Afterword

Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee

The recent upturn in biblically based films in Anglophone cinema is the departure point for this Afterword reflecting on the Bible’s impact on popular entertainment and literature in early modern England. Providing a survey of the book’s themes, and drawing together the central arguments, the discussion reminds that literary writers not only read and used the Bible in different ways to different ends, but also imbibed and scrutinized dominant interpretative principles and practices in their work. With this in mind, the Afterword outlines the need for further research into the relationship between biblical readings and literary writings in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.

2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 866-903 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Trevisan

AbstractThe relationship between poetry and painting has been one of the most debated issues in the history of criticism. The present article explores this problematic relationship in the context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, taking into account theories of rhetoric, visual perception, and art. It analyzes a rare case in which a specific school of painting directly inspired poetry: in particular, the ways in which the Netherlandish landscape tradition influenced natural descriptions in the poem Poly-Olbion (1612, 1622) by Michael Drayton (1563–1631). Drayton — under the influence of the artistic principles of landscape depiction as explained in Henry Peacham’s art manuals, as well as of direct observation of Dutch and Flemish landscape prints and paintings — successfully managed to render pictorial landscapes into poetry. Through practical examples, this essay will thoroughly demonstrate that rhetoric is capable of emulating pictorial styles in a way that presupposes specialized art-historical knowledge, and that pictorialism can be the complex product as much of poetry and rhetoric as of painting and art-theoretical vocabulary.


Author(s):  
Katherine Hill

In the the first part of this article* it was shown that neither John Wallis nor Isaac Barrow fits precisely into the modern or traditional categories commonly used by historians. Yet other kinds of tension between tradition and innovation did exist in the wider intellectual community of early modern England that might have some bearing on the state of mathematics. We therefore need to explore how the opposition between ancient and modern was expressed in the seventeenth century. First, there was the religiously based belief in the decay of nature; supporters of this belief regarded traditional methods to be superior. The defenders of the moderns, on the other hand, did not consider the Bible to rule out contemporary improvements on ancient techniques. But the very idea that knowledge could be advanced, particularly beyond the classical works, was still new and strange in this period.1 Second, the dispute surrounding educational reform included the rejection of traditional educational methods. Social and economic pressures led reformers to propose an increased concern with utility and practical methods, which might increase employment. Once the context of the tension between the supporters of the ancients and the supporters of the moderns has been explored, we can ascertain whether Wallis and Barrow stood on different sides in the conflict, and how this may have have influenced their mathematics.


Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee

The Introduction begins with a short discussion of George Herbert’s ‘H. Scriptures II’, a poem that demonstrates, unequivocally, literary interest in the particularities of biblical interpretation. This poem serves as a departure point for a broader survey of scripture’s profound influence on early modern culture and a preview of the book’s objectives. Acknowledging the Bible’s impact on individuals’ daily habits, education, and modes of reading and writing, as well as the period’s poetry, drama, and art, the discussion situates the book’s central concerns and questions in relation to the critical field. Historical and critical approaches to the relationship between early modern literature and the Bible are considered, and a brief preview of the chapters is offered by way of conclusion.


The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance is the first collection of essays to examine the relationship between William Shakespeare and dance. Despite recent academic interest in movement, materiality, and the body—and the growth of dance studies as a disciplinary field—Shakespeare’s employment of dance as both a theatrical device and thematic reference point remains under-studied. The reimagining of his writing as dance works is also neglected as a subject for research. Alan Brissenden’s 1981 Shakespeare and the Dance remains the seminal text for those interested in early modern dancing and its appearances within Shakespearean drama, but this new volume provides a single source of reference for dance as both an integral feature of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture and as a means of translating Shakespearean text into movement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 376-398
Author(s):  
Nigel Smith

Abstract This article contrasts hostility toward visual and literary art in English radical Puritanism before the late seventeenth century with the central role of art for Dutch Mennonites, many involved in the commercial prosperity of Amsterdam. Both 1620s Mennonites and 1650s–1660s Quakers debated the relationship between literal truth of the Bible and claims for the power of a personally felt Holy Spirit. This was the intra-Mennonite “Two-Word Dispute,” and for Quakers an opportunity to attack Puritans who argued that the Bible was literally the Word of God, not the “light within.” Mennonites like Jan Theunisz and Quakers like Samuel Fisher made extensive use of learning, festive subversion and poetry. Texts from the earlier dispute were republished in order to traduce the Quakers when they came to Amsterdam in the 1650s and discovered openness to conversation but not conversion.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-246
Author(s):  
Britt Dams

This article deals with the textual legacy of Dutch Brazil, in particular the ethnographic descriptions in one of the most popular works about the colony: Barlaeus’ Rerum per Octennium in Brasilia et alibi nuper gestarum. Barlaeus never set foot in Brazil, but was an important Dutch intellectual authority in the seventeenth century. To compose the Rerum per Octennium, he relied on a wide variety of available sources, not only firsthand observations, but also classical, biblical and other contemporary sources. From these, he made a careful selection to produce his descriptions. Recent research shows that the Dutch participated in networks of knowledge and imagination as well as in a more familiar early modern trading network. This article reveals that Barlaeus’ descriptions not only circulated as knowledge, but also produced new knowledge. The Rerum soon became one of the standard works about the colony due to the importance of its author and its composition. Furthermore, the article discusses the rhetorical techniques used in some selected descriptions in order to shed light upon the strategies Barlaeus used in his discourse on the strange reality of the New World. For example, his ethnographic descriptions employed parallel customs or events from the classical Antiquity or the Bible. In these comparisons he displays both his intellectual capacities and shows his desire to comprehend this exotic reality.


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Alonso Almeida ◽  
Margarita Mele-Marrero

This paper deals with authorial stance in prefatory material of Early Modern English manuals on women’s diseases. Publications on this field from between 1612 and 1699 constitute our corpus of study. Original digitalised texts have been analysed manually to identify and detect structures concerning authorial identity and stance, according to the model developed by Marín-Arrese (2009). This model for the identification of effective and epistemic stance strategies enables us to describe both the relationship between the authors and their texts and, more specifically, the power relationship between the writers and their audience. One of the most important conclusions of this study concerns the strategic use of stance markers to enhance the quality of these books and make them appropriate for a wide variety of readers.


Author(s):  
Jed Z. Buchwald ◽  
Mordechai Feingold

This chapter examines early modern conceptions regarding population, which impinged crucially on contemporary views—including Isaac Newton’s—regarding chronology, and the veracity of Scripture more generally. The Bible was universally perceived as the only authoritative account of “prehistory,” its divine authorship compelling unqualified assent. The first chapters of Genesis accordingly entailed that mankind had expanded quite rapidly from a common ancestor—both before and, especially, after the Deluge. While commentators on Genesis, especially the more zealous Protestants, saw little reason to engage in vain speculations regarding the number of mankind—or to synchronize sacred and secular histories beyond what Scripture itself required—a handful of chronologers and academic theologians began treading this territory at the turn of the seventeenth century. A pioneer of this new approach was Jean Du Temps (Johannes Temporarius), a French Protestant jurist.


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