Obscene Humour, Gender, and Sociability in Sixteenth-Century St Gallen*

2017 ◽  
Vol 234 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Roth
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Safety Valve ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
The Social

Abstract Over the last few decades, studies of early modern satires, Shrovetide plays and printed joke collections have gone a long way to establishing humour as a valid subject of historical research. Yet unfortunately these sources rarely shed any light on the role of jokes in everyday life. When writing about the social function of sexual humour, historians have therefore often relied on sociological and psychological studies which depict obscene jokes as a form of aggression, in particular against women. Through a detailed analysis of the obscene jokes recorded by the St. Gallen linen merchant Johannes R�tiner (1501-1556/7), this article shall propose an alternative perspective on sixteenth-century sexual humour. Based on the premise that in order to get the joke, we need to place it within both its social and cultural context, the analysis of R�tiner’s joke collection shall be twofold: first, the article will discuss obscene humour as an important element of sociability, in particular among the town’s educated elite. It will also examine how jokes circulated orally and in print, and highlight some of the creative processes and social skills involved in making a successful joke. Subsequently, R�tiner’s collection of jokes shall be analysed and placed within its broader cultural context. I shall argue that sexual and scatological jokes were closely linked through both medical discourse and a common set of metaphors, and that this type of humour primarily targeted the male body and his fluids. Rather than representing a safety valve for men’s aggressions against women, R�tiner’s obscene jokes first and foremost offered a platform on which acceptable forms of masculinity could be circumscribed and reaffirmed.

scholarly journals Luther and the Law in the Lutheran Church of Uganda

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Enoch Ekyarikunda ◽  
Ernest Van Eck
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
African Context ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Way

This article investigates the role of the Law in the Lutheran Church of Uganda. It investigates how the Law is understood and lived among Lutherans in Uganda. Luther, the sixteenthcentury Reformer, understood and interpreted the Law in terms of the social and cultural context of his time. Luther’s background is very different and so much removed from the African context in which the Ugandan Lutherans find themselves today. Therefore, can the Lutheran Church of Uganda have the same understanding and interpretation of the Law as the Reformer? Is Luther’s sixteenth-century European understanding of the Law applicable to the current Lutherans in Africa, specifically in the Lutheran Church of Uganda? This article examines the social and cultural context of Lutherans in Uganda and determines how it affects their understanding and interpretation of the Law. The article aims to demonstrate that the social and cultural context of the people plays an important role in the way the Christian life is conducted. This article appeals to Paul’s situation in Galatians to prove this point.

scholarly journals Ancient Pneumatics Transformed during the Early Modern Period

Nuncius ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Valleriani
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Exact Role ◽  
Ancient Technology ◽  
Ancient Science ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Natural Philosophers

The paper aims to show how sixteenth century hydraulic and pneumatic engineers appropriated ancient science and technology – codified in the text of Hero of Alexandria’s Pneumatics – to enter into scientific discourse, for instance, with natural philosophers. They drew on the logical structure, content and narrative style passed down from antiquity to generate and codify their own theoretical approach and to document their new technological achievements. They did so by using the form of commented and enlarged editions, just as Aristotelian natural philosophers had been doing for centuries. The argument aims to detail the exact role of ancient science and the process of transformation it underwent during the early modern period. In particular, it aims to show how pneumatic engineers first tested the ancient technology codified by Hero while carrying out their own practical activities. Once these tests were successfully concluded, in the spirit of early modern humanism they finally presented these activities as being associated with the work of their discipline’s most authoritative author, Hero of Alexandria, whose technology was tested during the construction of the hydraulic and pneumatic system of the garden of Pratolino.

scholarly journals THE RISE OF THE AMBASSADRESS: ENGLISH AMBASSADORIAL WIVES AND EARLY MODERN DIPLOMATIC CULTURE

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 617-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEMMA ALLEN
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Intelligence Gathering ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractThis article reveals how the ambassadress became an important part of early modern diplomatic culture, from the invention of the role in the early sixteenth century. As resident embassies became common across the early modern period, wives increasingly accompanied these diplomatic postings. Such a development has, however, received almost no scholarly attention to date, despite recent intense engagement with the social and cultural dimensions of early modern diplomacy. By considering the activities of English ambassadresses from the 1530s to 1700, accompanying embassies both inside and outside of Europe, it is possible not only to integrate them into narratives of diplomacy, but also to place their activities within broader global and political histories of the period. The presence of the ambassadress changed early modern diplomatic culture, through the creation of gendered diplomatic courtesies, gendered gift-giving practices, and gendered intelligence-gathering networks. Through female sociability networks at their host court, ambassadresses were able to access diplomatic intelligence otherwise restricted from their husbands. This was never more true than for those ambassadresses who held bonds of friendship with politically influential women at their host or home court, allowing them to influence political decision-making central to the success of the diplomatic mission.

scholarly journals Social and Cultural Context Affecting the Activities of Women Painters of Pahlavi Era (1925-1978)

