Writing on Death: Plague Narratives. A Review Essay

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Michael Meng
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Baruch Spinoza ◽  
Written Responses ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Last Man

Abstract This essay discusses several books, ancient and recent, on plagues to ask the question: Can we face death without turning away from it through historical narration? Can we write about death, which only afflicts individuals, without stripping death of its individuality? After briefly addressing these questions, I discuss five books, one from the ancient period (Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War), one from the late medieval period (Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron), one from the early modern period (Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year), and two from the modern period (Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, and Frank Snowden’s Epidemics and Society). These books not only come from different eras but also reflect different written responses to death—ancient history, story/fable, reportage, futuristic novel, and contemporary history. The essay concludes by considering a counterargument to its focus on death, an argument developed by Baruch Spinoza which claims that humans should think nothing less than of death.

Monetary Systems

2016 ◽  
pp. 320-341
Author(s):  
Angela Redish
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
Paper Money ◽  
Fiat Money ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Monetary Systems ◽  
Medieval Europe

This chapter presents the evolution of Western monetary systems from the bimetallic standards of medieval Europe through the gold standard and Bretton Woods eras to today’s fiat money regimes. The chapter notes that issues of revenue creation enabled by the monopoly over money issue—through debasement and/or inflation—runs through this history, as does the significance of the credibility of the money issuer. An additional theme in the chapter is the role of changing technology of money issue, from the hammered coins of the medieval period, to the milled coins of the early modern period, through paper money issues to cryptocurrencies.

The Holy Family

2020 ◽  
pp. 184-191
Author(s):  
Holly Taylor Coolman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New World ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Modern Period

The Holy Family, as such, is all but absent in Christian imagination and devotion for the first thousand years of the Church’s existence. In close connection to the cult of St Joseph, the Holy Family gains new prominence toward the end of the medieval period, and then grows dramatically in importance in the early modern period. Traditions in the New World such as Las Posadas are also discussed in this chapter. Especially important in Catholic thought and practice, the Holy Family has come to have central symbolic importance for all Christians in contemporary Christmas celebrations such as children’s Nativity plays and pageants.

scholarly journals Classical Tradition in Czech Renaissance and Baroque Literature

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Kysučan Lubor
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Educational Literature ◽  
Modern Period

The study deals with the influence of the classical tradition on Czech literature of the Early Modern Period (Renaissance, Baroque). The article demonstrates this influence through examples of the use of selected motifs from ancient history in all of the main genres of the literature of that era: homily, legend, school drama, poetry and educational literature. The study also analyses the educational background of the authors and readers of the era and their attitude to ancient history; the ways of mediation and making use of ancient motifs in the literature; and the influence of ancient historiography on Renaissance and Baroque culture and interpretation of history.

Religious Reformation and the Crisis of Providentialism in Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611): A Cultural Materialist Reading

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Shahab Entezareghaem
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Jacobean Drama ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Cyril Tourneur ◽  
Philosophical Debates

The early modern period in England is characterised by philosophical and moral debates over the meaning and pertinence of Christian beliefs and teachings. One of the most controversial topics in this epoch is God’s providence and its supposed impacts on man’s daily life. In the wake of the Reformation and emerging philosophical schools, particularly in the second half of the sixteenth century, Providentialism was seriously put into question and the meaning and influences of God’s providence were, therefore, investigated. Epicureans and Calvinists were two prominent groups of religious reformists who cast doubt upon the validity and pertinence of Christian Providentialism as it was taught during the medieval period. These intellectual and philosophical debates were reflected in the literary productions of the age in general, and in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in particular. Cyril Tourneur is one of the early modern English playwrights who inquired into the meaning and relevance of Providentialism in his last play, The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611). Adhering to a cultural materialist mode of criticism, I will show in this paper that Tourneur is a dissident dramatist who separates the realm of God’s divinity from man’s rational capacity in his tragedy and anticipates, hence, the emergence and development of new religious and philosophical visions in the Renaissance.

The Extent of Christ’s Work from the Early Church to Gottschalk

2021 ◽  
pp. 23-47
Author(s):  
Michael J. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Medieval Theology ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of

This chapter begins by observing the important precedent that patristic and medieval theology played in the development of Protestant theology, especially in Britain during the early modern period. It observes that early modern debates regarding the extent of Christ’s atoning work were, in many ways, grounded on the catholicity of one’s position. More important, this chapter surveys John Davenant’s own understanding of the history of the doctrine as it was exposited and debated in the patristic and medieval period. The final section of the chapter focuses on the so-called Lombardian formula and the scholastic consensus on the extent of Christ’s death.

Lost in Translation? Constructing Ancient Roman Martyrs in Baroque Bavaria

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 801-828
Author(s):  
Noria Litaker
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Lost In Translation

Over the course of the early modern period, parish, monastic, and pilgrimage churches across Catholic Europe and beyond eagerly sought to acquire the relics of ancient Roman martyrs excavated from the Eternal City's catacombs. Between 1648 and 1803, the duchy of Bavaria welcomed nearly 350 of these “holy bodies” to its soil. Rather than presenting the remains as fragments, as was common during the medieval period, local communities forged catacomb saint relics into gleaming skeletons and then worked to write hagiographical narratives that made martyrs’ lives vivid and memorable to a population unfamiliar with their deeds. Closely examining the construction and material presentation of Bavarian catacomb saints as well as the vitae written for them offers a new vantage point from which to consider how the intellectual movement known as the paleo-Christian revival and the scholarship it produced were received, understood, and then used by Catholic Europeans in an everyday religious context. This article demonstrates that local Bavarian craftsmen, artists, relic decorators, priests, and nuns—along with erudite scholars in Rome—were active in bringing the early Christian church to life and participated in the revival as practitioners and creative scholars in their own right.

Recreating Ancient History: Episodes from the Greek and Roman Past in the Arts and Literature of the Early Modern Period

2002 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 484
Author(s):  
Reid Barbour ◽  
Karl Enenkel ◽  
Jan L. de Jong ◽  
Jeanine De Landtsheer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Arts

YAMAUBA: REPRESENTATION OF THE JAPANESE MOUNTAIN WITCH IN THE MUROMACHI AND EDO PERIODS

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noriko T. Reider
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Japanese Society ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Beautiful Woman ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Familiar Figure ◽  
Over Time

This paper discusses the nature of the yamauba and the transformation of its image over time through an examination of its appearance in literature, folktales and art, focusing on, but not limited to, the early modern period. Literally, “yamauba” means an old woman who lives in the mountains, an appellation indicating a creature living on the periphery of society. Medieval Japanese literature equates the yamauba to a female oni (ogre/demon), sometimes devouring human beings who unwittingly cross her path. She is, however, not entirely negative or harmful. She is also credited with nurturing aspects, though these attributes are not always at the forefront of her character. Indeed, the emphasis on attributes imparted to that character changes significantly over time. A portrayal of the yamauba in the medieval period is predominantly of a witch-like white-haired hag, but by the end of the seventeenth century, the yamauba had come to be considered the mother of Kintarō, a legendary child with Herculean strength. By the eighteenth century, with a help of favorable depictions of the yamauba in puppet and Kabuki plays, she is portrayed by ukiyo-e artists as an alluring, beautiful woman who dotes on her son. The paper concludes that the yamauba remains a familiar figure in present-day Japanese society, and is still identified as a character of the disenfranchised “other.”

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