Body and law in late Anglo-Saxon England

1998 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 209-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe

This article explores some textual dimensions of what I argue is a crucial moment in the history of the Anglo-Saxon subject. For purposes of temporal triangulation, I would locate this moment between roughly 970 and 1035, though these dates function merely as crude, if potent, signposts: the years 970×973 mark the adoption of the Regularis concordia, the ecclesiastical agreement on the practice of a reformed (and markedly continental) monasticism, and 1035 marks the death of Cnut, the Danish king of England, whose laws encode a change in the understanding of the individual before the law. These dates bracket a rich and chaotic time in England: the apex of the project of reform, a flourishing monastic culture, efflorescence of both Latin and vernacular literatures, remarkable manuscript production, but also the renewal of the Viking wars that seemed at times to be signs of the apocalypse and that ultimately would put a Dane on the throne of England. These dates point to two powerful and continuing sets of interests in late Anglo-Saxon England, ecclesiastical and secular, monastic and royal, whose relationships were never simple. This exploration of the subject in Anglo-Saxon England as it is illuminated by the law draws on texts associated with each of these interests and argues their interconnection. Its point of departure will be the body – the way it is configured, regarded, regulated and read in late Anglo-Saxon England. It focuses in particular on the use to which the body is put in juridical discourse: both the increasing role of the body in schemes of inquiry and of punishment and the ways in which the body comes to be used to know and control the subject.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albrecht Diem ◽  
Matthieu van der Meer

<div>The seventh-century 'Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines' (Someone’s Rule for Virgins), which was most likely written by Jonas of Bobbio, the hagiographer of the Irish monk Columbanus, forms an ideal point of departure for writing a new history of the emergence of Western monasticism understood as a history of the individual and collective attempt to pursue eternal salvation.<br>The book provides a critical edition and translation of the 'Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines' and a roadmap for such a new history revolving around various aspects of monastic discipline, such as the agency of the community, the role of enclosure, authority and obedience, space and boundaries, confession and penance, sleep and silence, excommunication and expulsion.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Various monastic rules contain provisions on being read aloud to the community or to monks and nuns who were in the process of entering the monastery. In order to give an impression how the 'Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines' may have sounded, Albrecht Diem has provided an audio file (read by Matthieu van der Meer).</div>


Author(s):  
Arsen Rustemovich Pavlenko ◽  
Rakhimian Galimianovich Iusupov

This article is devoted to the contemporary historiography of higher school for energetics in USSR and the Russian federation. The subject of this research is comprised of formation of modern scientific perceptions on emergence and development of Russian system of training energy personnel. The object of this research is the body of 1990s-2000s publications of historic and multidisciplinary profile on the contemporary history of higher energy education and university energetics in Russia. The goal of this research is to determine the main problematic vectors and theoretical approaches forming in the process of scientific research of this topic, as well as understanding of the results and further prospects of its development. The novelty of this research consists in determining, systematizing and analyzing the content of the body of historiographical sources on history of Russian energetics and education during XX and XXI centuries. The authors conclude that within the framework of this historiographical branch, there is a current scientific base that allows transitioning to a new level of discovery and theoretical generalization of materials. It seems relevant to transition from &ldquo;milestone stories&rdquo; of universities and departments to study of the role of higher education and academic science in the process of implementation of state energy policy in Russia, as well as development of international energy dialogue.


2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 83-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Martin Dodsworth

This article explores the role that ‘habit’ played in discourses on crime in the 18th century, a subject which forms an important part of the history of ‘the social’. It seeks to bridge the division between ‘liberal’ positions which see crime as a product of social circumstance, and the conservative position which stresses the role of will and individual responsibility, by drawing attention to the role habit played in uniting these conceptions in the 18th century. It argues that the Lockean idea that the mind was a tabula rasa, and that the character was thereby formed through impression and habit, was used as a device to explain the ways in which certain individuals rather than others happened to fall into a life of crime, a temptation to which all were susceptible. This allowed commentators to define individuals as responsible for their actions, while accepting the significance of environmental factors in their transgressions. Further, the notion that the character was formed through habit enabled reformers to promote the idea that crime could be combated through mechanisms of prevention and reformation, which both targeted the individual criminal and sought more generally to reduce the likelihood of crime.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-207
Author(s):  
Ezra La Roi ◽  

