The Safavids under Western Eyes: Seventeenth-Century European Travelers to Iran

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudi Matthee
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Unique Information ◽  
Opening Up

AbstractThis essay takes a fresh look at the voluminous yet understudied Western travel writing about 17th-century Iran. It argues that, after this material is properly subjected to close scrutiny for authorial bias, interest and intertexuality, it remains exceedingly valuable for the information it provides on Safavid Iran. Early modern European travelers to Iran brought remnants of past religious and cultural prejudice with them, yet the best explored the country with an open eye, an appreciation for difference, and even a critical perspective on their own culture. They also provide remarkable, at times unique information about Iran and it inhabitants, opening up aspects of Safavid left uncovered by indigenous sources.

scholarly journals ‘Colouring’ — Material Depiction in Flemish and Dutch Baroque Art Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 243-265
Author(s):  
Lisa Wiersma
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Surface Effects ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Generic Term ◽  
Baroque Art ◽  
Human Flesh

Seventeenth-century painters were masters at painting objects and beings that seem tangible. Most elaborate was painting translucent materials like skins and pulp: human flesh and grapes, for instance, require various surface effects and suggest the presence of mass below the upper layers. Thus, the viewer is more or less convinced that a volume or object is present in an illusionary space. In Dutch, the word ‘stofuitdrukking’ is used: expression or indication of material, perhaps better understood as rendering of material. In English, ‘material depiction’ probably captures this painterly means best: it includes rendering of surface effects, while revealing the underlying substance, and it implies that weight and mass are suggested. Simple strokes of paint add up to materials and things that are convincingly percieved. At first glance, material depiction hardly seems a topic in early-modern art theory, yet 17th-century painters are virtually unequalled as regards this elaborate skill. Therefore, 17th-century written sources were studied to define how these might discuss material depiction, if not distinctly. This study concerns one of many questions regarding the incredible convincingness of 17th-century material depiction: besides wondering why the illusions work (Di Cicco et al., this issue) and how these were achieved (Wiersma, in press), the question should be asked why this convincingness was sought after. Was it mere display of ability and skill? And how was material depiction perceived, valued and enjoyed? First, contemporary terminology is determined: the seemingly generic term ‘colouring’ signified the application of convincing material depiction especially — which is not as self-evident as it sounds. Second, and extensively, the reader will find that convincing or appealing material depiction was considered a reference to religion and natural philosophy.

Early Modern Écologies

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Environmental Humanities ◽  
Human Relationship ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Opening Up

Early Modern Écologies is the first collective volume to offer perspectives on the relationship between contemporary ecological thought and early modern French literature. If Descartes spoke of humans as being ‘masters and possessors of Nature’ in the seventeenth century, the writers taken up in this volume arguably demonstrated a more complex and urgent understanding of the human relationship to our shared planet. Opening up a rich archive of literary and non-literary texts produced by Montaigne and his contemporaries, this volume foregrounds not how ecocriticism renews our understanding of a literary corpus, but rather how that corpus causes us to re-think or to nuance contemporary eco-theory. The sparsely bilingual title (an acute accent on écologies) denotes the primary task at hand: to pluralize (i.e. de-Anglophone-ize) the Environmental Humanities. Featuring established and emerging scholars from Europe and the United States, Early Modern Écologies opens up new dialogues between ecotheorists such as Timothy Morton, Gilles Deleuze, and Bruno Latour and Montaigne, Ronsard, Du Bartas, and Olivier de Serres.

scholarly journals Tra fonti erudite e lettori ordinari: una traduzione seicentesca del Satyricon

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Corinna Onelli
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Italian Translation ◽  
Italian Studies ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
Research Fellow ◽  
Excellent Work ◽  
Translation Errors

