Performative aspects of late medieval English wills

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Legal Enforcement ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Literate Culture

This paper presents a case study of the fifty earliest English wills in the Court of Probate, London, with a view to contributing towards highlighting the historical development of this legal genre. By analysing these documents from a pragmatic perspective and setting them in a diachronic framework, I show how the realisation of the act of bequeathing is highly dependent on the socio-cultural context of production and use. Late medieval wills are utterly different from Anglo-Saxon ones in that they are the product of a relatively literate culture in which drafters followed the format of Latin testaments; in this sense late medieval wills are similar to modern ones because they conform to the model of autonomous, formal text. However, they do not fulfil all the felicity conditions necessary to achieve their full constitutive potential as the authority validating these documents remains rooted in religious practices rather than in legal enforcement. This paper offers evidence in favour of the view that a proper pragmatic analysis of medieval documents can only be achieved by taking the historical context into account.

Towards a History of European Physical Sensibility: Pain in the Later Middle Ages

1995 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Physical Pain ◽  
Medieval Medicine ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
History Of ◽  
Positive Force

The ArgumentThe study of pain in a historical context requires a consideration of the cultural context in which pain is sensed and expressed. This paper examines attitudes toward physical pain in the later Middle Ages in Europe from several standpoints: theology, law, and medicine. During the later Middle Ages attitudes toward pain shifted from rejection and a demand for impassivity as a mark of status to a conscious attempt to sense, express, and inflict as much pain as possible. Pain became a positive force, a useful tool for reaching a variety of truths. While this attitude stemmed from the religious wish to identify with Christ's passion, it permeated and affected all spheres of cultural expression and investigation. Late permeated and affected all spheres of cultural expression and investigation. Late medieval medicine accepted pain, trying to relieve it only when it became dangerous to the patient. Given the existence of analgesic medicines at the time, this attitude is comprehensible only within the cultural context of the period.

scholarly journals Cities, nations and divine service: identifying Spanish merchants in late medieval Bruges

Urban History ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-187
Author(s):  
ANDREW BROWN
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Religious Rhetoric ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Foreign Merchants

ABSTRACTThis article explores the relationship between ‘national identity’, the urban environment and its religious practices. As a gateway city, where locals met foreigners to an unusual degree, late medieval Bruges provides a useful case-study. The focus is on the processes that shaped expressions of identity. These often involved religious rhetoric and practices. Foreign merchants, such as the Biscayans and Castilians, were grouped into ‘nations’, and identified with their homelands, especially in their chapels; but why and how they did so was not the result simply of patriotism or a sense of otherness, but of urban and strategic agendas, their own and those of native citizens.

Inheriting the Cultural Context and Constructing the System of Urban Characteristics: A Case Study of Nanjing

2011 ◽  
Vol 368-373 ◽  
pp. 1313-1317
Author(s):  
Lei Ji ◽  
Jiang Huang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Regional Background ◽  
The World ◽  
Nanjing City ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban Characteristics

Nowadays, globalization is gradually sweeping across the world, and the traditional cultural context of the city receives unprecedented impact, the urban characteristics are gradually disappearing and there appears to be the phenomenon of “thousand cities with one face”. In such circumstances, looking through the cultural traditions of the nation, inheriting the cultural context of the city and keeping its own cultural independence and the urban characteristics have been an important issue concerned by the countries. This text takes Nanjing as an example to research on the culture of the city under the regional background from the aspects of geography, culture, economy, society and so on along the historical context. On this basis, there is also a discussion about constructing the system of urban characteristics of Nanjing, underlying causes of and approaches to deal with the the characteristics crisis of current Nanjing City.

The “Ketu Nation” of Brazilian Candomblé in Historical Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-41
Author(s):  
Lisa Earl Castillo
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Atlantic Slave Trade ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Ethnic Origins

Abstract The Afro-Brazilian religion of Candomblé arose during the Atlantic slave trade and has unmistakable Yorùbá influences. In the city of Salvador, the term nação ketu [Ketu nation] is used among the oldest temples in describing Yorùbá heritage. This has led some scholars to assume that the founders came from the Yorùbá kingdom by that name. This paper critically examines the idea of Kétu origins, taking as a case study the temple Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká, a national historic heritage site in Brazil that is recognized by UNESCO as a site of diasporic memory. The paper shows that the first generations of leadership were dominated by people from Ọ̀yọ́ and that the term ketu emerged not as an allusion to ethnic origins but perhaps as a metaphor for a heterogeneous cultural context in which Yorùbá speakers from disparate regions lived in close coexistence.