This paper traces the semantic and constructional development of the complement-taking verb εὑρίσκω ‘find’ from Homeric Greek to Post-Classical Greek. First, the paper details the semantic development of εὑρίσκω using characteristics such as predicate type, semantic role of the subject and factivity. Subsequently, explanations are offered for the constructional development of εὑρίσκω, using insights from grammaticalization research such as reanalysis and analogy. In contrast to previous studies on Ancient Greek complementation which support the idea of a systematic Classical Greek opposition of factive participial versus non-factive infinitival complementation, this paper shows how bridging contexts of mental judgment εὑρίσκω with a participial complement do not follow this opposition as they are non-factive and changed their meaning (with reanalysis) before changing their complementation structure (through analogy). Also, by extending our view to the individual history of other cognitive predicates (ἐπίσταμαι, γιγνώσκω and οἶδα) the author showsthat other cognitive predicates undergo similar developments from factive+object to factive+ ACP to non-factive+ACI, although their individual histories are still in need of a systematic diachronic account. Thus, complementation patterns per period could be analysed in a more fine-grained way by analysing complementation patterns bottom-up from the semantic and constructional evolutions of individual predicates. Also, the findings from this paper provide evidence towards a diachronic solution of the so-called matching-problem: diachronically related semantic and constructional stages strongly motivate the choice of a specific complementation structure but absolute factivity oppositions in Classical Greek complementation are rather strong tendencies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albrecht Diem ◽  
Matthieu van der Meer

<div>The seventh-century 'Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines' (Someone’s Rule for Virgins), which was most likely written by Jonas of Bobbio, the hagiographer of the Irish monk Columbanus, forms an ideal point of departure for writing a new history of the emergence of Western monasticism understood as a history of the individual and collective attempt to pursue eternal salvation.<br>The book provides a critical edition and translation of the 'Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines' and a roadmap for such a new history revolving around various aspects of monastic discipline, such as the agency of the community, the role of enclosure, authority and obedience, space and boundaries, confession and penance, sleep and silence, excommunication and expulsion.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Various monastic rules contain provisions on being read aloud to the community or to monks and nuns who were in the process of entering the monastery. In order to give an impression how the 'Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines' may have sounded, Albrecht Diem has provided an audio file (read by Matthieu van der Meer).</div>


2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1808) ◽  
pp. 20150476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aodhán D. Butler ◽  
John A. Cunningham ◽  
Graham E. Budd ◽  
Philip C. J. Donoghue

Exceptionally preserved fossils provide major insights into the evolutionary history of life. Microbial activity is thought to play a pivotal role in both the decay of organisms and the preservation of soft tissue in the fossil record, though this has been the subject of very little experimental investigation. To remedy this, we undertook an experimental study of the decay of the brine shrimp Artemia , examining the roles of autolysis, microbial activity, oxygen diffusion and reducing conditions. Our findings indicate that endogenous gut bacteria are the main factor controlling decay. Following gut wall rupture, but prior to cuticle failure, gut-derived microbes spread into the body cavity, consuming tissues and forming biofilms capable of mediating authigenic mineralization, that pseudomorph tissues and structures such as limbs and the haemocoel. These observations explain patterns observed in exceptionally preserved fossil arthropods. For example, guts are preserved relatively frequently, while preservation of other internal anatomy is rare. They also suggest that gut-derived microbes play a key role in the preservation of internal anatomy and that differential preservation between exceptional deposits might be because of factors that control autolysis and microbial activity. The findings also suggest that the evolution of a through gut and its bacterial microflora increased the potential for exceptional fossil preservation in bilaterians, providing one explanation for the extreme rarity of internal preservation in those animals that lack a through gut.


