InRI by Henry Gould

I am pasting here a short dissertation I did for my course in Literary Criticism, Professor Bill Lavender, Universtity of New Orleans, UNO, specifically on In RI by Henry Gould.

Dichotomies:

witch-hunt and clear thinking, institutionalized insanity and intellectual work, history and historical poetry through the reading of In RI by Henry Gould, or an attempt at finding the sliding deferance as set by Derrida.

In RI by Henry Gould is a long historical poem. In a full poststructural, deconstructive and postmodern context, Gould rebuilds history, the two charters of rights for Rhode Island, free thought, and should we dare to mention it? Hope: see Hope Street, Providence; Malchizedek, king of Salem, Shanti Shanti Shalom, Salaam Salem. In the same way Robert Creeley perceives it in For Love: “[…] My method is not a / tenderness, but hope / defined”. Simon DeDeo notes that by Gould there is a “sense of vertigo” which in the present context is achieved by transposition, a fading through dreams, centuries, time. The past floats up to the present while the present strays into the past at times accompanied by the whippoorwill, other times by the clap of the mill as a background echo. Henry Gould says:

[…] Providence

like an old wasp’s nest, afloat

between stars, black

holes - and potholes (the DOT theory

of entropy: potholes emerge spontaneously

from black holes –

only known entity so capable.(Gould 10.26.94)

There is a subtle merging of time and space levels, of personal and historical dimensions, the clear observation of facts broadened into their unquestionable dichotomy: random inclement happening as much and an ostensive dimension with the “construction of meaning rather than the fictive assertion that existence is meaningless.”[1]

The book is divided into two parts which are subdivided into sections, specularly five in Part One and five in Part Two. The pages are not numbered and reference will be given to the dates by which the Author marks his writing. The first entry is dated 10.21.94, the last: 6.2.95. Several dual mirroring worlds are to be found within the poem and at distinct layers, from the observation of reality in the present to the observation of reality in the seventeenth century starting at the time of Salem, the sadly depicted one by Arthur Miller in The Crucible.

The escamotage that starts the Author’s interested search among documents is given by his finding one of his probable ancestors on ancient contracts: Thomas Gould, the son of Jeremy, who rented “space on his island for the hay” to Roger Williams (9.29.94). The pleasant discovery is countered by the deposition of John Gould in favor of Mary Redington, his wife, against Sarah Wilds in 1690. Salem Village on the borderline between Topsfield and Salem proper, is seen as the result of the manipulating intrigues of the two main families: the Putnams, west-end farmers, and the Porters, merchants closer to the town. The same Thomas Putnam accused Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty, and Sarah Wilds of bewitching his daughter Ann who showed “fits” and “spectral evidence,” all three women were hanged. Executed were also Sarah Good, Elizabeth How, and Susannah Martin.

The inexplicit incipit of the possible outline of a legalized belief like witchcraft was established by the sadly famous Council of Trent convened three times between December 13, 1545 and December 4, 1563. Through a series of canons - that started with “If any one saith, …” and ended with “let him be anathema” - the Church, in a powerful iron fist, brought into existence the idea of hereticism (The canons and decrees of the sacred and oecumenical Council of Trent). Such dogmatic assertion eliminated any free interpretation of the word of God and forced and forged man’s spiritual needs within the confines of the interpretation of the Bible in order to suit the predicaments of the Christian Catholic Church. Not only Protestantism was condemned but what seems most important is the observation that on 255 members, two-thirds of the 168 bishops were Italians, as much as the knowledge that Italian and Spanish prelates were highly preponderant (Wikipedia). Almost as if after the indisputably high-ranking excellence offered in the arts thanks to Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Giorgione, Titian, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio, Lippi, Vasari, …, after High Renaissance, Italy had to hit, bite back, take away from man and from the world as much as it had given.