The paper presents a 17th-century translation of the Satyricon into Italian transmitted in manuscript. The translation is anonymous and presumably was intended for the illegal market of clandestine manuscripts. Material evidence shows that the translation actually circulated across time and among popular readers. The comparison between the Italian translation and 16th – and 17th editions of Petronius has revealed that the translator started his work on the obsolete text of the excerpta brevia (that is, the Satyricon as published before1575) and then shifted to the the excerpta longiora tradition, likely using the Satyricon edition published in 1601 (reprinted in 1608). Such a mixture of source texts proves the translator’s total lack of philological accuracy. In addition, he made several translation errors. However, surprisingly enough, the Italian translation underpins an excellent work of textual criticism on Petronius’ text. The suggested explanation is that the translator or a later reviser emendated the translation following a highly specialised commentary. Some translation errors, in fact, can be explained only as critical indications that have been completely misunderstood. The papers concludes putting in relation the success of the Satyricon among 17th-century popular readers with its reception as a subversive parody of the Greek novel and its traditional values.I have a PhD in Italian Studies (2006) from the Università RomaTre of Rome. Currently, I am a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the EHESS in Paris. My recent research interests are focused on the Early Modern Period; more specifically, on the translation and receptions of Classics and the circulation of heterodox texts. I am working at the research project Popular readers and clandestine literature: the case of an early modern translation of Petronius’ Satyricon into Italian (17th C.) funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, and, more broadly, I am exploring the 17th-c. success of the Satyricon and its reception as a novel and as a satire.Affiliation: Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre des Recherches Historiques of the EHESS in Paris (research group: Grihl – Groupe de Recherches Interdisciplinaires sur l’Histoire du Littéraire ).Relevant publications:‘La retorica dell’esperimento: per una rilettura delle Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl’insetti di Francesco Redi (1668)’, Italian Studies (2017), 72, 1, 41-56.Bartolomeo Beverini (1629-1686) e una versione inedita della Metafisica di Aristotele’, in L. Bianchi, J. Kraye and S. Gilson (eds), Vernacular Aristotelianism in Italy from the Fourteenth to Seventeenth Century, London, The Warburg Institute, 2016, 183-208.‘Freedom and censorship: Petronius’ Satyricon in seventeenth-century Italy’, Classical Receptions Journal (2014), 6. 1, 104-130.‘Con oscurità mutando in nomi: Napoli epicurea nei Successi di Eumolpione (1678)’, California Italian Studies (2012), 3. 1, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2tr7x1nd.

“The Necessary Ornaments of Place”

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 47-73
Author(s):  
Mana Kia
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
The Self ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
The West ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
The World

This article analyzes representations of place in seventeenth-century texts to consider how early modern Persians made sense of the world. The Persian formulation of alterity stands in contrast to Edward Said’s formulation about Orientalism, by which Europe makes itself into the West. In early modern Persianate Asia, common representations of place appear in geographical and travel writing. These shared features, which I call ornaments, adorned both places that shared a learned Persian language, Muslim rule, and those beyond, in other parts of Asia and Africa. The presence or absence of these ornaments made the world intelligible for early modern Persians, creating categories of similarity and alterity that were partial, diffuse, and aporetic, defying the self-other distinctions of Orientalism. This form of knowledge about the self and the world then generated the possibility for encounters different from both modern colonial power and the nation-state.

scholarly journals Tra fonti erudite e lettori ordinari: una traduzione seicentesca del Satyricon

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Corinna Onelli
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Italian Translation ◽  
Italian Studies ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
Research Fellow ◽  
Excellent Work ◽  
Translation Errors

The paper presents a 17th-century translation of the Satyricon into Italian transmitted in manuscript. The translation is anonymous and presumably was intended for the illegal market of clandestine manuscripts. Material evidence shows that the translation actually circulated across time and among popular readers. The comparison between the Italian translation and 16th – and 17th editions of Petronius has revealed that the translator started his work on the obsolete text of the excerpta brevia (that is, the Satyricon as published before1575) and then shifted to the the excerpta longiora tradition, likely using the Satyricon edition published in 1601 (reprinted in 1608). Such a mixture of source texts proves the translator’s total lack of philological accuracy. In addition, he made several translation errors. However, surprisingly enough, the Italian translation underpins an excellent work of textual criticism on Petronius’ text. The suggested explanation is that the translator or a later reviser emendated the translation following a highly specialised commentary. Some translation errors, in fact, can be explained only as critical indications that have been completely misunderstood. The papers concludes putting in relation the success of the Satyricon among 17th-century popular readers with its reception as a subversive parody of the Greek novel and its traditional values.I have a PhD in Italian Studies (2006) from the Università RomaTre of Rome. Currently, I am a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the EHESS in Paris. My recent research interests are focused on the Early Modern Period; more specifically, on the translation and receptions of Classics and the circulation of heterodox texts. I am working at the research project Popular readers and clandestine literature: the case of an early modern translation of Petronius’ Satyricon into Italian (17th C.) funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, and, more broadly, I am exploring the 17th-c. success of the Satyricon and its reception as a novel and as a satire.Affiliation: Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre des Recherches Historiques of the EHESS in Paris (research group: Grihl – Groupe de Recherches Interdisciplinaires sur l’Histoire du Littéraire ).Relevant publications:‘La retorica dell’esperimento: per una rilettura delle Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl’insetti di Francesco Redi (1668)’, Italian Studies (2017), 72, 1, 41-56.Bartolomeo Beverini (1629-1686) e una versione inedita della Metafisica di Aristotele’, in L. Bianchi, J. Kraye and S. Gilson (eds), Vernacular Aristotelianism in Italy from the Fourteenth to Seventeenth Century, London, The Warburg Institute, 2016, 183-208.‘Freedom and censorship: Petronius’ Satyricon in seventeenth-century Italy’, Classical Receptions Journal (2014), 6. 1, 104-130.‘Con oscurità mutando in nomi: Napoli epicurea nei Successi di Eumolpione (1678)’, California Italian Studies (2012), 3. 1, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2tr7x1nd.

