Diplomatic Writing as Aristocratic Self-Fashioning

2019 ◽  
pp. 190-202
Author(s):  
Christine Vogel
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
The Social ◽  
French Court ◽  
Social Logic ◽  
Dynamic Research

Taking French ambassadorial reports from the reign of Louis XIV as an example, this chapter argues that in their letters to their superiors, French ambassadors expressed themselves not primarily as professional diplomats, but as eminent members of French court society and potential aspirants to even higher charges and honours. First and foremost, early modern diplomats abided by the ethos of patronage. Far from home, the ambassador still obeyed the social logic of court factions, clientele networks, and competition for prestige. His letters had to compensate for his physical absence from Versailles, as his only currency in the French court society’s economy of honour. The ambassador therefore used his letters as a specific means of displaying his skills and abilities, and distinguishing and expressing himself. He could fashion himself as honnête homme, noble warrior, or pious man of letters—or whatever aristocratic virtue seemed appropriate. In this sense, his letters were genuine self-narratives, and diplomatic history could therefore benefit greatly from methods and concepts elaborated in the dynamic research field of early modern ego-documents. By understanding diplomatic writing as noble self-fashioning and analysing diplomatic correspondence as self-narratives, this chapter reassesses the proper role and specific functioning of diplomacy in early modern political culture.

Morisco Prophecies at the French Court (1602-1607)

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 91-123
Author(s):  
Mayte Green-Mercado
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Social ◽  
French Court

Abstract This article presents a case study of a rebellion conspiracy organized by a group of Moriscos—Spanish Muslims forcibly converted to Catholicism—in the early seventeenth century. In order to carry out their plans, these Moriscos sought assistance from the French king Henry iv (r. 1589-1610). Analyzing a Morisco letter remitted to Henry iv and multiple archival sources, this article argues that prophecy served as a diplomatic language through which Moriscos communicated with the most powerful Mediterranean rulers of their time. A ‘connected histories’ approach to the study of Morisco political activity underscores the ubiquity of prophecies and apocalyptic expectations in the social life and political culture of the early modern Mediterranean. As a language of diplomacy, apocalyptic discourse allowed for minor actors such as the Moriscos to engage in politics in a language that was deemed mutually intelligible, and thus capable of transcending confessional boundaries.

5. The courtier

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Cronk
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
The Social ◽  
French Court ◽  
Ancien Régime

Voltaire worked hard throughout his life to establish and defend his status as an author within the social hierarchy of the ancien régime, with varying degrees of success, but with unflagging determination. ‘The courtier’ charts his time at the French court in 1725 and 1745–6, at the Prussian court of Frederick 1750–3, and his extensive correspondence with Catherine the Great. It describes Voltaire’s role as the Royal Historiographer in 1745 and some of his key works including the opera collaboration with Rameau, Le Temple de la gloire (1745), his historical masterpiece Siècle de Louis XIV (1751), and his world history, Essai sur les mœurs (1756).

FRENCH CROSSINGS: I. TALES OF TWO CITIES

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Jones
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
French History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Success Story ◽  
The Social ◽  
Revolutionary Politics ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Personal Attitudes

ABSTRACTUnder the general title, ‘French Crossings’, the presidential addresses over the next four years will explore intersections and relationships between cultures, periods, disciplines, approaches, historiographies and problems, all within the general field of early modern and modern French history. ‘Tales of Two Cities’ takes as its approach both comparative history andl'histoire croisée. It compares and contrasts the very differing cultural impact on each side of the Channel of one of the most influential British novels about Franco-British political culture, namely, Charles Dickens'sA Tale of Two Cities(1859). The novel has been conventionally hailed in England, especially from the end of the nineteenth century, as a parable unfavourably contrasting France's revolutionary tradition with the allegedly more humane political evolutionism of England. In France, the novel has been largely ignored or else viewed as a Burkean rant. Yet Dickens's personal attitudes towards France and in particular Paris suggests a more ambiguous and complicated history. For Dickens, modern Paris, as regenerated under Haussmann, was a brilliant success story against which he contrasted both Paris in the 1790s and the social and political circumstances he claimed to detect within English metropolitan culture in the recent past and present. Dickens views the radical and disinherited workers’ suburb of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine less, it is suggested, as quintessentially French than as quintessentially plebeian, and the prospect of a slide into revolutionary politics as a lurking threat within England as well as France.