Betty Parris was nine years old, her friend, Abigail Williams, eleven, and not seventeen as Arthur Miller introduced her in The Crucible to make his play more immediately credible to a theater audience. Tensions, due to political instability and frustration, danced wildly and freely with the lives of women first, and in general with the lives of men, a freedom fiction could not contemplate.

Section two of Part One ends with Halloween and Henry Gould’s wish to go to Topsfield to look for the graves of the good, through the “yellow leaves […] like small bronze masks, falling away, leaving the bare limbs. (10.31.94)”

At the beginning of section three there is a flashback into a further past. We are in 1637 and Henry Gould is rebuilding history through ancient papers, specifically “Jeremy Gould of Rode Island and Willm Jeffreys of Weymouth in New England gent to be bound to Henry Waltham in 301.” An orchard in England was to be Jeremy’s burial site, while his son Daniel, married to Mary Coggeshall, having become a Quaker, was not welcome in Massachusetts, and his uncle Zaccheus protested by turning his back to the pulpit. From Massachusetts and under the lead of Anne Hutchinson, labeled as antinomian, a group of religious “sectaries” moved to Rhode Island.

Mrs. H.: I desire to know wherefore I am banished?

Gov.: Say no more. The court knows wherefore and is satisfied. (The Examination of Mrs Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newton: 1637.)

For years the idea of a long poem

and the writing of short poems

cancelled each other

out, until I understood that prose

and fiction are a blessing in disguise,

allowing the epic

to become at last what it always dreamed

of becoming: a minor genre. And

one of the effects

of chaos is a kind of nonlinear

causation; catastrophes, enormous events, huge

turbulence result

from insignificant and marginal beginnings,

small states, imponderable, uncertain (something

like Rhode Island). (Gould 11.3.94)

"As I understand it, laws, commands, rules, and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway;" abandoned by John Cotton, under the new governorship of John Winthrop, having thus lost her old protective wing in Henry Vane, Anne Hutchinson couldn’t but flee having “challenged the strict orthodoxy of the Puritans and their male hegemony. (Rau)”

[…] 56 years after Kristallnacht.

365 years ago, Jeremy Gould

decided to remove

with Hutchinson, Coddington, Coggeshall

and the other Sectaries, to Portsmouth Rhode Island,

where Mr. Williams

and the Narragansetts would welcome them. (Gould 11.9.94)

“It had a face, but no head, and the ears stood upon the shoulders and were like an ape’s; it had no forehead, but over the eyes four horns, hard, and sharp… it had two mouths, and in each of them a piece of red flesh sticking out; it had arms and legs as other children; but, instead of toes, it had on each foot three claws, like a young fowl, with sharp talons. – John Winthrop” (Gould 11.10.94)

Winthrop is describing Mary Dyer’s stillborn daughter; Mary was hung on June 1, 1660, for having

:

[…] rejected oaths of any kind, taught

that sex was no determinant for gifts of

prophecy, contended

that women and men stood on equal ground

in church worship… imprisoned twice… refused…

recant or depart (Gould 11.10.94)

What kind of folly gripped the imagery of educated men to turn them into self-contented butchers, was it maybe something in the air? Foucault writes: “It is common knowledge that the seventeenth century created enormous houses of confinement; it is less commonly known that more than one out of every hundred inhabitants of the city of Paris found themselves confined there, within several months” (38). Maybe not in the air, it was merely the logical outcome of a societal system that allowed for previously unthinkable cracks, as soon as these void tracks started shaping themselves a set of regulations aiming at exploiting divergences was made legal. The fallacy of the human brain unable to foresee missteps coupled with the arrogance of not wanting to go back to redraw, gave the possibility to the cunningness of the few to win the pot not only at the detriment of others but by taking their lives away. “The phenomenon,” continues Foucault, “has European dimensions. The constitution of an absolute monarchy and the intense Catholic renaissance during the Counter-Reformation produced in France a very particular character of simultaneous competition and complicity between the government and the Church.” He therefore adds, to dissipate any doubts one might still have in seeing such fury as an outside immanence: “Elsewhere it assumed quite different forms; but its localization in time was just as precise.[…] In German-speaking countries, it was marked by the creation of houses of correction the Zuchthäusern; the first antedates the French houses of confinement (except for La Charité de Lyons); it opened in Hamburg around 1620. […] In England the origins of confinement are more remote. An act of 1575 covering both ‘the punishment of vagabonds and the ‘relief of the poor’ prescribed the construction of houses of correction, to number at least one per country. […] By the end of the eighteenth century, there were 126 of them.” Drawing back to the situation in France, Foucault underlines that the Hôpital Général “does not have the appearance of a mere refuge for those whom age, infirmity, or sickness keep from working; it will have not only the aspect of a forced labor camp, but also that of a moral institution responsible for punishing, for correcting a certain moral ‘abeyance’ which does not merit the tribunal of men, but cannot be corrected by the severity of penance alone. […] and to accomplish this task ‘stakes, irons, prisons, and dungeons’ are put at their disposal” (43-59).

