Heaven and Heavenly Piety in Colonial American Elegies

2009 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 258-267
Author(s):  
Adrian Chastain Weimer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Interesting Part ◽  
Opening Up

When the Massachusetts schoolteacher Benjamin Tompson pictured his unmarried sister Elizabeth in heaven, he saw her in a palace-like ‘nunnerye’ where ‘Chast virgins have faire entertainment free’. Elizabeth and the other virgins in heaven ‘Enjoy their purest love in sacred mirth’ as ‘Great Jesus daily steps of his bright throne/And gives them hart embraces every one.’ Colonial Puritan elegies such as this one challenge our inherited scholarly categories, which contrast a spiritualized Christian heaven with a corporeal Muslim one and set ‘a distant, majestic [Protestant] God’ in opposition to the intimate afterlife of medieval Catholic mystics. The most interesting part about Elizabeth Tompson’s elegy, however, is that she narrates it herself. Benjamin imagined her speaking to him from the bosom of Christ, saying ‘I Dare not tell what hear in heart i find’, and then going on to describe her experience of the afterlife in the first person. Christ leads her to the top of a ‘mount of pleasure’ where, she says, ‘i [have] all [the] flowers of paradice to Crop.’ A Protestant saint embracing a physical Jesus, picking flowers to her heart’s content, and telling her brother about it – these are all images which challenge our notions of early modern views of heaven and demonstrate the fruitfulness of elegies, or funeral poems, for opening up the imaginative worlds of early modern belief.

On interaction in herbals from Middle English to Early Modern English

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martti Mäkinen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Middle English ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Middle Ages

The focus of this article is on interaction in Middle English and Early Modern English herbals. In the Middle Ages, herbals were mainly instructive aids for producing medicines of the plants described in the text. Later, in the Early Modern English period, the herbal genre split into two, retaining the genre called herbals and giving birth to systematic botanical texts. The interaction established in texts can be studied through the use of pronouns (involvement markers) and the use of imperatives. This study shows that the strategies employed in the Middle English period are very different from the strategies in the Early Modern English period: the use of second-person pronouns and imperatives prevails in the Middle English period, whereas the use of first-person pronouns was preferred in the Early Modern English period. In addition to this, another division, irrespective of the time of writing, is observed in the material: the first group includes handbooks and practical herbals, and the other group learned and empirical herbals. Factors which explain these differences in interaction strategies are the purposes for writing and the education of the intended audience.

Admiration and Awe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Bell Tower ◽  
Negotiation Of Identity ◽  
Historical Controversy

This book offers the first systematic analysis of the cultural and religious appropriation of Andalusian architecture by Spanish historians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early Modern Spain was left with a significant Islamic heritage: Córdoba Mosque had been turned into a cathedral, in Seville the Aljama Mosque’s minaret was transformed into a Christian bell tower, and Granada Alhambra had become a Renaissance palace. To date this process of Christian appropriation has frequently been discussed as a phenomenon of hybridisation. However, during that period the construction of a Spanish national identity became a key focus of historical discourse. The aforementioned cultural hybridity encountered partial opposition from those seeking to establish cultural and religious homogeneity. The Iberian Peninsula’s Islamic past became a major concern and historical writing served as the site for a complex negotiation of identity. Historians and antiquarians used a range of strategies to re-appropriate the meaning of medieval Islamic heritage as befitted the new identity of Spain as a Catholic monarchy and empire. On one hand, the monuments’ Islamic origin was subjected to historical revisions and re-identified as Roman or Phoenician. On the other hand, religious forgeries were invented that staked claims for buildings and cities having been founded by Christians prior to the arrival of the Muslims in Spain. Islamic stones were used as core evidence in debates shaping the early development of archaeology, and they also became the centre of a historical controversy about the origin of Spain as a nation and its ecclesiastical history.

scholarly journals Human Enhancements and Voting: Towards a Declaration of Rights and Responsibilities of Beings

Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
S. J. Blodgett-Ford
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
To Come ◽  
Additional Option

The phenomenon and ethics of “voting” will be explored in the context of human enhancements. “Voting” will be examined for enhanced humans with moderate and extreme enhancements. Existing patterns of discrimination in voting around the globe could continue substantially “as is” for those with moderate enhancements. For extreme enhancements, voting rights could be challenged if the very humanity of the enhanced was in doubt. Humans who were not enhanced could also be disenfranchised if certain enhancements become prevalent. Voting will be examined using a theory of engagement articulated by Professor Sophie Loidolt that emphasizes the importance of legitimization and justification by “facing the appeal of the other” to determine what is “right” from a phenomenological first-person perspective. Seeking inspiration from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948, voting rights and responsibilities will be re-framed from a foundational working hypothesis that all enhanced and non-enhanced humans should have a right to vote directly. Representative voting will be considered as an admittedly imperfect alternative or additional option. The framework in which voting occurs, as well as the processes, temporal cadence, and role of voting, requires the participation from as diverse a group of humans as possible. Voting rights delivered by fiat to enhanced or non-enhanced humans who were excluded from participation in the design and ratification of the governance structure is not legitimate. Applying and extending Loidolt’s framework, we must recognize the urgency that demands the impossible, with openness to that universality in progress (or universality to come) that keeps being constituted from the outside.

The First Millennium bc: Temple Enclosure or Urban Citadel?

2004 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-276
Author(s):  
Barry Kemp
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
The South ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
First Millennium Bc ◽  
The City ◽  
Frequent Reference

The first millennium bc brought warfare to the interior of Egypt on a significant scale. We have two vivid records, one written and the other pictorial. The former is a first-person narrative of the Napatan (Sudanese) king Piankhy who, having gained control of the south of Egypt, embarked in 730 bc on a methodical subjugation of the rest of the country, then under the rule of several local families. During the seemingly irresistible northward progress of his army Piankhy makes frequent reference to walls with battlements and gates which could be countered with siege towers/battering rams and the erection of earthen ramps, although Piankhy himself preferred the tactic of direct storming. Within the circuit of these walls lay treasuries and granaries and, in the case of the city of Hermopolis in Middle Egypt, the palace of the local king Nemlut together with its stables for horses.

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