scholarly journals Early Modern European Languages and Literature: A Short Review

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
David Porter
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Short Review ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
General Interest ◽  
The Third ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Language And Literature

This article engages with several recent books about language and literature, with a general focus on the early modern period in Europe. One of these books discusses language study in early modern England. Another examines the histories of words relating to ‘ingenuity’. The third provides a theoretical look at the aphorism with a wide historical scope but with some chapters relating to early modern literature. Each is of general interest for linguistic and literary scholars.

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Historical Documents ◽  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is a study of London’s cathedral, its immediate surroundings, and its everyday users in early modern literary and historical documents and images, with a special emphasis on the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.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.

Moscow: The Third Rome

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Mayhew
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Imperial Ideology ◽  
The City ◽  
Modern Russian

In the mid-19th century, three 16th-century Russian sources were published that alluded to Moscow as the “third Rome.” When 19th-century Russian historians discovered these texts, many interpreted them as evidence of an ancient imperial ideology of endless expansion, an ideology that would go on to define Russian foreign policy from the 16th century to the modern day. But what did these 16th-century depictions of Moscow as the third Rome actually have in mind? Did their meaning remain stable or did it change over the course of the early modern period? And how significant were they to early modern Russian imperial ideology more broadly? Scholars have pointed out that one cannot assume that depictions of Moscow as the third Rome were necessarily meant to be imperial celebrations per se. After all, the Muscovites considered that the first Rome fell for various heretical beliefs, in particular that Christ did not possess a human soul, and the second Rome, Constantinople, fell to the Turks in 1453 precisely because it had accepted some of these heretical “Latin” doctrines. As such, the image of Moscow as the third Rome might have marked a celebration of the city as a new imperial center, but it could also allude to Moscow’s duty to protect the “true” Orthodox faith after the fall—actual and theological—of Rome and Constantinople. As time progressed, however, the nuances of religious polemic once captured by the trope were lost. During the 17th and early 18th centuries, the image of Moscow as the third Rome took on a more unequivocally imperialist tone. Nonetheless, it would be easy to overstate the significance of allusions to Moscow as the third Rome to early modern Russian imperial ideology more broadly. Not only was the trope rare and by no means the only imperial comparison to be found in Muscovite literature, it was also ignored by secular authorities and banned by clerics.

scholarly journals PUBLICITY, PRIVACY, AND RELIGIOUS TOLERATION IN HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARASH ABIZADEH
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
Public Expression ◽  
Modern Period

What motivated an absolutist Erastian who rejected religious freedom, defended uniform public worship, and deemed the public expression of disagreement a catalyst for war to endorse a movement known to history as the champion of toleration, religion's freedom from coercion, and separation of church and state? At least three factors motivated Hobbes's 1651 endorsement of Independency: the Erastianism of Cromwellian Independency, the influence of the politique tradition, and, paradoxically, the contribution of early modern practices of toleration to maintaining the public sphere's religious uniformity. The third factor illustrates how a key function of the emerging private sphere in the early modern period was to protect uniformity, rather than diversity; it also shows that what was novel was not so much the public/private distinction itself, but the separation of two previously conflated dimensions of publicity—visibility and representativeness—that enabled early modern Europeans to envisage modes of worship out in the open, yet still private.

Exiles Abroad

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Goodrich
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Third Order ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Period

Over the course of the early modern period, political and religious upheavals in England led to the formation of many different expatriate communities on the Continent and in North America. As Catholics, Protestants, Nonconformists, and Royalists lived in exile, they established three major sorts of communities: lay congregations; educational institutions; and monastic houses. Examining texts produced by and for representative examples of each group (the Marian congregation at Geneva, the English colleges at Rheims and Rome, and the Third Order Franciscan convent in Brussels), this chapter offers case studies of the way that exiled communities adapted certain forms of writing in order to develop and express a collective religious identity. In doing so, members of these groups negotiated their relationships with one another, the English nation, and the broader Continental religious community.

