LXIII. Influence of Superstition on Vocabulary: Two Related Examples

PMLA ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1033-1046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hope Emily Allen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Common Word ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Interesting Development

During the period covered by the Early Modern English Dictionary, witchcraft occupied the mind of the average man, and became the subject-matter of literature (dramatic, theological, philosophical, legal) to an extent probably not known in any other epoch. It is natural that such a predominating interest should have its effect on the vocabulary. There can now be described, with more detail than has hitherto been available, one instance in which the beliefs and practices of contemporary charlatans, pretending to supernatural connections, made an interesting development of meaning for a common word. This instance will be illustrated at length, for the sake of the analogies which it suggests as to possible starting points for studying other words. The discussion seems to indicate that elements in the problem go back to learned tradition and at the same time to primitive Teutonic folk-lore.

Discovering Architecture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Walker
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Athens ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Degree Of Confidence ◽  
Architectural Principles ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Architectural Knowledge

This chapter deals with the genesis of architectural knowledge. In particular, it explores those rare moments when early modern English authors wrote about newly discovered examples of ancient architecture, the most important forms of architectural knowledge that existed. I will discuss three such accounts (all published in the Philosophical Transactions) of Roman York, Palmyra, and ancient Athens. These three texts share a preoccupation with truth and accuracy, as befitted the task of communicating highly sought-after architectural knowledge. They also demonstrate the degree of confidence of English writers in this period, not only in how they interpreted ancient architecture, but also in how they sought to criticize previous European authors on the subject. But most importantly, these texts reveal the extent of English intellectuals’ knowledge of the architectural principles of the ancient world and how that knowledge was in a state of flux.

“Stonehenge in the Mind” and “Stonehenge on the Ground”:

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Roark
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Existing Structures ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind

In Stone-Heng Restored (1655), Inigo Jones, the father of English neoclassicism, used drawings, histories, and questionable logic to argue that Stonehenge was built by the ancient Romans and that it originally exhibited perfect Platonic geometries. This argument was never given much credence, but by 1725 the subject matter and the architect had received enough attention that two book-length responses (a challenge and a defense) were published, and both were then republished in a single volume alongside Jones's original text. While most Jones scholars have neglected this work because of its logical and historical shortcomings, Ryan Roark argues in “Stonehenge in the Mind” and “Stonehenge on the Ground”: Reader, Viewer, and Object in Inigo Jones's Stone-Heng Restored (1655) that it was in fact exemplary of what made Jones, for many, a protomodern architect and scholar. Rather than viewing Jones's book as an earnest attempt to prove a historical inaccuracy, Roark considers it as an exercise in formal analysis, one that set the precedent for the contemporary pedagogical trend of using geometric simplifications of existing structures as a first step in new design. Jones's idiosyncratic reading of Stonehenge belied the idea that such analysis could be anything but intensely reliant on the subjectivity of both architect and viewer.

scholarly journals A survey of grammatical variability in Early Modern English drama

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-301
Author(s):  
Andrew Hardie ◽  
Isolde van Dorst
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
English Drama ◽  
Early Modern English Drama ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Quantitative Metrics ◽  
Search Patterns ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Linguistic Approach ◽  
Statistical Summary

Grammar is one of the levels within the language system at which authorial choices of one mode of expression over others must be examined to characterise in full the style of the author. Such choices must however be assessed in the context of an understanding of the extent of variability that exists generally in the language. This study investigates a set of grammatical features to understand their variability in Early Modern English drama, and the extent to which Shakespeare’s grammatical style is distinct from or similar to that of his contemporaries in so far as these features are concerned. A review of prior works on Shakespeare’s grammar establishes that the quantitatively informed corpus linguistic approach utilised in this study is innovative to this topic. Using two of the grammatically annotated corpora created by the Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language project, one made up of Shakespeare’s plays, one of plays by other playwrights of the period, we present a method which steers a course between the narrow focus of close reading and the naïvely quantitative metrics of authorship analysis. For a set of 15 grammatical features of stylistic interest, we retrieve all instances of each feature in each play via complex corpus search patterns and calculate its relative frequency. These results are then considered, in aggregate and at the text level, to assess the differences across plays, across dramatic genre, and between Shakespeare and the other dramatists, via both statistical summary and visual representation of variability. We find that Shakespeare’s grammatical style tends (especially in comedies and tragedies) to disprefer informationally dense noun phrases relative to the other playwrights; and, moreover, to prefer tense, aspect and pronoun features which suggest a greater degree of narrative focus in his style. Furthermore, we find Shakespeare to be highly distinct in his preferences regarding verb complement subordinate clause types. These findings point the way both to a novel methodology and to further as yet unconsidered questions on the subject of Shakespeare’s grammatical style.

