Theory in Time

PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (3) ◽  
pp. 759-767 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Davis
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Fully Integrated ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Middle Ages

To define or describe the middle ages is to take a political stance, wittingly or not. Controversy accompanies any period definition, of course, as recent skirmishes over the early modern, the modern, and modernity attest. But the politics of the Middle Ages has generally gone under the radar of literary and cultural critique, precisely because of the nature of its formation and its relation to the modern. In fact “the Middle Ages” is a colonial category, developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as (primarily western) Europeans worked to legitimize, classify, and make sense of colonial policies, practices, and encounters. The formation of medieval studies as a discipline, vital to the then incipient discipline of history, was also fully integrated with colonial bureaucracy and administration (Frantzen; Biddick; Dagenais and Greer; Ganim; Kabir; Davis; Davis and Altschul; Lampert-Weissig). As a form of temporal spacing, the category of the Middle Ages enabled the thought of Europe's difference from itself, thus making it possible not only to define European nations across time but also to establish a scale of comparison by which to measure others and to deny them coeval status—that is, equal standing as human beings in regard to law, trade, the capacity for self-rule, and so on.

Picatrix: A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic. Trans. with an intro. by Dan Attrell and David Porreca. Based on the Latin edition by David Pingree. The Magic in History Series. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, xii, 372 pp.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 530-532
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern Time ◽  
State University ◽  
Pennsylvania State University ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Early Modern Time ◽  
The Middle Ages

Ordinary readers would welcome this new translation as one of many publications rendering a medieval Latin into modern English. All those efforts are certainly most welcome and necessary to maintain the scholarly and pragmatic-didactic approach to Medieval Studies. However, the Picatrix represents a unique magical treatise which every European pre-modern magician consulted and which enjoyed greatest respect for its universal relevance. Many contributors to the edited volume Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. by Albrecht Classen (2018) refer to the Picatrix, acknowledging it as a most important source for magic throughout the entire pre-modern world.

Proleptic Steps: Rethinking Historical Period in the Fifteenth-Century Dance Manual

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
Seeta Chaganti
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Theater History ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages

For some time now, scholarly medieval studies have been preoccupied with questions about the relationship between the modern and the premodern, and even about the very meanings of these terms. Medievalists in different fields have thoughtfully re-examined the critical paradigms that rely on a break between the medieval as premodernity, on the one hand, and the early modern as an initiation of modernity, on the other. Such new perspectives on periodization and the Middle Ages have tended to originate in studies of literature, theater, history, and art. The discipline of medieval studies has not, for the most part, considered what dance might contribute to our understanding of the constitution of historical periods such as “medieval” and “early modern.” And yet, basse danse and bassadanza, due to their placement in a fifteenth-century moment variously claimed by both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, potentially offer much to such discussions of periodization. As a performance, this fifteenth-century dance situates itself in a dynamic transition between the medieval and the early modern, raising questions about the nature, location, and even existence of this periodization boundary. At the same time, however, the instructional and codifying techniques associated with basse danse and bassadanza reinforce a more traditional periodization dynamic, whereby a culture looks back mainly in order to look forward, organizing its ideas about time and history around the mechanism of anticipation. I shall argue in this essay that basse danse and bassadanza reveal a suggestively conflicted perspective on time through the distinction they establish between the temporality of execution and that of instruction. Furthermore, in their espousal of anticipatory strategies, the instruction manuals in particular show how representations of early dance can construct perspectives on historical periodization. Casting into relief thus an occluded narrative about how period borders form and solidify, basse danse and bassadanza additionally offer early period scholarship some new ways to reconsider and dissolve such borders.