Almost as if the leading and winning idea of the prototype of the white male was the “thing-in-itself,” term borrowed by Nietzsche from Kant in reference to language as “truth without consequences” (877). There being no truth, as extensively shown by Nietzsche, how does the rusted structure, the catacomb, the “columbarium” (Nietzsche 877) survive? Thanks to a sliding differance (Derrida), in its negative connotation, that re-proposes different but similar values, the “transcendental signified” with slightly distinct connotations that keep the same notion alive. Presence is made possible by “the very thing that it makes impossible,” differance, its quasi-transcendental quality. In this Derrida imagines that what he says “is perhaps what Nietzsche wanted to write,” i.e. “that differance in its active movement is what is comprehended in the concept of differance without exhausting it – is what not only precedes metaphysics but also extends beyond the thought of being” (142).

The Magdalene Sisters by the Scottish director Peter Mullan, could be quoted within the context. Unwanted, problematic, free-thinking, dumb, lazy, creative, intelligent, any kind of girls of any social status were incarcerated in asylums, institutions run by nuns doubled as laundries, primarily in Ireland, where “a perfect collusion of family, church and state [found the solution to a possible flaw in a rigid system mainly based on exploitation]. The laundries were founded in the mid-19th century; the last was closed only in 1996. It is said that 30,000 women passed through their doors” (Gordon). Bad girls, good girls, women, poor, gipsy, Jews, black people, victims of colonialism, of reconstruction, voices from the past, they all scream out silently for attention. Sometimes they have names, sometimes they do not, they are numbers, faceless, they built towns, cities, railroads, they gave and gave in the humility of slavery, of serfdom, treated like rogues, deprived of their human dimension. The power of life and death is conferred to evil, protected by the two ever-present institutions: State and Church and their innumerable branches.

London, Rhode Island, religion, witchcraft, it all digs down to rights.

[…]

In 1637 there was a four-way struggle

for land and power in Connecticut.

English and Dutch

were rivals, as were Pequots

and Narragansetts;

moreover,

English were divided among themselves,

[…] (Gould 10.11.94)

[…] In May, 1642, Roger Williams

sailed for England, for the charter. In September

Anne Hutchinson was dead.

All, save 10-yr-old Susannah, tomahawked.

“After four years of captivity she was freed,

though she expressed reluctance

to return to white civilization.” (Gould 11.11.94)

Tatobem, Pequot River, Uncas, Sassacus, Boston magistrates, Saybrook, John Oldham, Block Island, Williams again, Canonicus, General Court, murderers, John Endicott, Connecticut, 300 and 700 Pequots (most of the noncombatants) died, Mystic fort, Mason, Narragansetts – English – Pequot-Mohegans, Williams again, the Isle of Aquiday,

Warning and promise

spoken with authority

to set hearts on fire,

burning

for century after century

in and out of the huge

stone campstoves

of the Church. And in the fire

danced the translators,

and out of the multitude

of tongues and books and implements

and machines came Gutenberg,

and out of the iron

tattoo of the scorching word came Bibles,

and out of the Bibles came burning

preachers,

and out of the preachers came

Protestants – and out of Protestants

came disputations

and exile, and migrations, and holy

settlements, and binding covenants, and

New England.

