The Grace of the Italian Renaissance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ita Mac Carthy
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Social Harmony ◽  
Vittoria Colonna ◽  
The World ◽  
Changing World

‘Grace’ emerges as a keyword in the culture and society of sixteenth-century Italy. This book explores how it conveys and connects the most pressing ethical, social and aesthetic concerns of an age concerned with the reactivation of ancient ideas in a changing world. The book reassesses artists such as Francesco del Cossa, Raphael, and Michelangelo and explores anew writers like Castiglione, Ariosto, Tullia d'Aragona, and Vittoria Colonna. It shows how these artists and writers put grace at the heart of their work. The book argues that grace came to be as contested as it was prized across a range of Renaissance Italian contexts. It characterised emerging styles in literature and the visual arts, shaped ideas about how best to behave at court and sparked controversy about social harmony and human salvation. For all these reasons, grace abounded in the Italian Renaissance, yet it remained hard to define. The book explores what grace meant to theologians, artists, writers, and philosophers, showing how it influenced their thinking about themselves, each other and the world. It portrays grace not as a stable formula of expression but as a web of interventions in culture and society.

The Rejection of Learning in Mid-Cinquecento Italy

1966 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 230-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul F. Grendler
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Mathematics History ◽  
Active Life ◽  
Pietro Bembo ◽  
Humanist Education ◽  
Renaissance Learning ◽  
Fourth Decade ◽  
The World

In the years 1535-1555 a group of Italian authors rejected much of Italian Renaissance learning. Humanists in the Quattrocento had wished to educate man for the active life. During the sixteenth century humanist education became a broad pattern of learning stressing grammar, rhetoric, logic, mathematics, history, and literature, based on both the Latin classics and vernacular models like Petrarch. Its purpose was the training of the young patrician to serve his family, city, or prince in the affairs of the world. But a group of critics mocked liberal studies, spurned the classical heritage, rejected authorities like Cicero and Pietro Bembo, ridiculed humanists, thought that history was widely misused, denied the utility of knowledge, and argued that man should withdraw into solitude. Nicolò Franco of Benevento (1515-1570), Lodovico Domenichi of Piacenza (1515-1564), Ortensio Lando of Milan (c. 1512-c. 1553), Giulio Landi of Piacenza (1500-1579), and Anton Francesco Doni of Florence (1513-1574) reached maturity in the fourth decade of the sixteenth century and expressed these critical themes in their many books published from 1533 to the early years of the 1550s.

A Renaissance Keyword

2020 ◽  
pp. 12-29
Author(s):  
Ita Mac Carthy
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Renaissance Art ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Questione Della Lingua ◽  
Full Maturity ◽  
Ancient Texts

This chapter discusses ‘grace’ in the context of the Italian Renaissance. During this time, the term became a mark of distinction in the questione della lingua and in the new language of literature. It was reenergised by the recovery of ancient texts that extolled its virtues as an instrument of persuasion in the language and visual arts. And it was the central bone of contention in Reformation and Counter-Reformation discussions about the nature of God's intervention in human salvation. Within each of these contexts, grace became a defining quality that Italians made their own. Grace provides a unique perspective on sixteenth-century Italy, for it rose to prominence in the context of so-called High Renaissance art, yet it also played a pivotal role in its polemical progress towards Mannerism. It was not, therefore, a banner that united artists in their advance towards the full maturity of their discipline, but a locus of encounter and conflict between different ways of conceiving of the visual arts.

LINGUACULTURAL ASPECT OF TEMPORAL NOMINATIONS

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (30) ◽  
pp. 200-213
Author(s):  
Anna Shapoval
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Experimental Analysis ◽  
Information Resource ◽  
Basic System ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
Lunar Calendar ◽  
Temporal System ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come

