The Classical Tradition

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Kallendorf
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Reception Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Intellectual Elite ◽  
Past Generation ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Renaissance Studies

Even the word “Renaissance” (“rebirth” in French) points to the effort to revive the learning of antiquity that motivated the intellectual elite of that era—for what sprang forth was an urgent awareness of the ancient past, prompting innovations in both ideas and the arts. The classical tradition, accordingly, has long played a central role in Renaissance studies. With the growing interest in nonelite cultures, the classical tradition in what is now sometimes called the early modern period has had to share the scholarly stage with an ever-increasing number of other areas of inquiry, but the recent burst of activity in reception studies has given the classical heritage a new lease on life along with a way to engage with the more theoretical discourse that has flourished in other areas of Renaissance studies over the past generation.

The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Colonization and the Discontinuity of the Classical Tradition

1992 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 808-828 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter D. Mignolo
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
New Directions ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
European Renaissance

Adistinctive feature in the new directions I have selected for this presentation is what I call the “darker side” of the European Renaissance, which could be condensed in “the discontinuity of the classical tradition.” Such discontinuity becomes apparent in the fractured cultural products which do not conform to the aesthetic norms of the early modern period, and they are, consequently, marginalized from histories of ideas, art or literature. I have also used elsewhere the expression “colonial semiosis” to distinguish the fractured semiotic practices in the colonial periphery resulting from the clash between hegemonic norms and values guiding semiotic practices in metropolitan centers, their extension to the colonial periphery, and the resistance and adaptation to them from the perspective of the native population to whose historical legacy the European Renaissance was quite meaningless. I have selected, therefore, those scholarly works which have in the past fifteen years introduced a new perspective by looking at the European Renaissance from the New World colonial periphery.

The Folly of the Cross

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Viladesau
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Theology Of The Cross ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Satisfaction Model

This work surveys the ways in which theologians, artists, and composers of the early modern period dealt with the passion and death of Christ. The fourth volume in a series, it locates the theology of the cross in the context of modern thought, beginning with the Enlightenment, which challenged traditional Christian notions of salvation and of Christ himself. It shows how new models of salvation were proposed by liberal theology, replacing the older “satisfaction” model with theories of Christ as bringer of God’s spirit and as social revolutionary. It shows how the arts during this period both preserved the classical tradition and responded to innovations in theology and in style.

HISTORY, MEMORY, AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRA WALSHAM
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
Inaugural Lecture ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The University

ABSTRACTThis article is a revised and expanded version of my inaugural lecture as Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, delivered on 20 Oct. 2011. It explores how the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reshaped perceptions of the past, stimulated shifts in historical method, and transformed the culture of memory, before turning to the interrelated question of when and why contemporaries began to remember the English Reformation as a decisive juncture and critical turning point in history. Investigating the interaction between personal recollection and social memory, it traces the manner in which remembrance of the events of the 1530s, 1540s, and 1550s evolved and splintered between 1530 and 1700. A further theme is the role of religious and intellectual developments in the early modern period in forging prevailing models of historical periodization and teleological paradigms of interpretation.

scholarly journals Alternative Pasts and Colonial Engagements in the North: The Materiality and Meanings of the Pajala ‘Runestone’ (Vinsavaara Stone), Northern Sweden

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-628
Author(s):  
Vesa-Pekka Herva ◽  
Janne Ikäheimo ◽  
Matti Enbuske ◽  
Jari Okkonen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
General Level ◽  
Northern Sweden ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Cosmological Context ◽  
Ancient Times

The unknown and exotic North fascinated European minds in the early modern period. A land of natural and supernatural wonders, and of the indigenous Sámi people, the northern margins of Europe stirred up imagination and a plethora of cultural fantasies, which also affected early antiquarian research and the period understanding of the past. This article employs an alleged runestone discovered in northernmost Sweden in the seventeenth century to explore how ancient times and northern margins of the continent were understood in early modern Europe. We examine how the peculiar monument of the Vinsavaara stone was perceived and signified in relation to its materiality, landscape setting, and the cultural-cosmological context of the Renaissance–Baroque world. On a more general level, we use the Vinsavaara stone to assess the nature and character of early modern antiquarianism in relation to the period's nationalism, colonialism and classicism.

Einleitung: Staatsfinanzen und Konflikt

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-302
Author(s):  
Korinna Schönhärl ◽  
Mark Spoerer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Modern State ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Central Arena

Abstract The following issue arose from a section at the Congress for Economic and Social History in Regensburg in March 2019 and focuses on fiscal conflicts in Europe from the early modern period until today. Distributive fiscal conflicts are seen here as a probe into the past which can increase our understanding of historical social structures. Fiscal history is analysed as a central arena of the modern state. The introduction provides an overview of current research into fiscal history in Germany and of the contributions presented in this focus issue.

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.