The Concept “Fact”: Legal Origins and Cultural Diffusion

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Third ◽  
Legal Origins ◽  
Cultural Diffusion ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Fact Finding

Facts are something we take for granted, at least most of the time. As ordinary individuals we assume that there are knowable facts, for instance, that the dog chewed the drapes, that England exists, that it rained yesterday, or that babies cry. If, as scholars, that is as historians, social scientists, and natural scientists, we are more aware of the problematical nature of “facts” we nevertheless tend to establish and use facts rather unselfconsciously in our work. On this occasion I want to look at the evolution of the concept of “fact,” and in particular the way “fact” entered English natural philosophy. I will attempt to show that the concept of “fact” or “matter of fact,” so prominent in the English empirical tradition, is an adaptation or borrowing from another discipline—jurisprudence, and that many of the assumptions and much of the technology of fact-finding in law were carried over into the experimental science of the seventeenth century.My paper has three parts. The first discusses the nature of legal facts and fact-finding in the early modern period, focusing on the distinction between “matters of fact” and “matters of law,” the emphasis on first hand testimony by credible witnesses, the preference for direct testimony over inference, and legal efforts to create and maintain impartial proceedings. The second portion attempts to show how legal methods and assumptions were adopted by early modern historiographers and other fact-oriented reporters. The third section attempts to show how the legally constructed concept of “fact” or “matter of fact” was transferred to natural history and natural philosophy and generalized in Locke's empirical philosophy.

Entering a city: on a lost early modern practice

Urban History ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL JÜTTE
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Main Section ◽  
Modern City ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
City Gates ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACT:City gates and walls were among the most striking features of the pre-modern city, yet we still know relatively little about their impact on daily life and what it meant to enter a city at that time. The present article explores precisely these questions. The first section outlines the general significance of city gates and walls in pre-modern times. In the second, I examine the four distinct functions of city gates in the early modern period. The third and main section presents a detailed description of the various practices, procedures and problems that accompanied the entrance to a city. Finally, and to conclude, the history of city gates is viewed in conjunction with the broader history of the early modern city and its transformation in the transition to modernity.

scholarly journals Back from Shingly: Revisiting the premodern history of Jews in Kerala

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ophira Gamliel
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

Jewish history in Kerala is based on sources mainly from the colonial period onward and mostly in European languages, failing to account for the premodern history of Jews in Kerala. These early modern sources are based on oral traditions of Paradeśi Jews in Cochin, who view the majority of Kerala Jews as inferior. Consequently, the premodern history of Kerala Jews remains untold, despite the existence of premodern sources that undermine unsupported notions about the premodern history of Kerala Jews—a Jewish ‘ur-settlement’ called Shingly in Kodungallur and a centuries-old isolation from world Jewry. This article reconstructs Jewish history in premodern Kerala solely based on premodern travelogues and literature on the one hand and on historical documents in Old Malayalam, Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic on the other hand. Sources of the early modern period are then examined for tracing the origins of the Shingly myth, arguing that the incorporation of the Shingly legend into the historiography of Kerala Jews was affected by contacts with European Jews in the Age of Discoveries rather than being a reflection of historical events.

Making Murder Public

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.J. Kesselring
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Formal Distinction

Homicide can seem timeless, somehow, determined by unchanging human failings. But a moment’s reflection shows this is not true: homicide has a history. In early modern England, that history saw two especially notable developments: one, the emergence in the sixteenth century of a formal distinction between murder and manslaughter, made meaningful through a lighter punishment than death for the latter in most cases, and two, a significant reduction in the rates of homicides individuals perpetrated on each other. This book explores connections between these two changes. It demonstrates the value in distinguishing between murder and manslaughter, or at least in seeing how that distinction came to matter in a period which also witnessed dramatic drops in the occurrence of homicidal violence. Focused on the ‘politics of murder’, the book examines how homicide became more effectively criminalized from c. 1480 to 1680, with chapters devoted to coroners’ inquests, appeals and private compensation, duels and private vengeance, and print and public punishment. The English had begun moving away from treating homicide as an offence subject to private settlements or vengeance long before other Europeans, at least from the twelfth century. What happened in the early modern period was, in some ways, a continuation of processes long underway, but intensified and refocused by developments from the late fifteenth to late seventeenth centuries. Exploring the links between law, crime, and politics, bringing together both the legal and social histories of the subject of homicide, the book argues that homicide became more fully ‘public’ in these years, with killings seen to violate a ‘king’s peace’ that people increasingly conflated with or subordinated to the ‘public peace’ or ‘public justice’.

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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