“Ready to Lay Down His Person and Fortune at Her Feet”: Prince Bogusław Radziwiłł’s Proposal for Marriage with Mary Stuart,Princess Royal of England and Princess of Orange in 1653–1654

The author appends and discusses two documents, of which the most significant is the hitherto unknown “relation” of Sir Alexander Hume, which he prepared at the close of 1654 for Sir Edward Hyde, Chancellor of the Exchequer, pertaining to Bogus?aw Radziwi??’s proposal for marriage with Mary Stuart. Prince Boguslaw Radziwi?? (1620–1669), a Calvinist, was a wealthy and powerful magnate and one of the best-known Protestant leaders in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Mary Stuart (1631–1660/1661), a staunch Anglican, since 1650 the widow of William II of Orange, was the eldest daughter of Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland, and Henrietta Maria of France. Although an abstract of this “relation” was published already in 1869, it appears that biographers of Boguslaw and Mary, including those of their family members and close associates, took notice neither of it nor the actual document. The author suggests that the marriage plans of Radziwi?? may have been connected, among other reasons, with his ambition to gain the elective throne of Poland.     

'Hirelings in the Camp,the Court & the University': some figurations of US English departments,area studies and Masao Miyoshi as Blakean poet Written for the 'Imminent Questions' Conference at NYU, 29 April–1 May 2004

Abstract

This article concerns figuring forth and dismantling the poesis of area studies in the era of transnational capital and what Jack Spicer called 'the English Department of the Spirit'. I will build out from some poems, anecdotes and historical memories as well as play upon Kenzaburo Oe's figurations of Blake as visionary poet of geopolitical transformation and a revolutionary will to liberationist energies to connect the work Masao Miyoshi has done and prodded into trans/disciplinary and transnational coalition since the 1970s. I will figure forth Masao Miyoshi as a Blakean poet working to energize the refiguration and dismantling of the whole US field-imaginary of Japanese and Asian, as well as British and American area studies, which was our shared starting point in the dialectics of post-1968 history as teacher/student on the left-coast trans-Pacific US front.