Writing the History of the Present: Contextualizing Early Modern Literature

1999 ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
Jean E. Howard
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals Dworstwo obyczajów Sebastiana Fabiana Klonowica. Przekład Civilitas morum Erazma z Rotterdamu w spuściźnie poety oraz wydawnicze losy książeczki w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej

Terminus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2 (59)) ◽  
pp. 157-216
Author(s):  
Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Book Market ◽  
Publishing History ◽  
Polish Text ◽  
History Of ◽  
Library Collections

Sebastian Fabian Klonowic’s Translation of Civilitas morum by Erasmus of Rotterdam: Its Place in the Poet’s Legacy and Its Publishing History in Poland-Lithuania The article focuses on the Polish rendition of De civilitate morum puerilium – that is, a translation from Reinhard Lorich’s (Hadamarius’) catechismal version of Erasmus’ of Rotterdam treatise. The main goals of the text are: first, to understand the presence of the text (the Polish title: Dworstwo obyczajów) among works of such a talented author as Sebastian Fabian Klonowic; second, to reconstruct the publishing history of the Polish De civilitate; third to argue that forgotten bestsellers, such as Dworstwo, can help to better understand both early modern literature and book market in the first centuries of printing. The article summarises current knowledge about Sebastian Fabian Klonowic (ca. 1545–1602), a prolific poet, but also an author of textbooks and handbooks used to teach Latin and morals, as De civilitate was used as well. It analyses Klonowic’s translation practices and discusses his enthusiasm for Erasmus’ output. It also suggests that the Polish text was written with school usage in mind, probably for students of the newly opened academy established by Polish Brethrens in Raków. Next, the text moves on to describe the publishing history of De civilitate – Erasmus’ manual, its adaptations and translations. The author concentrates on the Polish translation, but the scarce evidence available for this title and its editions in the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania is interpreted in the wider context of the Latin and vernacular editions of De civilitate printed in other European lands. The survey combines information offered by the unique copies preserved in the library collections and the evidence found in archival sources to reconstruct the reasons for the success of the handbook, and to explain why the majority of copies multiplying the text once enormously popular with printers and readers alike were bound to perish. Edition of Dworstwo obyczajów presents the Polish text of Klonowic. It is based on a printed unique copy of about 1603 (held at Ossolineum Library in Wrocław).

Introduction: remapping early modern literature

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Augustine
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Milton ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
John Dryden ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
High Definition ◽  
Andrew Marvell ◽  
History Of ◽  
Century Literature

The argument of this book follows two main themes: the first has to do with periodicity; the second with politics, especially as a framework within which to view seventeenth-century literature. This chapter maps the disciplinary paradigms which have long produced a view of the seventeenth century saturated by high-definition contrasts: between the earlier and later Stuart periods, but also between factions and ideologies. It then asks what it would look like to write the history of seventeenth-century literature anew, to tell a story about imaginative and polemical writing in this age that remained open to accident and unevenness, to contradiction and uncertainty. Giving illustrative consideration to John Dryden, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton, the chapter begins to suggest some new ways of conceiving how these writers might relate to one other and to the politics and aesthetics of a long seventeenth century.

Bunyan and Religious Allegory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Davies
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Narrative Methods ◽  
Pilgrim's Progress ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chivalric Romance

This chapter re-examines John Bunyan's religious allegories, and in particular The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), as works that complicate what might be thought of as novelistic habits of reading and writing. It seeks to approach them not simply as precursors to the novel but as radically different kinds of fiction. One might wish to treat Bunyan's allegories as ‘entertainment machines’ similar to other kinds of early modern literature, such as chivalric romance or the rogue biography, but they resist and arguably seek to reform ‘the fiction reading impulse’. To this degree, Bunyan's major allegorical works are sometimes like novels and at the same time nothing like them. Should Bunyan still hold a place in the history of the novel, it could be despite rather than because of the narrative methods he adopts.

Montaigne and Shakespeare

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
William M. Hamlin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

This article examines the history of critical efforts to trace the nature and extent of Shakespeare’s reliance upon Montaigne. Such efforts began in the late eighteenth century with the English scholar Edward Capell, and they have continued quite vigorously up to the present. In addition, the article raises a number of key cognate questions: What constitutes evidence in an investigation of this sort? When does verbal reliance amount to intellectual dependence? What do we stand to gain if we cease to look for relations of influence and focus instead on synchronic affinities between Montaigne and Shakespeare? Does Shakespeare exhibit resistance to Montaignian thought? And why do the potential links between these extraordinarily independent writers continue to fascinate scholars of early modern literature?