The Marketing-Character in Fiction: Len Deighton's Close up (1972) as a Sociological Description of Post-War Hollywood and the Process of Americanisation

2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Helmut Kuzmics
Keyword(s):  
Public School ◽  
The Self ◽  
Movie Industry ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
The Social ◽  
French Court ◽  
Post War

Len Deighton's book, although not well known among sociologists, provided as early as 1972 a profound and shrewd analysis not only of the American movie industry, its milieux and culture of deception and their influence on old Europe, but also of the more general mechanisms of a radical marketisation of the self. The novel can, thus, contribute to a better understanding of America's hegemonic position in Europe, insofar as it results in far-reaching Americanisation. The legionary barracks of the Romans, the French Court of Louis XIV and the English Public School have found their legitimate successor in the social fabric of Hollywood and the American spirit of commercial entertainment.

Indecorum

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Mackay
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Early Modern Theatre ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Social Logic

This chapter examines the ways in which the traffic between life and stage is always governed by a set of social, ethical, and interpretive norms, the violation of which threatens to humiliate (at best) or physically harm (at worst) the spectator. More specifically, it considers the problem of epistemological decorum in early modern theatre and describes the figure of the female playgoer as a model for indecorous participation, one that knowingly exploits the tensions between actuality and theatricality in order to sustain the play while also revealing its dependence upon the absorption and judgement of audiences. The chapter first provides an overview of the social logic of decorum in early modern England before turning to the perceptual contract that makes theatrical fiction possible. It argues that such a contract must be upheld by spectators in so many different ways at once—imaginatively, affectively, ethically—that it may dissolve at any moment; indeed, any act of theatre worth the same will always seek deliberately to push this contract to its limit.

Multiple-source Record Linkage in a Rural Industrial Community, 1680–1820

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve King
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Multiple Source ◽  
Demographic Analysis ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Industrial Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Broad Outline

Re-creating the social, economic and demographic life-cycles of ordinary people is one way in which historians might engage with the complex continuities and changes which underlay the development of early modern communities. Little, however, has been written on the ways in which historians might deploy computers, rather than card indexes, to the task of identifying such life cycles from the jumble of the sources generated by local and national administration. This article suggests that multiple-source linkage is central to historical and demographic analysis, and reviews, in broad outline, some of the procedures adopted in a study which aims at large scale life cycle reconstruction.

Brabantia: decoding the main characters of Utopia

Moreana ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (Number 187- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 151-182
Author(s):  
Maarten M.K. Vermeir
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political System ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Home Town ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
Political Thinker

In this study, we propose a new understanding, according to the principles of ‘humanistic interpretation’, of a fundamental layer of meaning in Utopia. In the work of Thomas More, major references can be found to the particular genesis and a crucial purpose of Utopia. Desiderius Erasmus arranged the acquaintance of Thomas More with Peter Giles, a key figure in the development of Erasmus as political thinker. More and Giles together in Antwerp (Giles’s home town), both jurists and humanists, would lay the foundation of Utopia. With this arranged contact, Erasmus handed over to More the knowledge of a particular political system - the earliest form of ‘parliamentary democracy’ in Early modern Europe - embedded in the political culture of the Duchy of Brabant and its constitution, named the ‘Joyous Entry’. We argue that Erasmus, through the indispensable politicalliterary skills of More in Utopia, intended to promote this political system as a new, political philosophy: applicable to all nations in the Respublica Christiana of Christian humanism. With reference to this genesis of Utopia in the text itself and its prefatory letters, we come to a clear recognition of Desiderius Erasmus in the figure of Raphael Hythlodaeus, the sailor who had discovered the ‘isle of Utopia’ and discoursed, as reported by More, about its ‘exemplary’ institutions.

