scholarly journals Li Pittori Parlano con l’Opere: Visualizing Poetry in Practice in Early Modern Italian Art

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-208

The relative sophistication of artists in the early modern era is contested, especially with regards to their educational backgrounds. On one hand, Dempsey-esque intellectual history is vested in touting the structured, literary curricula in art-educational institutions; while on the other, a complete rejection of the “artist-philosopher” as historical fiction seeks to undermine this hegemonic construct. This study argues that the lack of early formal education in the cases of artist like Annibale Carracci and Nicolas Poussin, who, unlike Peter Paul Rubens, did not have a firm foundation in the classics and languages that would allow them to engage directly with source material, would later be supplemented through their relationships with literary figures in the circles of Torquato Tasso, Giambattista Marino, and the Accademia dei Gelati. In addition to such relationships, informal exchanges, gatherings, and supplemental materials like Giovanni Paolo Gallucci’s Della Simmetria could be called upon when treating poetic subjects. With intimate knowledge of vernacular poetry, literati themselves participating in lectures and studio visits, and, finally, quick reference guides for subject matter, these artists were able to produce works that spoke to both poetic and artistic theory of the day, as one naturally informed the other.

AJS Review ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (01) ◽  
pp. 23-46
Author(s):  
Shai A. Alleson-Gerberg

In an era when cannibalism occupied the European imagination and became a political weapon that could be effectively aimed against the Other within or elsewhere, as well as a test case for the concept of humanity, it is hardly surprising to find similar rhetoric in internal Jewish discourse of the early modern era. This article shows Rabbi Jacob Emden's contribution to this discourse in the eighteenth century, and extends the boundaries of the scholarly discussion beyond establishing Jewish-Christian proximity. Emden's halakhic position on the question “Is it permissible to benefit from the cadaver of a dead gentile?” (She'elat Ya‘aveẓ) connects cannibalism and theological heresy springing from an overly literal reading of the rabbinical canon, as well as ties it to the concept of the seven Noahide laws. For Emden, the consumption of human flesh, literally and particularly metaphorically, distinguishes between the sons of Noah and heretics, as well as between humanity and savages. Emden advanced this concept in his polemical writings against the Sabbatian heresy in the 1750s, when he became embroiled in controversy with Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz and the Frankists.


2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilfried Lippitz

This paper considers the issue of alterity in education, first defining the question of the "other" or the "foreign" as it appears in a number of educational discourses and contexts. The paper then presents two different, historically-localizable aspects of the pedagogical encounter with foreignness or otherness. Both of these are associated with periods that have an important place in German cultural and intellectual history. The first is the transition from the middle ages to the early-modern period, the time of John Amos Comenius' Orbis Sensualium Pictus. Despite the achievements of this particular work as an encyclopedic and pedagogical introduction to the "visible world," it presents a rather deleterious treatment of the foreign in its contemporaneous manifestation in Northern Europe. The second historical period is the 19th century, and what is of principle concern here is the treatment of the foreign in grand, synthetic neo-humanistic theories of time. While the processes of dialectical assimilation and integration to which the foreign or other was subjected in these theories were not as explicit or overt as in preceding periods, they are still comparable in terms of their ultimate effect. This paper concludes by considering two 20th century articulations of education or Bildung in which the irreducible presence of the foreign or other in human development is explicitly acknowledged and affirmed, and the issue of its respect and recouperation is directly addressed, sometimes with significant and valuable consequences for pedagogy.


Author(s):  
Frans-Willem Korsten

The distinction between the theatrical and the dramatic is pivotal for different modes of subjection in the early modern era. Institutionally speaking, society was organized ideologically, theatrically by the introjection of what was shown publicly to private, but equally collective, theatres of the mind. This could be described as a logic of torture. In contrast, and on the other hand, the dramatic application of punishment on ships, and the pain it involved, served what Robert Cover called a ‘balance of terror’, based on a logic of what Deleuze defined as ‘cruelty’. In order to clarify this distinction, and the implication it has for our ideas on gouvernmentalité, this chapter will propose a close reading of a painting by Lieve Verschuier that either depicts a peculiar case of keelhauling or, allegorically, the lynching of the brothers De Witt in 1672. Although the painting is clearly theatrical, formally speaking, it superimposes a dramatic logic on the traumatic political event of the lynching of the brothers De Witt. This will be considered in the chapter as one instance of a more general shift in the seventeenth century: a shift away from the theatrical logic of torture to the dramatic logic of cruelty.