And out of words, and fire, and Latin, and scribes,

and tongues, and translators, and books,

and Bibles,

and preachers, and Protestants, and exile,

and covenants, and settlements, and New England,

came Roger the troublemaker.

[…]

And set himself

to start a colony, a city-state,

Rhode-Island, Providence-

where he could seek

with other seekers, toward

his heart’s desire. (Gould 12.15.94)

Part Two starts with the image of “Providence hidden in the fog.” A fog that hides facts away, tunes them down, with the FBI arresting Malcolm X’s daughter, El Niño blowing porch doors down.

1635

Oct 8. general Court of Massachusetts pronounces banishment.

[…] the said Mr. Williams shall departe out of this jurisdiccon…

[…] (the King had no right to grant lands belonging to another

sovereign people – the Natives).

[…] The Puritans never forgave him for leaving their church.

In 1639 (long after quitting Massachusetts) he was formally

excommunicated.

The second dated entry of the second Part of In RI: 2.2.95, runs for fourteen pages and centers on Roger Williams. A highly charismatic and emblematic figure who sharply distinguishes himself among those dissidents that left England to find a new home in the ‘promised’ land. A forced immigrant not only because of his interpretation of religion but mainly because of a new spiritual dimension within man based on highly religious concepts, see the equality of men, the importance of every individual beyond race, status or education at the eyes of God. “One can imagine him grappling with doctrine in a Salem pulpit, writing by lamplight in London, arguing with Cotton, conversing with John Milton; one can envision him trading in furs, woolens, and pewter at Cocumscussoc, or sharing a meal, a fire, and a Bible lesson with a Narragansett chieftain at the edge of the forest, but it is hard to combine these into a single image of an urbane cleric who is also a missionary frontiersman” (Read 98).

Roger Williams landed with his wife Mary in February 1631, in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As a brilliant student he had achieved excellence in his studies in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, he also mastered French and Dutch; characterized as he was by a refined sensitivity he was thrown out of England to face a wild world. Williams made two trips back to his mother-country, one in June or July for the Charter, and he successfully came back with the rights for the Providence Plantations in Narragansett Bay that included Providence, Newport and Portsmouth:

[…] March 14^th

victory: the charter is granted, signed

by Henry V,

Lord Wharton, Miles Corbet, Cornelius Holland,

Lord Saye and Sele, Sir Arthur Haselrig,

Lord Pembroke,

and the Earl of Warwick. The Narragansett bay

settlements are granted full power to rule themselves

by whatever Civil government (Gould 2.4.95)

In 1651, the Charter had to be accepted again, and Williams went back to London to have it finally confirmed as the Royal Charter by Charles II in July 1663, it was John Clarke who took it back home since Williams returned some three years after his departure. On that occasion he wrote to his wife while abroad. "My dearest love and companion in this vale of tears […].” (Behling). He finally became the Governor of the Colony from 1654 to 1658. Williams’ troubles had to continue with the destruction of Providence in 1676 during King Philip’s War against the Indians. He would rebuild his town before his death in 1683 (Roger Williams Family Association).

Roger Williams, through Henry Gould’s interpretation, stands out in his powerful work as a highly conscious mediator who seeks support for his beliefs and tries to accommodate his immediate as much as his greater family within a democratically ruled system. The theological aspect of the Author of A Key into the Language of America is depicted from the side of the one who looks for the Light within the parameters of a purly speculative search dictated by education and spiritual refinement. As David Read states, “what marks Williams as unusual is […] the lack of closure [that] comes across as systematic in an intellectual sense” (96). Gould’s choice of documents to be reproduced among the lines of his poetry will witness first Cotton’s betrayal, then Winthrop’s washed up outside façade and inside corruption, the importance of land for farmers whose lives depended on agriculture through the many contracts, as Williams’ inexhaustible attempts to bring peace and a certain basic wisdom into human affairs by showing both Miantonomi’s and Canonicus’ faithfulness and innocence, their civic and ethical behavior.

