The Fading Influence of the Medieval Ars Dictaminis in England After 1400

2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Significant Influence ◽  
Genre Theory ◽  
Letter Of Credit ◽  
Ars Dictaminis ◽  
The Middle Ages

The influence of dictaminal treatises in England was weak throughout the Middle Ages and largely restricted to a limited number of royal clerks and a few academics. Most practitioners were royal chancery clerks who dealt with foreign and ecclesiastical powers. This article focuses chiefly on the use of dictaminal letters by middle class English citizens in the fifteenth and earlier sixteenth centuries. These letters show little significant influence of continental or English dictaminal theory but are chiefly either sprawling news bulletins like the Paston letters or, more commonly, imitations of the royal missives from the Signet or Privy Seal offices. As the fifteenth century ended even these vestigial dictaminal forms were replaced among the middles classes by business formats, such as the letter of credit, although they retained some use among the upper classes into the sixteenth century and in some royal missives into the eighteenth century. The article concludes with suggestions on ways contemporary genre theory might be usefully applied to analyze the rise and decline of the ars dictaminis.

Music, Architecture, Proportion and the Renaissance Way of Thinking

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Vasco Zara
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Universal Truth ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
The Middle Ages

During the Renaissance, the language of proportion became a unified theory capable of encompassing the understanding of the world within a coherent theological, philosophical and artistic framework. Music, with its harmonic paradigm, plays a key role in this construction. From the fifteenth century through to the end of the sixteenth century, architects and architectural theorists made reference, both in new treatises and commentaries to Vitruvius, to musical matters, transforming architecture into the summa of knowledge. The affinity to music was grounded on both a common mathematical and rhetoric gnosiology. Formerly conceived of as ideal, numbers became eloquent, reinforcing the quantitative paradigm of proportion with its qualitative one. The language of proportion as a compositional tool reveals the shift between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: while the Medieval tèchne based on modular thinking provides beauty and universal truth using the technique of repetition, the Humanist paradigm of variety produces pleasure and individual truth – a condition typical of the premodern.

The Many Musical Medievalisms of Disney

2020 ◽  
pp. 689-708
Author(s):  
John Haines
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Sleeping Beauty ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Common View ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Animated Films ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Middle Ages

This essay argues that the Disney Company is one of today’s main purveyors of medievalism. The idea of Disney as a force for medievalism may strike some academic readers as odd, given the still common view of medievalism as a primarily academic phenomenon. Rather, as argued in the first part of this essay, medievalism is a widespread cultural phenomenon, originating in the sixteenth century, out of which academic medievalism emerged in the eighteenth century. As part of this broader cultural medievalism, the Disney Company has played an increasingly important role in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Rather than the literalist historical medievalism that usually preoccupies academics, the Disney Company has followed a looser approach centered on key stereotypes, in keeping with the earliest and most pervasive concept of the Middle Ages from the sixteenth century onward. In all its medievalist products, ranging from early animated films to Fantasyland’s iconic monument the Sleeping Beauty Castle, Disney has made music a primary concern.

The Figure Genius in the Renaissance

1964 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 234-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. T. Starnes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Middle Ages

The figure Genius in English literature has received attention from scholars from the eighteenth century to the present day, especially with reference to Spenser, Jonson, and Milton. Perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of the subject is that by Professor E. C. Knowlton, in a series of articles in the 1920s, tracing the appearance and literary use of the figure from antiquity, through the middle ages, to the end of the sixteenth century. As the substance of much of Knowlton's investigation is in his study of 'The Genii of Spenser' (1928), this article merits a statement of the author's purpose and procedure.

From Knight Errant to Family Man

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-62
Author(s):  
Marie Sumner Lott
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Song Cycle ◽  
Love Story ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Middle Ages

Like his contemporaries and predecessors, Brahms frequently engaged the Middle Ages to comment on modern cultural life in a way that would be accessible and meaningful to his audiences. This essay will explore his “Magelone Romances” (the song cycle, op. 33), which present the idealized, fantastical love story of Peter of Provence and the Fair Magelone in Ludwig Tieck’s 1797 retelling of the fifteenth-century romance. In essence, the cycle develops a simplistic fantasy of extraordinary heroism into the comforting reality of middle-class domesticity. In this way, Brahms appropriates medieval tropes that emerged in the early decades of literary and musical romanticism, but uses them to express a later generation’s artistic and social ideals.