Clean Bodies

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-112
Author(s):  
Susan North
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Medical Books

Early modern English medical books are full of advice about cleanliness of the skin, the subject of Chapter 4. It was considered vital for the survival of infants and insisted upon in books dedicated to childcare. Babies needed washing and/or bathing with every change of their nappy/diaper. Surgeons, responsible for the external health of the body, also recommended regular washing of the skin. Washing performed the necessary function of removing sweat, a form of excretion, as well as preventing and treating skin ailments such as the itch, morphew, and scabies. Bathing was considered a particularly effective method of cleaning the skin and the literature on this subject is examined and reassessed.

Translation and Cultural Convergence in Late Sixteenth-century Scotland and Huguenot France

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-128
Author(s):  
Peter Auger
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Cultural Convergence ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
Early Modern Poetry ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common

Examining poetical exchanges between James VI of Scotland and the Huguenot courtier Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas in the 1580s, Chapter 7 demonstrates how poetry contributed to diplomatic initiatives, and how diplomatic concerns fostered expressiveness in the composition and presentation of poems. Early modern poetry, especially poetry in translation, could contribute to building better international cultural relations. Ambassadors and elite political figures were sometimes involved in such poems as writers, translators, readers, dedicatees, or recipients. When they were, these poems could contain subtle gestures consistent with the cultural diplomatic aims to express shared identity and strengthen political ties. The poetic exchanges between James and Du Bartas in the 1580s contained many signals of the common literary and political culture in Scotland and Protestant France, signals that are found in the subject matter, prosody, diction, structure, and other poetic features of the verses that they exchanged. This chapter examines the poetic techniques that James and Du Bartas used for expressing cultural convergence between Scotland and France when translating and composing original verse for each other, and then shows how the print publication of their poems enabled a broader international community to participate in this cultural moment.

The Plant Life of China: Diversity and Distribution. By G.P. Chapman and Y.Z. Wang. [Berlin: Springer, 2002. xiii+257 pp. ISBN 3-540-42257-9.]

2003 ◽  
Vol 175 ◽  
pp. 851-852
Author(s):  
C.Y. Jim
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Plant Life ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind

This book is not one of those publications filled with colourful photographs or illustrations that delight the eye but numb the mind, but rather a labour of love that distils the knowledge of plants in China of two scholars who have plenty of experience on the subject matter. The study is based largely on published analyses of flora in China, both in English and in Chinese. It has a botanical orientation, and concentrates on the taxonomic aspects of the diversity of plant life in China, despite the inclusion of the word “distribution” in its subtitle. Readers should not anticipate many discussions of the plant-geographical, geobotanical or phytogeographical flavour in the tradition of N. Polunin or R. Good.

scholarly journals Is There a Metaphysics of Consciousness Without a Phenomenology of Consciousness? Some Thoughts Derived from Husserl's Philosophical Phenomenology

2010 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 141-154
Author(s):  
Eduard Marbach
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mental Acts ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Philosophical Phenomenology

