Meet the Pollinators of the Kinney Center

When you first imagine an insect, what do you feel? Horror, fear, curiosity? But maybe when you look closer, you begin to see their beauty and even feel a sense of wonder at their elegant architecture. As a Pollinator Ecologist, I have found that one of the best ways to shift perspectives on insects is to awaken people's curiosity and give them an up-close experience. As a Renaissance of the Earth Fellow, I want to know how our attitudes and understandings of insects have changed over time and how they have stayed the same. 

Figure 1. Ava Liberty (NRC Forestry student ‘26) and Mariah Klank (GCC Summer Intern) catch pollinators with nets in the Kinney Center Meadow.

As I began my research, I’ve started with what is familiar to me: pollinator sampling. At 28 acres,  the meadow at the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies is one of the largest natural areas on the UMass Amherst Campus, providing an abundant habitat for pollinators and other insects. This August, I brought my lab from the UMass Department of Environmental Conservation to document the pollinating insects of the Kinney Center’s meadow.

Together with my amazing lab technicians Ava Liberty (Natural Resource Conservation, Forestry student ‘26), Mariah Klank (Greenfield Community College Summer Intern), and colleagues Mike Amato (PhD Student, Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning) and Nicole Bell (UMass Extension Educator - Pollinators) we spent a morning using insect nets to catch and release any pollinators we saw and macrophotography to document them (Figure 1). Macrophotographs are a great way to experience the diversity and tiny details of insects. The morning's sampling began slowly since it was cool and overcast, and many insects need the heat of the sun to warm up before they begin foraging for the day. But as the clouds began to burn off we waded into the tall goldenrod, finding flies that mimic bees, red wasps, and fuzzy, bright yellow bees. Ultimately, we documented 15 pollinator species in under 2 hours (Table 1). 

Table 1. Pollinator species observed at the Kinney Center Meadow 8/19/25. Species listed include not only bees and butterflies but also wasps and flies, which are important and often overlooked wild pollinators.

This kind of close attention that my team and I pay to pollinators is not new. In the early modern era, naturalists were also observing the intimate relationships between insects and plants, seeking to understand the mysteries of garden pests and beneficial pollinators. As the British naturalist Richard Bradley wrote in New improvements of planting and gardening, both philosophical and practical (1717), “The leaves of the plants have their insects natural to them; the bark and wood likewise have their respective devourers…”. Likewise, many of our native flowers have special relationships with bees. Some wild bees rely on only one plant or a group of closely related plants to provide pollen to feed their offspring. We call these kinds of bees pollen specialist bees. One of the beautiful wild pollinators we caught is a good example of this kind of specialist–the Hairy-Banded Mining Bee (Andrena hircticinta; Figure 2). 

Figure 2. A Hairy-Banded Mining Bee (Andrena hirticincta) rests on goldenrod (Solidago sp.). Bees in the mining bee genus (Andrena spp.) are distinguished in part by patches of flattened hairs that run along the insides of their eyes like eyebrows (known as facial fovea). 

Image Credit: Nicole Bell

The Hairy-banded Mining Bee is a pollen specialist bee whose larvae can only feed on the pollen of plants in the Asteraceae family, primarily goldenrod (Euthamia spp., Solidago spp.). While at first this bee might be mistaken for a European Honey Bee (Apis mellifera), when you look closely at the photo of the hairy-banded mining bee below you will see a patch of dense, bright yellow hairs running along the inner margin of her compound eyes. One of the defining features of mining bees (Andrena spp.) is that they have what I like to call eyebrows (properly known as facial fovea by entomologists). This fuzzy golden bee is a solitary bee species, meaning a single female bee digs a nest in the ground by herself. She will then fill the nest with pollen and nectar by herself and lay an egg on top of this food. 

Take a walk through the meadow this fall to see the Hairy-Banded Mining Bee and the many other species of pollinating insects that sustain us! Stay tuned to our blog to learn more about the fascinating pollinator species of the Kinney Center’s  Meadow. 

—Aliza Fassler, Renaissance of the Earth Fellow, Kinney Center & PhD Candidate, Environmental Conservation, UMass

References:

Richard Bradley, New improvements of planting and gardening, both philosophical and practical (1717). Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, Amherst, MA.