scholarly journals "Commentatio tertia, nummaria" by Johann Peter Titius. A Contribution to the Knowledge of Ancient Greek and Roman Coins in the 17th-century Gdańsk Academic Gymnasium

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 203-218
Author(s):  
Bartosz Awianowicz
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Roman Coins ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Accounting Units ◽  
Practical Nature

Johann Peter Titz (Lat. Titius, 1619-1689), a professor of rhetoric at the Gdańsk Academic Gymnasium is known as an author of speeches, poems, rhetorical and historical writings. However, in 1676 he published an important (though less known) work on numismatics: Commentatio tertia, nummaria, de pecunia vetere ac nova, abaco tabulisque exhibita (Third, Monetary Commentary, on Old and New Money, Presented on a Plate and in Tables) as a signifcant part (320 pages) of a collection of treatises of more than 1,000 pages entitled Manuductio ad excerpendum. The aim of the paper is to present the content of the Commentatio tertia, nummaria and its ancient and early modern sources. The overall approach to the Titius’ study shows its practical nature (almost a third of the entire argument is devoted to attempts to reconcile the values of various ancient denominations and accounting units with contemporary coins) which seems to suggest that it might have been used by students viewing the coin collection in the Gdańsk library. A more thorough examination of the Commentatio alongside an analysis of the accounts of the seventeenth-century Gdańsk writer’s numismatic collection may contribute to determining to what extent numismatics were a permanent feature in the gymnasium curriculum in Gdańsk in the latter seventeenth century, and to what extent the youth (juventus) of the Academic Gymnasium, to whom Titius was addressing his work, really wanted to and could identify ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish coins.

Language Matters: ‘Counsel’ in Early Modern and Modern Medicine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Sabroe ◽  
Phil Withington
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Successful Scientist

Francis Bacon is famous today as one of the founding fathers of the so-called ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century. Although not an especially successful scientist himself, he was nevertheless the most eloquent and influential spokesperson for an approach to knowledge that promised to transform human understanding of both humanity and its relationship with the natural and social worlds. The central features of this approach, as they emerged in Bacon’s own writings and the work of his protégés and associates after 1605, are equally well known. They include the importance of experiment, observation, and a sceptical attitude towards inherited wisdom (from the ‘ancients’ in general and Aristotle in particular).

Divine Machines

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Theoretical Interest ◽  
Living World ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Organic Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Generation Theory

Though it did not yet exist as a discrete field of scientific inquiry, biology was at the heart of many of the most important debates in seventeenth-century philosophy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of G. W. Leibniz. This book offers the first in-depth examination of Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the empirical life sciences of his day, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. The book shows how these wide-ranging pursuits were not only central to Leibniz's philosophical interests, but often provided the insights that led to some of his best-known philosophical doctrines. Presenting the clearest picture yet of the scope of Leibniz's theoretical interest in the life sciences, the book takes seriously the philosopher's own repeated claims that the world must be understood in fundamentally biological terms. Here it reveals a thinker who was immersed in the sciences of life, and looked to the living world for answers to vexing metaphysical problems. The book casts Leibniz's philosophy in an entirely new light, demonstrating how it radically departed from the prevailing models of mechanical philosophy and had an enduring influence on the history and development of the life sciences. Along the way, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into early modern debates about the nature and origins of organic life, and into how philosophers such as Leibniz engaged with the scientific dilemmas of their era.

Dialectics, Rhetoric, and Functional Issues in Early Modern Hungarian Religious Disputes. Polemics Research in a Long Reformation Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-244
Author(s):  
Csilla Gabor
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Typical Form ◽  
The Right

The study deals with 16th and 17th century Hungarian printed polemical works considering religious disputes a typical form of communication in the age of Reformation and Catholic renewal. Its conceptual framework is the paradigm or research method of the long Reformation as an efficient assistance to the discovery and appreciation of early modern theological-religious diversity. The analysis examines several kinds of communication which occurs in the (religious) dispute, and explores the rules and conventions along which the (verbal) fighting takes place. Research shows that the opponents repeatedly refer to the rules of dialectics refuting each other’s standpoints accusing them of faulty argumentation, i.e., the wrong use of syllogisms. Dialectics is, namely, in this context not the ars with the help of which truth is found but with which evident truth is checked and justified in a way that the opponents can also be educated to follow the right direction.

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