ABSTRACT

As previous scholarship has observed, Margaret Cavendish’s ambitious intellectual project—spanning subjects as dissimilar as fairies and fevers—is driven by fancy, an inherently speculative mode of thought, and her correlation of fancy to women’s work is a stratagem that licenses her writing. Beginning with the evocative image of Cavendish as the host(ess) of “an Imaginary Feast,” however, this essay argues that the pervasive alimentary conceit is not merely functional but that it illuminates the essential materiality of fancy as an object that is produced, consumed, and incorporated via the matter and motions of the mind and body. Cavendish intimates a poetics that is shaped by Galenic dietetics and the holistic view of health that she expounds in her treatises on natural philosophy. Drawing on the symbolism and currency of recipe form and customs of hospitality, Cavendish demonstrates, especially in Poems and Fancies and with regards to poetry, that fancy’s effects are substantial and potentially salubrious.

摘要

正如之前的学术研究所观察到的，玛格丽特·卡文迪什雄心勃勃的智力计划——跨越与仙女和发烧不同的主题——是由幻想驱动的，一种天生的投机思维模式，她将幻想与女性工作联系起来是一种策略，使她的写作获得许可。然而，从卡文迪什作为“一场想象中的盛宴”的主人这一令人回味的形象开始，这篇文章认为，普遍存在的食物自负不仅是功能性的，而且它阐明了幻想作为一个被生产的对象的本质物质性，通过身心的物质和运动来消耗和吸收。卡文迪什暗示了一种诗学，这种诗学是由盖伦营养学和她在自然哲学论文中阐述的整体健康观塑造的。诗歌和幻想，关于诗歌，幻想的影响是巨大的，而且可能是有益的。