Reading ‘the Phoenix and Turtle’

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kerrigan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Structure Form ◽  
Funeral Rites ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
The Phoenix

This chapter reads closely one of Shakespeare’s most complex, elusive poems. Although obscurities are explicated, the primary aim is not to gloss difficulties but to provide a sustained analysis of the poet’s use of the resources of structure, form, rhyme, syntax, and diction. The focus is on the experience of reading ‘The Phoenix and Turtle’ as it unfolds. But due attention is given to what the writing owes to classical and medieval bird poems, to changing attitudes to ritual (and particularly to funeral rites) brought about by the Reformation, and to material features of Robert Chester’s Loves Martyr (1601), the book in which Shakespeare’s poem was first printed. The relevance is also shown of the conventions that came to govern early modern poems about death—a topic more fully explored in the associated, background chapter, ‘Shakespeare, Elegy and Epitaph: 1557–1640’.

scholarly journals Speaking for the People in Early Modern England*

2019 ◽  
Vol 244 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Coast
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Common People ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
The People ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Voice

Abstract The voice of the people is assumed to have carried little authority in early modern England. Elites often caricatured the common people as an ignorant multitude and demanded their obedience, deference and silence. Hostility to the popular voice was an important element of contemporary political thought. However, evidence for a very different set of views can be found in numerous polemical tracts written between the Reformation and the English Civil War. These tracts claimed to speak for the people, and sought to represent their alleged grievances to the monarch or parliament. They subverted the rules of petitioning by speaking for ‘the people’ as a whole and appealing to a wide audience, making demands for the redress of grievances that left little room for the royal prerogative. In doing so, they contradicted stereotypes about the multitude, arguing that the people were rational, patriotic and potentially better informed about the threats to the kingdom than the monarch themselves. ‘Public opinion’ was used to confer legitimacy on political and religious demands long before the mass subscription petitioning campaigns of the 1640s.

Briton and Scythian: Tudor representations of Irish origins

1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (112) ◽  
pp. 390-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hadfield
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Medieval Chronicles ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Origin Myths ◽  
Origin Myth ◽  
John Leland

It is a commonplace of recent British historiography that in the early modern period a sophisticated and sceptical concept of writing history began to develop which involved, among other things, historians becoming significantly less credulous in their use of sources. Often the crucial break with medieval ‘chronicles’ is seen to have been brought about by the triumph of the exiled Italian humanist, Polydore Vergil, over the fervently nationalistic band of British historians and antiquarians led by John Leland, establishing that the Arthurian legends were no more than an origin myth. Jack Scarisbrick, for example, has argued that ‘early Tudor England did not produce a sudden renewal of Arthurianism … As the sixteenth century wore on, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s patriotic fantasies received increasingly short shrift from reputable historians.’ However, this comforting narrative of increasingly thorough and careful scholarship ignores the fact that there was a form of history writing in which the reliance upon origin myths such as the Arthurian legends and the ‘matter of Britain’ actually increased dramatically after the Reformation, namely English histories of Ireland.

Rethinking Iconoclasm in Early Modern England: the Case of Cheapside Cross

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 379-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Budd
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Complex Variety ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

AbstractProtestant iconoclasm has generally been understood as an assault on the beliefs and practices of traditional religion. This article challenges that understanding through a detailed study of Cheapside Cross, a large monument that was repeatedly attacked by iconoclasts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It draws on contemporary pamphlets and the manuscripts records of the City of London to reveal the complex variety of associations that Cheapside Cross acquired before and during the Reformation era. It argues that perceptions of the monument were shaped not only by its iconography but also by its involvement in ceremonies and rituals, including royal coronation processions. The iconoclastic attacks on Cheapside Cross should be interpreted not merely as a challenge to traditional beliefs but as attempts to restructure the monument's associations. The paper concludes that attacks on other images may be understood in a similar manner.

scholarly journals Basel's Rural Pastors as Mediators of Confessional and Social Discipline

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Nelson Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Territorial State ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Social Discipline ◽  
Disciplinary Process ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
And Control

Overthe last two decades historians of early modern Europe have adopted the paradigm of confessionalization to describe the religious, political, and cultural changes that occurred in the two centuries following the Reformation.1As an explanatory model confessionalization has often been portrayed as the religious and ecclesiastical parallel to the secular and political process of social discipline, as formulated by Gerhard Oestreich.2In its simplest form, the process of confessional and social discipline is depicted as hierarchical and unidirectional: the impulse to discipline and control came from the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, and the laity, particularly the peasants at the bottom of the hierarchy, had little possibility of exerting counterpressures on those seeking to shape their beliefs and behavior. The inevitable result of the disciplinary process was the gradual suppression of popular culture and the imposition of new standards of belief and behavior on the subjects of the territorial state.

scholarly journals Las prácticas funerarias de los hugonotes (siglos XVI-XVIII)

Revista Trace ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Yves Krumenacker
Keyword(s):  
Radical Change ◽  
Funeral Rites ◽  
Social Standards ◽  
Xvith Century ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Will

La instauración de la Reforma, en el siglo XVI, provoca un cambio drástico en los rituales funerarios a raíz de la transformación radical de las creencias sobre el más allá: la desaparición del Purgatorio y la salvación o condena del alma inmediatamente después de la muerte. Los ritos deben ser simples y el lugar de la sepultura indiferente, como lo estipula también la ley francesa; por lo tanto, los funerales se reorganizan en función de las normas sociales y de la voluntad de preservar la pertenencia a la comunidad.Abstract: The advent of the Reformation in XVIth century brings a total upheaval of funeral rites due to a radical change of the belief in the hereafter: disappearance of Purgatory, salvation or damnation of the soul immediately after death. Rites must be austere and burial’s site makes no difference, as stipulated also by French legislation. Therefore, burials are reorganized according to social standards, and to the will to continue belonging to the community.Résumé : L’avènement de la Réforme, au XVIe siècle, a provoqué un bouleversement total des rituels funéraires chez les protestants, en raison d’une transformation radicale des croyances sur l’au-delà : disparition du Purgatoire, salut ou damnation de l’âme tout de suite après la mort. Les rites doivent être simples et le lieu de sépulture indifférent, ce qu’exige aussi la loi française. Les funérailles se réorganisent donc en fonction des normes sociales et de la volonté de préserver l’appartenance à la communauté.

Enchantment in Times of War: Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin, and the Secularization Thesis

2009 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane O. Newman
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
World War ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
Aby Warburg ◽  
Working Out

This article reads Aby Warburg's and Walter Benjamin's work on the astrological movements of the Reformation era in dialogue with the theory of relations between the spiritual and the temporal developed in Protestant "war theology" during World War I. War theology developed themes already present in historical Protestant doctrine, notably Luther's Two Kingdoms theory (Zwei Reiche Lehre). Warburg and Benjamin were wrestling with the challenge of living at a time of great conflict in a highly sacralized——rather than secularized——world with deep roots in early modern Lutheranism. Max Weber was working out his ideas about magic, Calvinism, and secularization at the same time. The article thus also suggests the need to reassess his theses about the emergence of a secular world purged of irrationalism in dialogue with Warburg's and Benjamin's work.

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