The Name of Grim: Tracing the Character of Grim the Collier in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Theatre

Early Theatre ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Seymour
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Environmental Awareness ◽  
Black Skin ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Superficial Similarity ◽  
The Devil

Grim the Collier is a curious comic character who receives little critical attention. Grim appears in three key plays, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century pamphlets, herbals, and ballad culture. This article examines, and rejects, Grim as a potentially useful figure for environmental awareness. I dispel legends about the basis of this character, and examine how the labile significance of the name ‘Grim’ implicates it in networks of superficial similarity between devils, colliers, and racialized black skin. These networks link to the proverb that underlies most early modern depictions of Grim: ‘like will to like quoth the devil to the collier’.

scholarly journals The Swift and Secret Messenger: John Wilkins’s Mercury and the Paradoxes of Language

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-91
Author(s):  
Klaudia Łączyńska
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Universal Language ◽  
Philosophical Language ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
The Right

AbstractJohn Wilkins’s Mercury or the Secret and Swift Messenger: Showing How a Man May with Privacy and Speed Communicate His Thoughts to a Friend at Any Distance was first published in 1641. As a book on cryptography presenting a variety of secret means of communication at a distance it seems to have appeared at just the right time, when the biblical curse of the confusion of tongues was doubled by the curse of political confusion on the brink of the English civil war. However, the book seems to be more than just a detailed account of methods of secret writing; its topic gives the author a chance to present his views on language which he would later develop in his life’s work An Essay towards Real Character and a Philosophical Language published in 1668. The Essay had received much greater critical attention than the early pamphlet, which is usually referred to as merely a prelude to an account of his universal language project. Indeed, in the little book on cryptography, Wilkins already demonstrated his awareness of the conventional character of language and its role within the system of human interactions, as well as advertised a project of philosophical language that would enhance communication between all nations and remedy the curse of Babel. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the value of the pamphlet lies also in the insight that it gives into the seventeenth-century debates on the nature of language and into arguments which were often provided, in equal measure, by theology, Hermetic lore, mythology, literature and early modern science. Wilkins’s meticulous recording of the contradictory views and propositions on language produces a sense of methodological inconsistency that leads to ambiguities and paradoxes. However, in the medley of concepts and the collection of linguistic “curiosities” that Mercury presents, a careful reader will discern the growing mistrust of language as a means of representing reality and as a foundation of knowledge, which was one of the symptoms of the general crisis of representation leading to an epistemological shift that started in the seventeenth century.

scholarly journals Todas las naciones han de oyrla: Bells in the Jesuit reducciones of Early Modern Paraguay

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jutta Toelle
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Flexible Material ◽  
The Devil

The essay focuses on the role of bells in the Jesuit reducciones. Within the contested sound world of the mission areas, bells played an important role as their sounds formed a sense of space, regulated social life, and established an audibility of time and order. Amongst all the other European sounds which Catholic missionaries had introduced by the seventeenth century—church songs, prayers in European languages, and instrumental music—bells functioned especially well as signals of the omnipotent and omnipresent Christian God and as instruments in the establishing of acoustic hegemony. Taking the Conquista espiritual by Antonio Ruiz de Montoya (1639) as its main source, the essay points to several references to bells, as objects of veneration, as part of a flexible material culture, and, most importantly, as weapons in the daily fight with non-Christians, the devil, and demons.

scholarly journals The Witch-cleric Stereotype in a Seventeenth-Century Lutheran Context*

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Rowlands
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Innocent People ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
Witch Trials ◽  
Wide Perspective ◽  
The Witch ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Over Time

