Staging the World: The Devils as Theatrum Mundi

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-514
Author(s):  
Christophe Van Eecke
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Tidal Wave ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Mise En Abyme ◽  
Political Allegory ◽  
The World

When Ken Russell's film The Devils was released in 1971 it generated a tidal wave of adverse criticism. The film tells the story of a libertine priest, Grandier, who was burnt at the stake for witchcraft in the French city of Loudun in the early seventeenth century. Because of its extended scenes of sexual hysteria among cloistered nuns, the film soon acquired a reputation for scandal and outrage. This has obscured the very serious political issues that the film addresses. This article argues that The Devils should be read primarily as a political allegory. It shows that the film is structured as a theatrum mundi, which is the allegorical trope of the world as a stage. Rather than as a conventional recreation of historical events (in the tradition of the costume film), Russell treats the trial against Grandier as a comment on the nature of power and politics in general. This is not only reflected in the overall allegorical structure of the theatrum mundi, but also in the use of the film's highly modernist (and therefore timeless) sets, in Russell's use of the mise-en-abyme (a self-reflexive embedded play) and in the introduction of a number of burlesque sequences, all of which are geared towards achieving the film's allegorical import.

The Politics of Providence in Dryden's Fables Ancient and Modern

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail Williams
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Arbitrary Power ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Political Allegory ◽  
William Iii ◽  
Standing Army

The politics of Dryden's Fables Ancient and Modern (1700) are at once transparent and obscure. These poems speak the idiom of late seventeenth-century political debate, introducing into, or simply discovering in the fictions of Chaucer, Ovid, Homer, and Boccaccio, the language and concepts of patriotism, abdication, passive obedience, arbitrary power, and political flattery. They seem to invite political reading on account of their subject matter itself – their narratives of tyrants, wronged parents and children, dynastic disputes, and usurpation. Moreover, they have been shown to incorporate numerous topical reflections on contemporary political issues: there are clear allusions to the standing army debates in Sigismonda and Guiscardo and Cymon and Iphigenia; to contemporary controversy over moral reformation and satire on Puritanism in The Cock and the Fox. Yet although the seventeenth century, and the 1690s in particular, saw an outpouring of explicitly political fables, Dryden's translations frustrate the application of sustained political allegory, as numerous critics have found.1 They offer contradictory signals: so, for example, we are invited to identify the conquering Theseus at the beginning of Palamon and Arcite as a type of William III, but by the end of the translation he has become a stoic figure offering a humanist consolation on loss and love.2 The collection as a whole tends to deny us the consistent political allegory that it invites us to make through its vocabulary and topical allusion.3

Divine Machines

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Theoretical Interest ◽  
Living World ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Organic Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Generation Theory

Though it did not yet exist as a discrete field of scientific inquiry, biology was at the heart of many of the most important debates in seventeenth-century philosophy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of G. W. Leibniz. This book offers the first in-depth examination of Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the empirical life sciences of his day, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. The book shows how these wide-ranging pursuits were not only central to Leibniz's philosophical interests, but often provided the insights that led to some of his best-known philosophical doctrines. Presenting the clearest picture yet of the scope of Leibniz's theoretical interest in the life sciences, the book takes seriously the philosopher's own repeated claims that the world must be understood in fundamentally biological terms. Here it reveals a thinker who was immersed in the sciences of life, and looked to the living world for answers to vexing metaphysical problems. The book casts Leibniz's philosophy in an entirely new light, demonstrating how it radically departed from the prevailing models of mechanical philosophy and had an enduring influence on the history and development of the life sciences. Along the way, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into early modern debates about the nature and origins of organic life, and into how philosophers such as Leibniz engaged with the scientific dilemmas of their era.

Dreams Give Birth to Reality”. Engraving Austroseraphicum Coelum as an Attempt to Create a New Reality by the Spanish Habsburgs Dynastic Propaganda / Sny rodzą rzeczywistość…”. Grafika Austroseraphicum Coelum jako próba kreowania nowej rzeczywistości za pomocą propagandy dynastycznej Habsburgów hiszpańskich

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Kurowiak
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
General Condition ◽  
Symbolic System ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Mission Of God ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

AbstractAs a work of propaganda, graphics Austroseraphicum Coelum Paulus Pontius should create a new reality, make appearances. The main impression while seeing the graphics is the admiration for the power of Habsburgs, which interacts with the power of the Mother of God. She, in turn, refers the viewer to God, as well as Franciscans placed on the graphic, they become a symbol of the Church. This is a starting point for further interpretation of the drawing. By the presence of certain characters, allegories, symbols, we can see references to a particular political situation in the Netherlands - the war with the northern provinces of Spain. The message of the graphic is: the Spanish Habsburgs, commissioned by the mission of God, they are able to fight all of the enemies, especially Protestants, with the help of Immaculate and the Franciscans. The main aim of the graphic is to convince the viewer that this will happen and to create in his mind a vision of the new reality. But Spain was in the seventeenth century nothing but a shadow of former itself (in the time of Philip IV the general condition of Spain get worse). That was the reason why they wanted to hold the belief that the empire continues unwavering. The form of this work (graphics), also allowed to export them around the world, and the ambiguity of the symbolic system, its contents relate to different contexts, and as a result, the Habsburgs, not only Spanish, they could promote their strength everywhere. Therefore it was used very well as a single work of propaganda, as well as a part of a broader campaign