Inuit-European Interactions in Greenland

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Christian Gulløv
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
West Coast ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The West ◽  
Southwestern Part ◽  
West Greenland ◽  
The Middle Ages

In every century since the Middle Ages there have been Europeans in Greenland. Medieval Norse farmers settled in the southwestern part of the country and met with Native Greenlanders from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. From the sixteenth century onward, English and Danish explorers, followed by primarily Dutch whalers, met the Inuit on the west coast of Greenland. In 1721, Greenland was colonized from the double monarchy Denmark-Norway. During the eighteenth century, permanent settlements were established throughout west Greenland, and in the nineteenth century contacts were established with the Inuit on the east coast and in the Thule area.

scholarly journals Divisas o empresas históricas de damas. Algunos testimonios (siglos XV y XVI)

2019 ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Sagrario López Poza ◽  
Nieves Pena Sueiro
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Genre Theory ◽  
Personal Involvement

ABSTRACT: Devices, badges or imprese, modalities of emblematics, were used by women between the 14th and 17th centuries, although less frequently than by men. This study analyses a little more than two dozen historical devices of ladies of the XVth and XVIth centuries from the perspective of emblematic genre theory. It deals with various aspects such as the structure, the personal involvement of the owners in the design of their devices, the purpose andmanners of displaying wit employed in their composition, etc., and concludes that there are no noticeable differences between women's devices and the masculine ones, except that the impreseof ladies crafted for special occasions (to display in the course of celebrations –invenciones–) did not contain messages of praise to males nor amorous laments, which would have been interpreted as somewhat vulgar and in bad taste, according to the mentality of the time, while gentlemen produced a large number of amorous devices.   KEYWORDS: Emblem Studies; Devices; Badges; imprese;Women; Fifteenth Century; Sixteenth Century; Visual Culture; Middle Ages; Renaissance.     RESUMEN: Las divisas o empresas, modalidades de la Emblemática, fueron usadas por mujeres entre los siglos XIV y XVII, si bien con menos frecuencia que por los hombres. Este trabajo analiza poco más de dos docenas de divisas históricas de damas de los siglos XV y XVI bajo la perspectiva de la teoría del género emblemático. Se atiende a diversos aspectos como la estructura, la implicación personal de las propietarias en el diseño de sus empresas, la finalidad y procedimientos de agudeza empleados en su composición, etc., y se concluye que no se advierten diferencias notables entre las empresas femeninas y las masculinas, salvo en que las divisas ocasionales de las damas (para ostentar en festejos –invenciones–) no contenían mensajes de elogio a varones ni lamentos amorosos, lo cual hubiera sido visto, según la mentalidad de la época, como liviano y de mal gusto, mientras que los caballeros produjeron una gran cantidad de divisas amorosas.       PALABRAS CLAVES: Emblemática; divisas; empresas; mujeres; siglo XV; siglo XVI; cultura visual; Edad Media; Renacimiento.      

The King in Parlement: The Problem of theLit De Justicein Sixteenth-Century France

1988 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mack P. Holt
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Personal Appearance ◽  
Customary Rights ◽  
Francis I ◽  
The Middle Ages

‘You ask me what aLit de justiceis? I will tell you!’ Thus exclaimed Louis-Adrien Le Paige, an eighteenth-centuryparlementairewho was excoriating the current spectacle of the king's appearance in person in the Grand-Chambre of the Parlement of Paris. Denied their ancient and customary rights of consultation and deliberation in important affairs of state, which in their view meant an active or participatory role in the legislative process, magistrates like Le Paige felt coerced in 1756 into the passive role of registering policies presented to them asfaits accomplis. And thus also opens Professor Sarah Hanley's penetrating and revisionist study of this complex ceremony where monarch and magistrates met together in the legislative arena: thelit de justice. In a tour de force of painstaking scholarship Professor Hanley has convincingly proved that this ceremony, in which the king personally appeared in Parlement and sat on a specially decorated ‘seat of justice’, had evolved out of legend and myth. Thelit de justicedid not, as generations ofparlementaireslike Le Paige had claimed, emerge in the middle ages shortly after the creation of the court itself in the late thirteenth century. As Professor Hanley shows, the first such ceremony did not occur until much later, in the reign of Francis I in 1527. More importantly, she demonstrates that at its inception thelit de justicewas not associated in any way with the adversarial scene depicted by Le Paige in 1756, with the king forcing his will on a recalcitrant court by making a personal appearance in the Grand-Chambre in order to force the registration of unpopular legislation.

