship or, 497 00:57:59,900 --> 00:58:08,990 or in a more varied way the the the Festschrift for memorial volume for Philip Ford on Sodality and so on. 498 00:58:08,990 --> 00:58:17,000 That and not just two examples of the a lot of really good work that's being done on this very often in this homosocial college setting, 499 00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:24,620 these alternatives and certainly more for social different as well. 500 00:58:24,620 --> 00:58:32,120 I think within those networks, it's the one thing that interests me that I think would be more work to be done is on certain suspension 501 00:58:32,120 --> 00:58:39,350 of social hierarchy that is made possible within friendship and or of the situations of familiarities. 502 00:58:39,350 --> 00:58:46,800 Yeah, that might be a temporary suspension. You can trace it to how people to trust each other, but so one should be OK. 503 00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:53,120 I've said everything was hierarchical. You know, there were constant suspensions. And and so in this particular context, that's absolutely right. 504 00:58:53,120 --> 00:58:57,750 Carry on nodding vigorously. Now, you want to come back in on that question. 505 00:58:57,750 --> 00:59:03,570 I'm just thinking about the social conduct books which are circulating in England at that time, 506 00:59:03,570 --> 00:59:18,480 which are very clear about suspending hierarchy, went to suspend and when to start again and who gives the signal to start or stop. 507 00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:26,640 Thank you. As is so often the case in these discussions, questions either anticipate or pick up on something that's already been said. 508 00:59:26,640 --> 00:59:34,380 And when you were talking about homosexual colleges, Neal, Jim Reed has pointed out that colleges can also function as families and in 509 00:59:34,380 --> 00:59:39,510 Germany supervise your doctor farter and that this has a kind of after effect. 510 00:59:39,510 --> 00:59:45,360 I should know that, as Jim was one of my undergraduate tutors, if not my Dr. FATA. 511 00:59:45,360 --> 00:59:50,820 But I think I mean, obviously, the world would be a different place if they were Dr. Mutter's as well. 512 00:59:50,820 --> 00:59:55,320 So the gender question around there is part of that, too. 513 00:59:55,320 --> 01:00:02,010 But it's yeah, the family the college as a family is clearly a strong part of the story. 514 01:00:02,010 --> 01:00:08,610 But also, I think one of the things your book shows well, what are the questions you asked is, 515 01:00:08,610 --> 01:00:18,000 is this a particular historical moment which if you like the not all the literature produces a sworn to celibacy where the 516 01:00:18,000 --> 01:00:26,640 tonsure is not a kind of necessary part of of literary practise in the way that it might have been earlier and so on. 517 01:00:26,640 --> 01:00:32,340 Colleges come to pick up some of that dimension. 518 01:00:32,340 --> 01:00:40,860 Two more quick questions, I think. And one is from Tom Hamilton, who tends to food instead of. 519 01:00:40,860 --> 01:00:42,400 Well, yeah, he asks. 520 01:00:42,400 --> 01:00:48,000 He says the statistical research underlying the first part of your book is extremely helpful, not only for literary scholars, but authors. 521 01:00:48,000 --> 01:00:50,190 First of all, for social historians. 522 01:00:50,190 --> 01:00:56,400 Could you reflect on how you decided on your categories of analysis, how you slice of the pie or the Camembert charts? 523 01:00:56,400 --> 01:00:58,110 In other words, more generally, 524 01:00:58,110 --> 01:01:06,230 did the statistical analysis produce finding that surprised you or changed how you conceived of the project as a whole? 525 01:01:06,230 --> 01:01:11,880 Oh, yes, all of the above. I mean, I went to you go through. 526 01:01:11,880 --> 01:01:19,230 Every possible answer to Tom's really good question, but very exciting stuff, and that's, for example. 527 01:01:19,230 --> 01:01:26,820 Yeah, I just say, General, that for me this is a new departure and to go quantitative for part of the project, 528 01:01:26,820 --> 01:01:35,730 I'm not the tool of the minority in terms of pages, but to get that sort of rough, you know, sort of scraping of the terrain. 529 01:01:35,730 --> 01:01:41,190 And it's a bit of a shock to do what will be completely familiar to social historians, 530 01:01:41,190 --> 01:01:49,560 to have to get really arbitrary with your definitions were not arbitrary, but very precise because you can cancel. 531 01:01:49,560 --> 01:01:52,940 You have to count that you're counting the same thing. 532 01:01:52,940 --> 01:02:02,430 Say for yourself, it's all kinds of challenges from literacy such as me normally if but no, you have to define a work. 533 01:02:02,430 --> 01:02:10,300 You have to try what Francis and you have to define the degree of certainty with which you're classifying someone. 