How Kētos became Whale: Oceanic Cosmologies in Sky and Sea

Figure 1: "Psalterium Georgii, Fluvius Eridanus, Cetus, Officina Sculptoris, Fornax Chemica, and Machina Electrica," plate 28 in Urania's Mirror, a set of celestial cards accompanied by A familiar treatise on astronomy by Jehoshaphat Aspin, London.

Today, we know exactly what a whale is and what it isn’t. However, in the early modern period, before taxonomy neatly categorized all beings into fixed categories, “kētos” and “cetus” were fluid words that didn’t just encompass many dangerous and enormous creatures living in the ocean, but also, arguably, named the power of the ocean itself. This power was not confined to the deep either, it was mirrored above into the night, where among the stars, the constellation Cetus—a hybrid sea monster, part fish, part terrestrial being—guided mariners through the southern hemisphere (see Figure 1).

In Ancient Greek, kētos, “sea monster,” could mean a whale, a giant fish, or any enormous marine creature. Romans translated kētos into cetus, a Latin term that maintains a similar ambiguity. When the Old Testament and Quran’s story of “Jonah and the great fish,” later called “Jonah and the whale,” was translated from Hebrew, the being doing the swallowing, דָּג גָּדוֹל (dag gadol), literally “great fish,” was translated as “cetus grandis,” great cetus. The question of who, exactly, swallowed Jonah is a contested one in biblical exegesis, with answers including everything from a fish-god like creature, to a toothed whale, or even a shark, who is supposedly able to swallow a human in their entirety (see Figures 2, 3, and 4).  

Figure 2 : Whale, men in a boat on its back. England c. 1236. The British Library.

Figure 3: “Jonah Bible Illustration.” Bible, Hainaut ca. 1280. Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale. ms. 185, fol. 130r.

Figure 4:  Jonah Mosaic. Early 4th century CE. Mosaic. Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, Aquileia, Italy.

The historical accounts of whales, the biblical tale of Jonah, Conrad Gesner’s Historiae Animalium (1551-1558), and Adam Lonicer’s Kreuterbuch (1551), show how porous the boundaries between whale and the ocean truly were. Indeed, whales were not simply creatures living in the ocean. They were seen as the creators of tremendous storms and were often framed as intentionally wrecking ships, causing massive disasters, and more generally voicing god’s disruptive rage. These early accounts highlight how much the understanding of the ocean was framed through stories of mariners who survived such storms.

From a scientific point of view based on today’s knowledge of whale’s behavior, mariners must have witnessed whales breaching out of the water in unusual quantities during storms—something whales need to do in order to breathe in high seas—and most likely, this behavior was read as evil and dangerous. Indeed, if whales would have slammed at full speed into a ship, they would have certainty taken down said ship. The vulnerability that humans felt during these stormy encounters with the ocean and the whales might have established further a cosmological association between the two based on danger and human’s insignificance when faced to such power.

Figure 5:  Conrad Gesner, “Animalium Mar. Ordo XII,” Historiae Animalium, National Library of Medicine (1551), 176.

This conflation of meanings persisted for hundreds of years, as clearly shown in the Historiae Animalium and the Kreuterbuch. Both published in the 1550s, these compendiums provide illustrations and categorizations of cetus and whales. In Historiae Animalium, Conrad Gesner gathers whales alongside sea monsters and sirens. In these early illustrations whales are frequently depicted as enormous fish/serpent faces with dangerous fangs, who rise to destroy ships and devour humans (see Figure 5).

This is also true in Frankfurt physician Adam Lonicer’s Kreuterbuch, a vast herbal and natural history compendium published in 1551. This text contains images of human and nonhuman animals, as well as flora and more, and in it, “Walffisch/Cetus,” are among sea dogs, sturgeons, picarels, and tunas (see Figure 6).  

Figure 6: Adam Lonicer’s categorization of fish in his natural history taxonomy book. Held in the collection of the collection at the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies.

However, in Lonicer’s description the whale is not just massive in size, it also has a series of uncommon characteristics that are all jumbled up from what must have been a long series of accounts of all different sorts of marine creatures (see Figure 7). Thus, in this period the category of whale/cetus was highly unstable and included baleen and toothed whales, monsters with human or board heads, mermaids, and sea serpents. Perhaps these were not only so muddled because of the lack of specific information, but also because the aim was not so much biological accuracy as much as it was representing the devastating and overwhelming power of the ocean: a power that expressed itself through massive storms, animals, and human annihilation.

