Sex and Scholarship

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-119
Author(s):  
Floris Verhaart
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Classical Philology ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
Independent Field ◽  
Moral Perspective ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Modern Europe

This chapter looks at examples of scholars who, in the early eighteenth century, worked on texts that were highly controversial from a moral perspective. The focus is on Pieter Burman’s edition of Petronius (1709) and Bentley’s work on Horace. Looking at this material from a perspective of textual criticism allowed Burman and Bentley to avoid delving too deeply into passages of a sexually loaded nature. Nevertheless, political and scholarly opponents of both men tried to blacken their reputation by connecting their research interests with their private lives. It is demonstrated that the association of textual critics with immorality was a commonplace in early modern Europe and that the tensions between in particular Burman and his opponents reveals a struggle to make classical philology a more independent field of enquiry versus other disciplines, such as theology.

The Loving Community

Caritas ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 31-59
Author(s):  
Katie Barclay
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Cultural Norm ◽  
Family Household ◽  
The Family ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
A Site

Caritas was an idea with resonance across early modern Europe, but given shape and form within particular national or religious contexts. This chapter introduces how the Scottish Kirk envisioned caritas as an embodied ethic—an experience of love that was manifested in deportment, thought, feeling, and behaviour—as well as its widespread take-up as a cultural norm. It particularly highlights that the family—the holy household—was imagined as the basis of a social order founded on caritas and introduces how the idea of caritas shaped the practice of the family-household relationships in eighteenth-century Scotland. It explores how the family was located not just as a site of patriarchal discipline, but also of peace and comfort, where fighting and quarrelling (excesses of passion) should be minimized. The family-household was not formed in private, however: its loving behaviours were interpreted and given meaning by a watching community.

Peasants and Debt in Eighteenth-Century Champagne

2006 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
High Risk ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Rural Households ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Modern Europe

Recent scholarship about debt in early-modern Europe has replaced an old model of misery and exploitation with a new paradigm that emphasizes the entrepreneurial rationale for going into debt. Reassessment of these arguments on the basis of detailed information about 5,000 rural households in France finds that debt posed a high risk of ruin to nearly half of the region's debtors and that viticulture played a unique role in stimulating a borrowing frenzy in the countryside.

Narrative Fiction in Early Modern Europe

Quaerendo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 160-188
Author(s):  
Rita Schlusemann ◽  
Krystyna Wierzbicka-Trwoga
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Fictional Narrative ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The article presents a corpus of European fictional narratives, which were continuously printed in at least six European languages from the beginning of printing until the end of the eighteenth century. It analyses the denominations of the works in European literary histories in a comparative way in order to show the impact of the different national traditions in literary history, and provides a survey of the contemporary terms for the works used in European vernaculars. In early modern Europe there was an awareness of the congruence of these narratives and a similar choice of genre attributions in different European vernaculars whereas, as a consequence of the development of nationalism and national studies, the denomination of the genre and their studies has become much more tattered. We therefore propose to use the term ‘narrative fiction’ for the genre and the term ‘fictional narrative’ for the works themselves.

Sleeping in Church: Preaching, Boredom, and the Struggle for Attention in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 1146-1174
Author(s):  
Daniel Jütte
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Falling Asleep ◽  
History Of ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Court Life ◽  
Grave Problem ◽  
Modern Condition

Abstract The word “boredom” was not used in English before the eighteenth century. Does this mean that pre-eighteenth-century people did not experience boredom? Or did their experience of boredom differ from ours? This article approaches these questions by exploring the history of people falling asleep in church, and asking whether boredom played a role in their slumber. Across the confessional spectrum in premodern Europe, religious somnolence was depicted as a common and grave problem. The preoccupation with this problem went hand in hand with longstanding ecclesiastic concerns about deficient attention among the flock. Probing medieval and early modern controversies about somnolence and boredom offers insight on two levels: First, it helps to correct the problematic presentism that identifies boredom as a quintessentially modern condition. Second, exploring the long history of boredom adds nuance to our understanding of premodern culture and mentalities, revealing—in the case of religious audiences—a struggle for attention that we would not expect to find in a world in which religion reigned supreme. The article also touches on other social and institutional contexts (such as court life) in which boredom was both endogenous and endemic.

Giving in early modern history: philanthropy in Amsterdam in the Golden Age

2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARCO H. D. VAN LEEUWEN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Modern Europe

ABSTRACTPhilanthropy was enduring in early modern Europe. For centuries local charities gave small sums that helped many people to survive. Such charity can be studied from below, from the persepective of survival strategies, and from above, from the perspective of social control, but it can also be studied as scholars of philanthropic studies do for contemporary societies. This article does the latter. It pays attention to benefactors and benefactions; how many people gave and who were they?; when, where and what did benefactors give, and what were their motives? The article places an in-depth study of Amsterdam from the late sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century in the context of the literature on early modern European philanthropy.

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