Poeta in Vinculis I

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-170
Author(s):  
Monika Fludernik
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
John Bunyan ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The World ◽  
Psychological Coping

Chapter 2 contrasts the writings of Thomas More and John Bunyan. The chapter foregrounds these authors’ strategies of imaginative and psychological coping, considering how their texts reflect the traumatic experience of incarceration in the imaginative re-enactment of their fiction. The chapter introduces a number of prison tropes besides the WORLD AS PRISON/PRISON AS WORLD metaphor, most prominently in Bunyan the SIN AS PRISON trope. A major focus of the chapter concerns the difficult relationship between fact, fiction, and allegory in the work of the two authors and their contemporaries. A final section of the chapter links Bunyan’s poetry to the tradition of late medieval and early modern prison verse.

Wangara, Akan and Portuguese in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I. The matter of Bitu

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivor Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The World ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Late Fifteenth

In late medieval and early modern times West Africa was one of the principal suppliers of gold to the world bullion market. In this context the Matter of Bitu is one of much importance. Bitu lay on the frontiers of the Malian world and was one of its most flourishing gold marts. So much is clear from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings, both African and European. A review of this body of evidence indicates that the gold trade at Bitu was controlled by the Wangara, who played a central role in organizing trade between the Akan goldfields and the towns of the Western Sudan. It is shown that Bitu cannot be other than Bighu (Begho, Bew, etc.), the abandoned Wangara town lying on the northwestern fringes of the Akan forest country, which is known (from excavation) to have flourished in the relevant period. In the late fifteenth century the Portuguese established posts on the southern shores of the Akan country, so challenging the monopolistic position which the Wangara had hitherto enjoyed in the gold trade. The Portuguese sent envoys to Mali, presumably to negotiate trade agreements. The bid was apparently unsuccessful. The struggle for the Akan trade in the sixteenth century between Portuguese and Malian interests will be treated in the second part of this paper.

4. The age of exploration

2015 ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Stewart A. Weaver
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Human History ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Age Of Exploration ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Europe

‘The age of exploration ’ considers why textbooks and teachers privilege late-medieval and early-modern Europe when designating “the age of exploration” and not the earlier Greek, Roman, Arab, Norse, Polynesian, or Mongol achievements in terms of exploration and cultural reach. It is for three main reasons. Firstly, because the late-medieval extrusion of European maritime power and the associated record of exploration were global in reach. Secondly, they were unprecedented in scope and daring. Thirdly, the exploration of the world by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European mariners, such as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama, permanently and decisively altered the lineaments of global power and set human history on the broad common course that it still to this day follows.

The World of Image in Islamic Philosophy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. W. C. van Lit
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Islamic Philosophy ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Ibn Sina ◽  
The World ◽  
Innovative Thinking ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

This book traces the notion of a world of image from its conception until today. This notion is one of the most original innovations in medieval Islamic philosophy, and is unique compared to other parts of the history of philosophy. The notion originated out of discussions on the fate of human beings after death; would this be spiritual only or physical as well? The world of image suggests that there exists a world of non-physical (imagined) bodies, beyond our earthly existence. This world may be entered after death and glimpses of it may already be witnessed during sleep or meditation. Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) was the first to suggest something along these lines, arguing that people could simply imagine their afterlife without the need for it to be actually physical. Suhrawardī (d. 1191) included this suggestion in his innovative thinking on epistemology, known as ‘knowledge by presence’, without fully ontologizing it. Shahrazūrī (d. > 1286), finally, turned Suhrawardī’s thinking into the full-blown notion of a world of image. Notably through Taftāzānī (d. 1390) and Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621), the idea gained wider popularity and continued to be discussed, especially in Shīʿī circles, up to this day. This book gives an insight into late medieval and early modern Islamic philosophy, especially the role of commentary writing. It sets the record straight for the provenance and development of the world of image and reconsiders the importance of Suhrawardī for the development of philosophy in the Islamic world.

Teleology in Jewish Philosophy

Teleology ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 123-149
Author(s):  
Jeffrey K. McDonough
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Critical Dialogue ◽  
Philosophical Discourse ◽  
The Third ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The World

Medieval and early modern Jewish philosophers developed their thinking in conversation with various bodies of literature. The influence of ancient Greek and Arabic sources was fundamental to the very constitution of medieval Jewish philosophical discourse. Toward the late Middle Ages, Jewish philosophers also established a critical dialogue with Christian Scholastics. In addition to these philosophical corpora, Jewish philosophers drew significantly upon rabbinic sources and the Hebrew Bible. In order to clarify the unique as well as shared elements in the thought of medieval Jewish philosophers, this chapter begins with a brief study of some early rabbinic sources on the purpose of the world. The second part of this chapter studies Maimonides’s critique of the veracity and usefulness of the belief in (anthropocentric) teleology, and the critical reception of his views by later philosophers. The third part addresses discussions of divine teleology in Kabbalistic literature. The fourth and final section elucidates Spinoza’s critique of teleology, its precise target and scope, and its debt to earlier sources discussed in this chapter.

