Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 226-228
Author(s):  
Robert Collis ◽  
Natalie Bayer
Keyword(s):  
History Of ◽  
Religious Enthusiasm

The conclusion to this book emphasises the important legacy of the Avignon Society in terms of its role in disseminating millenarian doctrine, in particular, throughout Europe for nearly half a century, between 1779 and 1822. It shows the lasting impact of the society by highlighting the remarkable impact of Madame Bouche on Emperor Alexander at a crucial moment in the history of Russia and Europe as a whole. At the same time, the conclusion also reminds the reader about the hostility shown towards the society by government authorities in Russia, the papal territories, and in revolutionary France. This opposition was based on disdain for heretical strands of religious enthusiasm, as well as a fear of the millenarian dynamic of the society, which was often viewed as undermining the pillars of authority. This anxiety about the revolutionary dynamic of the Avignon Society was exacerbated by a profound confusion about the supposed radical agenda of the group, which was often conflated with the atheistic doctrine of the Bavarian Illuminati.

Archival Enthusiasm

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-102
Author(s):  
Lindsay V. Reckson
Keyword(s):  
Jim Crow ◽  
Political History ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Death Scene ◽  
Moving Body ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Enthusiasm

This chapter examines the ecstatic performances haunting Stephen Crane’s 1895 narrative of the Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage. While much has been made of the way the novel strategically “forgets” the political history of the war, this chapter analyzes the novel’s complex overlay of religious enthusiasm and minstrel performance, exploring how Red Badge deploys these forms in order to grapple with the embodied semiotics of the Jim Crow era. Recovering traces of the midcentury minstrel figure “Dandy Jim of Caroline” in Jim Conklin’s exuberant death scene, the chapter argues that the narrative afterlife of such traces reveals the novel’s tendency to simultaneously erase and embed the excesses of war and postwar racial violence. Marking the historical resonance between minstrelsy and religious enthusiasm in their objectification of the moving body, Red Badge’s performances treat bodies as kinetic archives, whose stylized gestures offer stunning testimony to history’s traumatic returns. In this sense, the novel treats the ambivalence of performance as precisely the arena in which literature might grapple with history’s unaccountable remainders.

The Social Origins and Provenance of the English Bishops during the Reign of Edward II

1959 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
K. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Early Career ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
The Social ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
History Of

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.

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