The Open Use of Living: Prudence, Decorum, and the ‘‘Square Man’’

2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Pender
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Moral Philosophers

Abstract In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that a happy man is ““foursquare beyond reproach”” (ττεεττρράάγγωωννοοσσ άάννεευυ ψψόόγγοουυ or, in a common Latin translation, quadratus sine probro). To be foursquare, the happy man must bear the chances of life nobly and decorously as well as possess the qualities of the phronimos or good deliberator. That Aristotle moors felicity to prudence and decorum spurs classical, medieval, and early modern commentators, moral philosophers, and poets; by tracing the reception and use of the square man, I explore change and continuity in the relationship between prudence and decorum in some classical, late medieval, and early modern texts in order to suggest that prudent and practical persuasion emerges as a flexible responsive mode of perceiving ethical and political practice in the early modern period.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Heather L. Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Administrative Practice ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Comparative Historical Analysis ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Universal Rule

This chapter draws on Katip Çelebi's Düstūrü’l-‘amel li ıṣlāhı ’l-ḥalel, or the Guiding Principles for the Rectification of Defects, to outline how attention to genre, to the relationship between conceptual models and administrative practice, to the role of sultanic authority as an anchor for imperial order, and to the significance of comparative historical analysis offers an alternative approach to Ottoman state-making in the early modern period. It further suggests that the “middle years” of the state might best be understood as a tension between principles of universal rule and the practices designed to entice and co-opt regional elites into a coherent sociopolitical order.

5. Family histories and the autobiography of childhood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Family Histories ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The years of childhood have become increasingly central to autobiographical writing. Historians have linked this development to the new ideas about life-stages that emerged in the early modern period. Philippe Ariès (1914–84) made a key contribution in 1960 with a book on the child and family life in the ancien régime, known in English as Centuries of Childhood. ‘Family histories and the autobiography of childhood’ considers how genealogy (the tracing of family history) and the shaping of family relations by cultural and social forces have been central concerns for many modern autobiographers. It also looks closely at the relationship between child and parent and at the impact of mixed cultures.

Divine Punishment or Disease? Medieval and Early Modern Approaches to the 1518 Strasbourg Dancing Plague

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-164
Author(s):  
Lynneth J. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Divine Judgment ◽  
Divine Punishment ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

Using writings from observers of the 1518 Strasbourg dancing plague, this article explores the various understandings of dancing mania, disease, and divine judgment applied to the dancing plague's interpretation and treatment. It argues that the 1518 Strasbourg dancing plague reflects new currents of thought, but remains closely linked to medieval philosophies; it was an event trapped between medieval and modern ideologies and treated according to two very different systems of belief. Understanding the ways in which observers comprehended the dancing plague provides insight into the ways in which, during the early modern period, new perceptions of the relationship between humanity and the divine developed and older conceptions of the body and disease began to change, while at the same time, ideologies surrounding dance and its relationship to sinful behavior remained consistent.

Marked Angels: Counterfeits, Commodities, and The Roaring Girl*

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (4-Part2) ◽  
pp. 1531-1560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Forman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Shadow Side ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Title Character

This article traces the connections between the circulation of commodities and counterfeit coins in The Roaring Girl. Contextualizing the play's representation of counterfeits within a discussion of the relationship between real and counterfeit money in the early modern period, I argue that the play registers and addresses economic pressures, in part through its commentary on, and revision of, the conventions of stage comedy. In particular, the play offers enhanced forms of realism and the fiction of the “individual” in the title character, Moll, to compensate for the absence of legible material guarantees for value, legitimacy, or status. I conclude with a reading of the play's representation of masterless persons as the necessary shadow side of the plethora of opportunities seemingly offered by the market.

The Shapes of Romance in the Renaissance

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Moore
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Morte Darthur ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Period

The early modern period is often characterized as a time of energetic reshapings in literature, religion, and culture. Starting from the premise that the interrogation and reshaping of human subjects is also one of the key enterprises of late medieval and early modern romance, this article analyzes what Caxton might have meant in ascribing “humanyté” to Malory’sMorte Darthurand considers some of the re-formations practised on human “shapes,” or bodies, in Sidney’sArcadiaand Lodge’sRosalynd. It argues that romance’s exploration of the human, particularly the malleability of body and mind, facilitates the transformation of its own generic “shape.”