Popular Romance in Iceland

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheryl McDonald Werronen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Literature Discussion ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Popular Romance ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
King Of France ◽  
Manuscript Context

A late medieval Icelandic romance about the ‘maiden-king’ of France, Nítída saga generated interest in its day and grew in popularity in post-Reformation Iceland, yet until now it has not received the comprehensive scholarly analysis that it much deserves. Analysing this saga from a variety of perspectives, this book sheds light on the manner in which Nítída saga explores and negotiates the romance genre from an Icelandic perspective, showcasing this exciting saga’s strong female characters, worldviews, and long manuscript tradition. Beginning with Nítída saga’s manuscript context, including its reception and transformation in early modern Iceland, this study also discusses how Nítída saga was influenced by, and also later influenced, other Icelandic romances. Considering the text as literature, discussion of its unusual depiction of world geography, as well as the various characters and their relationships, provides insights into medieval Icelanders’ ideas about themselves and the world they lived in, including questions about Icelandic identity, gender, female solidarity, and the literary genre of romance itself. The book also includes a newly revised reading edition and translation of Nítída saga.

Convent Autobiography

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Van Hyning
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Conversion Narrative ◽  
Conversion Narratives ◽  
Running Away ◽  
The World ◽  
Sir Thomas More

Convent Autobiography explores the ways in which cloistered women articulated their senses of self through genres such as letters, chronicles, accounts, guidance and devotional manuals, and conversion narratives. The book explores writings by early modern English women who elected a double self-exile from home and ‘from the world’, undertakings that shaped and informed so much of their self-writing. These nuns sometimes composed under their own names, but many composed anonymously. Using a combination of close reading, palaeography, manuscript evidence and other data, this book reveals the identities of half a dozen women, including descendants of Sir Thomas More, whose contributions to English literature and history were hitherto unknown. Although anonymous composition was in keeping with monastic norms of humility, Convent Autobiography argues anonymity offered paradoxical freedoms, such as enabling an author to write extensively about her own family, and herself, or to present institutional narratives through the lens of her own experiences. Three case studies devoted to anonymous chronicling reveal the complexity of authorial strategies of self and communal representation. On the basis of these, two new genres of autobiography are proposed: anonymous and subsumed autobiography. These definitions have wider application beyond convent and early modern literature. The book includes a complete edition of the vibrant conversion narrative, lists, and prayers of Catherine Holland, who defied her Protestant father by running away to join the convent of Nazareth where she could practise Catholicism and ‘escape the slavery of marriage’.

“All in a Garden Green”: Shakespeare's Staging of Garden Imagery

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-252
Author(s):  
Deborah Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Audience Interaction ◽  
The Many ◽  
Green World

This essay draws attention to the surprising lack of scholarship on the staging of garden scenes in Shakespeare's oeuvre. In particular, it explores how garden scenes promote collaborative acts of audience agency and present new renditions of the familiar early modern contrast between the public and the private. Too often the mention of Shakespeare's gardens calls to mind literal rather than literary interpretations: the work of garden enthusiasts like Henry Ellacombe, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, and Caroline Spurgeon, who present their copious gatherings of plant and flower references as proof that Shakespeare was a garden lover, or the many “Shakespeare Gardens” around the world, bringing to life such lists of plant references. This essay instead seeks to locate Shakespeare's garden imagery within a literary tradition more complex than these literalizations of Shakespeare's “flowers” would suggest. To stage a garden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries signified much more than a personal affinity for the green world; it served as a way of engaging time-honored literary comparisons between poetic forms, methods of audience interaction, and types of media. Through its metaphoric evocation of the commonplace tradition, in which flowers double as textual cuttings to be picked, revised, judged, and displayed, the staged garden offered a way to dramatize the tensions produced by creative practices involving collaborative composition and audience agency.

From the Tower of London to the Thomas More Society of Buenos Aires: “Give me thy grace, good Lord, to set the world at nought”

Moreana ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 42 (Number 164) (4) ◽  
pp. 187-206
Author(s):  
Clare M. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Short History ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Tower Of London ◽  
Hebrew Poetry ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Book Of Hours ◽  
Almost All

The Thomas More Society of Buenos Aires begins or ends almost all its events by reciting in both English and Spanish a prayer written by More in the margins of his Book of Hours probably while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London. After a short history of what is called Thomas More’s Prayer Book, the author studies the prayer as a poem written in the form of a psalm according to the structure of Hebrew poetry, and looks at the poem’s content as a psalm of lament.

St Thomas More : Utopia and the World Today

Moreana ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 25 (Number 98-9 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 5-8
Author(s):  
Laura Bonner
Keyword(s):  
Thomas More ◽  
World Today ◽  
The World
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document