Figure 7: Adam Lonicer’s depiction and classification of the “Walfisch” (Cetus) under the category of fish in the Kreuterbuch. Held in the collection at the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies.

Lonicer’s description of Walfisch/Cetus states:

The whale is large among other fish and has black teeth when young and white when old. When there is a storm at sea, they rise above the waters and sink ships through their movements and violence.Once the whale reaches the age of three years, it mates with the Balenes. During the mating act, it is injured, so that it can no longer reproduce. It then goes into the depth of the sea and grows so greatly that it can no longer be caught by any human. Therefore, it can be caught only before it reaches three years of age, as follows:

The fishermen observe the place where it is, gather there with many ships, and begin to sing and whistle thereby luring it in, for it delights in such things. When they see it standing still by the ships, frightened by the sound of thunder, they secretly throw a large iron with sharp teeth onto its back and then flee. As soon as it is wounded, the whale flees to the bottom of the sea and rubs its back against ground, causing the iron to work its way in until it passes through the fatty layer to the living flesh. The salted seawater then follows the iron into the wound and kills it. When it thus lies dead, floating on the sea, the fishermen draw it to land with ropes, with great joy.

When the whale plays in the sea, it is a sign of a storm. When the whale releases its natural fluid during mating, it floats on the water; from this a white fatty substance is collected, called sperma ceti by apothecaries, and is of high value. [bold added]

This is the longest description of all “fish” present in the book, one that carefully lays out hunting techniques mixed with behavioral patterns and danger warnings. Whereas other fishes are mostly passive in these descriptions, the whale, according to Lonicer, is a powerful entity that controls storms, sinks ships, and must be tricked and lured through singing to be hunted. In this sense, the whale has most of the characteristics of the ocean itself, including force, unpredictability, danger, bounty, all of which require collaboration and high skill levels among humans to navigate its capture. 

Whereas today “whale” means something very specific, in the sixteenth century “cetus” described something broader: a force of the ocean that could be expressed as fish, sea serpent, mermaid, whale, and more. As we can see in the Kreuterbuch and Historiae Animalium,“cetus” embodied a sense of awe, danger, and vulnerability—a force to be navigated and controlled, as much as it was to be feared and revered. This force was as present as above as below, where the shapeshifting sea monster in the sky directed sailors into the night, the same people who would sometimes face whales as the physical manifestation of ocean’s power. Thus, before modern taxonomy and more broadly before the scientific split of nature into fixed categories and species, “cetus” carried a plurality of meanings far beyond the modern word “whale.” This shift didn’t just reflect a heightened specificity; it also severed whales from their role as living embodiments of the ocean’s power. In stripping away their mystical force, we also stripped away a reminder of human vulnerability as well as a more just and respectful relationality towards our ocean kin.

—Marie Comuzzo, PhD Candidate, Brandeis University, Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellow 2025-2026, & Visiting Scholar, Kinney Center

References:
Adam Lonicer, Kreuterbuch (Franckfort am Meyn, 1564). Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, Amherst, MA.

Welcome to the Renaissance of the Earth Garden!

As part of their Renaissance of the Earth fellowships with the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, Hannah Gould and Melanie Morgan revitalized the kitchen garden in ways that brought their scientific expertise together with humanist interests in the Renaissance. 

Hannah (right) is a senior at UMass Amherst pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Plant and Soil Science and Bachelor of Arts in English, with an Environmental Humanities Specialization. Hannah is a Renaissance of the Earth Fellow at the Kinney Center and a Sustainability Fellow with Sustainable UMass.  

Melanie (left) is a senior at UMass Amherst pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture and Sustainable Food and Farming with a concentration in Business and a minor in Natural Resource Conservation. Melanie has been a Renaissance of the Earth Fellow for over two years at the Kinney Center where she has managed the garden. 

As students at UMass and as Renaissance of the Earth Fellows, we have drawn from our coursework in the Stockbridge School of Agriculture and our experience reading rare books in the Kinney Center’s library to meaningfully shape our stewardship of the kitchen garden. Our goals have been to: 

• Introduce better drainage for the Kitchen Garden to improve soil health. 

• Widen existing walkways and embed educational material for the community.