Allegra Iafrate, The Long Life of Magical Objects: A Study in the Solomonic Tradition. The Magic in History Series. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, xi, 235 pp., 19 b/w images, 2 tables.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-254
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modern World ◽  
State University ◽  
Eastern Culture ◽  
Historical Objects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Objects ◽  
The Middle Ages

Throughout times, magic and magicians have exerted a tremendous influence, and this even in our (post)modern world (see now the contributions to Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2017; here not mentioned). Allegra Iafrate here presents a fourth monograph dedicated to magical objects, primarily those associated with the biblical King Solomon, especially the ring, the bottle which holds a demon, knots, and the flying carpet. She is especially interested in the reception history of those symbolic objects, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, both in western and in eastern culture, that is, above all, in the Arabic world, and also pursues the afterlife of those objects in the early modern age. Iafrate pursues not only the actual history of King Solomon and those religious objects associated with him, but the metaphorical objects as they made their presence felt throughout time, and this especially in literary texts and in art-historical objects.

The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Book Production ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography provides a comprehensive overview of the development of Latin scripts from Antiquity to the Early Modern period, of codicology, and of the cultural setting of the mediaeval manuscript. The opening section, on Latin Palaeography, treats a full range of Latin book hands, beginning with Square and Rustic Capitals and finishing with Humanistic minuscule. The Handbook is groundbreaking in giving extensive treatment to such scripts as Old Roman Cursive, New Roman Cursive, and Visigothic. Each article is written by a leading expert in the field and is copiously illustrated with figures and plates. Examples of each script with full transcription of selected plates are frequently provided for the benefit of newcomers to the field. The second section, on Codicology, contains essays on the design and physical make-up of the manuscript book, and it includes as well articles in newly-created disciplines, such as comparative codicology. The third and final section, Manuscript Setting, places the mediaeval manuscript within its cultural and intellectual setting, with extended essays on the mediaeval library, particular genres and types of manuscript production, the book trade in antiquity and the Middle Ages, and manuscript cataloguing. All articles are in English. The Handbook will be an indispensable guide to all those working in the various fields concerned with the literary and cultural dynamics of book production in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period.

Apocalypticism and Globalization in the Early Modern World: A Medievalist’s Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Rubenstein
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
World History ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Age Of Discovery ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract The apocalyptic belief systems from early modernity discussed in this series of articles to varying degrees have precursors in the Middle Ages. The drive to map the globe for purposes both geographic and symbolic, finds expression in explicitly apocalyptic manuscripts produced throughout the Middle Ages. An apocalyptic political discourse, especially centered on themes of empire and Islam, developed in the seventh century and reached extraordinary popularity during the Crusades. Speculation about the end of world history among medieval intellectuals led them not to reject the natural world but to study it more closely, in ways that set the stage for the later Age of Discovery. These broad continuities between the medieval and early modern, and indeed into modernity, demonstrate the imperative of viewing apocalypticism not as an esoteric fringe movement but as a constructive force in cultural creation.

Prospects for the Development of Source Studies in Modern Medieval Studies

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6 (104)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Kirillova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Scientific Conference ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Russian Scientific ◽  
Source Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Source Study ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The Middle Ages

Source study is the foundation of the research work of professional historians. It became the subject of the All-Russian Scientific Conference “Source Studies in Contemporary Medieval Studies”, which was held from 28 to 29 June 2021 at the Institute of World History at the Russian Academy of Sciences. The conference, conceived as a platform for regular communication of specialists in the history of the Middle Ages, allowed the participants and numerous listeners to get acquainted with the latest research on the source study of the history of Russia, Europe, the East and America. It included reports summarizing the experience of research and outlining the prospects for further work on key problems of source study of the history of the Middle Ages.

Protestant Rivalry — Metaphysics and Rhetoric in Germany c. 1590–1620

1990 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The Middle Ages

One of the most remarkable changes to take place at German Protestant universities during the last decade of the sixteenth century and the first twenty years of the seventeenth century was the return of metaphysics after more than halfa century of absence. University metaphysics has acquired a reputation for sterile aridity which was strengthened rather than diminished by its survival in early modern times, when such disciplines are supposed deservedly to have vanished with the end of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, this survival has attracted some attention this century. For a long urne it was assumed that German Protestants needed a metaphysical defence against the intellectual vigour of the Jesuits. Lewalter has shown, however, that this was not the case.

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