Thomas More and the Master Tropes: The deep structure of A Dialogue Concerning Heresies and Giambattista Vico

Moreana ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 38 (Number 147- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 4-24
Author(s):  
John D. Schaeffer
Keyword(s):  
Deep Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Giambattista Vico ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hayden White ◽  
Religiously Based ◽  
Sensus Communis ◽  
Language And Law ◽  
Desperate Attempt

More’s Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529) has furnished many of his contemporary critics with evidence of his manipulative rhetoric and his rigid orthodoxy. A careful reading of the work, however, reveals its structure to depend upon the four master trop es: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, arranged in a dialectic that Giambattista Vico called “the poetic logic.” Hayden White found this same poetic logic underlying the structure of Michel Foucault’s account of the history of discourse. Vico and Foucault were writing at the end of the dialectic age, in the age of irony. More, on the other hand, was writing at the end of the metonymie stage, when a coherent sensus communis begins to collapse into plurality of competing world views. Viewed against the background of the poetic logic, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies was not merely a defense of religious orthodoxy, but a desperate attempt to maintain a coherent, religiously-based sensus communis, one that underwrote the intelligibility of language and law, against what More perceived as a tide of relativism and solipsism.

Oedipus's Riddle: Elizabethan transformation of the family portrait of Thomas More, an Appendix to “Non sum Oedipus sed Morus”

Moreana ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (Number 212) (2) ◽  
pp. 133-159
Author(s):  
Frank Mitjans
Keyword(s):  
Family Group ◽  
The Other ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
The Family ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
History Of ◽  
Victoria And Albert Museum

Holbein produced a drawing of Sir Thomas More and his Family which was a preparatory sketch for a larger painting. The painting was acquired by Karl von Liechtenstein-Kastelkron (1623–95), Archbishop of Olomouc, Moravia, and was last recorded in 1691 as being kept in the episcopal residence in Olomouc; it is generally assumed that the painting was lost in the 1752 fire at the Archbishop's château in Kroměřiž. There are, however, five extant versions of the Family Group. The three main versions are the full-sized oil on canvas, The Family of Sir Thomas More (1592), now at Nostell Priory, and two paintings of Sir Thomas More, his Household, and Descendants: one kept at the National Portrait Gallery, the other at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. There has been much discussion about the transformation from a family at prayer—as portrayed in the original drawing—to a conversation on Seneca. Based on editions of Oedipus prior to the Nostell painting, the history of More's descendants, and a cameo that belonged to More's family, this paper argues that the Elizabethan transformation is a story of conformity and non-conformity.

More's History of King Richard III: Bilingual Writing and Renovation of Historiography

Moreana ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (Number 213) (1) ◽  
pp. 48-62
Author(s):  
Guillaume Navaud
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bilingual Writing ◽  
As If

Why did Thomas More write two versions of his History of King Richard III, one in English and the other in Latin? Critics tend to answer this question by arguing that the two versions were not destined for the same audience: the Latin for a continental elite, the vernacular for a larger British readership. Although perfectly convincing, this explanation may not be the only one: this paper tries to underline the existence of another motivation, one of a literary nature. The History of King Richard III indeed combines two historiographical models: the ancient and classical monograph as illustrated by Sallust, and the medieval tradition of the chronicle. The oscillation between English and Latin may reflect More's wish to renovate the genre of the medieval chronicle, accomplished by an hybridization with classical Latin models—as if More attempted to grasp the best of both traditions in order to initiate a new means of writing history.

scholarly journals Genomic perspectives on the birth and spread of plastids

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (33) ◽  
pp. 10147-10153 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Archibald
Keyword(s):  
Gene Transfer ◽  
Deep Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Endosymbiotic Gene Transfer ◽  
Microbial Eukaryotes ◽  
Eukaryotic Genes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Cyanobacterial Genes ◽  
Endosymbiotic Origin

The endosymbiotic origin of plastids from cyanobacteria was a landmark event in the history of eukaryotic life. Subsequent to the evolution of primary plastids, photosynthesis spread from red and green algae to unrelated eukaryotes by secondary and tertiary endosymbiosis. Although the movement of cyanobacterial genes from endosymbiont to host is well studied, less is known about the migration of eukaryotic genes from one nucleus to the other in the context of serial endosymbiosis. Here I explore the magnitude and potential impact of nucleus-to-nucleus endosymbiotic gene transfer in the evolution of complex algae, and the extent to which such transfers compromise our ability to infer the deep structure of the eukaryotic tree of life. In addition to endosymbiotic gene transfer, horizontal gene transfer events occurring before, during, and after endosymbioses further confound our efforts to reconstruct the ancient mergers that forged multiple lines of photosynthetic microbial eukaryotes.

The Lion and the Fox: an Unholy Animal Kingdom

Moreana ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (Number 189- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 54-70
Author(s):  
Stelio Cro
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Animal Kingdom ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Negative View ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
Detailed List

This article compares the History of Richard III (1512) of Thomas More and The Prince (1513) of Niccolò Machiavelli. More attributes to Richard III a detailed list of moral vices that leaves no doubt as to his very negative view of Richard. On the other hand, in The Prince, Machiavelli deals with contemporary events without moral or religious preoccupations. In essence, for More history is “magistra vitae”, as long as the Christian values are conveyed by the historian, whereas for Machiavelli history’s lesson is valid regardless of religious and/or moral issues.

