Cultural Chase: The Gendered Medieval and Renaissance Discourses in Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World and Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis

Abstract

Ahead of feminine writing in the linear track of western literary gendered and chronological progression, feminine writing has always been a chronological step back. The Renaissance female writers entered the already masculine-occupied space of literary scripture and used several strategies and tactics to secure a rightful place within the literary continuum. This paper investigates “The Cultural Chase” between Margaret Cavendish and Francis Bacon, and attempts to display the generic and chronological differences between their representative works: Blazing World and New Atlantis. The first section of this paper’s argument explores those texts’ introductory passages and the role the authors’ genders play in selecting a literary genre to convey their agendas. The later section explores the strategies used by Cavendish and Bacon in presenting major contemporary intellectual controversies. Furthermore, we explore the successes and frustrations of Cavendish and Bacon and their impact on the cultural arena of the time. Finally, the paper blurs the binary opposition forced on humanities, as well as the sciences and attempts to use Newton’s Laws of Gravity to analyze and explain the nature of this Cultural Chase.