• Expand the variety of plants which provide visual, aromatic, and medicinal benefits to those that interact with the garden. 

• Create opportunities for scholars, students and the public to engage with the early modern past through our hands-on practices and educational material.  

• Cultivate organic, sustainable garden management practices that encourage beneficial pollinators.  

“The Heart and Strength of Soil” 

While working in the garden during the summer, we noticed that certain low points contained pooling water during rain storms. Thanks to the core teachings in STOCKSCH 105 Soils, we know that pooling water could be harmful to the plants, risking damage to the fruit and integrity of the soil structure. Similarly, in Walter Blith’s The English Improver Improved (1653), he refers to standing water as a cause of barrenness of land for early modern agriculturalists, specifically Blith claims that it gnaws at “the heart and strength” of the soil (E2v). When we noticed this pattern in the garden, we set out to improve the drainage by building up the beds and wood chips to level out the ground. We planned for new wood chip pathways and  reshaped the existing beds to avoid low-lying areas by adding more soil.  

“Always Weeding!” 

Cardboard and flags on new beds. Spring 2024.

As any gardener can tell you and as William Lawson laments to his readers in  A New Orchard and Garden (1648): “weeds are always growing” (B1v)! Before we could begin adding new soil and wood chips, we collected cardboard from across campus to help kill some of the weeds and invasives overtaking the garden. Our classes in STOCKSCH 186 Intro to Permaculture & STOCKSCH 119 Designing a Backyard Homestead, as well as our past employment experiences, have shown that cardboard is an efficient, sustainable tool in gardens to suppress weeds without synthetic chemicals. Since cardboard is biodegradable in nature, the paths and beds will need to be replenished overtime to help manage the weeds. We weighted the cardboard down and marked the garden’s layout with flags to begin restructuring the beds.  

“A Garden’s Use” 

The garden is split into two different sections to replicate an early modern kitchen garden. The left side of the garden focuses on medicinal, perennial plants that may be used for various home articles, including: tinctures, poultices, botanical dyes, etc. The right side, inspired by the design examples in William Lawson’s Country House-wives Garden (1648), focuses on annuals and herbs that are rotated each year. The annuals consist of a variety of vegetables to be harvested for community members, as well as complimentary herbs for cooking, teas, and dyes available to local herbalists. 

“Less Work, More Production” 

A major aspect of this project has been perpetuity and guaranteeing that the garden is sustainable and may be enjoyed for many years to come. To practice sustainability, one element of this design features plants that are primarily perennials. This allows future stewards of the garden to worry less about routine maintenance, as many of the plants will flourish on their own with little assistance. In addition, we have thoughtfully limited the amount of open soil for weeds and unruly invasives to dominate. William Lawson says in New Orchard and Garden, that gardening should not be a tedious and endless labor for any gardener, specifically when dealing with herbs (G8r). Our hope with this project is to reduce labor as much as possible, while still providing something beautiful and productive for the humans and animals which occupy the land.

“Many Hands Make Light Work” 

Volunteers using wheelbarrows to shape beds. Spring 2024. Check out their class project on the kitchen garden here.

With the help of volunteers from Lena Fletcher’s NRC185:  Sustainable Leadership courses in Spring 2024 & Spring 2025, we worked together to haul soil and wood chips into the garden and shape the pathways and beds. The volunteers recognized the impact a community can have on the garden while cultivating motivation to continue this work in the future. The time-consuming task of moving soil and wood chips was made easy by many-hands and the help of these volunteers. They also learned about one of our more pesky plants, stinging nettle, that, despite its being nutrient dense and a powerful medicinal herb, it also can irritate the skin and cause a rash. However, our volunteers also learned to identify jewelweed, which can help soothe the stinging that nettles cause. We were happy to learn that this team enjoyed our time working together in the garden and they had fun learning more about what the Kinney Center has to offer. Through our collective hard work, we are building a community for the garden that encourages students to get involved and engage with the land and soil.

