scholarly journals Zentrifugen des Wissens – Zur Enzyklopädik des Barockromans

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas B. Kilcher
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
Centrifugal Dispersion

AbstractEarly modern literature has high epistemological claims. In particular, the novel as the most innovative genre of the 16th and 17th centuries was expected to negotiate and transmit knowledge about the world in an extensive way. This epistemological optimism must be understood against the background of contemporary encyclopaedic models, which offered new possibilities of reaching out for universal and total knowledge. Two variants of encyclopaedic writing are most efficient for the novel: the logic of Lullism and the miscellaneous knowledge production of Polyhistorism. Both techniques were used in baroque novels of the 17th century: Polyhistorism produced a centrifugal dispersion of knowledge throughout the texts, whereas Lullism aimed at recollecting and ordering it. This interplay is evidently present in Daniel Casper von Lohenstein’s highly digressive 3,000 page novel „Arminius“ (1689/90), with its paratextual framework of prefaces, annotations, and indices. Moreover, the reception of „Arminius“ in 18th and 19th centuries is pertinent for the subsequent critique of encyclopaedic knowledge.

Traducing the Soul: Donne's Second Anniversarie

PMLA ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 121 (5) ◽  
pp. 1493-1508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramie Targoff
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
The Self ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Marked Contrast ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

Readers have long acknowledged John Donne's lament for the decay of the world in the two Anniversarie poems commemorating Elizabeth Drury. What has not been acknowledged is the extent to which the second of these poems stages the reluctance of the soul to depart from the carcass of the earth so vividly depicted in the first. In The Second Anniversarie, Donne does something unprecedented in early modern literature: he gives voice to a soul that cannot bear to leave its earthly body behind. This essay argues that Donne represents a mutual longing between soul and body that stands in marked contrast to conventional Protestant depictions of the relationship between the two parts of the self. His explanation for such mutual longing, I contend, derives from his belief in the corporeal origins of the soul. (RT)

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.

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.

Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhodri Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
English Language ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
New Interpretation

This book is a radical new interpretation of the most famous play in the English language. By exploring Shakespeare's engagements with the humanist traditions of early modern England and Europe, the book reveals a Hamlet unseen for centuries: an innovative, coherent, and exhilaratingly bleak tragedy in which the governing ideologies of Shakespeare's age are scrupulously upended. The book establishes that life in Elsinore is measured not by virtue but by the deceptions and grim brutality of the hunt. It also shows that Shakespeare most vividly represents this reality in the character of Hamlet: his habits of thought and speech depend on the cultures of pretence that he affects to disdain, ensuring his alienation from both himself and the world around him. The book recovers a work of far greater magnitude than the tragedy of a young man who cannot make up his mind. It shows that in Hamlet, as in King Lear, Shakespeare confronts his audiences with a universe that received ideas are powerless to illuminate—and where everyone must find their own way through the dark. The book is required reading for all students of early modern literature, drama, culture, and history.

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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