Recht zur Intervention – Pflicht zur Intervention?

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Contractual Relationships ◽  
The Right ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

The responsibility to protect and intervention possessed a central political importance in the early modern period. This volume asks whether there was also a duty to intervene alongside the right to do so. This draws attention to the relationship between the responsibility to protect, security and reputation, which is the focus of the contributions the book contains. Chronologically, they range from the 15th to the 18th centuries and discuss monarchical duties to protect, alliance commitments, confessional legitimation and motives, as well as those based on patronage, contractual relationships and electoral processes. One of the book’s important findings is a deeper understanding of reputation, which is comprehensively examined here as a political guiding factor with reference to changing understandings of security for the first time.

The Organization and Use of Household Space for Work in Early Modern England: 1550–1750

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 480-503
Author(s):  
Amanda Flather
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
Business World ◽  
Social Closure ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This paper explores the neglected topic of the organization and use of household space for work (paid and unpaid) during the early modern period. It engages critically with the concept of ‘the open house’ in relation to recent arguments about processes of spatial and social closure of houses and households in the early modern period associated with the development of a capitalist socio-economic system. Drawing on a variety of sources including diaries, autobiographies, inventories and court records the analysis considers how work was organized in the domestic context and how experience varied according to gender, age, status and location as well as time of day, week or year. The paper argues that a perceived dichotomy between an open house and a closed home secluded from the social and business world of community and commerce is inadequate in the consideration of space and attitudes in this period. Individuals in larger houses could control access to certain spaces at specific times and work could be concentrated in certain rooms. But in practice in most households the complicated demands of the household economy required openness to outsiders that rendered the boundaries of houses more permeable and potentially more unstable than they are today. The analysis considers the case of England and compares rural and urban homes in a particular regional context, but it opens up several ways for historians to think about the relationship between work and home in other European regions.

Central Europe's Gentle Voice of Reason: Bílejovský and the Ecclesiology of Utraquism

1997 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 29-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zdeněk V. David
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Underground Resistance ◽  
Social Upheaval ◽  
The Church

The Utraquist Church of Bohemia was unique among the late medieval defections in Western Christendom from the Church of Rome in that it involved the separation of an entire church, organized on a national territory, not merely an underground resistance of relatively isolated and scattered groups of sectarians, like the Waldensians or the Lollards. Moreover, the Bohemian Reformation was linked with a major social upheaval, the Hussite Revolution, lasting from 1419 to 1434, which historians have viewed as an early specimen, if not a prototype or the first link in the chain, of the revolutions of the early modern period in the Euroatlantic world: the Dutch, the English, the American, and the French revolutions. Building mainly on the Bohemian Reform movement that had gathered momentum since the mid-fourteenth century, the Utraquists' defiance of Rome, leading to the Hussite Revolution, was sparked by the burning of Jan Hus at the Council of Constance on July 6, 1415.

Observing, Interpreting, and Excavating Roman Barrows

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-176
Author(s):  
Olivier Latteur
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Historical Observation ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

Even today, the landscape of some Belgian regions is deeply marked by the presence of dozens of Roman barrows. These mounds have survived the passage of time and have shaped the landscape, from antiquity up to the present-day. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a period characterized by the rediscovery of classical antiquity and the emergence of antiquarianism, travellers and scholars took a fresh look at these remains. The development of a proto-archaeological approach to the landscape gradually transformed the relationship between man and his surrounds, and contributed to a better understanding of certain landscape features. The first part of this article is devoted to historical observation of these barrows and their impact on the local landscape: Roman tumuli had unusual features (height, strength, presence of trees, etc.) and were used as landmarks and vantage points, especially in the Hesbaye region, which was sparsely wooded and relatively flat. The second part deals with interpretations of these mounds during the early modern period (attribution to the Romans, association with magic, etc.). The third part focuses on the first ‘archaeological’ excavations of tumuli (1507, 1621, 1641, and 1654). These early modern digs gradually transformed perceptions of these remains: observations of a proto-archaeological nature became increasingly common and heralded the emergence of a new approach, which co-existed with medieval or popular traditions.

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