Sport Reporting in an Era of Activism: Examining the Intersection of Sport Media and Social Activism

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans C. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sport Media ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

While there is a longstanding connection between sports and politics, this past year has seen a surge of social activism in the world of sport, and numerous high-profile athletes have used their positions of prominence to raise awareness of social or political issues. Sport media, in turn, have faced questions regarding how best to cover such activism. Given the popularity of sport media, such decisions can have real implications on the views held by the public. This scholarly commentary discusses how sport media cover the social activism of athletes and presents the results of a content analysis of popular news and sports television programs, newspapers, and magazines. Overall, results indicate that sport media are giving significant and respectful coverage to athletes who advocate for social or political issues.

On the Nomenclature of the Vinegar Eelworm

1927 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. G. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Keen Interest ◽  
Naked Eye ◽  
The World

This eelworm, only just visible to the naked eye, and quite common in vinegar in all parts of the world, has long been known to zoologists, and indeed was an object of keen interest and discussion to the naturalists of the seventeenth century. Petrus Borellus [3], for instance, enthusiastic over the recent adoption of the microscope for researches in natural history, published in 1656 his “Observationum Microcospicarum Centuria,” in which he leads off with a note “De Vermibus aceti.” In the twelfth edition of the “Systema Naturae” (1767), Linnaeus included a species redivivum in that final genus of the Regnum Animale so appropriately named Chaos. This species of animal he says, “Habitat in Aceto & Glutine Bibliopegorum.”.

The Confessions of a Wayward Professor

1950 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-362
Author(s):  
Herbert Eugene Bolton
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Great Honor ◽  
The World ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Wild West ◽  
Huntington Library

It is a Great Honor for one who lives in the Wild West to be asked to speak in the cultured capital of our country, for California is remote. In fact, it came into history as “the most outlandish place in the World,” and in some quarters so it is still regarded. A wealthy Italian Duchess, in the seventeenth century, told her Father Confessor that she wished to endow a mission for the heathen. Being asked where she wished it established, she replied, “In the most outlandish place in all the world.” The Jesuits consulted their geography and concluded that the most outlandish place in all the world was California, and there the mission was founded. Father Kino had a long correspondence with the same Duchess, and for their letters the Huntington Library, a few years ago, paid $18,000. Bigger sums have been paid for letters written to a lady, but seldom for letters written to a lady by a Jesuit priest.

Cooch Behar: Medieval Regional History in a Bengal Frontierland

2021 ◽  
pp. 097152312110355
Author(s):  
Chanchal Adhikary
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political History ◽  
Eastern India ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
Regional History ◽  
Historical Developments

For constructing the medieval political history of Cooch Behar, also known as Koch Bihar, the Persian manuscript of Bah rist n-i-Ghaybī, discovered in 1919 by Jadunath Sarkar in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, is very significant. This text facilitates our understanding of important historical events in eastern India during the time of Mughal Emperor Jahangir (1601–27). The text also provides important details of peasants’ revolts during the Mughal occupation, with remarkable implications until recent times regarding border relations between India and Bangladesh. The article examines the historical facts presented in this important text and corroborates them with other sources to argue that this text should be read as a chronicle for the history of warfare, society and peasants’ life in the region throughout the seventeenth century, with significant implications for later historical developments in Cooch Behar.

The Album De Colbert: The Image of Shipbuilding

2021 ◽  
Vol 163 (A3) ◽  
Author(s):  
M Corradi
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
Shipbuilding Industry ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

The Album de Colbert compiled by an anonymous author in the second half of the seventeenth century is among the most important illustrated testimonies of the art of shipbuilding. Probably commissioned by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Minister of Finance and Minister of the Navy of the kingdom of France, the Album was composed to make Louis XIV understand the complexity of shipbuilding. It was also made to support the creation of a navy with the ambition of being competitive with the Royal Navy and with the intent of modernising and expanding the French shipbuilding industry. The fifty plates that make up this illustrated treatise unravel the story of the construction of a first-rank 80-gun line vessel, from the laying of the keel to the launch. It is a unique document that has no contemporaries or precursors because it is not a didactic collection of boats, like the previous treaties that had a completely different methodological approach, more technical-descriptive than illustrative, but it wants to go beyond the scientific treatise. Its purpose was instead to measure itself with representation, showing through the strength of drawing and images the peculiar aspects of the reality of shipbuilding, using iconography as a means of transmitting knowledge related to the world of shipyards and shipbuilding in the 17th century.

scholarly journals John Hales (1582-1656). A Tolerant Man Living in an Intolerant Age

Perichoresis ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-205
Author(s):  
Lee W. Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
The World ◽  
Way Of Thinking

John Hales (1582-1656). A Tolerant Man Living in an Intolerant Age This article focuses upon the seventeenth-century English philosophical theologian, John Hales, who is all too often overlooked or forgotten at the present time. The thought of Hales on the relation of human reason to God’s revelation in Holy Scripture is shown to be remarkably modern in many ways. The article also concludes that Hales’s “Middle Way” of thinking and acting continues to be relevant to Christian churches throughout the world torn as they presently are with discord and dissention.

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