Volunteers use wheelbarrows and rakes to shape beds. Spring 2025

“Transplanting”

With the herb and annual portion of the garden done in Spring 2024, we waited until Fall 2024 to tackle our goals for the perennials. By waiting until the Fall, we were able to see the existing plants fully grown, and clean up without damaging the plants. Using shovels and a weedwacker, we cut back overgrown plants and transplanted them to fit the beds. Transplanting allowed us to move the thriving, mature plants into a location that provided more space within the pathway without getting rid of the plant. STOCKSCH 200 Plant Propagation and work experience has provided us with the knowledge to properly transplant established perennials to reduce plant waste and prevent damage to thriving root systems. Fall provided the perfect opportunity to adjust the garden before the first hard frost. Afterwards, we hauled some wood chips and soil to shape the beds and pathways. 

“The Music and Poetry of a Garden” 

We also fixed the gate and created plant ID markers. The markers feature the plant’s common name, along with either quotes from early modern texts, poems, recipes or passages from modern song lyrics and poems. Each marker invites visitors to consider our real and imagined relationships to plants in the early modern period and our own. The plant ID markers fulfills one of our primary goals to embed educational material for the community within the garden. Once new plantings are added, we will generate additional  markers to bring these plants into the conversation. 

With the garden layout complete, we were ecstatic for the garden to have a fresh start for 2025!  

“Garden as Medicine” 

As we moved plants and reimagined this space as a teaching garden, we aimed to expand the variety of plants which provide aesthetic, aromatic, and medicinal benefits to those that interact with the garden. We made these additions so that future visitors and stewards could have the opportunity to work in the garden with rotating annual vegetables and still have the opportunity to learn about thriving old world medicinal plants.To determine our new plantings, we selected herbs and medicinal perennials found in John Gerard’s Herbal (1633). We placed these new plants among the more well-established ones throughout the garden: 

Pink = Annuals/vegetables  

Green = Perennials 

Blue = Bird bath

“Welcome Pollinators!”

At the Kinney Center, we are committed to preserving sustainable management practices. Many of the new plants we added will attract beneficial insects and pollinators, reduce soil compaction, and eliminate chemicals. As members of the UMass Amherst community, we have an obligation to advocate for and model sustainable ecosystems. By applying what we’ve learned through 21st century coursework to a model of an early modern kitchen garden, we achieve our goal of inspiring visitors and students to engage with this sustainable process and follow in our footsteps. 

“An Invitation to Join the Passion Project” 

For years, the Kitchen Garden has been a source of inspiration for us, as well as for our guests and scholars who visit the Kinney Center. As Renaissance of the Earth fellows, we hope that our journey with the garden provides a legacy for other students to engage with the Kinney Center and everything it has to offer. Serving as stewards of this garden has been a passion project for both of us as we navigate our future careers and relish in our final moments at UMass Amherst. 

Hannah & Melanie at the end of the 2024 season.   

Hannah and Melanie would like to extend their deepest gratitude to the following individuals for their time and effort in making the kitchen garden redesign come to life. 

Cameron Dennison, 2024 Graduate  

Danica Shores, 2024 Graduate 

Jeffrey Goodhind, Kinney Center Librarian 

Liz Fox, Arts and Academic Coordinator at the Kinney Center 

Marjorie Rubright, Director of the Kinney Center & Associate Professor of English 

Pamela Monn, UMass Amherst Custodial & Grounds Services

Rene Jatoi, 2024 Graduate 

Sarah Jones, Natural Resource Conservation Sophomore

Ash Tree: Pasts & Futures

Ash trees are easy to spot by their unique diamond-patterned bark. Their wood is incredibly versatile due to its flexibility, making it an excellent resource for a variety of projects. In the twentieth-century, ash wood was popular in the manufacturing of baseball bats but now we use it for carpentry projects in our homes. The ash tree is a vital part of the ecosystem where it grows. For example, in the forest, the ash tree serves as a habitat as well as a food source for lots of wildlife. In the wetlands, fish feed off of ash leaves, while in the woods, white-tailed deer and rabbits feed off the bark of young ash trees. Up in the canopy, birds eat ash seeds and nest in the safety of its branches. The ash tree is vital our ecosystem because wildlife and humans rely on its resources. 

Both Indigenous and Native to Massachusetts, the ash tree has been used as a medicine and resource for hundreds of years. Indigenous communities like the Abnaki, Cherokee, and Chippewa all have unique relationships with ash trees. The bark and leaves of the tree were used by the Abnaki as a menstrual aid to induce a period and stimulate flow. Members of the Cherokee used the tree as a tonic for an upset stomach or liver. The Chippewa and Abnaki used flexible ash wood for craftsmanship such as fishing rods as well as snowshoe frames (Native American ethnobotany database).