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Azadeh Alipoor Heris ◽  
Abolghasem Dadvar
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Cultural Foundations ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Different factors were affecting the presence of women during the Pahlavi era. In new structures after the constitutional period and along with the absolute modernism of Pahlavi, discourses changes were made based on democracy, socialism, Shia resistance and autonomy, court to government and political figures to people. During this period the role of women was formed on the basis of their social position and in their gender approach it changed from a <class in itself> to a <class for self>. The consequences of social contexts led to witness more active presence of women during Pahlavi era compared with the past periods particularly in the visual arts arena; so that the history of the Tehran galleries from 1953-1978 which reflects their activities during that time confirms this fact. The purpose of the present essay is to analyze the social contexts which have attracted women from margin to the center and attending to them since no study has been done in this respect seems essential and it’s an attempt to answer the question that what social contexts have been influential in boosting up the presence of women especially women painters of Pahlavi era? In this research the data collect is library type and filed study and it has been compiled in a comparative descriptive-analytic method, the origin and social contexts of the women painters of the Pahlavi era whose works were displayed were studied and analyzed and it can be inferred that the presence of supportive men in families, education, social context, urban life, publicizing the culture thanks to the cultural foundations and media, the actual and legal presence of the queen, government support due to cultural policies, women social movements, and the transformation of the women role in twentieth century had decisive role on enhancing the social position of women particularly the role of the women painters of the second Pahlavi era.

‘Kindred Without End’: Wet-Nursing, Fosterage and Emotion in Ireland, c. 1550–1720

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-35
Author(s):  
Clodagh Tait
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Old English ◽  
Fictive Kinship ◽  
Infants And Young Children

Wet-nursing and fosterage were widely used in early modern Ireland. Despite the difficulties of reconstructing practices surrounding the nourishment and care of infants and young children, the limited surviving sources provide some evidence for the practical arrangements involved, the role of these practices in extending families and creating long-lasting ties of ‘fictive kinship’, the emotional and economic connections they forged and deeply held concerns that they might inspire and extend political disloyalty and disaffection. While fosterage is mostly associated with Gaelic communities, by the sixteenth century, a distinct brand of fosterage was significant to Old English families as well. New English and Protestant families also increasingly participated in networks referred to as fosterage, and references in the 1641 depositions testify to the degree to which these practices linked settlers and natives and the horror inspired by their abandonment.

Polyglossic Malabar: Arabi-Malayalam and the Muhiyuddinmala in the age of transition (1600s–1750s)

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-539
Author(s):  
P. K. YASSER ARAFATH
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Poetic Discourse ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Malabar Coast ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ocean Region ◽  
Textual Traditions ◽  
Classical Arabic

AbstractThis article examines the relations between trade, faith, and textual traditions in early modern Indian Ocean region and the birth of Arabi-Malayalam, a new system of writing which has facilitated the growth of a vernacular Islamic textual tradition in Malabar since the seventeenth century. As a transliterated scriptorial-literary tradition, Arabi-Malayalam emerged out of the polyglossic lingual sphere of the Malabar Coast, and remains as one of the important legacies of social and religious interactions in precolonial south Asia. The first part of this article examines the social, epistemic and normative reasons that led to the scriptorial birth of Arabi-Malayalam, moving beyond a handful of Malayalam writings that locate its origin in the social and economic necessities of Arab traders in the early centuries of Islam. The second part looks at the complex relationship between Muslim scribes and their vernacular audience in the aftermath of Portuguese violence and destruction of Calicut—one of the largest Indian Ocean ports before the sixteenth century. This part focuses on Qadi Muhammed bin Abdul Aziz and his Muhiyuddinmala, the first identifiable text in Arabi-Malayalam, examining how the Muhiyuddinmala represents a transition from classical Arabic theological episteme to the vernacular-popular poetic discourse which changed the pietistic behaviour of the Mappila Muslims of Malabar.

Translating Sorrow

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-163
Author(s):  
Scott L. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Central European ◽  
Cultural Challenges ◽  
The Social ◽  
Italian Music

In the multilingual environments of Central European cities and courts, Italian musicians found a receptive market for their music. There they confronted a range of linguistic abilities that encouraged innovative approaches to musical composition and publication. Recent rediscovery of the opening sheets of Giovanni Battista Pinello’s 1584 Primo libro dele neapolitane enables us to assess one Genoese composer’s experience of a multi-ethnic, Central European milieu during an unprecedented migrational wave. As chapelmaster at the electoral court in Dresden with ties to aristocratic circles in Prague, Pinello also issued a German version that can be sung, according to the composer, simultaneously with the napolitane. This study examines the Central European market for Italian music, the role of the Holy Roman Empire in facilitating Italian migration, and cultural challenges foreign musicians faced in their new homes. Nineteenth-century myths of nationhood depended on histories of folk-like immobility, but in fact migration was a basic condition of early modern European life. Music historians have long been aware of individual musicians’ travels from the Low Countries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, along with a new trend, emerging around 1600, toward northward emigration by Italian musicians. Nonetheless, there is much more to say about the social underpinnings of such movements. Pinello’s fusion of languages, poetic forms, and registers invites us to reimagine the multi-ethnic complexion of Central European musical centers in the late sixteenth century.

Louder Than Words: Broadsheets as Agents in a Multimedial Society

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva L E Janssens
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Word And Image ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Abstract As significant instruments in the dissemination of Protestant ideas, oral, visual and written media affected early modern culture and its mentalities in an unprecedented way. Through word and image, religious oppositions were exacerbated in order to encourage the process of conversion. The role of prints in Protestant propaganda has already received scholarly attention. Yet, too often, a focus on medium-specific characteristics has ignored the interesting facet of interplay with other media. Through a detailed study of several illustrated broadsheets, this contribution analyses how prints of a Protestant stripe related, both in an explicit and in an implicit way, to other modes of communication. The perspective of multi- and intermediality is used as a scientific window on sixteenth-century prints and their reception.

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