Reason's Muse: Andrew Marvell, R. Fletcher, and the Politics of Poetry in the Engagement Debate

1991 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 655-680
Author(s):  
Adriana McCrea
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Andrew Marvell ◽  
Cultural Artifact ◽  
Strict Interpretation ◽  
Renaissance Poetry ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Fundamental Shift

Andrew Marvell's “An Horatian ode upon Cromwel's return from Ireland” may not be the most famous seventeenth-century poem but it is perhaps the most enigmatic. Its elusive, haunting quality defies any strict interpretation, and, as Blair Worden has recently indicated, the poem refuses to fall neatly into any simple “royalist” or “Cromwellian” category. Rather, the “Horatian Ode” has the aspect of a cultural artifact, having captured and held the historical moment that tore asunder two ages: the pre-1649 past of hereditary monarchy with its confidence in the traditions bequeathed by time, and the immediate post-1649 future, when the English state was to be governed by brute strength and naked power. As such, it has become a testament to the “fundamental shift in English civilization, that when every reservation has been made, the middle of the seventeenth century brought about.” For Worden “An Horatian Ode,” with its ambivalent stance of neither approval nor condemnation of the rise of Cromwell, epitomizes the state of Renaissance poetry before T. S. Eliot's much lamented “disassociation of sensibility” took place.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 192-198
Author(s):  
Jyoti Gulati Balachandran
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The State ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
History Of Migration

The Conclusion interprets the narrativization of the Muslim community’s past between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries as the triumph of the ‘historical’ moment. By the end of the seventeenth century, the consolidation of narrative pasts had successfully created a genealogical record of Muslim settlement in Gujarat connecting the history of the Muslim community under the Gujarat sultans to the period of the Mughal occupation of Gujarat. Apart from transcribing the history of migration and settlement, Sufi texts had been instrumental in the early modern conceptualization of the history of the state, the region, and finally the Mughal province.

Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century England and the Making of the Modern Political Imaginary

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feisal G. Mohamed
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Legal History ◽  
The State ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Andrew Marvell ◽  
First Order ◽  
The People ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Imaginary

Sovereignty is the first-order question of a politics attaching itself to the state, and seventeenth-century England provides an important case study in the roots of its modern iterations. With these central claims in view, this book explores the thought of Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell, as well as lesser-known figures, such as William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, and John Barclay. In addition to political philosophy and literary studies, it also takes account of the period’s legal history, such as the exercise of the crown’s feudal rights through the Court of Wards and Liveries, the status of corporations and contracts, debates over habeas rights, and the contested jurisdiction of prerogative courts. Theorizing sovereignty in a way that points forward to later modernity, the book critiques key concepts in the thought of Carl Schmitt: the mechanization of the state; land appropriation and legal order; the concept of the “people”; the pluralist state; and the protection–obedience axiom.

The Curious Eye

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Johannes Kepler ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Moment

The Curious Eye explores early modern debates over two related questions: what are the limits of human vision, and to what extent can these limits be overcome by technological enhancement? Today, in our everyday lives we rely on optical technology to provide us with information about visually remote spaces even as we question the efficacy and ethics of such pursuits. But the debates surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision have their roots in a much older literary tradition in which the ability to see beyond the limits of natural human vision is associated with philosophical and spiritual insight as well as social and political control. The Curious Eye provides insight into the subject of optically mediated vision by returning to the literature of the seventeenth century, the historical moment in which human visual capacity in the West was first extended through the application of optical technologies to the eye. Bringing imaginative literary works by Francis Bacon, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn together with optical and philosophical treatises by Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, The Curious Eye explores the social and intellectual impact of the new optical technologies of the seventeenth century on its literature. At the same time, it demonstrates that social, political, and literary concerns are not peripheral to the optical science of the period but rather an integral part of it, the legacy of which we continue to experience.

Surface and Substance: Baroque Dress in Spain and France, 1600–1720

2019 ◽  
pp. 237-263
Author(s):  
Lesley Ellis Miller
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Economic Significance ◽  
System A ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
State Textile

This article explores the surface and substance of elite dress in the baroque period by unpacking printed texts and images that reveal their political and economic significance in the courts of Europe. It does so by considering the nature and sources of garments and fabrics, continuity and change in their production and consumption in Spain and France, and the shaping of the modern fashion system—a system in which changes in textiles and trimmings were promoted seasonally by the state, textile manufacturers, and the nascent fashion press (Le Mercure galant) from the late seventeenth century onward. It thus underlines the local and global networks involved in the production and consumption of dress.

Mercantilism Revisited

1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. C. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Economic Policy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Situation ◽  
The Status

The intention of this paper is to look at some of the problems which arise in attempts to provide ‘explanations’ of mercantilism and especially its English manifestations. By ‘explanations’ I mean the efforts which some writers have made causally to relate the historical appearance of sets of economic notions or general recommendations on economic policy or even acts of economic policy by the state to particular long-term phenomena of, or trends in, economic history. Historians of economic thought have not generally made such attempts. With a few exceptions they have normally concerned themselves with tracing and analysing the contributions to economic theory made by those labelled as mercantilists. The most extreme case of non-explanation is provided by Eli Heckscher's reiterated contention in his two massive volumes that mercantilism was not to be explained by reference to the economic circumstances of the time; mercantilist policy was not to be seen as ‘the outcome of the economic situation’; mercantilist writers did not construct their system ‘out of any knowledge of reality however derived’. So strongly held an antideterminist fortress, however congenial a haven for some historians of ideas, has given no comfort to other historians – economic or political, Marxist or non-Marxist – who obstinately exhibit empiricist tendencies. Some forays against the fortress have been made. Barry Supple's analysis of English commerce in the early seventeenth century and the resulting presentation of mercantilist thought and policy as ‘the economics of depression’ has passed into the textbooks and achieved the status of an orthodoxy.

