Radicalism and Mysticism in the Later Seventeenth Century: John Pordage’s Angels
In 1667, when Paradise Lost was published, John Milton’s nephew, pupil and biographer, Edward Phillips, was working as tutor for Philip Herbert, 5th Earl of Pembroke. At the same time, the Earl’s steward was the little-known author of a visionary and prophetic epic poem about angels, Samuel Pordage. Were there discussions of their parallel projects? Unfortunately, we do not know whether Milton and Pordage heard news of each other, or even met. Their shared interests included not only poetry and angels, but radical religion: Samuel’s father, John, was a visionary who had conversed with angels, rejected the moral law and founded a church. The circumstantial associations deepen with another visitor to the Earl’s house in that same year, 1667. This was Richard Bovet, author of Pandaemonium (1684), an antiSadducist compendium of tales of witches and spirits, but also a dissenter’s attack on Catholicism and on Restoration politics. Bovet was later involved in plotting against the regime. Not only was there an element of political sympathy between them, but Bovet’s title Pandaemonium derives from Milton’s epic (which Bovet commends in the text). Perhaps all three writers intersected in person as well as in spirit in 1667.1
Enlightenment Enthusiasms and the Spectacular Failure of the Philadelphian Society
Good English folk, come shake both Sides and Head; For after all her Vaunt Poor Philly’s Dead. Who in this Nation made such a fearful riot, Folks could not eat and drink their common Dyet, Nor play, nor fight, nor go to Church at quiet. Whose notions soard above the starry Sky-Balls, Beyond the reach of dim, and clearer Eye-Balls. Icrus like she flew to[o] near the flame, Melted her waxen wings, and down she came. An Elegy, Upon the Philadelphian Society: With the False Oracles, Last Speech, and Confession (1703), lines 1–9
Urban Identities and Catastrophe: Izmir and Salonica at the End of the Ottoman Empire*
Two huge fires dramatically influenced the urban development of Salonica and Izmir, in 1917 and in 1922, respectively. These catastrophes occurred after the Ottoman Empire fell, and Salonica and Izmir had shifted into new national contexts. The fires mainly destroyed the districts that were transformed during the late‐Ottoman period. These districts became the cosmopolitan façades of modern Izmir and Salonica. The post‐fires' tabula rasa provided an opportunity for Greek and Turkish politicians and European planners to change the urban identity of both cities. Moreover, the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 transformed their multicultural societies also. Reconstruction plans had been thought to de‐Ottomanize and remove the previous idea of the towns and their multiplicity, interpreting new cultural and nationalist feeling. Here, I emphasize how modernity was interpreted before and after the fires, and point out contradictions between ideological aspects of planning and how the first urban districts were built during the 1920s.