I must beg leave?

& parley

for the paltry

right to live

& breathe?

Until He cometh

to tear down Kings

& Powers.

& Gorton in the stocks

all winter, &

Hutchinson gone,

& young Miantonomi,

joy of his father,

cut down

under Boston eyes – (Gould 2.3.95)

The reader is seized by a certain immanence while approaching the closing lines of Section Two of Part Two, thanks to Gould’s extended quotations taken from Williams’ studies of the Old Testament. Section Three opens with an overview of London as it was in the early 1600s with Milton watching from his candle lit window the actors of the Apollo Club stagger home, Shakespeare and Ben well identifiable. Gould zooms onto Milton with his work for Cromwell, his personal problems; the poet mentions that maybe Williams consulted Milton for his Key, fact is that Williams’ book was published by Gregory Dexter, also Milton’s publisher. Cotton reaches him in England through A Letter of Mr. John Cotton to Mr. Williams in which he shows why Williams was banished. But the Key is powerful and it conquers the town:

[…] London lips

mouth the Narragansett sounds

transcribed,

littered, pressed across alien streets,

a curious writing. TAHENAU’ATU

What price? (Gould 2.4.95)

David Read defines A Key into the Language: “A glossary, a guidebook, a controversialist tract, an anthology of poems, a defense of Native American culture, a scholarly inquiry, a personal testimony: Key into the Language is all of these things, yet each by itself is insufficient to account for the book as a whole” (111). He later continues: “Following in Schweitzer’s wake, Thomas Scanlan argues that ‘the narrative of the colony [Providence] was an allegory of the narrative of the nation,’ by which he means the narrative of the struggle for a reformed polity within England itself: Williams brilliantly and relentlessly frames his representations of Indians by allowing his readers to see the extent to which they functioned as versions of themselves and their struggles. While appearing to bring home linguistic exotica, Williams in fact tacitly forces his readers to situate issues of colonial rule in a domestic context” (112).

As soon as he received confirmation of the charter, Williams did not fly back home, he probably thought that his moral duty had not been completely fulfilled. Gould underlines:

Cotton’s tract The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven

became the Bible of national church forces.

The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience appears on July 15^th, here are Bruckunier’s words as reported by Gould:

[…] Magistrates or rulers were not stewards of the Lord but civil servants of the people; their duty toward religion was to protect the right of the citizen to freedom of worship not to determine whether the citizen’s religion was true or false.

These demands for a secular state Williams grounded solidly on his deep faith in the common man and the power of reason in a free people; and on page after page he drove home the revolutionary democratic doctrine that governments derived their powers solely from consent of the governed:

“From this Grant I infer… that the Soveraigne, originall, and foundation of civill power lies in the people… And if so, that a People may erect and establish what forme of Government seemes to them most meete for their civill condition. It is evident that such Governments as are by them erected and established, have no more power, nor for no longer time, then the civill power or people consenting and agreeing shall betrust them with. This is cleere not only in Reason, but in the experience of all commonweales, where the people are not deprived of their naturall freedome by the power of Tyrants.” - Brockunier, Irrepressible Democrat (Gould 2.4.95)

Enlightened words in a century of legalized madness, words needed to revolutionize history, to make single consciousnesses aware and to set the foundations of the Constitution that will be signed over a century later. Achebe and Said, Wittig and Butler, Benjamin, Marx, would not have been needed by history had Williams’ words be listened to and put into practice. The Civil War, two World Wars, and the continuous wars would not have taken place, not to count the victims of the Counter-Reformation or the innumerable endless ones of institutionalized governments, see Foucault, or the psychological victims of stable societies with Deleuze and Guattari or Artaud, as much as the trade of slaves and the darkest folds in the past and present of humanity.

