Ultra mensuram tendere. Zur Maßlosigkeit mönchischer Askese (David von Augsburg, García Jiménez de Cisneros, Bernardino de Laredo)

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
Christina Johanna Bischoff
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
General Problem ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
The Subject

AbstractThe present contribution deals with excess in medieval and early modern monastic asceticism. It claims that excess, in this context, is not an individual option, but a general problem inherent to Christian asceticism. By giving priority to self-denial, this type of asceticism promotes a self-regulated, autonomous subjectivity which is clearly an unintentional by-product of the asceticism. Therefore individual asceticism oscillates between prohibited self-fashioning and, as a response, intensified self-denial. The problem is outlined in an introductory chapter about ‘De exterioris et interioris hominis compositione’ by David of Augsburg. Following this, two early modern Spanish books are used to illustrate how spiritual texts deal with the ambivalences of asceticism. The ‘Exercitatorio de la vida spiritual’ by García Jiménez de Cisneros regulates asceticism in detail, while the ‘Subida del monte Sión’ by Bernardino de Laredo allows the subject more room for interpretation; this however comes at the price of a fictionalisation of asceticism.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Berger
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
European History ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Visual Form ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Textual Strategies ◽  
Clear Presentation

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to introduce visual counterparts to the textual strategies of selection, encapsulation, and recombination employed by Aristotelian and anti-Aristotelian scholars and students in the early modern period. Many early modern philosophical images were the products of a particular moment in European history, when a method of transmitting knowledge aimed at optimizing efficiency through the clear presentation of information began to flourish. This study demonstrates that these images, rather than merely simplifying preexisting philosophical concepts, enrich theoretical knowledge by bringing it into visual form both in combination with words and independently of texts. The remainder of the chapter describes documents that are the subject of this study followed by an overview of the subsequent chapters.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Islamic Architecture ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Spanish National Identity

This introductory chapter opens with the case study of the amendments that the historian Ambrosio de Morales introduced in the manuscript version of his core book Las Antigüedades de las ciudades de España (1575) before sending it to print. The changes in the description of Córdoba Mosque reveal the conflictive status of Islamic architecture in the Spanish historical writing of the time. Upon this example the subject of Admiration and Awe is introduced through three angles: the connection of the topic of the interpretation of Islamic monuments to sixteenth and seventeenth historiographical building of Spanish national identity; a review of recent academic literature on the subject as well as on its possible connection to postcolonial theory; and a survey in the early modern historiographical distinction among medieval Islamic buildings and contemporary uses of Islamic architecture.

‘More, I prithee, more’: Melancholy, Musical Appetite and Medical Discourse in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Iselin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
Modern Music ◽  
Twelfth Night ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
Dramatic Text ◽  
Musical Event ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many

Pierre Iselin broaches the subject of early modern music and aims at contextualising Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s most musical comedies, within the polyphony of discourses—medical, political, poetic, religious and otherwise—on appetite, music and melancholy, which circulated in early modern England. Iselin examines how these discourses interact with what the play says on music in the many commentaries contained in the dramatic text, and what music itself says in terms of the play’s poetics. Its abundant music is considered not only as ‘incidental,’ but as a sort of meta-commentary on the drama and the limits of comedy. Pinned against contemporary contexts, Twelfth Night is therefore regarded as experimenting with an aural perspective and as a play in which the genre and mode of the song, the identity and status of the addressee, and the more or less ironical distance that separates them, constantly interfere. Eventually, the author sees in this dark comedy framed by an initial and a final musical event a dramatic piece punctuated, orchestrated and eroticized by music, whose complex effects work both on the onstage and the offstage audiences. This reflection on listening and reception seems to herald an acoustic aesthetics close to that of The Tempest.

Spectacular Science, Technology and Superstition in the Age of Shakespeare

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Renaissance Literature ◽  
Science And Literature ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
Dialectical Approach ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Modern Perspective

Back in the late 1950s, C.P. Snow famously defined science negatively by separating it from what it was not, namely literature. Such polarization, however, creates more problems than it solves. By contrast, the two co-editors of the book have adopted a dialectical approach to the subject, and to the numerous readers who keep asking themselves “what is science?”, we provide an answer from an early modern perspective, whereby “science” actually includes such various intellectual pursuits as history, poetry, occultism, or philosophy. Each essay illustrates one particular aspect of Shakespeare’s works and links science with the promise of the spectacular. This volume aims at bridging the gap between Renaissance literature and early modern science, focusing as it does on a complex intellectual territory, situated at the point of juncture between humanism, natural magic and craftsmanship. We assume that science and literature constantly interacted with one another, making clear the fact that what we now call “literature” and what we choose to see as “science” were not clearly separated in Shakespeare’s days but rather part of a common intellectual territory.