A estranha objetividade do valor: trabalho, ideologia e capital no pensamento de Marx

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-175
Author(s):  
Wécio Pinheiro Araújo
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Sao Paulo ◽  
Social Representation ◽  
Labor Process ◽  
São Paulo ◽  
Concrete Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Logic ◽  
The One

Resumo: Em O Capital, Marx nos alertou que a mercadoria tem um caráter misterioso que carrega “sutilezas metafísicas e argúcias teológicas”. Este artigo tenta decifrar um pouco desse mistério buscando decodifica-lo naquilo que denominamos como a estranha objetividade do valor. Para isso, analisamos a relação entre a ideologia e o valor a partir da crítica marxiana à mercadoria, consignada à lógica de Hegel. Vemos que o valor se constitui como razão ontológica da mercadoria enquanto produto do processo de trabalho que carrega uma racionalidade imanente, isto é, um espírito socialmente produzido que se objetiva à medida que é vivenciado pelos indivíduos como uma lógica social que rege as relações nesta sociedade. Isso se dá por meio de “sutilezas metafísicas” na formação da realidade social marcada por contradições estabelecidas entre, de um lado, o conteúdo objetivo das relações sociais, e de outro, a forma como essas relações são vivenciadas pela consciência na sociedade capitalista. Nesta relação entre conteúdo e forma, encontramos determinações de profundidade ontológica entre o valor e a ideologia, enquanto forma social que opera harmonizando as contradições constituintes da realidade social, a exemplo do que acontece no trabalho assalariado. A mediação ideológica se põe como uma progressão imanente à materialização da vivência concreta da relação entre capital e trabalho no salário, de maneira a naturalizar a exploração que se esconde na estranha objetividade do valor que se realiza na troca de mercadorias. Concluímos que a conexão ontológica entre o ser social e a mercadoria é socialmente ubíqua, precisamente por conta do seu caráter ideológico na formação da sociabilidade a partir do processo de trabalho subjugado ao capital.  Palavras-chave: Valor. Ideologia. Trabalho, Capital. Salário.  Abstract: In Capital, Marx warned us that the commodity has a mysterious character bearing "metaphysical subtleties and theological insights." This article attempts to decipher a little of this mystery by decoding it into what we call the strange objectivity of value. For this, we analyze the relation between ideology and value from the Marxian critique of the commodity, consigned to the Hegelian logic. We see that value is constituted as the ontological reason of the commodity as the product of the labor process that carries an immanent rationality, that is, a socially produced spirit that is objectified as it is experienced by the individuals as a social logic that governs the relations in this society. This is done through "metaphysical subtleties" in the formation of social reality marked by contradictions established between, on the one hand, the objective content of social relations, and on the other, the way in which these relations are experienced by consciousness in capitalist society. In this relationship between content and form, we find determinations of ontological depth between value and ideology, as a social form that operates by harmonizing the constituent contradictions of social reality, as in wage labor. Ideological mediation is seen as an immanent progression to the materialization of the concrete experience of the relation between capital and labor in wage, in order to naturalize the exploitation that is hidden in the strange objectivity of the value that is realized in the exchange of commodities. We conclude that the ontological connection between the social being and the commodity is socially ubiquitous precisely because of its ideological character in the formation of sociability from the labor process subjugated to capital.  Keywords: Value. Labor. Ideology. Capital. Wage.  REFERÊNCIAS  ADORNO, Theodor W. Teoria Estética. [Asthetische Theorie]. Tradução de Artur Morão. – São Paulo : Livraria Martins Fontes, 1988.  ADORNO, Theodor W. Três estudos sobre Hegel. [Drei Studien zu Hegel]. Tradução: Ulisses Razzante Vaccari. – 1. Ed. – São Paulo: Editora Unesp, 2013.  ARAÚJO, Wécio Pinheiro. Ideologia e capital: crítica da razão imanente à sociedade moderna. Tese de doutorado. João Pessoa, PB; Leipzig, Saxônia, UFPB/UFPE/UFRN-HGB, 2018.  ARTHUR, Christopher J. A nova dialética e “O Capital” de Marx. Tradução de Pedro C. Chadarevian. – São Paulo : Edipro, 2016.   DUSSEL, Enrique. A Produção Teórica de Marx: um comentário sobre os Grundrisse. Tradução de José Paulo Netto. – 1 ed. – São Paulo : Expressão Popular, 2012. GERAS, Norman. Marx and the Critique of Political Economy. In: Ideology and Social Science: politics, sociology, anthropology, economics, history. – Ed. by Robin Blackburn, Fontana/Collins, 1977, p. 284-305.  JAEGGI, Rahel. Alienation: News directions in Critical Theory. Columbia Uni. Press, 2014.  HERÁCLITO, de Éfeso. Heráclito : fragmentos contextualizados. Tradução, apresentação e comentários Alexandre Costa. – São Paulo : Odysseus Editora, 2012.  HEGEL, G. W. F. Fenomenologia do Espírito [Phänomenologie des Geistes]. Tradução de Paulo Meneses; com a colaboração de Karl-Heinz Efken, e José Nogueira Machado. – 5. ed. – Petrópolis, RJ : Vozes : Bragança Paulista, Editora Universitária São Francisco, 2008.  MARX, Karl. Das Kapital: Der Produktionprozess des Kapitals. Erster Band, Erstes Buch (Kapitel XVI-LII). Hamburg, Nikol Verlag., 2016.  MARX, Karl. Grundrisse: manuscritos econômicos de 1857-1858 : esboços da crítica da economia política. – supervisão editorial Mario Duayer; tradução Mario Duayer, Nélio Schneider (colaboração de Alice Helga Werner e Rudiger Hoffman). – São Paulo : Boitempo; Rio de Janeiro: Ed. UFRJ, 2011.  MARX, Karl. Manuscritos econômico-filosóficos. [Ökonomie-philosophische Manuskripte] Tradução, apresentação e notas de Jesus Ranieri. - 2. reimp. - São Paulo : Boitempo Editorial, 2008.  MARX, Karl. O Capital – Crítica da Economia Política. Livro 1 – O Processo de Produção do Capital. Vol. I – 10 ª. Edição, Tradução de Reginaldo Sant’ Anna. Do original em alemão: DAS KAPITAL – Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Buch I: Der Produktionsprozes des Kapitals, Quarta edição, 1890). São Paulo : DIFEL, 1985.  MARX, Karl. O Capital – Crítica da Economia Política. Livro 1 – O processo de produção do capital. Do original em alemão: DAS KAPITAL – Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Buch 1: Der Produktionsprozess des Kapitals.  – São Paulo: Boitempo, 2013.   NICHOLS, Bill. Ideology and the Image: Social Representation in the Cinema and Other Media. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981.