Section four of Part Two focuses on Milton portrayed in his spiritual detachment made of music (of the spheres) and privileged studies, he is compared to Glenn Gould mentioned for his search for “pure tone.” Finally Williams comes back to London and that is when he spends time with Milton by teaching each other languages, the former Dutch, the latter, Italian. According to Loewenstein, “Milton is highly conscious of history as a complex, dynamic process where vigorous ideological conflict and opposition generate radical reform”(77). Loewenstein is defending Areopagitica, written in 1664, and I would like to imagine that Milton found in Williams the embodiment of the strength needed for “radical reform.”

The last Section of Part Two starts in New England in 1994. The Author’s daughter’s birthday is remembered in the joyful opening of spring. While facts, contemporary and historical, follow one another: Kristallnacht, Nixon’s burial, Eikon Basilike, Jackie O, a series of images with Florence (Firenze in the text), Valentine’s Day, Sachem Canonicus’ burial shroud given to him by Williams, and the final dream, a dream Roger Williams has while Mary is playing at the fire, he falls asleep, dreams of a rose, and sinks into the future…

The long poem ends with “Shwishcuttowwdauog Mishánnock.” And the closing date is: 2.6.95.

Henry Gould’s work has to be praised for the objectivity and seriousness of his historical search, as well as for his capacity of tuning the readers’ emotions towards the formation of a clearly cut awareness of the needs of the human being, beyond rules meant to defeat and destroy, be them institutional or religious. Portrayed is also his fragility as a man that has to be read within the lines with the preference for his son and daughter, the interest in his own genealogy, the wish to end his historical journey by accompanying his hero all the way to reach us, not only metaphysically through his writings, but in spirit through the symbols of his dream: a rose, fire, Mary and Williams in their union as a couple, and the annulment of space-time dimensions. Henry Gould’s pen so sharp in detaching falsehood from truth can reach the highest notes of lyrical poetry. In a recent E-mail, Gould commented with the following words:

In the first Part, the Gould genealogy underscores the fact that in poetry, as opposed to ‘objective’ chronicles or impersonal history, there is no obliteration of the subjective, there's no escape from personal & familial implications. In the second Part, the (to a degree) liberating ‘epic’ deeds of Williams make possible the turn toward dream & imagination of the closing sections. This is sort of represented by the focus on Milton (who imagined Paradise lost and regained).

Very active at a cultural level, Gould’s literary interests are difficult to trace even if Osip Mandelstam, Anna Akhmatova, and Joseph Brodsky seem to be “eternal returns.”

Several years ago I decided without having been commissioned or any expectation of a return, to translate In RI into Italian. My decision was based not only on the conviction of the validity of the present text as of Henry Gould’s poetry but it represented for me a tribute to what I like to consider my first mother country, Italy being the second. The book was finally self-published in 2006 by Henry Gould and dedicated to me in its bilingual version. The same question of language is raised within the poem. By showing how fitting and timely my translation has been, Gould wrote in a recent E-mail: “How it [language] highlights contrasts - between the abuses of legal language in Boston, Salem, elsewhere - and Williams' openness toward foreign language & cultures generally (the section of Narragansett translations, for example; learning languages with Milton, etc.).”

The title “In RI” on the Italian market brings to the association with the inscription on Jesus’ cross, very few know of the existence of Rhode Island. While in English it comes through in its dual meaning. Here are Henry Gould’s words:

[The poem] is political. About founding a "counter-state", based on rights and popular sovereignty, which themselves in turn depend upon human empathy, fairness, openness, solidarity. Thus the title “In RI” sort of telescopes two things: an abuse of judicial language, and a special place (RI). By the abuse I mean the inscription ‘IN RI’ written by the Romans over Jesus' crucifixion. They had a procedure of writing the crimes of the condemned in this way, on the very instrument of execution. ‘In RI’ stood for ‘king of the Jews’, thus accusing Jesus of rebellion vs. the Roman state (actually a sort of stand-in for Barabbas). The political foundation of that "special place" (Rhode Island), through the agency of Williams, effects a sort of reversal (in world history) of the type of injustice represented by the inscription "In RI" (a mirror-image of the founding of Rome in Virgil's Aeneid. . .).