The Tenuous Thread: A Venetian Lawyer's Apology for Jewish Self-Government in the Seventeenth Century

AJS Review ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-250
Author(s):  
David Malkiel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Political Structures

Ghettoization stimulated sixteenth-century Italian Jewry to develop larger and more complex political structures, because the Jewish community now became responsible for municipal tasks. This development, however, raised theological objections in Catholic circles because Christian doctrine traditionally forbade the Jewish people dominion. It also aroused hostility among the increasingly centralized governments of early modern Europe, who viewed Jewish self-government as an infringement of the sovereignty of the state. The earliest appearance of the term “state within a state,” which has become a shorthand expression for the latter view, was recently located in Venice in 1631.

scholarly journals Verleden en macht in Vondels Gijsbreght van Aemstel

1970 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 123-145
Author(s):  
Mike Keirsbilck
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
The State ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Literary Practice ◽  
Political Debates

The Amsterdam Schouwburg festively opened in January 1638 with the performance ofVondel’s Gijsbreght van Aemstel. The play was situated in medieval Amsterdam, butaddressed nonetheless the seventeenth-century audience explicitly. In Gijsbreght vanAemstel political and moral instructions that related to the Amsterdam of Vondel’s agewere given. To approach these political and moral instructions, I will make use of MichelFoucault’s notion of ‘governmentality’. Foucault’s theoretical concept deals with theconstruction of power structures. Governmentality allows me to place Vondel’s text in acontemporary debate about how the state should be ordered, and in this way opens up aninterpretation of the instructions of the play accordingly. I will argue that the play condemned violentstruggles, and that the text presented an opposing stand on how the stateshould be ordered.To indicate how the play voiced an opinion about contemporary political debates, Iwill confront Gijsbreght van Aemstel with Hugo de Groots De Republica Enendanda.This early tract, by one of the most important scholars of the Dutch Republic, also playeda part in Vondel’s play. This way Vondel's text can be read as an exploration of politicalideas in a literary practice, in which the character of Gijsbreght van Aemstel is presentedas an ideal.

Images of the Priesthood: An Analysis of Catholic Sermons from the Late Seventeenth Century

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renate Dürr
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Catholic Church

“All, therefore, who consider themselves Christians may be absolutely certain that we are all equally priests.”1 With this declaration Martin Luther categorically repudiated the Catholic understanding of priesthood as a holy estate with indelible marks bestowed at consecration. According to the reformers all Christians, in principle, have the same authority in word and sacrament, but only those authorized by the respective community of believers may wield it. This assessment not only reflected certain irregularities within the clergy but also signified a completely new definition of the priesthood. It cannot be understood outside the context of existing contemporary criticism—not only from reformatory circles—of the state of numerous parishes who suffered under poorly educated, morally unacceptable (from a contemporary point of view) or indeed absent clergymen. The Catholic Church's answer to this challenge, therefore, had two aims: plans for far-reaching reforms were intended to renew the image of priests and, primarily, to provide effective pastoral care. Polemical theological debates against Protestants and discussions within the Catholic Church were intended not only to strengthen the certainty of the fundamental essence of priestly identity but also to facilitate a differentiation of Catholic from Protestant understanding. The decisions of the Council of Trent also touched both areas. At the 23rd session both the theological basis of the sacrament of consecration and the plans to reform the rules concerning the bishops' obligatory residence in their parishes were debated.2

scholarly journals The Bishop’s Role in Two Non-Catholic States

2015 ◽  
Vol 95 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 245-255
Author(s):  
Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Confessional Identity ◽  
The One ◽  
Catholic Reform

This paper contrasts the very different roles played by the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland, on the one hand, and Turkish-occupied Hungary, on the other, in the movement of early modern religious reform. It suggests that the decision of Propaganda Fide to adopt an episcopal model of organisation in Ireland after 1618, despite the obvious difficulties posed by the Protestant nature of the state, was a crucial aspect of the consolidation of a Catholic confessional identity within the island. The importance of the hierarchy in leadership terms was subsequently demonstrated in the short-lived period of de facto independence during the 1640s and after the repression of the Cromwellian period the episcopal model was successfully revived in the later seventeenth century. The paper also offers a parallel examination of the case of Turkish Hungary, where an effective episcopal model of reform could not be adopted, principally because of the jurisdictional jealousy of the Habsburg Kings of Hungary, who continued to claim rights of nomination to Turkish controlled dioceses but whose nominees were unable to reside in their sees. Consequently, the hierarchy of Turkish-occupied Hungary played little or no role in the movement of Catholic reform, prior to the Habsburg reconquest.

Black Mothering Legacies: Theorizing Lament as a Form of Justice Research

2021 ◽  
pp. 194084472110495
Author(s):  
Nichole A. Guillory
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Black Child ◽  
The State ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Black Life ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Black Mothering

I feel compelled by the moment to take up these questions: What does it mean to mother a Black child within/against this historical moment within/against the (carceral) United States? What does it mean to mother a Black child when the legacy of enslavement in the United States is still the basis for assessing the “worth” of you and your children? How do I determine justice for my/a/the Black child in this historical moment? How does this justice come to matter? My approach to critical qualitative research is best understood through Cynthia Dillard’s (2006) notion of “endarkened feminist epistemology” (p. 3). Here I trace a lineage of Black mothering praxis that has been enacted in response to injustice across different historical moments and geographical locations in the United States. This lineage focuses on Black mothers who have lost their children to state violence, when that violence is perpetrated by the state or when the state fails to mete out justice for the taking of Black life.

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