Villainy in France (1463-1610)

Author(s):  
Jonathan Patterson

This is a book about the outward manifestation of inner malice—that is to say, villainy—in French culture (1463–1610). In pre-modern France, villainous offences were countered, if never fully contained, by intersecting legal and literary responses. Combining insights from legal anthropology with literary and historical analysis, this study examines villainy across juridical documents, criminal records, and literary texts (broadly conceived). While few people obtained justice through the law, many pursued out-of-court settlements of one kind or another. Literary texts commemorated villainies both fictitious and historical; literature sometimes instantiated the process of redress, and enabled the transmission of conflicts from one context to another. Villainy in France follows this overflowing current of pre-modern French culture, examining its impact within France and across the English Channel. Scholars and cultural critics of the Anglophone world have long been fascinated by villainy and villains. This book reveals the subject’s significant ‘Frenchness’ and establishes a transcultural approach to it in law and literature. Villainy’s particular significance emerges through its representation in authors remembered for their less-than respectable, even criminal, activities: François Villon, Clément Marot, François Rabelais, Pierre de L’Estoile, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Marston, and George Chapman. Villainy in France affords comparison of these authors alongside many of their lesser-known contemporaries; in so doing, it reinterprets French conflicts within a wider European context, from the mid-fifteenth century to the early seventeenth century.

The Perraults ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Oded Rabinovitch

The introduction sets the story of the Perraults against the backdrop of early modern France. It covers the transformation of French culture in the seventeenth century (in its different dimenstion: geographical, social, and institutional, including the rise of academies and salons, the court at Versailles), the history of intellectual families, notions of family strategy, and the use of networks in historical analysis. It also includes an outline of the chapters.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Patterson

The poetry and persona of François Villon have been subject to transcultural reinvention since the fifteenth century (and especially since the nineteenth century, among Anglo-American poets). The legend of Villon goes back to an impecunious poet–criminal who disappeared in 1463, and who both encourages and resists a historicizing interpretation of villainy through his works. This chapter reassesses the singularity of the testator persona in Le Testament Villon (c.1461–2) in his complex vilifying manoeuvres. Some of these have distinct parallels in the early sixteenth-century works of the English poet John Skelton. Yet Villon idiosyncratically instantiates poetic discourse as a para-legal means of attesting to the rigours of torture, where the villain-poet is a direct (if unreliable) witness of his own subjection to judicial punishment.


Urban History ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Antonieta Leite ◽  
João Leitão

Abstract The Portuguese discovered the uninhabited Azores archipelago in 1427 and started to settle it during the fifteenth century. Angra, located on Terceira Island, soon became the most important Azorean city, leading to rapid urban development. This article investigates the overlooked role of streams in the rise of Angra as a pivotal Atlantic urban centre. Through the intersection of historical and flood modelling methods, it makes a unique contribution to our understanding of Angra's urban morphologic development, highlighting the potential of applying urban flood modelling to analysis of the rise of coastal urban settlement.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Hallvard Kjelen

Artikkelen drøfter eit sentralt problemfelt innom litteraturdidaktikken, nemleg tilhøvet mellom litterær lesing som fagleg kompetanse og litterær lesing som oppleving. Problemfeltet er særleg knytt til Louise Rosenblatts arbeid. Ho viser ved hjelp av omgrepa efferent og estetisk lesing korleis det er ei utfordring for litteraturlæraren å utvikle ei litteraturundervisning som i tilstrekkeleg grad tek omsyn til kjensler og røynsler. I ein litteraturteoretisk kontekst er subjektive responsar på litterære tekstar irrelevante, men i ein litteraturdidaktisk kontekst er subjektive responsar høgst relevante. Denne artikkelen bidrar inn i diskusjon-en mellom anna ved å trekkje inn meir empirisk basert litteraturteori som referanseramme. Artikkelen presenterer tre lesarars litterære responsar, og viser korleis kunnskap om individuelle lesarresponsar kan vere utgangspunkt for ei litteraturundervisning som balanserer ei fagleg tilnærming til litteratur opp mot ei meir opplevingsbasert tilnærming.Emneord: Litteraturundervisning, litterær kompetanse, empirisk litteraturteori, lesarresponsAbstractThe article discusses a key issue in literature didactics, namely the relation between literary reading as an academic competence, and literary reading as an experience. The discussion draws heavily on Louise Rosenblatt’s work. By using the concepts efferent and aesthetic reading, she shows how it is a challenge for the teacher of literature to develop literature teaching that adequately takes emotions and experience into account. In a literature-theoretical context, subjective responses to literary texts are irrelevant; but in a didactics context, the subjective responses are highly relevant.  This article contributes to the discussion by bringing in a more empirically based literature theory as a frame of reference. The article presents three readers’ literary responses, and shows how knowledge of individual reader responses can be the basis for literature teaching which balances an academic approach to literature with a more experience-based approach.Key word: Teaching literature, literary competence, empirical literary theory, reader-response 