‘Think me cold, frozen, and impotent, and so report me?’: Volpone and His ‘Castrone’ Complex

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac Hui
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
The Subject

Reading Jonson with the Fabliau, Boccaccio and Chaucer, this chapter, with the help of Lacan’s theory, rereads Volpone Act 3 scene 7, explaining why Volpone ‘delays’ his ‘rape’ of Celia. While Volpone is commonly known for his love of theatrical performance and transformation, the chapter suggests that this cannot be thought without the concept of his being ‘castrated’. Although ‘castration’ is usually regarded as a censoring force, Volpone is empowered and thrives on it. Moreover, this chapter compares the scene in Volpone with another similar one in Philip Massinger’s The Renegado, discussing how the subject of castration is used in early modern comedy and tragicomedy.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas I. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Michel De Montaigne ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Northern European ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
Legal Principle ◽  
Ethical Disposition

In academic debates and popular political discourse, tolerance almost invariably refers either to an individual moral or ethical disposition or to a constitutional legal principle. However, for the political actors and ordinary residents of early modern Northern European countries torn apart by religious civil war, tolerance was a political capacity, an ability to talk to one’s religious and political opponents in order to negotiate civil peace and other crucial public goods. This book tells the story of perhaps the greatest historical theorist-practitioner of this political conception of tolerance: Michel de Montaigne. This introductory chapter argues that a Montaignian insistence that political opponents enter into productive dialogue with each other is worth reviving and promoting in the increasingly polarized democratic polities of the twenty-first century.

Discovering Architecture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Walker
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Athens ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Degree Of Confidence ◽  
Architectural Principles ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Architectural Knowledge

This chapter deals with the genesis of architectural knowledge. In particular, it explores those rare moments when early modern English authors wrote about newly discovered examples of ancient architecture, the most important forms of architectural knowledge that existed. I will discuss three such accounts (all published in the Philosophical Transactions) of Roman York, Palmyra, and ancient Athens. These three texts share a preoccupation with truth and accuracy, as befitted the task of communicating highly sought-after architectural knowledge. They also demonstrate the degree of confidence of English writers in this period, not only in how they interpreted ancient architecture, but also in how they sought to criticize previous European authors on the subject. But most importantly, these texts reveal the extent of English intellectuals’ knowledge of the architectural principles of the ancient world and how that knowledge was in a state of flux.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hadfield
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Empirical Observation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Modern Europe

There were few subjects that animated people in early modern Europe more than lying. The subject is endlessly represented and discussed in literature; treatises on rhetoric and courtiership; theology, philosophy, and jurisprudence; travel writing; pamphlets and news books; science and empirical observation; popular culture, especially books about strange, unexplained phenomena; and, of course, legal discourse. For many, lying could be controlled and limited even if not eradicated; for others, lying was a necessary element of a casuistical tradition, liars balancing complicated issues and short-term pragmatic considerations in the expectation of solving more problems than they caused through their deceit....

Commands in Wolaitta

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Azeb Amha
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Type ◽  
Positive Polarity ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Leave Taking ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Syntactic Properties

This chapter examines expressions of commands (imperatives) in Wolaitta and the ways in which the imperative is distinguished from statements and questions. Although each sentence type is formally distinct, imperatives and questions share a number of morpho-syntactic properties. Similar to declarative and interrogative sentences, imperatives in Wolaitta involve verbal grammatical categories such as the distinction of person, number, and gender of the subject as well as negative and positive polarity. In contrast to previous studies, the present contribution establishes the function of a set of morphemes based on -árk and -érk to be the expression of plea or appeal to an addressee rather than politeness when issuing a command. Instead, politeness in commands is expressed by using plural (pro)nominal and verbal elements. The imperative in Wolaitta is a robust construction which is also used in formulaic speeches such as leave-taking as well as in blessing, curses, and advice.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Cefalu
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Synoptic Gospels ◽  
Fourth Gospel ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Saint John ◽  
Pauline Theology

The introductory chapter argues that, during the early modern period in England, the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle of Saint John the Evangelist were as influential as Pauline theology and, in many respects, more influential than the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The chapter outlines several features of a distinctive, post-Reformed, English Johannine devotionalism: a high Christology that emphasizes the divine rather than human nature of Christ; the belief that salvation is achieved more through revelation than objective atonement and expiatory sin; a realized eschatology according to which eternal life has been achieved and the end-time has already partially arrived; a robust doctrine of assurance and comfort, usually tied to Johannine eschatology and pneumatology; and a stylistic and rhetorical approach to representing these theological features that often emulates John’s mode of discipleship misunderstanding and irony not found to a comparable degree in the Synoptic writings.

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