The Rhetoric of the Page

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurie Maguire
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Blank Space ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
The Social ◽  
Google Books ◽  
The Rich

This book explores blank space in early modern printed books; it addresses physical blank space (from missing words to vacant pages) as well as the concept of the blank. It is a book about typographical marks, readerly response, and editorial treatment. It is a story of the journey from incunabula to Google books, told through the signifiers of blank space: empty brackets, dashes, the et cetera, the asterisk. It is about the semiotics of print and about the social anthropology of reading. The book explores blank space as an extension of Elizabethan rhetoric with readers learning to interpret the mise-en-page as part of a text’s persuasive tactics. It looks at blanks as creators of both anxiety and of opportunity, showing how readers respond to what is not there and how writers come to anticipate that response. Each chapter focuses on one typographical form of what is not there on the page: physical gaps (Chapter 1), the &c (Chapter 2) and the asterisk (Chapter 3). The Epilogue uncovers the rich metaphoric life of these textual phenomena and the ways in which Elizabethan printers experimented with typographical features as they considered how to turn plays into print.

Baroque Dance

2018 ◽  
pp. 263-285
Author(s):  
Jennifer Nevile
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Design Principles ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Scientific Thought ◽  
The Social ◽  
French Court ◽  
Concept Of Beauty

Baroque dance was inseparable from music and theater, with its role in multimedia spectacles giving it a dramatic power and an expressive passion. It was part of politics and diplomacy; it was influenced by contemporary artistic attitudes as they pertained to the concept of beauty and artistic design principles, as well as trends in philosophic and scientific thought; and it reflected the organization of society and the social interactions of the upper levels of society. Dance taught self-control, which was itself a sign of noble virtue and a graceful bearing. While each country had its own national dance traditions, the fundamental characteristics of baroque dance was French; the practice as performed at the French court and the Opéra. The years 1630–1750 saw changes in styles and dance genres, major innovations in the methods of notating choreographies, as well as visible and substantial changes in the bodily deportment of dancers.

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