AbstractThe paper first addresses Husserl's conception of philosophical phenomenology, metaphysics, and the relation between them, in order to explain why, on Husserl's view, there is no metaphysics of consciousness without a phenomenology of consciousness. In doing so, it recalls some of the methodological tenets of Husserl's phenomenology, pointing out that phenomenology is an eidetic or a priori science which has first of all to do with mere ideal possibilities of consciousness and its correlates; metaphysics of consciousness, on the other hand, has to do with its reality or actuality, requiring an eidetic foundation in order to become scientifically valuable. Presuming that, if consciousness is to be the subject-matter of a metaphysics which is not simply speculative or based on prejudice, it is crucial to get the phenomenology of consciousness right, the paper then engages in a detailed descriptive-eidetic analysis of mental acts of re-presenting something and tries to argue that their structures, involving components of non-actual experiencing, pose a serious problem for a materialistic or physicalistic metaphysics of consciousness. The paper ends with a brief comment on Husserl's broader view of metaphysics, having to do with the irrationality of the transcendental fact, i.e. the constitution of the factual world and the factual life of the mind.

Subject control and coreference in Early Modern English free adjuncts and absolutes

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Río-Rey
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Statistical Evidence ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The clear-cut distinction between free adjuncts and absolutes based on the presence in absolutes of an overt subject different from the subject of the matrix clause, as opposed to the covert subject – controlled by the subject of the matrix clause – of free adjuncts, does not always hold. While it is generally agreed that unrelated free adjuncts are fairly frequent in Present-day English (PE), absolutes whose subject is identical to that of the matrix clause are regarded as obsolete (Jespersen, 1909–49; Kortmann, 1991; Söderlind, 1958; Visser, 1963–73). However, no statistical evidence has been provided on this topic for earlier stages of the history of English. This article quantitatively assesses whether the various degrees of relatedness observed in Early Modern English (EModE) coincide with those attested for PE, and concludes that the boundaries between free adjuncts and absolutes were considerably fuzzier in EModE, a phenomenon to which punctuation decisively contributed.

Recognizing Religion: Disciplinary Traditions, Epistemology, and History

Numen ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 145-165
Author(s):  
Michael Lambek
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Subject

AbstractQuestions of methodology hang on epistemology. I consider the conceptualization of the subject of the study of religion, arguing that the disciplines that carry out the study and also the objects or subjects of their study can be understood as traditions. I briefly review the conceptualization of religion within the anthropological tradition, noting a tension between understanding religion as socially immanent or as a set of explicit beliefs and practices constitutive of the transcendent. Religion is probably conceptualized rather differently within religious studies, especially insofar as each tradition has formulated itself in relation to secularism in its own way and in relation to, or confrontation with, other distinct traditions, whether of science or theology. Drawing on a meteorological metaphor, I suggest that both disciplines and religions qua traditions can be understood to change along historical “fronts;” these form both the conditions of our knowledge and its appropriate subject matter.

Fat Feminism: Reading Shelley Jackson's ‘Fat’ through Elizabeth Wilson's Gut Feminism

Somatechnics ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tove Solander
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
The Body ◽  
Fertile Woman ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Body Without Organs ◽  
The Subject ◽  
American Author ◽  
The Mind

In this article, I treat a literary text as a form of somatechnics making an intervention in fat embodiment. I read contemporary American author Shelley Jackson's short story ‘Fat’ from The Melancholy of Anatomy through what Elizabeth Wilson terms ‘gut feminism’, a feminism accounting for the dynamism of the biological body and acknowledging ‘organic thought’ as an alternative to the mind/body split. Wilson's ‘gut feminism’ is related to theories drawing on Deleuze's concept the ‘Body without Organs’ such as hypertheorist N. Katherine Hayles’ argument for the ‘Text as Assemblage’. I show how the seemingly surreal narrative of ‘Fat’ provides crucial insights about fat, understood as an assemblage of images, affects and matter and as a liminal substance questioning the integrity of the subject. Fat is associated with the feminine in a reclamation of the early modern rhetorical term ‘dilation’, which figures the swelling text as a fat, fertile woman with voracious orifices. I describe how Jackson's ‘aesthetics of fat’ works through dilation, disgust and ‘bad taste’ to draw the reader into an experience of fat embodiment. I characterise fat as a ‘sticky sign’ in Sara Ahmed's sense, one that will not stay confined to the page but sticks to the reader and elicit gut reactions. In conclusion, I argue for a non-derogatory model of reading as incorporation

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