|
Charles Blount (27 April 1654 – August 1693) was an English deist and philosopher who published several anonymous essays critical of the existing English order. ==Life== Blount was born in Upper Holloway, Islington, Middlesex, the fourth son of Sir Henry Blount. His father educated him at home and exposed him to freethinking philosophy. In 1672 Charles inherited lands in Islington and the estate of Blount's Hall in Staffordshire. He married Eleanor Tyrrell in Westminster Abbey at the end of 1672; they had three sons and a daughter. Throughout his life he remained at Blount's Hall as a leisured gentleman, although he also travelled to London to participate in courtly life. Blount's publications were consistently anonymous or written under a pseudonym, and with a radical or Whig slant. In 1673 he wrote ''Mr Dreyden Vindicated'', defending John Dryden's ''The Conquest of Granada'' from Richard Leigh's attacks. In 1673 he also penned the anonymous ''The Friendly Vindication.'' In 1678 Blount became a member of the Green Ribbon Club, a group of radical Whig advocates and activists. In 1679 he published ''An Appeal from the Country to the City'' under the name of Junius Brutus. It was a strongly Whig piece that suggested that the Popish Plot was entirely real. It painted a lurid picture of what life in London would be like under James II and Roman Catholicism. In this case, the printer was seized and fined, and the pamphlet was burned by the common hangman (i.e. a symbolic execution of the book for treason). The same year, he assumed the name of Philopatris ("lover of his country") to write ''A Just Vindication of Learning,'' which was an argument against the act licensing printers. He mimicked John Milton's previous ''Areopagitica.'' When Thomas Hobbes died (1680), Blount produced an anonymous broadsheet of "sayings" from Hobbes' book ''Leviathan.'' In 1693 Blount used his ironic approach to argue for the validity of William and Mary. His ''King William and Queen Mary Conquerors'' argued that they were, in fact, conquerors of England, since they landed with force; therefore the people should support them as able protectors, as Hobbes had argued that the people should obey anyone who represented such force. This pamphlet was licensed by the Tory licensor, Edmund Bohun. In 1695 Parliament debated the fate of the work and had it, too, burned by the common hangman; and Bohun lost his position.〔Dorothy Auchter, ''Dictionary of Literary and Dramatic Censorship in Tudor and Stuart England'' (2001), pp. 179-183〕 The Act for the licensing of the press was allowed to expire, as well.〔The 1662 Licensing Act was not renewed when it expired in May 1695.〕 In 1689 Blount's wife had died, and he wanted to marry her sister, but such marriages were illegal at that time in England. He wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1693 and requested permission, but was denied. In August 1693 he committed suicide.〔 Alexander Pope wrote in a footnote to his 'Epilogue to the Satires: Dialogue I' that Blount, 'being in love with a near kinswoman of his, and rejected, gave himself a stab in the arm, as pretending to kill himself, of the consequence of which he really died'.〔Footnote to line 123; Alexander Pope, 'Epilogue to the Satires Dialogue I', ''Alexander Pope: The Major Works'', ed. Pat Rogers (2008), p.398.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Charles Blount (deist)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|