scholarly journals Barthélemy Aneau’s Alector ou le coq and the Paradox of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Jenny Meyer

Barthélemy Aneau’s histoire fabuleuse, Alector ou le coq (1560) epitomizes a burgeoning sixteenth-century awareness of the globe and its scope. New possibilities for envisioning global space went hand in hand with the development of cosmopolitan sympathies among Renaissance humanists; namely, enthusiasm for the ideal of a world republic. In this article, I show how Aneau’s fictional narrative demonstrates an idealized vision of the French monarch’s global role. I argue that Alector is written in the spirit of the princely manual, with a singular emphasis on the monarch’s obligatory mastery of spatial navigation that evinces sixteenth-century awareness of geography’s relevance to governance. Aneau creates a pastiche of French foundation myths and of geographical sources in order to emphasize both the French monarch’s preeminence and his worldwide reach. Elements of the hermetic tradition are manifest in Alector, where space is allegorized to illustrate Aneau’s conception of France’s place in the cosmos; in this way, his work is similar to that of his contemporary, the self-described cosmopolitan Guillaume Postel. Ultimately, there is a discord between the real geography evoked in Alector and the fictional genre that houses it. This dissonance emphasizes the paradoxical nature of a cosmopolitanism that strives to incorporate nationalism, and illustrates an unresolved complexity for would-be Renaissance world citizens. L’histoire fabuleuse de Barthélemy Aneau, Alector ou le coq (1560) illustre la conscience grandissante de la Renaissance pour le globe terrestre et son espace. Les nouvelles façons de voir l’espace global se sont développées en même temps que les sympathies cosmopolites de certains humanistes de la Renaissance, en particulier en ce qui concerne leur enthousiasme pour la république mondiale. Dans cet article, l’auteur montre comment la trame narrative d’Aneau illustre une vision idéalisée du rôle global du roi de France. On y analyse qu’Alector est écrit dans l’esprit du manuel du prince, en mettant l’accent particulièrement sur l’obligation qu’a le roi de maîtriser l’espace de navigation, illustrant l’idée au XVIe siècle que la connaissance géographique se situe au cœur de la gouvernance. Aneau crée un pastiche de mythes de fondation française et de sources géographiques afin de souligner à la fois la prééminence du roi de France et son rayonnement mondial. Certains éléments de la tradition hermétique peuvent également être retracés dans Alector, puisque l’espace y fonctionne comme une allégorie de la conception d’Aneau de la place de la France dans le cosmos. De cette façon, son œuvre est similaire à celle de son contemporain, Guillaume Postel, qui se décrivait lui-même comme un cosmopolite. Enfin, un décalage s’observe entre la géographie réelle évoquée dans Alector et le cadre fictionnel qui l’abrite. Ce décalage souligne à son tour la nature paradoxale d’un cosmopolitisme voulant intégrer les nationalismes, ce qui représente bien une question complexe et non résolue pour les citoyens du monde en devenir de la Renaissance.

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Wałczyk

Nikifor Krynicki (Epifaniusz Drowniak, 1895-1968) was one of the most popular non-academic Polish painters worldwide. To show the biblical inspiration in his creative output I chose two categories from various thematic aspects: self-portraits and landscapes with a church. There are plenty of Nikifor’s paintings showing him as a teacher, as a celebrating priest, as a bishop, or even as Christ. A pop­ular way to explain this idea of self-portraits is a psychological one: as a form of auto-therapy. This analysis is aims to show a deeper expla­nation for the biblical anthropology. Nikifor’s self-portraits as a priest celebrating the liturgy are a symbol of creative activity understood as a divine re-creation of the world. Such activity needs divine inspira­tion. Here are two paintings to recall: Potrójny autoportret (The triple self-portrait) and Autoportret w trzech postaciach (Self-portrait in three persons). The proper way to understand the self-identification with Christ needs a reference to biblical anthropology. To achieve our re­al-self we need to identify with Christ, whose death and resurrection bring about our whole humanity. The key impression we may have by showing Nikifor’s landscapes with a church is harmony. The painter used plenty of warm colors. Many of the critics are of the opinion that Nikifor created an imaginary, ideal world in his landscapes, the world he wanted to be there and not the real world. The thesis of this article is that Nikifor created not only the ideal world, but he also showed the source of the harmony – the divine order.


1967 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 699-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise V. Frisbie ◽  
Frank J. Vanasek ◽  
Harvey F. Dingman

Ratings of the self and of the ideal self were obtained from 215 institutionalized child molesters and 143 child molesters who were living in the community. The discrepancy between the two ratings of the self is seen to be related to the descriptive terms used to depict the self Words that are clearly evaluative in nature did not lead to discrepancies in the two ratings. Words that were descriptive but nonevaluative gave rise to large differences between ratings of the ideal self and the real self. There were few apparent differences between the child molesters in the community and those in the institution.


1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (02) ◽  
pp. 30-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dieter Wandschneider

When the Ideal is understood as ontologically fundamental within the framework of an idealistic system, and the Real, on the other hand, as derived, then the first and foremost task of a philosophy of this kind is to prove the claimed fundamentally of the Ideal. This is immediately followed by the further demand to also substantiate on this basis the existence of the Real and particularly of natural being. These tasks have been understood and attempts made to solve them in very different ways in German Idealism - about which I cannot go into more detail here. Let me say this much: that Fichte and Schelling, it appears to me, already fail at the first task, ie. neither Fichte nor Schelling really succeeds in substantiating their pretended ideal as an absolute principle of philosophy. Fichte believes he has such a principle in the direct evidence of the self. However, as this is of little use for the foundation of a generally binding philosophy because of its ultimately private character, Fichte already replaces it with the principle of the absolute self already in his first Wissenschaftlehre of 1794. As a construction detached from the concrete self, this of course lacks that original direct certainty from which Fichte started in the first place, in other words: because the construction of an absolute self can no longer refer to direct evidence, it must be substantiated separately, something which Fichte, I believe, nonetheless fails to do. The same criticism can, in my view, be made of Schelling, who ingeniously substitutes constructions for arguments. His early intuition of an absolute identity which simultaneously underlies spirit and nature, remains just as thetic and unproven as that eternal subject on which he based the representation of his system in, for example, the Munich lectures of 1827.