Cruisy Historicism

2021 ◽  
pp. 150-185
Author(s):  
James M. Bromley
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Sexual Practice ◽  
The Past ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Historical Methodology ◽  
The Erotic

This chapter articulates a historical methodology, cruisy historicism, for attending to the erotic possibilities of the resistances from minor voices within a text and the mismatch between text and historical context. Drawn analogically from queer public sexual practices, cruisy historicism is particularly suited to unpacking the queer sexual possibilities that inhere in these multiplicities and misalignments. This methodology is explored via the intersection of clothing and space in Ben Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour. The play depicts lavishly dressed male characters circulating knowledge about queer forms of eroticism and subjectivity in the middle aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral, a place famed for its parading gallants in the early modern period. This chapter uses cruisy historicism to access the utopian fantasies surrounding extravagant apparel that exceed their historical and satiric contexts. In addition, cruisy historicism invites readers to encounter texts that do not seem especially welcoming to queerness so as to rework them into sites in which queer pleasure can animate one’s relationship with the past and compel us to rethink present-day political demarcations of legitimate forms of sexual practice.

scholarly journals The Game of the Sphere or of the Universe — a Spiral Race Game from 17th century France

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Adrian Seville
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Planetary Motion ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Tycho Brahe ◽  
Classical Knowledge ◽  
The Universe

Abstract Simple race games, played with dice and without choice of move, are known from antiquity. In the late 16th century, specific examples of this class of game emerged from Italy and spread rapidly into other countries of Europe. Pre-eminent was the Game of the Goose, which spawned thousands of variants over the succeeding centuries to the present day, including educational, polemical and promotional variants.1 The educational variants began as a French invention of the 17th century, the earliest of known date being a game to teach Geography, the Jeu du Monde by Pierre Duval, published in 1645. By the end of the century, games designed to teach several of the other accomplishments required of the noble cadet class had been developed: History, the Arts of War, and Heraldry being notable among them. A remarkable example of a game within this class is the astronomical game, Le Jeu de la Sphere ou de l’Univers selon Tycho Brahe, published in 1661 by E(s)tienne Vouillemont in Paris. The present paper analyses this game in detail, showing how it combines four kinds of knowledge systems: natural philosophy, based on the Ptolemaic sphere; biblical knowledge; astrology, with planetary and zodiacal influences; and classical knowledge embodied in the names of the constellations. The game not only presents all four on an equal footing but also explores links between them, indicating some acceptance of an overall knowledge-system. Despite the title, there is no evidence of the Tychonian scheme for planetary motion, nor of any Copernican or Galilean influence. This game is to be contrasted with medieval race games, based on numerology and symbolism, and with race games towards the end of the Early Modern period in which science is fully accepted.

Algol anomaly or careful observations of its brightness? The values recorded for the magnitude of Algol in the medieval astronomical corpus

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-103
Author(s):  
S. Mohammad Mozaffari ◽  
Jeremy J. Drake
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Accretion Rate ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Yuan Dynasty ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Star Catalog ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Tycho Brahe ◽  
The Yuan Dynasty

The historical evidence from the past two millennia show two problems concerning the star Algol (β Per): First, a critical variation in its brightness from a magnitude m ~ 2 in (1) Ptolemy’s Almagest (2nd century AD) and reported by (2) al-Ṣūfī (10th ct.) through its diminution to m = 4 in (3) the star catalog prepared by the Persian astronomers in service of the Yuan dynasty of China in the 13th ct. to becoming brighter, m = 3, as reported by (4) Ibn al-Shāṭir (14th ct.) and (5) Tycho Brahe (16th ct.). In the early modern period, it returned back to m ~ 2, as reported, for example, by Hevelius and Flamsteed (17th ct.), before the discovery of its periodic variability in 1783. Second, al-Ṣūfī reports it as a red star. We present detailed analyses of the sources (3) and (4) for the test of their accuracy and reliability. Our conservative hypothesis concerning the first problem is that the past astronomers observed the star at various phases of its 3-day period of variability. We reject the reddening to have arisen from the extinction due to either the Earth’s atmosphere or an interstellar medium. For resolving both problems, we instead speculate on astrophysical explanations for the observations. These are: copious dust produced as a result of arrested coronal mass ejections or pulverized planetary debris that resides close to the central binary before being dispersed; and a much-enhanced accretion rate that lead Algol into a W Ser-like state in which the primary was enveloped in an inflated accretion disk. We draw an analogy between the dimming of Algol and the recent dimming of Betelgeuse in order to highlight the value of historical observations for understanding astrophysical phenomena.

Forms of Emplacement

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-64
Author(s):  
Andrew Bozio
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Intimate Relationship ◽  
Ambient Environment ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Architectural Model ◽  
The Way

Taking its cue from William Sly’s performance of a disoriented playgoer in the Induction to John Marston’s The Malcontent, this chapter puts theatrical performance in dialogue with two other modes of thinking through place in the early modern period: first, what Mary Carruthers has termed the “architectural” model of the arts of memory, and, second, chorography, or the practice of describing a region in terms of its topographical features and history. It argues that these modes resemble one another in depicting place as a kind of phenomenological assemblage, one that comes into being as the disparate features of an ambient environment are perceived and organized within embodied thought. This resemblance reveals the intimate relationship between environment and embodied thought within the early modern English playhouse, and it thereby suggests that theatrical performance was less a form of spatial abstraction than a means of transforming the way that playgoers perceived, experienced, and navigated their surroundings.

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