534 01:02:10,300 --> 01:02:15,360 So you have to define how you're classifying and socially whether the top middle of watching the ability. 535 01:02:15,360 --> 01:02:19,860 So that comes down to to to some monetary sum as well. 536 01:02:19,860 --> 01:02:26,640 So all of that you have to do. So I wanted to simply say that that's a new thing for me. 537 01:02:26,640 --> 01:02:29,400 And it made me a much more sympathetic to people who have to do that. 538 01:02:29,400 --> 01:02:37,140 And I'm less likely to pick the apart because the payoff is you do get this rough picture that emerges. 539 01:02:37,140 --> 01:02:42,840 But of course, one then stands by the absolute truth of the definition in relation to any particular case, 540 01:02:42,840 --> 01:02:49,560 because things are always a little more interesting when you get into the detail and see the detail. 541 01:02:49,560 --> 01:02:56,730 Thank you, Neal. So we've got we're running out of time, but we've got one quick question, which Sabrina Hogan asks, is that time for this? 542 01:02:56,730 --> 01:03:06,090 Did you come across any twin writers or families with twins? And this has an interest in the she has a specific genetic phenomenon in. 543 01:03:06,090 --> 01:03:16,830 But, yeah. Twins part of your story and some of it I think they are, but I think brothers are twins that this is so I can't remember much more. 544 01:03:16,830 --> 01:03:25,140 So just when we started, I might not be able to remember everything in this one extreme case of these two brothers, 545 01:03:25,140 --> 01:03:33,420 possibly twins who called the ship. And then you knew who was so extreme about them is that they in the late 16th century, 546 01:03:33,420 --> 01:03:39,300 they produced these volumes, translating virtue and intolerance. 547 01:03:39,300 --> 01:03:49,470 And there's no indication of dividing them up other than us as a unit, even the divorced mother daughter, you know, which means by which. 548 01:03:49,470 --> 01:03:51,130 But this is not is no indication. 549 01:03:51,130 --> 01:03:59,580 You did you did look at them very slightly differentiated, one of the two groups, but they're basically in individual represented in the unit. 550 01:03:59,580 --> 01:04:04,350 They may be twins, but I'm afraid I have to go back to check. 551 01:04:04,350 --> 01:04:09,840 Caroline, were you nodding your head as if to say I know the answer to this or just it's okay? 552 01:04:09,840 --> 01:04:19,440 Um, well, I think we've yeah, we've roamed and ranged over all sorts of exciting areas, 553 01:04:19,440 --> 01:04:26,340 from cognitive gadgets to cognitive ethnography through to the terrific example of the Assad family. 554 01:04:26,340 --> 01:04:30,150 We could have spent a good hour talking about that alone, I think. 555 01:04:30,150 --> 01:04:39,750 But so many, many thanks both to Kerry and Caroline for their rich and imaginative and critical and as Neil says, 556 01:04:39,750 --> 01:04:45,480 sometimes laugh out loud, but also really profound responses to Neil's book. 557 01:04:45,480 --> 01:04:50,130 And, of course, many thanks to Neil for writing it in the first place. 558 01:04:50,130 --> 01:04:54,690 I think to take up the pedagogies question that Caroline asked, I really do think this is, you know, 559 01:04:54,690 --> 01:04:59,880 we'll think differently about authorship and about how to teach things as a 560 01:04:59,880 --> 01:05:05,110 result of this work and indeed of your larger study that you're engaged in. 561 01:05:05,110 --> 01:05:09,000 Neil, you know, collaborative study about literature and social function. 562 01:05:09,000 --> 01:05:15,450 And it may not seem like this is, in the jargon, terribly relevant work, but of course, it really is, 563 01:05:15,450 --> 01:05:26,460 because it is absolutely about the sort of the role and the power of education and of literary work within within the social structure. 564 01:05:26,460 --> 01:05:29,340 So thank you all very much indeed. One more time. 565 01:05:29,340 --> 01:05:40,020 And thank you also for to our several many punters who turned up, listened, added to their questions or even were there just listening along. 566 01:05:40,020 --> 01:05:43,770 You have disappeared from screens. Thanks again before before we finished, 567 01:05:43,770 --> 01:05:50,280 I just wanted to say that the the next book at lunchtime is in two weeks time on Wednesday, the 9th of June, same time. 568 01:05:50,280 --> 01:05:56,730 And we'll be discussing the book edited by Abigail Green and Simon Levy. 569 01:05:56,730 --> 01:06:02,340 Slim called Jews Liberalism anti-Semitism A Global History. 570 01:06:02,340 --> 01:06:11,892 Do come back in a couple of weeks time, if you can. Many thanks again for being here and goodbye.