scholarly journals Mansnavnið Lagi í Føroyum / The Male Forename Lagi in the Faroes

2017 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Eivind Weyhe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
I 18 ◽  
The Middle Ages

<p><strong>Úrtak</strong></p><p>Tað upprunaliga danska mansnavnið <em>L</em><em>agi </em>breiðir seg í miðøld til Norra (og Svøríkis). Úr Norra tykist tað vera komið til Føroyar, men eftir øllum at døma bara til Fugloyar, í seinasta lagi í endanum á 16. øld. Í 17. øld kemur navnið aftur til Føroyar, men nú í tí danska sniðinum <em>Lauge</em>, seinri skrivað <em>Lave</em>. Tað verður í 18. øld brúkt í Tórshavn og Suðuroy sum seinri liður í tvínevninum <em>Peder Lave</em>. Í 19. øld gerst <em>L</em><em>ave </em>fast eftirnavn. Í Tórshavn verður tað eisini til húsanavnið <em>Á Lava</em>, og fólk í (ella úr) tí húsinum verða nevnd við viðurnevninum „á Lava“. Í 20. øld fáa summi teirra sær „á Lava“ sum eftirnavn. Greinarhøvundurin viðger málsøgulig, ljóðfrøðilig, bendingarlig og dialektal viðurskiftir í sambandi við navnið.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>A</strong><strong>bstract</strong></p><p>The  male  forename <em>Lagi</em>, originally  Danish, spreads to Norway (and Sweden) during the Middle Ages. From Norway it seems to have reached the Faroes towards the end of the sixteenth century at the latest, but is only documented on Fugloy. In the seventeenth century the name arrives in the Faroes once more,  but  now  in  the  Danish  form  <em>Lauge</em>, later written <em>Lave</em>. It is used in Tórshavn and Suðuroy in the eighteenth century as the second element of the compound forename <em>Peder Lave</em>. In the nineteenth century <em>Lave </em>becomes an established surname. In Tórshavn it is also incorporated into the name of a dwelling in the prepositional form <em>Á Lava </em>‘at Lava’, and people living there (or originating from the house) are given the by­name „á Lava“. In the twentieth century some of them take „á Lava“ as a surname. The author treats language­historical, phonetic, morphological and dialectal aspects of the name.</p>

scholarly journals VALENTINES AND THE VICTORIAN IMAGINATION:MARY BARTONANDFAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-412
Author(s):  
Karin Koehler
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Written Communication ◽  
Valentine's Day ◽  
Epistolary Exchange ◽  
Obscure Origin ◽  
The Middle Ages

The custom of celebrating Valentine'sDay dates back to the Middle Ages. The emergence of Valentine's Day as a commercial holiday, exploited above all by the greeting card industry, is more recent. In Britain, Valentine's Day cards emerged in the eighteenth century. As David Vincent writes,The observance of 14 February underwent a metamorphosis during the eighteenth century which was later to befall many other customs. What had begun as an exchange of gifts, with many local variations of obscure origin, was gradually transformed into an exchange of tokens and letters, which in turn began to be replaced by printed messages from the end of the century. (44)Early examples of pre-printed Valentine's Day stationery and manuals for the composition of the perfect valentine reveal that existing folk customs were swiftly adapted by modern print culture and an increasingly literate population. However, it was the 1840 introduction of Rowland Hill's penny post in Britain, alongside concomitant advances in American and European postal infrastructure, which led to a veritable explosion in the exchange of valentines, moulding the practice into a shape still recognisable today (see Golden 222). Hill not only democratised access to written communication by lowering prices, he also anonymised epistolary exchange. Prepaid stamps and pillar post boxes made it possible to correspond with anyone, anywhere, without giving away one's identity. And while sending an anonymous letter would have been perceived as a violation of epistolary decorum during the remainder of the year, on Valentine's Day it was not only acceptable but, as Farmer Boldwood hints in Thomas Hardy'sFar from the Madding Crowd(1874), expected. The opportunity for anonymous correspondence generated an enthusiastic response.

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