City Powd’ring

Author(s):  
James M. Bromley

This chapter examines how Thomas Middleton’s Michaelmas Term positions the cloth trade as pivotal to the construction of sexuality and sexual relations in the city. Circulating with cloth in the play is queer urban sexual knowledge. Antitheatricalists feared that the theater was a site of sexual pedagogy and initiation in the early modern period. Michaelmas Term subtly embraces that role for the city comedy, and the chapter draws on queer theories of materiality to demonstrate that the play’s relentless focus on the materiality of selfhood is pertinent in querying the limits of biological determinism and essentialism that characterize mainstream politics around sexuality today. The play can prompt us to consider how alternate forms of queer ontogenesis derived from the past have affordances for the production of queer culture in the present.

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 117
Author(s):  
Ellen Gough

This study shows how Varanasi, a site that many people understand to be a sacred Hindu city, has been made “Jain” through its association with the lives of four of the twenty-four enlightened founders of Jainism, the jinas or tīrthaṅkaras. It provides an overview of the Jain sites of worship in Varanasi, focusing especially on how events in the life of the twenty-third tīrthaṅkara Pārśva were placed in the city from the early modern period to the present day in order to bring Jain wealth and resources to the city. It examines the temple-building programs of two Śvetāmbara renunciants in particular: the temple-dwelling Kuśalacandrasūri of the Kharataragaccha (initiated in 1778), and the itinerant Ācārya Rājayaśasūri of the Tapāgaccha (b. 1945). While scholars and practitioners often make a strong distinction between the temple-dwelling monks (yatis) who led the Śvetāmbara community in the early modern period and the peripatetic monks (munis) who emerged after reforms in the late nineteenth-century—casting the former as clerics and the latter as true renunciants—ultimately, the lifestyles of Kuśalacandrasūri and Rājayaśasūri appear to be quite similar. Both these men have drawn upon the wealth of Jain merchants and texts—the biographies of Pārśva—to establish their lineage’s presence in Varanasi through massive temple-building projects.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Suzanna Ivanič

The question that sparked this forum was to what extent we can see Prague as an important stage for Renaissance and Reformation exchange and as an internationally connected city. It is striking, though not unexpected, that all the authors have been drawn to some extent to sources and subjects in Rudolfine Prague. It must be stressed, however, that the emphasis of each of these studies is somewhat different to an older field of “Rudolfine studies.” The researchers here do not focus on the emperor's court but use it as context. It is tangential to their main focal points—on Jewish communities, religious change, and the exchange of scientific and musical knowledge—and these are first and foremost historians not of Prague but of social and cultural history, music, art, material culture, and religion. This indicates a marked shift from the historiography. For this generation of scholars, Prague is not only a city that is home to a fascinating and intriguing art historical moment but is also a city of early modern international connections. It provides a unique context for understanding communities, everyday experiences, religion, and culture in early modern Europe—a multilingual, multiconfessional, and multicultural mixing pot whose composition changed dramatically across the early modern period. Rudolf's court was certainly a catalyst for these crossings and encounters, but they did not fade away after his death in 1612, nor were they limited to the confines of the castle above the city.


2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRA WALSHAM

ABSTRACTThis article is a revised and expanded version of my inaugural lecture as Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, delivered on 20 Oct. 2011. It explores how the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reshaped perceptions of the past, stimulated shifts in historical method, and transformed the culture of memory, before turning to the interrelated question of when and why contemporaries began to remember the English Reformation as a decisive juncture and critical turning point in history. Investigating the interaction between personal recollection and social memory, it traces the manner in which remembrance of the events of the 1530s, 1540s, and 1550s evolved and splintered between 1530 and 1700. A further theme is the role of religious and intellectual developments in the early modern period in forging prevailing models of historical periodization and teleological paradigms of interpretation.