The Kinney Center’s rare book library offers a window onto the long histories of human relationships with ash trees. John Gerard’s Generall Historie of Plantes (1633) emphasizes the medicinal uses of the ash tree. Taken with wine, the leaves on an ash tree eased pain in the spleen and liver and comforted an upset stomach. Due to its filling properties, ash tree leaves were commonly used as a remedy for weight loss. John Evelyn, also provides practical and medicinal uses for the tree in his book Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber (1679). He writes that an oil secreted by the ash tree was a cure for hearing impairment as well as pain in the kidneys and spleens. It could also ease toothaches. Although it was not preferred over white oak, ash tree wood was also commonly used to build houses and furniture.

As ash trees have helped humans across centuries, we must now help the ash trees. The biggest threat to the ash tree is an insect no larger than a penny, but don't be deceived by its size, the emerald ash borer (EAB) has decimated ash trees throughout the world, especially in the US. Introduced to the US in 2002, likely through wood packaging containers from Asia, the EAB destroys the tissue of the tree by tunneling underneath the bark, making snake-like pathways through the tissues called “serpentine galleries”. Since this deformity is below the surface and not readily visible, it can be difficult to spot before it's too late. Luckily, there are other stressors we can identify to assess if an ash tree is suffering. Canopy thinning, early yellowing leaves, and woodpecker activity may indicate that the EAB is present in the tree. The strongest visible evidence of an EAB is the ‘D’ shaped exit holes that the beetle makes when leaving the trees.

Unfortunately, the emerald ash borer has inhabited most ash trees in the US but protective measures are underway to protect ash trees. In Massachusetts, for example, ash tree lumber transportation is closely monitored by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to minimize the spread of larvae. The Massachusetts Department of Conservation has implemented a trapping program to monitor new ash borer populations and better understand the beetle. Monitoring individual ash trees in your area helps foresters identify the beetle and early action helps aid prevention. If you are worried about a tree, contact a certified arborist or tree care expert to assess the best course of action.

Understanding our past relationship with ash trees helps further our knowledge about stewardship of the land in the future. If we lose the ash trees, we will lose another aspect of what makes our ecosystem diverse. Without biodiversity, any species is more susceptible to disease and could result in our forests becoming weaker with every generation. Although it is inevitable for tree species to face danger, humans have the power and knowledge to protect them. Knowing the challenges that ash trees face now, we must take time to protect them so we can keep these ecosystems alive.

Melanie Morgan, RoE Fellow

References:

Akabelowsky, A. (2024b, September 16). Emerald Ash Borer Confirmed In All 72 Counties. Wisconsin DNR Forestry News.

Emerald Ash Borer: Arbor day foundation. Emerald Ash Borer | Arbor Day Foundation.

Emerald Ash Borer. City of O’Fallon, Missouri.

Emerald Ash Borer in Massachusetts. Mass.gov.

Emerald Ash Borer - profile. Invasive Species Centre. (2024, August 26).

Evelyn, J. (1679). Sylva. John Martyn.

Gerard, J. (1633). Herball. Spring Books.

Native american ethnobotany database. BRIT.

10 recommendations - to help you manage ash in your ...

Optics, Cosmography, and Justice in Ralegh’s The History of the World

I first encountered Sir Walter Ralegh’s The History of the World (1614) as a Visiting Scholar at the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies in 2021-2022. At the time, I was in the process of researching and writing a manuscript/documentary film for a Cambridge University Press Element entitled Teaching Shakespeare’s Theatre of the World (under review). Ralegh’s title page illustration vivified how I was imagining the theatrum mundi, but it also raised questions about what constitutes truth and justice.

The theatre of the world metaphor has circulated for millennia as a figure that invites cosmographical contemplation. For example, at the turn of the Common Era, Plutarch claims “life is a festival,” a temporary foray on earth before humanity faces final judgment at the hands of the Gods. The options for eternity are stark: one either goes ‘up’ to Elysium, or ‘down’ to Hades. Christian theologians later typologized the metaphor. John of Salisbury’s twelfth-century satire Policraticus: Frivolities of Courtiers and Footprints of Philosophers reflects the shift to monotheism and the absolute authority of the Christian God as he reminds mundane monarchs and leaders that they are not exempt from final judgment (Ed. Pike, 1938). But by the time Shakespeare’s Jacques says “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” the cosmological and theological certainties had become catastrophically fractured (Folger, AYLI 2.7).