Organization ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Casper Hoedemaekers

This article explores the question of identification through a Lacanian lens, paying specific attention to the interruption of identification in the self-presentation of employees. Jacques Lacan’s notion of the Real is taken up here as a conceptualization of the limits inherent in representation, and the unexpected effects of signification that go beyond the meaning effects engendered in the process of speaking. Identification is viewed here as an iterative condensation and simplification of recurrent significations within a local organizational context, aiming to displace and repress the indeterminacy of meaning and the failure of intentionality in discourse. Interview material from a public sector case study is used to analyse identifications with images of the ‘ideal employee’, which can be interpreted through interviewees’ moves to demarcate themselves from images of the ‘non-ideal’. The analysis then turns to examine interruptions in this self-presentation in the form of slips, contradictions and breakdowns of the narrative. The article concludes that the examined interruptions indicate considerable space for resistance and re-signification in identifications.


2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance Furey

AbstractThis paper analyzes how the "new" genre of Utopia (nominally invented by Thomas More in the sixteenth century) historicizes in a way that is not, strictly speaking, tied to history. More builds his imaginary world using details culled from life in sixteenth-century England, and Utopia—a fictional island society—is itself a commentary on the values and politics of More's society. This dual focus on the real and the ideal explains why this prosaic genre has intrigued so many commentators, notably Fredric Jameson, who (I argue) has written repeatedly about Utopia as a way to think through the unresolved implications of his own injunction to historicize. Working out of a commitment to historical materialism, Jameson has found it difficult to articulate hope for an alternative future that is itself appropriately historicized and not naively utopian. Analyzing More and Jameson in tandem thereby illuminates the theoretical dilemmas involved in critiquing history.


1923 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 109-130
Author(s):  
Preserved Smith

By many scientists as well as by the pragmatist philos-ophers we are told that the best, if not the only possible, test of a given thing is what it does. From physics we learn that whereas the nature of matter or of electricity defies definition, it is possible to describe the operation or effect that each has. In a book of economics I have read the definition “money is what money does.” Apparently the same test must be applied to historical phenomena. If we would know the real nature of a given invention or a new ideal we must inquire exactly what was the change in human life that it introduced. It is this test that I propose to apply to the Reformation. I propose to show that of seven great changes which came over the people of Western Europe in the sixteenth century the Reformation was the ideal expression; in part effect, in part cause, in part so intimately connected with some social, philosophical, political or economic movement, that it is hard to say which it is.


2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey L. Guenther ◽  
Kathryn Applegate ◽  
Steven Svoboda ◽  
Emily Adams

Moreana ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (Number 197- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 115-137
Author(s):  
Daniel Lochman

John Colet knew Thomas Linacre for approximately three decades, from their mutual residence in Italy during the early 1490s through varied pedagogical, professional, and social contacts in and around London prior to Colet’s death in 1519. It is not certain that Colet knew Linacre’s original Latin translations of Galen’s therapeutic works, the first printed in 1517. Yet several of Colet’s works associate a spiritual physician—a phrase linked to Colet himself at least since Thomas More’s 1504 letter inviting him to London—with Paul’s trope of the mystical body. Using Galenic discourse to describe the “physiology” of the ideal mystical body, Colet emphasizes by contrast a diseased ecclesia in need of healing by the Spirit, who alone can invigorate the mediating “vital spirits” that are spiritual physicians—ministers within the church. Colet’s application of sophisticated Galenic discourse to the mystical body coincided with the humanist interest in Galen’s works evident in Linacre’s translations, and it accompanied growing concern for health related to waves of epidemics in London during the first two decades of the sixteenth century as well as Colet’s involvement in licensure of London physicians. This paper explores the implications of Colet’s adaptation of Galenic principles to the mystical body and suggests that Colet fostered a strain of medical discourse that persisted well into the sixteenth century.


Author(s):  
Milen Dimov

The present study traces the dynamics of personal characteristics in youth and the manifested neurotic symptoms in the training process. These facts are the reason for the low levels of school results in the context of the existing theoretical statements of the problem and the empirical research conducted among the trained teenagers. We suggest that the indicators of neurotic symptomatology in youth – aggression, anxiety, and neuroticism, are the most demonstrated, compared to the other studied indicators of neurotic symptomatology. Studies have proved that there is a difference in the act of neurotic symptoms when tested in different situations, both in terms of expression and content. At the beginning of the school year, neurotic symptoms, more demonstrated in some aspects of aggressiveness, while at the end of school year, psychotism is more demonstrated. The presented summarized results indicate that at the beginning of the school year, neurotic symptoms are strongly associated with aggression. There is a tendency towards a lower level of social responsiveness, both in the self-assessment of real behavior and in the ideal “I”-image of students in the last year of their studies. The neurotic symptomatology, more demonstrated due to specific conditions in the life of young people and in relation to the characteristics of age.


2020 ◽  
Vol 310 ◽  
pp. 120-125
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Kalogeras ◽  
Neil Ruparelia ◽  
Tito Kabir ◽  
Richard Jabbour ◽  
Toru Naganuma ◽  
...  

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