Recollecting the Arundel Circle: Discovering the Past, Recovering the Future (Literature and the Visual Arts)

Product Description The most celebrated collector and cultural patron in Stuart England, Thomas Howard, the 14th Earl of Arundel (1585-1646), sponsored the painter Van Dyck, the philologist Franciscus Junius, and the physician William Harvey, among a number of other key figures in the diverse artistic and intellectual arenas of the day. Rather than tracking the individual accomplishments of Arundel’s illustrious clients, Recollecting the Arundel Circle explores their common ground in shaping a project reflected most clearly in the earl’s fantasy of planting a colony on the far-off island of Madagascar. Starting with Van Dyck’s «Madagascar» portrait of the Earl and the Countess of Arundel, this book explores the connection between Arundel’s authority as an antiquarian and his ambition to found a brave new world in the Indian Ocean. Directly and indirectly, the other members of Arundel’s circle are shown to collaborate in the broader cultural task of joining a proprietary claim to reviving the classical past with the authority to create new domains, both geographical and intellectual. About the Author The Author: Ernest B. Gilman is Professor of English at New York University. He received his Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from Columbia University. He is the author of two books in the field of literary and visual culture: The Curious Perspective: Literary and Pictorial Wit in the Seventeenth Century and Iconoclasm and Poetry in the English Reformation: Down Went Dagon.