In unison with Jung (“On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry.” 998), at my further reading of Gould’s work I have appreciated his poetry with a renewed freshness, interest, and deep respect.

Works Cited

Anne Hutchinson. 5 December 2002. AnneHutchinson.com. 24 November 2007 <>

Behling, Susanne Lucretia. “Roger Williams.” Rootsweb. 1997. Ancestry.com community. 24 November 2007. < http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~sam/roger.html>

Creeley, Robert. The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley: 1945 – 1975. Berkely and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press. 1982.

“Council of Trent.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 26 November 2006. 26 November 2006. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Trent>

“The Council of Trent: The canons and decrees of the sacred and oecumenical Council of Trent.” 1995. Hanover Historical Texts Project. 27 November 2007.

DeDeo, Simon. “Henry Gould: Basilique Saint Madeleine.” Blog Entry. rhubarb is susan. 30 January, 2006. 24 November, 2007.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins University Press, 1997

Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1973.

Gardiner, Rick. “The Examination of Mrs Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newton: 1637.” The American Colonist’s Library: A Treasury of Primary Documents. 24 November 2007 <>

Gomes, Peter G. “Vita: Anne Hutchinson.” Harvard Magazine on the Web Nov-Dec 2002. 24 November 2007 <>

Gordon, Mary. “How Ireland Hid Its Own Dirty Laundry.” New York Times on the Web 3 Aug. 2003. 24 November 2007 < http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00EFDA163EF930A3575BC0A9659C8B63

Gould, Henry. In RI. Trans. Anny Ballardini. Providence, 2006.

Gould, Henry. “Re: In RI.” E-mail to the author. 26 Nov. 2007.

Jung, Carl Gustav. “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.: 2001. 990-1002.

Loewenstein, David A. “Areopagitica and the Dynamics of History. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900.” The English Renaissance 28.1 (1988) : p. 77-93. Jstor. UNO U Lib., New Orleans, LA. 24 November 2007 http://library.uno.edu/

Miller, Arthur. Collected Plays. Viking Adult. 1981.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.: 2001. 874-884.

Rau, Elizabeth. “Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643): Courage ahead of her time.” The Providence Journal on the Web 2003. 24 November 2007 < http://www.projo.com/specials/women/94root1.htm>

Read, David. New World, Known World : Shaping Knowledge in Early Anglo-American Writing. Columbia, MO, USA: University of Missouri Press, 2005. p 96-112. UNO U Lib., New Orleans, LA. 24 November 2007 http://library.uno.edu/

Roger Williams Family Association. 1997-2007. 24 November 2007.

Taylor, Richard. “A Defense of Poetry: Reflections on the Occasion of Writing by Paul H. Fry.” The Modern Language Review 93.1 (1998) : 202-3. Jstor. UNO U Lib., New Orleans, LA. 24 November 2007

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[1] Richard Taylor in “A Defense of Poetry: Reflections on the Occasion of Writing by Paul H. Fry” writes:

“Ostension invokes the construction of meaning rather than the fictive assertion that existence is meaningless. It is a deferral by disclosure that existence may be meaning-free. Fry is much exercised by the notion that phenomena are cultural constructions and holds that language in its predicative moment is culturally conditioned without exception of qualification. Harold Bloom, J. Hillis Miller, and Paul de Man are invoked as dangerous heretics. Literature, in Fry’s view, is an entropy supplementing the expansive, purposeful energies of life wherein the instrumentality of language is suspended, and the phonic-scriptive aspect of a text (uninterrupted sound) takes precedence. […]”