Author(s):  
Константин Сергеевич Носов

В работе рассматриваются взгляды на военное зодчество двух итальянских архитекторов XV в. - Леона Баттисты Альберти и Антонио Аверлино (Филарете). Трактат Альберти «Десять книг о зодчестве» стал первым архитектурным трактатом со времен Витрувия, а Филарете писал свой «Трактат об архитектуре» параллельно с руководством строительными работами в Кастелло Сфорцеско. Проводится сопоставление представленных в этих трактатах теоретических взглядов на военное зодчество с реализацией их на практике на примере строившегося в то же время этого миланского замка. В результате исследования было выявлено, какие рекомендации Альберти и Филарете нашли воплощение на практике, а какие остались лишь в теории. Самым удивительным представляется тот факт, что главная воротная башня Кастелло Сфорцеско, даже получившая название Башня Филарете в честь строившего ее архитектора, не имеет практически ничего общего с описанием ворот как цитадели, так и города Сфорцинды из трактата. Сравнение описаний военного зодчества в трактатах Альберти и Филарете позволило выявить как черты сходства, так и отличия. К чертам сходства автор работы считает возможным отнести общую концепцию планировки города с цитаделью и главной башней внутри и одинаковый концептуальный подход к фортификации - оба архитектора относятся еще к эпохе башенной фортификации, описания бастионов в их работах нет. Различия состоят в подходе к источникам и общем осмыслении системы обороны. Если Альберти в основном следует античной традиции, Филарете опирается на реалии современной ему итальянской фортификации. Однако в трактатах обоих архитекторов есть новаторские идеи, которые начнут широко применяться только в Новое время в так называемой «новой фортификации». У Альберти это гласис, у Филарете - треугольный равелин перед воротами. The work deals with the views on military architecture of two 15th century Italian architects - Leon Battista Alberti and Antonio Averlino (Filarete). Alberti’s treatise “De re aedificatoria” became the first architectural treatise since Vitruvius, while Filarete wrote his “Libro architettonico” while directing the building works in Castello Sforzesco. Theoretical views on military architecture presented in these treatises are compared here with their realization in Milan castle (Castello Sforzesco), erected at the same time. The research reveals which of Alberti’s and Filarete’s recommendations were implemented and which remained only in the realm of theory. The most surprising is the fact that Castello Sforzesco’s main gate tower, named Filarete Tower after the architect who erected it, has nothing in common with either the citadel gate or the city Sforzinda gate described in the treatise. Comparing military architecture described by Alberti and Filarete reveals similarities as well as differences. The general conception of the city - with the citadel and the main tower inside - and identical conceptual approach to fortification can be attributed to similarities in their approaches: both architects belong to the era of tower fortification, their works lack any descriptions of bastions. The differences constitute their approach to sources as well as their general comprehension of defense systems. Whereas Alberti mainly follows ancient tradition, Filarete is guided by realistic contemporary Italian fortification. Both treatises, however, are comprised of new ideas, which will begin to be widely used only in the Early Modern period in the so-called fortificazione alla moderna. They are Alberti’s glacis and Filarete’s triangular ravelin in front of the gate.


2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Teresa Schröder-Stapper

The Written City. Inscriptions as Media of Urban Knowledge of Space and Time The article investigates the function of urban inscriptions as media of knowledge about space and time at the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period in the city of Braunschweig. The article starts with the insight that inscriptions in stone or wood on buildings or monuments not only convey knowledge about space and time but at the same time play an essential role in the construction of space and time in the city by the practice of inscribing. The analysis focuses on the steadily deteriorating relationship between the city of Braunschweig and its city lord, the Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, and its material manifestation in building and monument inscriptions. The contribution shows that in the course of the escalating conflict over autonomy, a change in epigraphic habit took placed that aimed at claiming both urban space and its history exclusively on behalf of the city as an expression of its autonomy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-628
Author(s):  
Vesa-Pekka Herva ◽  
Janne Ikäheimo ◽  
Matti Enbuske ◽  
Jari Okkonen