Author(s):  
Roze Hentschell

This chapter provides an overview of the architectural features, uses, and users of the nave, with discussion of its physical condition. It also discusses the occupations of the nave—the various church-related and secular practices and professions that were carried out in the interior, and emphasizes the commercial activities, including those of labourers, lawyers, clergy, serving men, and criminals. The chapter looks at the newsmongers and walkers of Paul’s, including John Chamberlain, and attempts to reframe the rituals of their ‘walk’ as purposeful rather than idle. Several literary texts, including those by Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Dekker, are discussed. Further, consideration is given to how the nave’s architecture and material features, principally the tombs and monuments influenced the practices by both restricting and affording human agency, all the while affirming the importance of the dead to the living in Paul’s.


Author(s):  
James M. Bromley

This book examines ‘queer style’ or forms of masculinity grounded in superficiality, inauthenticity, affectation, and the display of the extravagantly clothed body in early modern English city comedies. Queer style destabilizes distinctions between able-bodied and disabled, human and nonhuman, and the past and the present—distinctions that have structured normative ways of thinking about sexuality. Glimpsing the worldmaking potential of queer style, plays by Ben Jonson, George Chapman, Thomas Middleton, and Thomas Dekker imagine alternatives to the prevailing modes of subjectivity, sociability, and eroticism in early modern London. While the characters associated with queer style are situated in a hostile generic and historical context, this book draws on recent work on disability, materiality, and queer temporality to rethink their relationship to those contexts so as to access the utopian possibilities of early modern queer style. These theoretical frameworks also help bring into relief how the attachments and pleasures of early modern sartorial extravagance can estrange us from the epistemologies of sexuality that narrow current thinking about sexuality and its relationship to authenticity, pedagogy, interiority, and privacy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 768-790
Author(s):  
Yusup M. Idrisov ◽  
◽  
Ismail I. Khanmurzaev ◽  

Research objectives: To conduct a detailed comparative analysis of the toponymic source known as “Hand Drawn Portolan of the Caspian Sea (1519)” by Vesconte Maggiolo, and ascertain the range and chronology of its sources. Research materials: At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there were a few navigational maps – portolan charts – created in Italy which contained rather precise outlines of the coastline of the Caspian Sea. The present Portolan excels all earlier items in terms of precision of the depicted topographical realities of the region. The quality of the map we are examining was surpassed only in the seventeenth century after Peter I’s hydrographic expeditions. The high level of shoreline’s precision also strongly suggests that the map was based on authentic topographic input. Maggiolo’s map contains 136 geographical names. Results and novelty of the research: For the first time ever in domestic scholarship, we conducted a comparative historical analysis of the hand drawn portolan chart of the Caspian Sea. We also proved the correlation of some toponyms of the West Caspian region with the Timurid and local sources that covered the military campaigns of Amir Timur in the region. In our view, the “Hand Drawn Portolan Chart of the Caspian Sea (1519)” created by Vesconte Maggiolo is one of the most notable among similar works. It finds many common features with the portolan from the island of Lesina, but also contains some common elements with the Mallorca cartographic school and Fra Mauro, Egerton MS 73, and Egerton MS 2083. This research allows us to extend and systematize our understanding of Italian cartography in relation to the Caspian region. It also details or adds some facts about the presence of Europeans in this region during the Golden Horde era. Based on this topographic and toponymic analysis, we furthermore come to a conclusion that the portolan in question is derived from a protograph created in the first half of fifteenth century, reflecting the realities of the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.


2016 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 167-190
Author(s):  
Dragana Ratković

