Every now and then people glom on to the fact that I spent a lot of time studying English Renaissance literature. Here are a couple of people discussion my dissertation, English Literary Anatomy, 1540-1621: Institution into Form (1993).
The discussion gets the main observations about the literature, but kind of misses the point about how much I saw/see "institutions" as really the primary frame for our undertanding of, well, basically: anything. If you are thinking of something through the framework of, say, "the corporation," the boundaries of what you can think and describe are proscribed. Maybe today we'd talk about Overton windows. My argument was that the institition of anatomy was so compellingly lived by the barber-surgeons (and the King) that it could legitimize all kinds of thoughts that would otherwise be disallowed. Really, unthinkable.
Meanwhile, I think the second half of the conversation is more boring than the first half, just like the dissertation.
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