Lisa Jardine
Daniel Snowman meets Lisa Jardine, Renaissance and Shakespeare scholar, historian of science and biographer of Erasmus, Bacon, Wren and Hooke.
'I have never understood the difference between the arts and the sciences, or felt the need to choose between them.’ The sentence could have come from Dr Jacob Bronowski, the Polish-born mathematician, scientist, presenter of TV’s Ascent of Man and expert on the poetry of Blake. In fact, it comes from his daughter, Lisa Jardine, whose writings are peppered with statements to the effect that intellectual boundaries are for crossing.
As you read Jardine’s work or spend time in her company, you get a firm impression of someone – like Erasmus or Bacon – unconfinable within conventional borders. In an early, feminist study of Shakespeare, she identifies herself with those scholars ‘who struggle to position ourselves between the disciplines of history, cultural studies, and text criticism’. Various universities have made her professor of History or of English. But London University’s Queen Mary probably have it right, pinning her down as their Professor of Renaissance Studies.
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