Culture and the plasticity of perception

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lifshitz ◽  
T. M. Luhrmann
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
The World

Abstract Culture shapes our basic sensory experience of the world. This is particularly striking in the study of religion and psychosis, where we and others have shown that cultural context determines both the structure and content of hallucination-like events. The cultural shaping of hallucinations may provide a rich case-study for linking cultural learning with emerging prediction-based models of perception.

Cristóbal Balenciaga. Explorations in Traditional Spanish Aesthetics

Costume ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-185
Author(s):  
Ana Balda Arana
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Doctoral Thesis ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Religious Iconography

This article investigates how the traditional attire and religious iconography of Cristóbal Balenciaga's (1895–1972) country of origin inspired his designs. The arguments presented here build on what has already been established on the subject, provide new data regarding the cultural context that informed the couturier's creative process (with which the Anglo-Saxon world is less familiar) and conclude by investigating the reasons and timing of his exploration of these fields. They suggest why this Spanish influence is present in his innovations in the 1950s and 1960s and go beyond clichéd interpretations of the ruffles of flamenco dress and bullfighters’ jackets. The findings derive from research for the author's doctoral thesis and her curatorial contribution to the exhibition Coal and Velvet. Balenciaga and Ortiz Echagüe. Views on the Popular Costume (Balenciaga Museum, Getaria, Spain, 7 October 2016–7 May 2017).

A.I. Solzhenitsyn Apropos of Russia’s Future: Specific Outlook Features Depending on Different Historical Context

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 327-334
Author(s):  
Inga V. Zheltikova ◽  
Elena I. Khokhlova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Future ◽  
Pessimistic Attitude ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
Images Of The Future ◽  
The Church

The article considers the dependence of the images of future on the socio-cultural context of their formation. Comparison of the images of the future found in A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s works of various years reveals his generally pessimistic attitude to the future in the situation of social stability and moderate optimism in times of society destabilization. At the same time, the author's images of the future both in the seventies and the nineties of the last century demonstrate the mismatch of social expectations and reality that was generally typical for the images of the future. According to the authors of the present article, Solzhenitsyn’s ideas that the revival of spirituality could serve as the basis for the development of economy, that the influence of the Church on the process of socio-economic development would grow, and that the political situation strongly depends on the personal qualities of the leader, are unjustified. Nevertheless, such ideas are still present in many images of the future of Russia, including contemporary ones.

The Power of Art to Cope With Trauma: Psychosocial Intervention After the Tsunami in Japan

2020 ◽  
pp. 002216782098214
Author(s):  
Tami Gavron
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Psychosocial Intervention ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Psychosocial Interventions ◽  
Kindergarten Teachers ◽  
Japanese Culture ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
The Arts

This article describes the significance of an art-based psychosocial intervention with a group of 9 head kindergarten teachers in Japan after the 2011 tsunami, as co-constructed by Japanese therapists and an Israeli arts therapist. Six core themes emerged from the analysis of a group case study: (1) mutual playfulness and joy, (2) rejuvenation and regaining control, (3) containment of a multiplicity of feelings, (4) encouragement of verbal sharing, (5) mutual closeness and support, and (6) the need to support cultural expression. These findings suggest that art making can enable coping with the aftermath of natural disasters. The co-construction underscores the value of integrating the local Japanese culture when implementing Western arts therapy approaches. It is suggested that art-based psychosocial interventions can elicit and nurture coping and resilience in a specific cultural context and that the arts and creativity can serve as a powerful humanistic form of posttraumatic care.

What Is Hidden in the Small Box? Narratives of Late Antique Roman Palestine in Dialogue

AJS Review ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-94
Author(s):  
Reuven Kiperwasser
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Narrative Tradition ◽  
Judaic Studies ◽  
Roman Palestine ◽  
The Church ◽  
Shared Narrative

This study is a comparative reading of two distinct narrative traditions with remarkably similar features of plot and content. The first tradition is from the Palestinian midrash Kohelet Rabbah, datable to the fifth to sixth centuries. The second is from John Moschos's Spiritual Meadow (Pratum spirituale), which is very close to Kohelet Rabbah in time and place. Although quite similar, the two narratives differ in certain respects. Pioneers of modern Judaic studies such as Samuel Krauss and Louis Ginzberg had been interested in the question of the relationships between early Christian authors and the rabbis; however, the relationships between John Moschos and Palestinian rabbinic writings have never been systematically treated (aside from one enlightening study by Hillel Newman). Here, in this case study, I ask comparative questions: Did Kohelet Rabbah borrow the tradition from Christian lore; or was the church author impressed by the teachings of Kohelet Rabbah? Alternatively, perhaps, might both have learned the shared story from a common continuum of local narrative tradition? Beyond these questions about literary dependence, I seek to understand the shared narrative in its cultural context.

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