Suffolk, Arcadia, and Shakespeare’s Flowers

Lecture no. 8

Dear Heart,

The phrase ‘nominative determinism’ may be dull to look at, but it is an entertaining enough concept. The term denotes the theory that someone’s name determines their life.

While I was growing up the name Dickon had an association with the children’s book The Secret Garden (1911) by Frances Hodgson Burnett. In that story Dickon is a rustic, r…