Analysis of linguocultural aspect of temporal nominations is impossible without involving the problems of hrononymic lexics. Chrononyms is an important information resource of a certain linguaculture, some distinctive peculiarities of conceptual picture of the world. The aim of the experimental analysis is a complex examination of the linguacultural aspect of temporal nominations that function in Chinese and Turkish languages reflecting the concepts of the world. The research was based on the material of the novels “Imperial woman” by Pearl Buck and “Roxolana” by Pavlo Zagrebelniy. The analysis of recent scientific publications allowed us to come to the conclusion that the investigation of hrononymic lexics can involve different theoretical and practical principles. Being guided by the existing classifications of chrononyms (N. Podolskaya, M. Torchinsky, S. Remmer) the linguocultural features of the following types of temporal chrononymic lexical units were identified and studied in the research: georthonyms, dynastic chrononyms, tumultonyms, parsonyms and mensonyms. The results of the research demonstrate that not all lexical units of temporal denotation chosen from the above mentioned novels refer to the class of chrononyms. The group under investigation includes the following lexemes: nominations of the lunar calendar, nominations of the solar calendar, nominations of mixed calendar and temporal slots denoting day and night. The basic system of chronology in the linguiacultures under analysis is the dominance of the lunar calendar nominations (Chinese picture of the world — 51,0 %, Turkish — 40,4 %). In the analyzed works the nominations of the solar calendar are used less often in the Chinese picture of the world; the usage of this unit reaches 20 %, and this phenomenon is historically conditioned. Mixed calendar nominations (21 % of temporal units) are rather common, solar calendar nominations are refined by the monthly calendar; it can be explained by the fact that the Chinese mind is conservative towards the new temporal system. In the Turkish picture of the world 45 % of temporal vocabulary belongs to the solar calendar since in the sixteenth century only a lunar calendar operated in the Ottoman Empire. It should be mentioned that significant place in the temporal vocabulary of “Roxolana” is conditioned by the influence of the linguistic personality of the author, who was a Ukrainian.

Platón, Einstein y el triunfo de la imaginatividad cosmológica

1998 ◽  
pp. 87-98
Author(s):  
T. M. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Striking Similarity ◽  
Empirical World ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Cosmology ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Physical Objects ◽  
Changing World

This article argues the following five claims: 1. Plato’s description of the origins of cosmos in the Timaeus is not a myth, nor something unlikely: when he called it an eikos mythos or eikos logos, he meant a likely or trustworthy account on this very subject. 2. Among the details in this account, the following are prominent and surprising: a) the world was fashioned in time, in that precise point that was the beginning of time; b) several kinds of duration can be distinguished in cosmology (mainly eternity, sempiternity, perpetuity and time); and c) space is an entity characterized by movement and tension. 3. In the Statesman, Plato repeats much the same thing, adding this time the strange notion that the universe’s circular movement is periodically reversed. 4. In spite of the important differences in detail, there is a striking similarity between Plato’s account of the origins of the world and the explanation adopted by much of modern cosmology. 5. What Plato shares with so many instances of recent thought is here termed “cosmological imaginativity”. A first section of the paper deals exclusively with the Timaeus. Claims 1 and 2a are supported by a revision of the meanings of mythos and logos, followed by brief reference and discussion of the argument at Timaeus 27d, leading to the conclusion that Plato affirms that the ever-changing world has indeed had a beginning in time. Claim 2b describes five different types of duration, corresponding to Forms, the Demiurge, Space, the [empirical] world and its contents, physical objects. The second section is concerned with the myth in the Statesman, discussing it as a parallel and describing its peculiar turn to the Timaeus’ cosmology and cosmogony, a complex spheric and dynamic model. After digressing into some important ideas in modern cosmology, touching especially on affinities of some of Einstein’s ideas with of Plato’s own, the paper closes with a discussion of cosmological imaginativity, oriented to recover and recognize fully Plato’s greatness as a cosmologist.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary History ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Related Material ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Early English

Mythographies were books that collected, explained, and interpreted myth-related material. Extremely popular during the Renaissance, these works appealed to a wide range of readers. While the European mythographies of the sixteenth century have been utilized by scholars, the short, early English mythographies, written from 1577 to 1647, have puzzled critics. The first generation of English mythographers did not, as has been suggested, try to compete with their Italian predecessors. Instead, they made mythographies into rhetorical instruments designed to intervene in topical debates outside the world of classical learning. Because English mythographers brought mythology to bear on a variety of contemporary issues, they unfold a lively and historically well-defined picture of the roles myth was made to play in early modern England. Exploring these mythographies can contribute to previous insights into myth in the Renaissance offered by studies of iconography, literary history, allegory, and myth theory.

