Cruisy Historicism

Author(s):  
James M. Bromley

This chapter articulates a historical methodology, cruisy historicism, for attending to the erotic possibilities of the resistances from minor voices within a text and the mismatch between text and historical context. Drawn analogically from queer public sexual practices, cruisy historicism is particularly suited to unpacking the queer sexual possibilities that inhere in these multiplicities and misalignments. This methodology is explored via the intersection of clothing and space in Ben Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour. The play depicts lavishly dressed male characters circulating knowledge about queer forms of eroticism and subjectivity in the middle aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral, a place famed for its parading gallants in the early modern period. This chapter uses cruisy historicism to access the utopian fantasies surrounding extravagant apparel that exceed their historical and satiric contexts. In addition, cruisy historicism invites readers to encounter texts that do not seem especially welcoming to queerness so as to rework them into sites in which queer pleasure can animate one’s relationship with the past and compel us to rethink present-day political demarcations of legitimate forms of sexual practice.

Author(s):  
Cristiano Casalini ◽  
Christoph Sander

This chapter discusses the philosophical pedagogy of Benet Perera (1535–1610) through an analysis and transcription of his treatise on the useful, error-free study of Christian philosophy, the Documenta quaedam perutilia iis qui in studiis philosophiae cum fructu et sine ullo errore versari student. It places Perera’s treatise within its historical context—that of the Jesuit Roman college of the 1560s—in order to elucidate how his promotion of his own idea of a Christian philosophy for schools provoked criticism among his fellow Romans Diego de Ledesma and Achille Gagliardi. It shows the position of Perera’s project within the multiple forms of Aristotelianism in the early modern period and how Perera was able to justify his own position as ‘sufficiently pious’ through his emphasis on philology as an approach to philosophy. Perera came up with a strictly Christian philosophy curriculum by integrating different trends of Aristotle’s philosophy into his own, even including approaches that were considered impious by some of his fellow Jesuits.


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.


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.


2016 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 131-201
Author(s):  
Inga Mai Groote ◽  
Dietrich Hakelberg

Recent research on the library of Johann Caspar Trost the Elder, organist in Halberstadt, has led to the identification of a manuscript with two unknown treatises on musica poetica, one a lost treatise by Johann Hermann Schein and the other an unknown treatise by Michael Altenburg. Together they offer fresh insights into the learning and teaching of music in the early modern period. The books once owned by Trost also have close connections to his personal and professional life. This article situates the newly discovered manuscript in the framework of book history and Trost’s biography, and discusses the two treatises against the background of contemporary books of musical instruction (Calvisius, Lippius, or Finolt). The historical context of the manuscript, its theoretical sources and its origins all serve to contribute to and further the current understanding of musical education in early modern central Germany. An edition of the treatises is provided.


1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
TRISTAN MARSHALL

Recent moves by New Historicists to evaluate theatrical material from the early modern period have been at the expense of what historians would recognize as acceptable use of historical context. One of the most glaring examples of the dangers of taking a play out of such a proper context has been The Tempest. The play has had a great deal of literary criticism devoted to it, attempting to fit it into comfortable twentieth-century clothing in regard to its commentary on empire, at the expense of what the play's depiction of imperialism meant for the year 1611 when it was written. The purpose of this paper will therefore be to suggest that the play does not actually call into question the Jacobean process of colonization across the Atlantic at all, and suggests that of more importance for its audience would have been the depiction of the hegemony of the island nation of Great Britain as recreated in 1603. Such a historical reconstruction is helped through contrasting Shakespeare's play with the Jonson, Chapman, and Marston collaboration, Eastward Ho, as well as with the anonymous Masque of Flowers and Chapman's Memorable Masque. These works will be used to illustrate just what colonialism might mean for the Jacobean audience when the Virginia project was invoked and suggest that an American tale The Tempest is not.


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):  
Judith Fletcher

The Introduction situates the myth of the descent to the underworld (catabasis) in a broad historical context beginning with Ancient Near East traditions, including the Sumerian poem preserved in cuneiform, “The Descent of Inanna,” and extending to medieval treatments such as “The Visions of the Knight Tondal”, and those of the early modern period. It includes a survey of other scholarly treatments of the underworld theme in recent literature. A brief overview of the volume explains how it fills a gap in the scholarship by focusing on the adaptation of the theme of a visit to Hades in postmodern, feminist, and postcolonial fiction.


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.


Author(s):  
Alise Pokšāne ◽  

The aim of the research is to find out how ancient DNA analysis could supplement the existing knowledge acquired with research methods like analysis of literature and sources, as well as archaeological methods, using specific early modern period burials in Riga as an example. Within the framework of the study, the ancient DNA extraction and analysis was performed. The results are connected with the archaeological and historical context of the burial, thus enabling advancement of hypotheses about the origin of specific individuals based on the population genetics theory. As a result of the study, the approximate maternal origin of three and the sex of all six of the studied individuals was determined. It was found that the buried individuals had different regions of origin, thereby confirming that the inhabitants of Riga in the early modern period were ethnically diverse.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 370
Author(s):  
Laura Kathryn Jurgens

This article provides an overview of the social-historical methodology, highlights relevant scholarship on this approach, and offers specific examples of studies on the Reformation period in Europe that use the social-historical method. I begin by explaining how the social-historical methodology, otherwise known as new social history, originated from the historical method. While highlighting key scholarship on this approach, I outline how the social-historical method differs from the historical method. I also present two essential methodological features of social history, including using sources in new, more analytical ways. I conclude by presenting specific examples of how historians of the early modern period, such as Kirsi Stjerna and Merry Wiesner-Hanks, apply the social-historical method in their own studies. This last section focuses on works that explore women’s history, family life, work, and witchcraft, primarily during the Reformation period in Europe. My goal is to provide a resource for emerging young scholars, such as undergraduate students and newly admitted graduate students, who are interested in strengthening their own work by better understanding the social-historical research method and how it is used in the study of history and religion.


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