Derivatives with the -i- / -i/y- interfix and a verb as the first component in Serbian, Russian and PolishThe paper gives a comparative historical analysis of derivative words with the i / i/y- interfix and a verb as the first component in Serbian, Russian and Polish from the standpoint of contemporary Slavic morphology (derivatology). The aim is to provide their description in terms of semantic variation. The author ascertains that all the three languages feature a derivational model of forming expressive lexis by means of the i / i/y- interfix, predominantly nouns, of mostly humorous and pejorative meaning. A special group is formed by onyms (nicknames turned surnames, but also toponyms, oronyms, hydronyms etc). This type of words first occurred in Serbian and Russian in the thirteenth century (possibly in Serbian in the eleventh century), and in Polish in the fifteenth century. Judging by the available sources, derivatives with the i- interfix appear frequently in historical as well as modern Serbian, Polish and Russian (much more in Serbian and Polish than in Russian). In Serbian and Russian pre-nineteenth-century sources chiefly given names and nicknames-turnedsurnames were noted (in Russian, also some animal and plant names as well as abstract nouns). In Old Polish, words of the discussed kind are zoological and botanical lexemes; from Middle Polish on, the lexemes encompass all semantic categories characteristic of modern Serbian and Russian. It should, however, be stressed that the inaccessibility of the spoken language as well as the limited number of sources introduce considerable uncertainty to observations regarding the time of origin and vocabulary of the first centuries of Slavic languages. This applies especially to expressively marked lexemes, a considerable portion of which is constituted by common nouns of the “A (verb) + -i- / -i/y- + B” model. In contemporary Serbian, Polish and Russian, the lexis formed by means of this derivational model is almost equally developed conceptually and relates predominantly to the same phenomena. Expressive words in all three languages are formed in the processes of metonymisation, metaphorisation, personification, hyperbolization and grotesque, and are characterized by numerous derivational and semantic equivalents. Derywaty z interfiksem -i- / -i/y- oraz pierwszym członem czasownikowym w języku serbskim, rosyjskim oraz polskimArtykuł zawiera analizę historyczno-porównawczą wyrazów z interfiksem -i- / -i/y- oraz pierwszym członem czasownikowym (modelu A (czas.) + -i- / -i/y- + B) w języku serbskim, rosyjskim oraz polskim z punktu widzenia współczesnej derywatologii slawistycznej. Celem badań jest opis analizowanych derywatów według ich zróżnicowania znaczeniowego. Autorka wykazuje, że we wszystkich trzech językach według tego modelu słowotwórczego powstaje przede wszystkim słownictwo ekspresywne, głównie rzeczowniki, o znaczeniu żartobliwym i pejoratywnym. Taki typ wyrazów w języku serbskim i rosyjskim pojawia się po raz pierwszy w źródłach z XIII wieku (możliwe, że w serbskim już w XI w.), natomiast w polszczyźnie w przebadanym materiale z XV wieku. Sądząc po źródłach, model słowotwórczy, według którego tworzone są analizowane wyrazy, jest produktywny we wszystkich trzech językach, zarówno w ich stadium historycznym, jak i w języku współczesnym, przy czym w języku serbskim i polskim jest takich derywatów więcej niż w języku rosyjskim. W źródłach sprzed XIX stulecia w języku serbskim i rosyjskim odnotowano głównie imiona i przydomki przetworzone w nazwiska (w języku rosyjskim również pewne nazwy zwierząt i roślin oraz rzeczowniki abstrakcyjne). W staropolszczyźnie jest to leksyka zoologiczna i botaniczna, а w dobie średniopolskiej wyrazy modelu A (czas.) + -i/y- + B obejmują prawie wszystkie kategorie pojęciowe, do których przynależą wyrazy tego modelu we współczesnym języku serbskim i rosyjskim. W tym miejscu należy podkreślić, że brak dostępu do języka mówionego, a także ograniczona liczba zabytków sprawiają, że spostrzeżenia dotyczące czasu powstania czy zasobów leksykalnych pierwszych wieków słowiańszczyzny pisanej obarczone są dużym stopniem niepewności. Dotyczy to w szczególności leksemów o nacechowaniu ekspresywnym, wśród których wyraźną grupę stanowią wyrazy pospolite modelu A (czas.) + -i- / -i/y- + B. We współczesnym języku serbskim, rosyjskim oraz polskim leksyka tego modelu jest podobnie zróżnicowana znaczeniowo i dotyczy zazwyczaj tych samych zjawisk. Ekspresywy we wszystkich trzech językach powstają w wyniku procesów metonimizacji, metaforyzacji, personifikacji, hiperbolizacji oraz przy zastosowaniu groteski i charakteryzują się licznymi ekwiwalentami słowotwórczo-semantycznymi.


2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 447-475
Author(s):  
Sachi Schmidt-Hori

Through a comparative reading of several premodern Japanese tales with a focus on Ochikubo monogatari (ca. tenth century) and Hachi-kazuki (ca. fifteenth century), this essay attempts to interpret the common literary trope of mamako ijime—stepmothers’ mistreatment of their stepdaughters—in a new light. Within the pre-existing scholarship, the fictional accounts of mamako ijime seem to have been viewed as a reflection of quasi-universal, self-evident phenomena at best. Consequently, little inquiry has been made regarding the ubiquity or functions of this particular form of female-on-female violence in literary texts. The present study, in turn, attributes the blind acceptance of the universality of mamako ijime to negative stereotypes against middle-aged women, shared by the readers of the past and present, and offers a more critical interpretation thereof. Based on the recurrent patterns found in premodern Japanese tales, mamako ijime can be read as the dead birthmothers’ “tough love” for their daughters. By enduring the abusive (albeit not deadly) deeds of the stepmothers—or the evil surrogates of the late mothers—the heroines mature into resilient, caring, and wise women and ultimately achieve strong marriage, wealth, and prestige, all of which would have been what the birthmothers wished upon their daughters.


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