The Baroque and Philosophy

2018 ◽  
pp. 601-622
Author(s):  
Michael Moriarty
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The Self ◽  
Early Modern Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
Baroque Art ◽  
Art And Architecture

Although the concept “baroque” is less obviously applicable to philosophy than to the visual arts and music, early modern philosophy can be shown to have connections with baroque culture. Baroque style and rhetoric are employed or denounced in philosophical controversies, to license or discredit a certain style of philosophizing. Philosophers engage with themes current in baroque literature (the mad world, the world as a stage, the quest for the self) and occasionally transform these into philosophical problems, especially of an epistemological kind (are the senses reliable? how far is our access to reality limited by our perspective?) Finally, the philosophies of Malebranche and Berkeley, with their radical challenges to so-called common sense, and their explanation of conventional understandings of the world as based on illusion, have something of the disturbing quality of baroque art and architecture.

Astrological Debates in Italian Renaissance Commentaries on Aristotle’s Meteorology

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-339
Author(s):  
Craig Martin
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Italian Renaissance

Abstract From the time of Albertus Magnus, medieval commentators on Aristotle regularly used a passage from Meteorology 1.2 as evidence that the stars and planets influence and even govern terrestrial events. Many of these commentators integrated their readings of this work with the view that planetary conjunctions were causes of significant changes in human affairs. By the end of the sixteenth century, Italian Aristotelian commentators and astrologers alike deemed this passage as authoritative for the integration of astrology with natural philosophy. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, however, criticized this reading, contending that Aristotle never used the science of the stars to explain meteorological phenomena. While some Italian commentators, such as Pietro Pomponazzi dismissed Pico’s contentions, by the middle of the sixteenth century many reevaluated the medieval integration. This reevaluation culminated in Cesare Cremonini, who put forth an extensive critique of astrology in which he argued against the idea of occult causation and celestial influence, as he tried to rid Aristotelianism of its medieval legacy.

scholarly journals Latin America in Global History: An Historiographic Overview

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (60) ◽  
pp. 253-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Olstein
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
World History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Global History ◽  
The World ◽  
Last Ice Age ◽  
Great Divergence

Abstract World history can be arranged into three major regional divergences: the 'Greatest Divergence' starting at the end of the last Ice Age (ca. 15,000 years ago) and isolating the Old and the New Worlds from one another till 1500; the 'Great Divergence' bifurcating the paths of Europe and Afro-Asia since 1500; and the 'American Divergence' which divided the fortunes of New World societies from 1500 onwards. Accordingly, all world regions have confronted two divergences: one disassociating the fates of the Old and New Worlds, and the other within either the Old or the New World. Latin America is in the uneasy position that in both divergences it ended up on the 'losing side.' As a result, a contentious historiography of Latin America evolved from the very moment that it was incorporated into the wider world. Three basic attitudes toward the place of Latin America in global history have since emerged and developed: admiration for the major impact that the emergence on Latin America on the world scene imprinted on global history; hostility and disdain over Latin America since it entered the world scene; direct rejection of and head on confrontation in reaction the former. This paper examines each of these three attitudes in five periods: the 'long sixteenth century' (1492-1650); the 'age of crisis' (1650-1780); 'the long nineteenth century' (1780-1914); 'the short twentieth century' (1914-1991); and 'contemporary globalization' (1991 onwards).

Las Yslas de Esperar en Dios: The Jesuit Mission in Moro 1546–1571

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-606
Author(s):  
John Villiers
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Mission Field

The numerous and voluminous reports and letters which the Jesuits wrote on the Moro mission, as on all their missions in Asia, are perhaps of less interest to us now for what they reveal of the methods adopted by the Society of Jesus in this remote corner of their mission field or the details they contain about the successes and failures of individual missionaries, than for the wealth of information they provide on the islands where the Jesuits lived and the indigenous societies with which they came into contact through their work of evangelization. In other words, it is not theprimary purpose of this essay to analyse the Jesuit documents with a view to reconstructing the history of the Moro mission in narrative form but rather to glean from them some of the informationthey contain about the social and political conditions in Moro during the forty years or so in the sixteenth century when both the Jesuit missionaries and the Portuguese were active in the regio Because the Jesuits were often in close touch with local rulers and notables, whether or not they succeeded in converting them to Christianity, and because they lived among their subjects for long periods, depending upon them for the necessities of life and sharing their hardships, their letters and reports often show a deeper understanding of the social, economic and political conditions of the indigenous societies and, one suspects, give a more accurate and measured account of events and personalities than do the official chroniclers and historians of the time, most of whom never ventured further east than Malacca and who in any case were chiefly concerned to glorify the deeds of the Portuguese and justify their actions to the world.

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