Ray's most widely read book was his Wisdom of God manifested in the works of creation (1691), probably based on addresses given in the chapel of Trinity College Cambridge 20 years previously. In it he forswore the use of allegory in biblical interpretation, just as he had done in his (and Francis Willughby's) Ornithology (1678). His discipline seeped into theology, complementing the influence of the Reformers and weakening Enlightenment assumptions about teleology, thus softening the hammer-blows of Darwinism on Deism. The physico-theology of the eighteenth century and the popularity of Gilbert White and the like survived the squeezing of natural theology by Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises a century after Wisdom … , and contributed to a peculiarly British understanding of natural theology. This undergirded the subsequent impact of the results of the voyagers and geologists and prepared the way for a modern reading of God's “Book of Works” (“Darwinism … under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend”). Natural theology is often assumed to have been completely discredited by Darwin (as well as condemned by Barth and ridiculed by Dawkins). Notwithstanding, and despite the vapours of vitalism (ironically urged – among others – by Ray's biographer, Charles Raven) and the current fashion for “intelligent design”, the attitudes encouraged by Wisdom … still seem to be robust, albeit needing constant re-tuning (as in all understandings influenced by science).
The European Honey-buzzard (Pernis apivorus) was first accurately described and clearly distinguished from the Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo) by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their Ornithology, originally published in Latin in 1676. Alfred Newton's statement that Pierre Belon had described the species over a century earlier is not entirely correct, as Belon confused this honey-buzzard's features with those of the common buzzard and even appeared uncertain whether it was a separate species. One of Willughby's important contributions to ornithology was the identification and use of “characteristic marks” to distinguish and identify species, including those that distinguish the European Honey-buzzard from the Common Buzzard. Because Willughby provided the first accurate description of Pernis apivorus – and because his contribution to ornithology has never been formally recognized – we propose that the common name of the European Honey-buzzard be changed to Willughby's Buzzard.
I. Observations topographical, moral and physiological made in a journey through part of the low countries, Germany, Italy and France, by John Ray, Fellow of the R. Society; Whereunto is added a Brief Account of F. Willoughby Esq; his voyage through a great part of Spain. London, printed for J. Martyn, printer to the R. Society, at the Bell in St. Pauls Churchyard, 1673. in 8°. II. Bernhardi vareni M. D. Geographia Generalis; in qua affectiones generales Telluris explicantur, Summâ curâ quamplurimis in locis emendata, & XXXIII Schematibus novis, œre incisis unà cumtabulis aliquot, quœ desider abantur, aucta & illustrata ab Isaaco Newtono Mathes. Professore Lucasiano apud cantabrigienses, è Societate Regia. Cantabrigiæ 1672. in 8°. This Curious and very Instructive
Itinerary
may well serve as a Pattern for Travelling with that improvement and advantage, as ought to be aimed at by all discreet Travellors;
Through intertext, adaptation, nominative re-births and epiphanies, Lolita (1955) enacts a kind of incestuous narcissism, a self-consuming act of libidinality and linguistic desire that offers a fantasy of self-exculpation and discovery, a narrative of abuse and trauma, and a meta-fiction that revels in the performative perversions its characters suffer from. Each part of the novel is born of an incestuous relationship with an earlier (part of the) text, every subsequent re-statement of Lolita carries this textual-familial weight.This essay frames an analysis of the novel and its two filmic daughters in the light of these three strands: a realist fantasy of a man’s maniac relationship with a girl who becomes his daughter and sexual partner; his ‘confession’, her distorted trauma tale; the various formal, stylistic, intertextual “incests” that stand in dizzying juxtaposition to the ‘ethical impact’ assigned to it by the pre-facing John Ray Jr.
I. Observations topographical, moral and physiological made in a journey through part of the low countries, Germany, Italy and France, by John Ray, Fellow of the R. Society; Whereunto is added a Brief Account of F. Willoughby Esq; his voyage through a great part of Spain. London, printed for J. Martyn, printer to the R. Society, at the Bell in St. Pauls Churchyard, 1673. in 8°. II. Bernhardi vareni M. D. Geographia Generalis; in qua affectiones generales Telluris explicantur, Summâ curâ quamplurimis in lo