Theodor W. Adorno

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colby Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

In his somewhat controversial book Remnants of Auschwitz, Agamben makes brief reference to Theodor Adorno’s apparently contradictory remarks on perceptions of death post-Auschwitz, positions that Adorno had taken concerning Nazi genocidal actions that had seemed also to reflect something horribly errant in the history of thought itself. There was within such murderous acts, he had claimed, a particular degradation of death itself, a perpetration of our humanity bound in some way to affect our perception of reason itself. The contradictions regarding Auschwitz that Agamben senses to be latent within Adorno’s remarks involve the intuition ‘on the one hand, of having realized the unconditional triumph of death against life; on the other, of having degraded and debased death. Neither of these charges – perhaps like every charge, which is always a genuinely legal gesture – succeed in exhausting Auschwitz’s offense, in defining its case in point’ (RA 81). And this is the stance that Agamben wishes to hammer home quite emphatically vis-à-vis Adorno’s limitations, ones that, I would only add, seem to linger within Agamben’s own formulations in ways that he has still not come to reckon with entirely: ‘This oscillation’, he affirms, ‘betrays reason’s incapacity to identify the specific crime of Auschwitz with certainty’ (RA 81).

Augustine, Boethius and the Fortune Verses of Thomas More

Moreana ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 39 (Number 149) (1) ◽  
pp. 17-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.D. Cousins
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
Consolation Of Philosophy ◽  
White Individual

William J. Bouwsma influentially argued, in 1975, that “[t]he two ideological poles between which Renaissance humanism oscillated may be roughly labelled ‘Stoicism’ and ‘Augustinianism.’” He suggested that white individual humanists might, at different times, favour some version of one over some version of the other, their intellectual allegiances were nonetheless fundamentally divided between the two. An unacknowledged possibility in Bouwsma’s essay is that humanist texts might interplay the two—knowingly or unselfconsciously. Stoical elements and Augustinianism can be seen to co-exist in Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy, a notable precedent, perhaps. Further, they can be seen to co-exist in More’s Fortune Verses, which are at once a sophisticated contribution to the literature of Fortune and an example (most likely a self-conscious one) of Stoicism’s literary cohabitation with Augustinianism.

From the Tower of London to the Thomas More Society of Buenos Aires: “Give me thy grace, good Lord, to set the world at nought”

Moreana ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 42 (Number 164) (4) ◽  
pp. 187-206
Author(s):  
Clare M. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Short History ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Tower Of London ◽  
Hebrew Poetry ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Book Of Hours ◽  
Almost All

The Thomas More Society of Buenos Aires begins or ends almost all its events by reciting in both English and Spanish a prayer written by More in the margins of his Book of Hours probably while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London. After a short history of what is called Thomas More’s Prayer Book, the author studies the prayer as a poem written in the form of a psalm according to the structure of Hebrew poetry, and looks at the poem’s content as a psalm of lament.

The World after the End of the World

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kas Saghafi
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
End Of The World

In several late texts, Derrida meditated on Paul Celan's poem ‘Grosse, Glühende Wölbung’, in which the departure of the world is announced. Delving into the ‘origin’ and ‘history’ of the ‘conception’ of the world, this paper suggests that, for Derrida, the end of the world is determined by and from death—the death of the other. The death of the other marks, each and every time, the absolute end of the world.

Geografia e dissimulazione nell’ Utopia di Morus

Moreana ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (Number 195- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 103-113
Author(s):  
Carlos Berriel
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Thomas More

At the beginning of Book II of Utopia, Thomas More describes the adventures of a hypothetical navigator who approached the isle of Utopia: actually the navigator is none other than us, readers who, through this reading-navigation are approaching the idea of Utopia. However, the Utopians wish to protect themselves from our approach, having built a dangerous harbor, with “shallows on one side and rocks on the other.” “Since the other rocks lie under the water, they are very dangerous. The channels are known only to the Utopians, so hardly any strangers enter the bay without one of their pilots; and even they themselves could not enter safely if they did not direct their course by some landmarks on the coast”. Utopia has two meanings, the book and the island; the reader/navigator must avoid shipwreck on the reefs. The various references and meanings of the work, which are as many landmarks on the coast, frequently change places. Thus it is necessary to find one’s orientation through the evermoving game of such indications.

Med. Dr. Adalbert Wraný (1836–1902) – doctor of medicine, mineral collector and donor to the National Museum in Prague

2019 ◽  
Vol 188 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-146
Author(s):  
Martin Bohatý ◽  
Dalibor Velebil
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Industrial Chemistry ◽  
Pediatric Pathology ◽  
Geological Institute ◽  
History Of ◽  
Precious Stones

Adalbert Wraný (*1836, †1902) was a doctor of medicine, with his primary specialization in pediatric pathology, and was also one of the founders of microscopic and chemical diagnostics. He was interested in natural sciences, chemistry, botany, paleontology and above all mineralogy. He wrote two books, one on the development of mineralogical research in Bohemia (1896), and the other on the history of industrial chemistry in Bohemia (1902). Wraný also assembled several natural science collections. During his lifetime, he gave to the National Museum large collections of rocks, a collection of cut precious stones and his library. He donated a collection of fossils to the Geological Institute of the Czech University (now Charles University). He was an inspector of the mineralogical collection of the National Museum. After his death, he bequeathed to the National Museum his collection of minerals and the rest of the gemstone collection. He donated paintings to the Prague City Museum, and other property to the Klar Institute of the Blind in Prague. The National Museum’s collection currently contains 4 325 samples of minerals, as well as 21 meteorites and several hundred cut precious stones from Wraný’s collection.

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