The unknown and exotic North fascinated European minds in the early modern period. A land of natural and supernatural wonders, and of the indigenous Sámi people, the northern margins of Europe stirred up imagination and a plethora of cultural fantasies, which also affected early antiquarian research and the period understanding of the past. This article employs an alleged runestone discovered in northernmost Sweden in the seventeenth century to explore how ancient times and northern margins of the continent were understood in early modern Europe. We examine how the peculiar monument of the Vinsavaara stone was perceived and signified in relation to its materiality, landscape setting, and the cultural-cosmological context of the Renaissance–Baroque world. On a more general level, we use the Vinsavaara stone to assess the nature and character of early modern antiquarianism in relation to the period's nationalism, colonialism and classicism.


Author(s):  
Nick Mayhew

In the mid-19th century, three 16th-century Russian sources were published that alluded to Moscow as the “third Rome.” When 19th-century Russian historians discovered these texts, many interpreted them as evidence of an ancient imperial ideology of endless expansion, an ideology that would go on to define Russian foreign policy from the 16th century to the modern day. But what did these 16th-century depictions of Moscow as the third Rome actually have in mind? Did their meaning remain stable or did it change over the course of the early modern period? And how significant were they to early modern Russian imperial ideology more broadly? Scholars have pointed out that one cannot assume that depictions of Moscow as the third Rome were necessarily meant to be imperial celebrations per se. After all, the Muscovites considered that the first Rome fell for various heretical beliefs, in particular that Christ did not possess a human soul, and the second Rome, Constantinople, fell to the Turks in 1453 precisely because it had accepted some of these heretical “Latin” doctrines. As such, the image of Moscow as the third Rome might have marked a celebration of the city as a new imperial center, but it could also allude to Moscow’s duty to protect the “true” Orthodox faith after the fall—actual and theological—of Rome and Constantinople. As time progressed, however, the nuances of religious polemic once captured by the trope were lost. During the 17th and early 18th centuries, the image of Moscow as the third Rome took on a more unequivocally imperialist tone. Nonetheless, it would be easy to overstate the significance of allusions to Moscow as the third Rome to early modern Russian imperial ideology more broadly. Not only was the trope rare and by no means the only imperial comparison to be found in Muscovite literature, it was also ignored by secular authorities and banned by clerics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-302
Author(s):  
Korinna Schönhärl ◽  
Mark Spoerer

Abstract The following issue arose from a section at the Congress for Economic and Social History in Regensburg in March 2019 and focuses on fiscal conflicts in Europe from the early modern period until today. Distributive fiscal conflicts are seen here as a probe into the past which can increase our understanding of historical social structures. Fiscal history is analysed as a central arena of the modern state. The introduction provides an overview of current research into fiscal history in Germany and of the contributions presented in this focus issue.


Author(s):  
James M. Bromley

This chapter outlines how sartorial extravagance might be thought of as a kind of queer worldmaking in early modern city comedy. It offers an overview of the book’s application of disability theory and new materialism to the forms of superficial embodiment and queer eroticism that extravagant clothing facilitated on the early modern stage. It argues that more flexible historical methodologies based on queer theories of temporality can move the field of early modern studies beyond the false choice between historicism and presentism. It situates the book in current scholarship on the early modern period and queer theory and previews the remaining chapters of the book.


Author(s):  
Craig Kallendorf

Even the word “Renaissance” (“rebirth” in French) points to the effort to revive the learning of antiquity that motivated the intellectual elite of that era—for what sprang forth was an urgent awareness of the ancient past, prompting innovations in both ideas and the arts. The classical tradition, accordingly, has long played a central role in Renaissance studies. With the growing interest in nonelite cultures, the classical tradition in what is now sometimes called the early modern period has had to share the scholarly stage with an ever-increasing number of other areas of inquiry, but the recent burst of activity in reception studies has given the classical heritage a new lease on life along with a way to engage with the more theoretical discourse that has flourished in other areas of Renaissance studies over the past generation.


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