The 1572 supernova in Cassiopeia marks a key moment of epistemological disruption. When this new star appeared in November 1572 and shone brightly day and night for weeks, it shook the foundations of mathematics and natural philosophy. What NASA now calls ‘Cass A’ (Chandra; Webb) gave rise to advances in measuring parallax that dissolved Aristotle’s solid spheres and confirmed heliocentrism and infinity. At the same time, Alhazen’s De Aspectibus, or Perspectiva, was republished. Alhazen’s (or Ibn al Haytham) theory of optics fed into questions surrounding epistemology writ large. Broadly speaking, Alhazen proposed a double-scope model of vision that synthesized Aristotelian intromission, a theory by which light passes through an external object and into the eye stimulating vision, and extromission, a theory that posited vision generated by the viewer who emits beams of light (see Anne-Valérie Dulac, “Shakespeare’s Alhazen” in Chiari & Popelard, 2017). This double-scope model, like parallax, requires the measurement of multiple viewpoints to arrive at an understanding of a third term or perceived object. One finds Shakespeare exploring the challenges these ideas raise for the theatre of the world and its associations with divine and mundane justice systems – so too, Ralegh.

As I return to Ralegh’s incorporation of the History of the World into the stage play of life, I’m struck by how it grapples with challenges posed by optics and perspective in relation to sociocultural (including theological) and political constructions of “justice.” Ralegh’s The History of the World was not printed until 1614, well after Elizabeth’s death in 1603 and James I’s accession. Already one may see how the title page disrupts strictly vertical judicial hierarchies even as it conveys Ralegh’s masterfully duplicitous rhetoric. Early iterations of the theatrum mundi allocated the adjudication of justice to the singular “Apollonian Eye” of divinity; each individual gets one trial, and there are no appeals.

Title page of Ralegh’s The History of the World (1614) in the collection at the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies.

Although Ralegh’s title page prominently features what appears to be such a singular eye, Providentia emerges from beams of light generated by the horn of Fama Bona and wafting smoke from that of Fama Mala. These figures mediate information generated from a relatively small rendering of a planetary globe, held for their inspection by Magistra Vitae, or History. History is proportionately larger than the globe she supports, a robust, Amazonian-like figure with the power to crush Death and Oblivion blow.

Like divine Providence, History emerges from double-scope inputs that challenge vertical hierarchies of justice and reflect the challenges that optics pose to epistemology. Flanked by a wizened rendering of Experience and a youthful depiction of Truth sharing her light, Magistra vitae absorbs their beamy contributions before projecting her own light to the world above.

On one level of interpretation, History might be read as a record of God’s providence, and as a caution to readers – including King James who was holding Ralegh prisoner at the time of composition. But History is not objective or unmediated. She is informed by both Experientia (Experience) and Veritas (Truth). The optics here are weird on several levels of interpretation, not least the fact that all three allegorical figures are bare-breasted women. Experience sounds the depths and reports to Magistra Vitae whilst Truth sends light from her palm. Truth is proportionately small, about equal to Experience, but far slighter than History, or the figures of Fame that ultimately report to Providence.

From Ralegh’s perspective outlined here, Fame – Rumor – Reputation: these are humanity’s ultimate rewards. But that’s not what’s shocking. What’s shocking is the fact that Ralegh’s engraver has captured the challenge perspective itself poses to law, equity, and mercy – the elements of justice. Is Ralegh cynical about the role of Truth in a judicial equation? Perhaps so. I think we all are. But as a master rhetor himself, one who repeatedly attempts to rewrite his own story in the world, he reminds his audience that Truth is not absolute. She is part of a complex system. She has the power to illuminate History, but once out into the world, her light is subject to perception. Ralegh’s The History of the World raises a question that is urgent now: Will her light survive the tests put forth by world and time?

—Kristen Abbott Bennett, Associate Professor, Framingham State University & Visiting Scholar, Kinney Center

Sources
Raleigh, Walter. The Historie of the World : In Fiue Bookes. Edited by Renold Elstracke, et al., London, 1621.