Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy

Author(s):  
Michael Meere

The performance of violence on the stage has played an integral role in French tragedy since its inception. Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy is the first book to tell this story. It traces and examines the ethical and poetic stakes of violence, as playwrights were experimenting with the newly discovered genre during decades of religious and civil war (c.1550–1598). The study begins with an overview of the origins of French vernacular tragedy and the complex relationships between violence, performance, ethics, and poetics. The remainder of the book homes in on specific plays and analyzes biblical, mythological, historical, and politically topical tragedies—including the stories of Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, Medea, Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, the Roman general Regulus, and the assassination of the Duke of Guise in 1588—to show how the multifarious uses of violence on stage shed light on a range of pressing issues during that turbulent time such as religion, gender, politics, and militantism.

2021 ◽  
pp. 50-91
Author(s):  
Michael Meere

This chapter analyzes biblical violence in Catholic and Calvinist tragedy by examining dramatic adaptations of the stories of Cain and Abel and David and Goliath. Thomas Lecoq’s Tragédie de Cain (1580) imitates the early sixteenth-century Mistére du Viel Testament and uses Cain’s murder of Abel as a counterexample of virtuous behavior at the peak of the religious wars, encouraging spectators to behave peacefully toward their neighbors despite differing beliefs. The chapter then considers how the Calvinist tragedies by Joachim de Coignac (La Desconfiture de Goliath, c.1551) and Louis Des Masures (David combattant, 1563/1566) use violence as a positive, liberating force. David’s defeat of Goliath mirrors the Reformed Church’s hopeful victory against the Roman Catholic Church. This chapter argues that Coignac and Des Masures depict David’s violence as a morally good act, yet their plays raise theological, moral, and epistemological questions of when and why it is acceptable to kill.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Editors of the JIOWS

The editors are proud to present the first issue of the fourth volume of the Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies. This issue contains three articles, by James Francis Warren (Murdoch University), Kelsey McFaul (University of California, Santa Cruz), and Marek Pawelczak (University of Warsaw), respectively. Warren’s and McFaul’s articles take different approaches to the growing body of work that discusses pirates in the Indian Ocean World, past and present. Warren’s article is historical, exploring the life and times of Julano Taupan in the nineteenth-century Philippines. He invites us to question the meaning of the word ‘pirate’ and the several ways in which Taupan’s life has been interpreted by different European colonists and by anti-colonial movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. McFaul’s article, meanwhile, takes a literary approach to discuss the much more recent phenomenon of Somali Piracy, which reached its apex in the last decade. Its contribution is to analyse the works of authors based in the region, challenging paradigms that have mostly been developed from analysis of works written in the West. Finally, Pawelczak’s article is a legal history of British jurisdiction in mid-late nineteenth-century Zanzibar. It examines one of the facets that underpinned European influence in the western Indian Ocean World before the establishment of colonial rule. In sum, this issue uses two key threads to shed light on the complex relationships between European and other Western powers and the Indian Ocean World.


AJS Review ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-75
Author(s):  
Tamara Morsel-Eisenberg

This article examines early modern learning through Ashkenazic responsa. Beyond explicit evidence from published responsa collections, implicit insights dwell in what these publications lack. These missing features shed light on sixteenth-century scholarly practices. The works’ organizational inconsistencies must be understood in context of learned archives. Such an adjustment offers a corrective to the regnant narrative, which views the introduction of print as a sharp rupture from earlier modes of transmission. This article suggests instead that the culture of printed books coexisted with older approaches, and that print was complemented by more disorderly and unconstrained forms of transmission. Comparing rabbinic “paper-ware” with contemporaneous humanist practices highlights the rabbi's working papers, focusing on a culture's dynamic activity rather than its stable output. This shift in perspective allows us to see rabbinic writings not merely as a collection of books but as a mode of scholarship.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (04-1) ◽  
pp. 4-39
Author(s):  
Olga Konovalova ◽  
Vera Fedorova ◽  
Anna Dvoretskaya

In the publication, O.V. Konovalova, V.I. Fedorova, A.P. Dvoretskaya presented letters 1931-1932 of the leader and theoretician of the party of socialists-revolutionaries V.M. Chernov to a prominent figure of the party O.S. Minor and a representative of Harbin socialists-revolutionaries organization M. I. Klyaver regarding the split of the Foreign delegation of the socialists-revolutionaries. They are preserved in the collection of VM. Chernov of the International Archives and Collections at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. The presented letters help to clarify VM. Chernov’s position on the key issues of the history of the SR party during the Russian revolution, Civil War, and emigration of the 1920s, and also shed light on the deep reasons for the split of the ZD AKP.


