Things which are not : ideas of nothing in Renaissance literary and philosophical discourse

Abstract

This thesis attempts, using both well-known and unfamiliar textual sources, to account for the literary theme of 'Nothing' during the Renaissance. Humanist, neo-Latin writings reveal that nihil was a topic of interest to poets from about 1550, and to philosophers throughout the seventeenth century. The study traces inter-connections between the numerous and diverse semantic implications of nihil and its vernacular equivalents in early-modern European texts. A wide range of metaphoric uses of the word 'nothing' in English Renaissance verse is also explored, with particular attention to Shakespeare's thematic use of 'nothing' in his plays.

Nihil was a subject of philosophical and theological debate in the late medieval period, and became associated with creation-myths, mysticism, millenarianism, and alchemy in the Renaissance. In intellectual discourses of the period, 'nothing' could name a metaphysical level of being, the spiritual realm, or the ideas of infinite and empty space.

Some medieval dialecticians had disputed whether nihil could logically be a name at all, so that the term had become a common focus of logical problems. These 'sophisms' in turn were to inspire Renaissance poets, who made semantic play on 'nothing' in numerous epigrams and a series of poems in praise of nothing, which have hitherto been considered as neo-classical in form.

The least familiar manifestation of the interest in nothing - a sequence of cross-disciplinary university debates on the topic - shows the development of the theme during the seventeenth century. Those texts are set in the broader context of mainstream scientific and philosophical changes.

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