Melancholy, Passionate Love, and the Coita d'Amor

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 640-646
Author(s):  
Josiah Blackmore
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Passionate Love ◽  
Marsilio Ficino ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Constructions

From (Pseudo-)Aristotle's reflections on wine, poetry, and heroes in problems, book 30, to modern psychoanalytic theory and depression, melancholy has claimed the attention of artists and thinkers throughout the history of Western culture. According to Jennifer Radden's historical analysis, melancholy was “a central cultural idea, focusing, explaining, and organizing the way people saw the world and one another and framing social, medical, and epistemological norms” (vii). It takes a number of forms: for ancient Greek physicians it was a somatic malady, an overwrought contemplativeness and moroseness rooted in the body's humors; for Aristotle it was this, too, but was also a fount of artistic inspiration; for the Italian humanist Marsilio Ficino it was the source of poetic and prophetic powers, a requisite for heightened intellect. Melancholy was, in short, a principle of relation between the interior and exterior realms and as such possessed a weighty hermeneutic charge as a lens through which to experience and read the world. In recent years, scholars in literary and cultural studies have begun to explore the perspectives that melancholy offers for understanding such broad topics as the formation of literary subjectivities and cultural constructions of gender. The persistent presence of melancholy in medieval and early modern literature, following Radden's observation, advocates for its many possibilities as an interpretive tool to shape diverse literary positionalities and socioepistemological modes of being.

Albrecht Classen, Prostitution in Medieval and Early Modern Literature: The Dark Side of Sex and Love in the Premodern Era. Studies in Medieval Literature. Lanham, USA: Lexington Books, 2019, 237 p.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 267-269
Author(s):  
Charlotte A. Stanford
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Related Topic ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
History Of

As this book notes wryly, sex sells well, and the related topic of prostitution has also had its related impact in scholarly literature, even of the premodern era. However, the author also observes a “curious lacuna”—how has prostitution been represented in literary texts? By whom, for what reasons, and for what purposes have these narratives been employed? And what can they tell us about the history of mentalités? Classen’s study on prostitution in literature tackles all these questions and others.

The Undoing of a Man: Cuckoldry in Heywood's Edward IV

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-267
Author(s):  
Jonathan Wright
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Social Construct

Manhood was a complex social construct in early modern England. Males could not simply mature or grow from boys to men. Instead, they had to assert or prove they were men in multiple ways, such as growing a beard, behaving courageously in battle, exercising self-control in walking, talking, weeping, eating, and drinking, pursuing manly interests, exhibiting manly behaviors, avoiding interests or behaviors typically ascribed to women, marrying a woman and providing for her physical, sexual, and spiritual needs, and living and dying as a faithful Christian. Once a male became a “man” in the eyes of others, his efforts shifted from “making” himself manly to maintaining or defending his reputation as a “true man.” All men could undermine their manhood through their own actions or inactions, but the married man could also lose his reputation through his wife's infidelity. Numerous literary husbands in early modern literature live anxiously with the knowledge they might suffer a cuckold's humiliation and shame. Matthew Shore, who “treasures” his wife to a fault in Thomas Heywood's two-part play Edward IV, is an exceptional example of such a husband. This critical reading of Edward IV explores the complexity of manhood in Heywood's day by showing various males trying to assert or defend their manhood; explaining why husbands had reasons to fear cuckoldry; analyzing how Jane Shore's infidelity affects her husband; following Matthew Shore's journey from trusting husband to distrusting, bitter cuckold, to forgiving husband; and examining his seemingly inexplicable death at the end of the play.

St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roze Hentschell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Performance Space ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Discrete Spaces

St Paul’s Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Spatial Practices is a study of London’s cathedral, its immediate surroundings, and its everyday users in early modern literary and historical documents and images, with a special emphasis on the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Hentschell discusses representations of several of the seemingly discrete spaces of the precinct to reveal how these spaces overlap with and inform one another spatially. She argues that specific locations—including the Paul’s nave (also known as Paul’s Walk), Paul’s Cross pulpit, the bookshops of Paul’s Churchyard, the College of the Minor Canons, Paul’s School, the performance space for the Children of Paul’s, and the fabric of the cathedral itself—should be seen as mutually constitutive and in a dynamic, ever-evolving state. To support this argument, she attends closely to the varied uses of the precinct, including the embodied spatial practices of early modern Londoners and visitors, who moved through the precinct, paused to visit its sacred and secular spaces, and/or resided there. This includes the walkers in the nave, sermon-goers, those who shopped for books, the residents of the precinct, the choristers—who were also schoolboys and actors—and those who were devoted to church repairs and renovations. By attending to the interactions between place and people and to the multiple stories these interactions tell—Hentschell attempts to animate St Paul’s and deepen our understanding of the cathedral and precinct in the early modern period.

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