“Hobbes’s Leviathan and the Squaring of the Circle: A Hermetic Solution to a Geometrico-Political Problem”
“A Risky Business For a Woman?: Margherita Marescotti and the Print Trade in Early Seventeenth Century Florence“
24 Oct. 2023
4:00-5:30 PM
Location: Burwash Common Room (85 Charles St W)
The Early Modern Interdisciplinary Graduate Forum 2023-2024 will be hosted as a hybrid event, with our speakers presenting in person at University of Toronto. Our goal is to encourage early modern scholars to return to meeting in person, socialize, network, and become part of the early modern community in the Greater Toronto Area. Coffee and light snacks will be provided for all EMIGF events this year. For those who cannot attend in person, we will also make the event accessible on Zoom.
Lucas Simpson
PhD Candidate, Department of English, University of Toronto
“Hobbes’s Leviathan and the Squaring of the Circle: A Hermetic Solution to a Geometrico-Political Problem”
By the seventeenth century, geometers since antiquity had wrestled with the unsolved problem of the squaring of the circle—that is, to construct a square with area equal to that of a given circle. While Euclidean geometry could produce a remarkable breadth of mathematical theorems, the squaring of the circle, seemingly an elementary procedure given this breadth, remained unsolved. This apparent incompleteness was a thorn in the side of Thomas Hobbes’s conception of geometry as the paradigm for all scientific knowledge. His effort to remove it led him to a series of embarrassing blunders that badly damaged his reputation among the founding circle of the Royal Society. Despite the merciless public refutation of his proofs, Hobbes persisted to his deathbed with the conviction that he had successfully squared the circle. My presentation uncovers a surprising source for this reckless geometrical ambition—namely, the hermetic geometry of John Dee. Placed alongside Dee, Hobbes’s wrestling with the enigma of the squaring of the circle illuminates the hermetic influence on Hobbes’s thought in general and brings us to the heart of the Leviathan’s own enigma: the conjuring of the Leviathan as the creation of the modern state.
Chiara Campagnaro
Master’s in Art History, Renaissance Culture, and Curatorship, Warburg Institute, University of London
“A Risky Business For a Woman?: Margherita Marescotti and the Print Trade in Early Seventeenth Century Florence“
The study of women printers in early modern Italy has received little attention over the last few decades despite rising interest in book history and women’s history. Very few historians have dedicated themselves to the topic. To date, the only substantial studies have been written by Deborah Parker and Valentina Sestini. My research aims to redress this scholarly gap in the history of the book trade by bringing attention to these early women printers in Italy. This paper seeks to understand the role of gender in early Italian women’s experiences in the book trade by considering the printer Margherita Marescotti. Margherita worked alongside her husband, Cristofano Marescotti, from around 1602, took control of the firm in 1611, and closed shop in 1617. During her nearly two decades at the press, economic struggle plagued the Marescotti firm, especially after 1611, when she became a working widow with a daughter. How do we see gender and work intersect in the life of Margherita? My study looks at letters and petitions from the Archivio di Stato that shed light on the conditions of printers under Medici rule in Florence and show how Margherita advocated for herself, her daughter, and her ability to work.