Abstract This article enhances our understanding of the development and dynamism of early modern witch stereotypes by focusing on the stereotype of the witch-cleric, the Christian minister imagined by early modern people as working for the devil instead of God, baptizing people into witchcraft, working harmful magic and even officiating at witches’ gatherings. I show how this stereotype first developed in relation to Catholic clerics in demonology, print culture and witch-trials, then examine its emergence in relation to Protestant clerics in Germany and beyond, using case studies of pastors from the Lutheran territory of Rothenburg ob der Tauber from 1639 and 1692 to explore these ideas in detail. I also offer a broader comparison of beliefs about Protestant witch-clerics and their susceptibility to formal prosecution with their Catholic counterparts in early modern Germany, showing that cases involving Protestant witch-clerics were part of a cross-confessional phenomenon that is best understood in a comparative, Europe-wide perspective. In addition to showing how the witch-cleric stereotype changed over time and spread geographically, I conclude by arguing that three distinct variants of this stereotype had emerged by the seventeenth century: the Catholic ‘witch-priest’ and Protestant ‘witch-pastor’ (who were supposedly witches themselves) and the overzealous clerical ‘witch-master’, who was thought to do the devil’s work by helping persecute innocent people for witchcraft. Despite these stereotypes, however, relatively few clerics of either confession were tried and executed as witches; overall, patriarchy worked to protect men of the cloth from the worst excesses of witch persecution.

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.

Orthodox Radicals

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Baptist Identity ◽  
Ongoing Project

Orthodox Radicals explores the origins and identity of Baptists during the English Revolution (1640–1660), arguing that mid-seventeenth century Baptists did not, in fact, understand themselves to be part of a larger, all-encompassing “Baptist” movement. Contrary to both the explicit statements of many historians and the tacit suggestion embedded in the very use of “Baptist” as an overarching historical category, the early modern men and women who rejected infant baptism would not have initially understood that single theological move as being in itself constitutive of a new group identity. Rather, the rejection of infant baptism was but one of a number of doctrinal revisions then taking place among English puritans eager to further their ongoing project of godly reformation. Orthodox Radicals thus complicates our understanding of Baptist identity and addresses broader themes including early modern religious toleration, the mechanisms by which early modern groups defined and defended themselves, and the perennial problem of historical anachronism. By combining a provocative reinterpretation Baptist identity with close readings of key theological and political texts, Orthodox Radicals offers the most original and stimulating analysis of mid-seventeenth century Baptists in decades.

Stuart Succession Literature

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
British Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
Distinct Category ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
Distinguished Group ◽  
Modern British Literature

Moments of royal succession, which punctuated the Stuart era (1603–1714), occasioned outpourings of literature. Writers, including most of the major figures of the seventeenth century from Jonson, Daniel, and Donne to Marvell, Dryden, and Behn, seized upon these occasions to mark the transition of power; to reflect upon the political structures and values of their nation; and to present themselves as authors worthy of patronage and recognition. This volume of essays explores this important category of early modern writing. It contends that succession literature warrants attention as a distinct category: appreciated by contemporaries, acknowledged by a number of scholars, but never investigated in a coherent and methodical manner, it helped to shape political reputations and values across the period. Benefiting from the unique database of such writing generated by the AHRC-funded Stuart Successions Project, the volume brings together a distinguished group of authors to address a subject which is of wide and growing interest to students both of history and of literature. It illuminates the relation between literature and politics in this pivotal century of English political and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the volume will be indispensable to scholars of early modern British literature and history as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in both fields.

Bjørn Okholm Skaarup, Anatomy and Anatomists in Early Modern Spain (Farnham/Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2015), xii + 285pp. ISBN: 9781471448162

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Nutton
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Spain

This chapter reviews the book Anatomy and Anatomists in Early Modern Spain (2015), by Bjørn Okholm Skaarup. The book traces the development of anatomy in Spain and Mexico from 1500 to the end of the seventeenth century. Skaarup cites particular instances where the Spanish experience can contribute substantially to wider debates, including Juan Tomas Porcell’s autopsies of plague victims in a hospital at Zaragoza in 1568 and the detailed plan of 1586 for a ‘house of anatomy’ there. He challenges O’Malley’s exaggerated description, based on Vesalius’s comments on his time in Spain between 1559 and 1561, that doctors and surgeons lack interest in anatomy. Skaarup reveals the difficulties faced by those who wished to introduce dissection as an essential part of the education of a doctor, as well as the objections that might be made.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Empirical Stance

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

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