Academic

I love the internet! ... For Its Electronic Library

By Alfred Brophy

I'm sitting here working on my paper on Quaker ideas about justice for the Pastorius conference (and cursing why I agreed to this -- but I know it'll be fun once I get the paper finsihed).  I just found that I needed to look at one of George Fox's obscure tracts, An Instruction to Judges.  Back when I was working full-time on Pastorius years and years ago I had to first ask a librarian for help in even locating the Wing Short Title number for this (it was microfilmed after the Wing Short Title catalog was put together, so it wasn't easily locatable in the published bibliography, as I recall.)  Then I had to drive down from Oklahoma City to Norman to look at in in the OU library (beautiful building, btw, an an all-around fantastic place to do research).  It was the better part of a day.  ... Took all of about five minutes (maybe less) to get it from the on-line version of the Early English Books on-line this evening.  And now I have that scarce document in my hands.  As I've said before, now that records are more easily accessible, it puts a real premium on interpretation.

The image is of Edward Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom, which is of William Penn making a treaty with the natives in the background and the lion laying down with the lamb (and Jesus) in the foreground. It's from 110 years after Pastorius' death, but the sentiment is stable in Quaker thought, even if somewhat romanticized in Hicks' depiction.  (And as Gary Nash taught us a long time ago, the relations on the ground may not have been so harmonious in reality as they were in the minds and dreams of the founders of Pennsylvania.  But this paper is about the dreams, rather than the reality.  I have a big interest in dreams of justice -- in the seventeenth as well as twentieth centuries, even when the harsh realities didn't match up with the dreamland.)

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on August 01, 2009 (boomark / email).