1967 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bossy

In the following essay I have tried to put into practice some ideas about the investigation of English Catholic communities outlined in a paper which I gave to the recusant history conference in 1965. These were much indebted to the school of sociologie religieuse inaugurated in France by M. Gabriel le Bras; I have tried to adapt its approach and methods for use in the different conditions of an English nonconfortning body. The assumptions made are that the congregation is a major object of study in the history of any Christian tradition; and that congregations, being secial entities, may best be studied by methods, including statistical methods, proper to the study of societies. In applying these assumptions to the history of English Catholicism I do not claim to be doing something different from what historians of the subject have usually done, but to be asking about single cells questions which have traditionally been aimed at the body as a whole. How big was it, and was it getting bigger or smaller? Who belonged to it, and why? Where did its members live? What relations had they with one another, outside religious belief and practice? With how much enthusiasm, with what particular emphases did they believe and practise? How did they get on with the community at large? I have sought here to answer some of these questions for four congregations in rural Northumberland between the mid-eighteenth and the mid-nineteenth century: Hesleyside alias Bellingham, Biddlestone, Thropton and Callaly. I chose this period because materials of the sort one needs were available for it; and also because it is a period of peculiar importance in the history of English Catholicism, covering the transition from its ancient to its modem phase, and providing a point of departure for enquiry in either direction. There is little significance in the communities chosen. It is incidental that the region in question should have provided most of the English support and much of the English scenery for the rebellion of 1715, or that Biddlestone should have a small niche in literary history as the original of Osbaldistone Hall in Scott’s Rob Roy. One of the characteristics of this type of investigation is that it does not much matter where one begins. Another is, however, that the value of conclusions drawn depends on. the number of cases studied. I hope to pursue some myself, but should be most happy if others were inspired to do the same. One might, in this way, reach a more intimate and comprehensive understanding of the whole English Catholic community than has so far been achieved or, I suspect, is possible for any other religious community in the country.


Literatūra ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 54-66
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Kamecka

Leila Sebbar, since the beginning of her literary work, has been describing her identity experience connected with her mixed family origins: the writer’s father was Algerian and her mother French. This prevailing thread in her texts demonstrates the weight of the (re)construction of identity, frequently incoherent and delicate, in order to confirm her ethnic and cultural affinity.The author of this article is interested in problems, so close to the writer, of identity and history. The point of departure of the reflection on Sebbar’s attitude towards mother tongues of her parents is the analysis of her autobiographical novel “Je ne parle pas la langue de mon père” (2003). “We are not born with one identity, an identity is always gained, built”, maintains Sebbar and through this statement she confirms the role of the cultural baggage in the broad sense of the word, in the life of an individual coming from a culturally diversified environment. The questions of the ignorance of the Arabic language also lead the writer to define not only the picture of the individual family history but also common history, the history of the inhabitants of Algeria during the French colonization. The Seine Was Red: Paris, October 1961 (1999) is a story in which its author continues to exploit, tirelessly, the issue related to the history of its two countries: Algeria and France. For Leïla Sebbar, to return to the traumatic events of the massacre of dozens of Algerians in Paris on October 17, 1961 means to enter into incessant dialogue with the painful past. It seems that the writer’s will to confront the past is one of characteristic qualities of her works. In an original, far from stereotypical, way she tries to disclose errors and fights the oblivion and repression of uncomfortable events from history. The aim of the article is to analyze the non-stereotyped strategies that Sebbar uses to build his characters and to reflect on the modes of representations of History and identity.


Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Esethu Monakali

This article offers an analysis of the identity work of a black transgender woman through life history research. Identity work pertains to the ongoing effort of authoring oneself and positions the individual as the agent; not a passive recipient of identity scripts. The findings draw from three life history interviews. Using thematic analysis, the following themes emerge: institutionalisation of gender norms; gender and sexuality unintelligibility; transitioning and passing; and lastly, gender expression and public spaces. The discussion follows from a poststructuralist conception of identity, which frames identity as fluid and as being continually established. The study contends that identity work is a complex and fragmented process, which is shaped by other social identities. To that end, the study also acknowledges the role of collective agency in shaping gender identity.


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