Author(s):  
Rudolf Schuessler

The scholastic controversy on probable opinions in the seventeenth century was one of the most extensive and acrimonious debates of the early modern era. Historiography has treated it as a quarrel over moral casuistry, but this underestimates its import. The scholastic preoccupation with the ‘use of opinions’ should be understood as a search for a general framework for dealing with reasonable disagreement between competent evaluators of truth claims (not only moral ones). In the early modern era, scholastic analyses as well as regulations concerning the prudent and legitimate use of opinions acquired an unprecedented scope and depth. For the first time in European intellectual history, detailed theories of reasonable disagreement emerged, based on explicit characterizations of competing probable opinions as reasonably tenable.


Author(s):  
Dirk Heirbaut

Historians of a previous generation saw feudalism as a creation of the Carolingians, which was to be found mainly in the heartland of their empire. However, in 1994 Susan Reynolds demolished this view: feudalism is not medieval, but the product of the early modern era, albeit with roots in the medieval Libri Feudorum. Reynolds and others were right in attacking the old views but, on the other hand, recent research also shows that in at least four pioneering regions feudalism already appears in the eleventh century, before the Libri Feudorum. However, the latter helped to spread feudalism to other parts of Europe. The upshot was not one model of feudalism that was slavishly followed all over Europe and remained constant until the demise of feudalism. There were only regional feudalisms that were very different from the model of the traditional handbooks.


Author(s):  
Rachel Bedic

The field of Medicine in the early Modern period was primarily male-dominated. Women in the Early Modern era were faced with numerous challenges when pursuing a career in the medical field, due to not only their gender, but also the limitations they faced when obtaining formalized medical training. Due to their natural knowledge, women in the Early Modern period were able to thrive in the medical field as midwives despite having their authority constantly undermined by male authorities such as the Church and male physicians. Although female midwives lacked the formal education their male contemporaries received, their informal natural knowledge of the female body helped them thrive in a male-dominated field of medicine.GRADE RECEIVED: 85%PROFESSOR: Dr. Rose


Author(s):  
David Randall

The changed conception of conversation that emerged by c.1700 was about to expand its scope enormously – to the broad culture of Enlightenment Europe, to the fine arts, to philosophy and into the broad political world, both via the conception of public opinion and via the constitutional thought of James Madison (1751–1836). In the Enlightenment, the early modern conception of conversation would expand into a whole wing of Enlightenment thought. The intellectual history of the heirs of Cicero and Petrarch would become the practice of millions and the constitutional architecture of a great republic....


Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke

This is the first full-scale look at the essential place of Stoicism in the foundations of modern political thought. Spanning the period from Justus Lipsius's Politics in 1589 to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile in 1762, and concentrating on arguments originating from England, France, and the Netherlands, the book considers how political writers of the period engaged with the ideas of the Roman and Greek Stoics that they found in works by Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The book examines key texts in their historical context, paying special attention to the history of classical scholarship and the historiography of philosophy. The book delves into the persisting tension between Stoicism and the tradition of Augustinian anti-Stoic criticism, which held Stoicism to be a philosophy for the proud who denied their fallen condition. Concentrating on arguments in moral psychology surrounding the foundations of human sociability and self-love, the book details how the engagement with Roman Stoicism shaped early modern political philosophy and offers significant new interpretations of Lipsius and Rousseau together with fresh perspectives on the political thought of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. The book shows how the legacy of the Stoics played a vital role in European intellectual life in the early modern era.


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