Balcanica ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 43-55
Author(s):  
Dragana Amedoski

The role of the vaqf in the Ottoman Empire, as in the whole Islamic world, was quite significant, especially in a period marked by the founding of new orien?tal settlements. The first endowers in the newly-conquered lands were sultans, begs and prominent government officials. Affluent citizens also took part in endowing their cities, and women are known to have been among them. The aim of the paper, based on Ottoman sources, is to shed light on the participation of Muslim women in this kind of humanitarian and lucrative activity using the example of the Sanjak of Krusevac (Alaca His?r) in the sixteenth century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-38
Author(s):  
Gabriela Vargas-Cetina ◽  
Manpreet Kaur Kang

The world in which we live is crisscrossed by multiple flows of people, information, non-human life, travel circuits and goods. At least since the Sixteenth Century, the Americas have received and generated new social, cultural and product trends. As we see through the case studies presented here, modern literature and dance, the industrialization of food and the race to space cannot be historicized without considering the role the Americas, and particularly the United States, have played in all of them. We also see, at the same time, how these flows of thought, art, science and products emerged from sources outside the Americas to then take root in and beyond the United States. The authors in this special volume are devising conceptual tools to analyze this multiplicity across continents and also at the level of particular nations and localities. Concepts such as cosmopolitanism, translocality and astronoetics are brought to shed light on these complex crossings, giving us new ways to look at the intricacy of these distance-crossing flows. India, perhaps surprisingly, emerges as an important cultural interlocutor, beginning with the idealized, imagined versions of Indian spirituality that fueled the romanticism of the New England Transcendentalists, to the importance of Indian dance pioneers in the world stage during the first part of the twentieth century and the current importance of India as a player in the race to space. 


2018 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
David J. Appleby ◽  
Andrew Hopper

The introduction surveys the historical and historiographical contexts which underpin and link the various chapters in Battle-Scarred, before outlining the questions and topics covered in the chapters. By adumbrating trends in military historiography and the history of early modern medicine, the editors highlight how the contributors have utilised potential synergies between these two sub-disciplines in order to make a series of significant contributions to the study of military medicine and war-related welfare. The chapters are arranged in three sections: the first section considers attitudes towards the bodies of the slain and efforts to control epidemic disease in civil-war garrisons; the second brings together professional, political and literary aspects of military medicine; whilst the third explores the complex relationships between war, societal culture, welfare and memorialisation. The editors argue that by examining the myriad ways in which English and Scottish people at various levels of society responded to the trauma and stress of civil war, the volume will help foster a more rounded approach to military history, and a sounder grasp of the historical origins of modern British attitudes towards war-related institutional care.


2020 ◽  
pp. 54-96
Author(s):  
Adam Fox

Chapter 2 surveys the development of the book trade in Edinburgh during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries with a particular emphasis on the production and circulation of more popular works in Scots and English. It traces the development of printing in Edinburgh, looks at the expansion of booksellers in the city, and examines the role of travelling chapmen in disseminating literature across Scotland and into England. The remarkable inventories of Thomas Bassandyne and Robert Gourlaw are examined in some detail in order to shed light on the extensive range of vernacular literature from the London market that was being sold in the Scottish capital in the later sixteenth century.


2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 323-323
Author(s):  
Lissi Hansen ◽  
Susan J. Rosenkranz ◽  
Kathleen Wherity ◽  
Anna Sasaki

323 Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a growing problem worldwide and accounts for more than 700,000 deaths annually. There is no curative treatment for those diagnosed with terminal HCC. This group of patients differs from other populations with liver disease or cancer due to the combined disease processes of cancer and liver failure. Although family members often play an integral role in providing care, no study was found specifically examining family member experiences of caring for patients with terminal HCC. The aim of this study was to describe family members’ experiences and perceptions of providing care for patients with HCC as they near the end of life. Methods: This longitudinal, prospective pilot study described here presents the qualitative results of semi-structured in-person interviews with a convenience sub-sample of 13 family members conducted once a month for up to a 6-month period. The interview guide included questions about family member experiences of providing care for patients living with HCC and any current concerns of significance. Interview data were analyzed using conventional content analysis. Results: Analysis included a total of 39 family member interviews. Ten family members were female and three were male (mean age = 56 years, range = 22-68 years). Family members’ relationships to patients varied and included: spouses, siblings, adult children, parents, and ex-spouses. The analysis resulted in four major themes: perception of and response to terminal HCC diagnosis, HCC progression, symptom assessment and interpretation, and challenges of providing care. Findings were colored by complex relationships between family members and patients that changed or did not change as the disease progressed. Conclusions: This study contributes new knowledge to begin developing interventions that address family members’ need for support, help, and information as the disease progresses and at the end of life. Future research should include a larger sample size that is more ethnically and racially diverse, includes more male family members, and focuses on how care provided by family members may vary based on kinship, and relationship dynamics.


2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 801-845 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate van Orden

This essay studies a large repertory of French laments (complaintes,) written in the voices of women. As a feminine counterpart to masculine love lyric, thecomplaintearose from an alternative poetics, treating subjects excluded fromfin amors, such as death, crime, and war. Essentially, lyric assigned erotic longing to men and mourning to women. The unusual subject matter accommodated by thecomplaintes, coupled with a set of material and musical forms locating them amid the cultures of cheap print, psalmody, and street song, ultimately embroiled them in the battles of the religious wars. Thus female voices came to trumpet confessional politics in songs that levied lyric, gender, and faith to serve in civil war.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document