Introduction: Speech and Oral Culture in Early Modern Europe and Beyond

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 301-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Horodowich
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Word Of Mouth ◽  
Printing Press ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Classical Rhetoric ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Oral Culture ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Academic Discussion ◽  
Do So

Abstract From preaching to academic discussion, from intimate conversation to the circulation of rumors in the marketsquare, the exchange of ideas and information in the early modern world was predominantly and overwhelmingly by word of mouth. Despite the growing impact of the printing press, texts themselves circulated and were received in a context that was pervasively oral. The majority of the population communicated primarily in speech rather than in writing, and even when they accessed written texts, they were most likely to do so through the mediation of speech by listening to others read out loud. Many literary and scholarly genres moreover, from poetry to theater, were conceived for oral diffusion. From the Renaissance interest in the study of classical rhetoric to conversation manuals, from civic decrees punishing blasphemy to the preoccupation with rumors and the collection of word-of-mouth testimonies in judicial settings, this was a culture that thought deeply about talk.

Circles of Confidence in Correspondence

Nuncius ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles van den Heuvel ◽  
Scott B. Weingart ◽  
Nils Spelt ◽  
Henk Nellen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Knowledge Exchange ◽  
Technological Knowledge ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Republic

Science in the early modern world depended on openness in scholarly communication. On the other hand, a web of commercial, political, and religious conflicts required broad measures of secrecy and confidentiality; similar measures were integral to scholarly rivalries and plagiarism. This paper analyzes confidentiality and secrecy in intellectual and technological knowledge exchange via letters and drawings. We argue that existing approaches to understanding knowledge exchange in early modern Europe – which focus on the Republic of Letters as a unified entity of corresponding scholars – can be improved upon by analyzing multilayered networks of communication. We describe a data model to analyze circles of confidence and cultures of secrecy in intellectual and technological knowledge exchanges. Finally, we discuss the outcomes of a first experiment focusing on the question of how personal and professional/official relationships interact with confidentiality and secrecy, based on a case study of the correspondence of Hugo Grotius.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Pollmann
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Public Memory ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Memory Practices ◽  
Do So

Although ‘memory’ has in recent years become an important topic of study for early modernists, no comparative overview of its practice in early modern Europe and the British Isles as yet exists. It is the first aim of this book to offer such an overview. The introduction explores memory as a scholarly concept, explains why this book focuses on the ‘practice’ of memory, and what sources we have at our disposal to do so. It explains why theories and textbooks on memory have so far had so little to say about early modern practices, and proceed from the assumption that public memory is a modern phenomenon. By contrast, this book contends that a better knowledge of early modern memory practices can help account for many features of modern memory that are currently ascribed to the coming of modernity.

The Scandal of Kabbalah

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaacob Dweck
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Culture War ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition. From its medieval beginnings as an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah spread throughout the early modern world and became a central feature of Jewish life. Scholars have long studied the revolutionary impact of Kabbalah, but, as this book argues, they have misunderstood the character and timing of opposition to it. Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources, this book tells the story of the first criticism of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. In this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an authentic form of ancient esotericism, Modena proved the recent origins of Kabbalah and sought to convince his readers to return to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides. This book examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed by Modena's attack—a critical analysis of sacred texts, skepticism about religious truths, and self-consciousness about the past—and shows how these qualities and the later history of his polemic challenge conventional understandings of the relationship between Kabbalah and modernity. The book argues that Kabbalah was the subject of critical inquiry in the very period it came to dominate Jewish life rather than centuries later as most scholars have thought.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 213-218
Author(s):  
Peter Thonemann
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Dream Interpretation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Arabic Translation ◽  
New Science ◽  
Dream Analysis ◽  
Medieval Islam

This chapter describes the fate of the Oneirocritica after antiquity, with a focus on its reception in Medieval Islam, Byzantium, and early modern Europe. The transmission of the text (in Greek and Arabic) is discussed, with particular attention to the enormous influence exercised on later Islamic dream-interpretation by the ninth-century Arabic translation of the Oneirocritica by Ḥunayn b. Isḥâq. An account of the rediscovery of the Oneirocritica in sixteenth-century Europe is followed by a short coda on the influence of Artemidorus in the modern world, with a discussion of the role played by the Oneirocritica in Freud’s ‘new science’ of dream-analysis.

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