Afterword

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Blair
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
State Bureaucracy

The afterword provides a critical reflection on the contribution made by this volume to the historiographies of early modern archives and information. It highlights the need for further exploration of archival impulses beyond state bureaucracy, pointing to their role as instruments of power in a wider range of contexts and environments. It also underlines the value of paying close attention to questions of materiality and the conditions of document survival and durability. It concludes by calling for greater collaboration between professional archivists and academic historians.

Speaking the End Times: Early Modern Politics and Religion from Iberia to Central Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Mayte Green-Mercado
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
End Times ◽  
Sacred History

Abstract This introduction delineates the contours of early modern apocalyptic thought and practice among Christians, Muslims, and Jews by discussing specific themes explored in the five articles included in this special issue. It also situates the articles in the expansive scholarship on apocalypticism, highlighting the contribution of this collection of essays to the field. Paying close attention to and problematizing the importance of the terminology that expressed early modern notions of sacred history and political authority—in a context of intense inter-confessional contact and conflict—this introduction calls for a contextual examination of apocalyptic thought and practice.

SECRECY AND AUTHORITY IN LATE SIXTEENTH- AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 925-951 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL GRIFFITHS
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
City Government ◽  
Written Expression ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The People ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
Concealed Information

Governors always seek to monitor the flow of information and guide its release. Secrecy and tactical publicity are valued aspects of government, boosting authority but also marking limits of participation by restricting access to official words and their written expression. Close attention is given to two ubiquitous institutions in early modern London, guilds and vestries (material illustrating city government is also introduced). A distinction is drawn between concealed information and policy communicated to the people. Attention is given thus to the regulation of meetings, chests and keys, and the selective discharge of information. Secrecy gave rise to vocabularies of ‘public’ and ‘private’. It was a code (a form of protection), but in languages of ‘private’ and ‘public’ as they were used in specific contexts studied here, it also depicted the use of space, the distribution of authority, and the limits of access and participation. The study of secrecy and partial publicity adds another dimension to our knowledge of the formation of opinion, perceptions of authority were partly formed by this enclosure of information, secrecy spawned speculation. It also provides a linguistic indication of the nature of government in institutions which mouthed fraternal tunes while remaining obsessed with formality and secrecy.

Picturing Global Conversion: Art and Diplomacy at the Court of Paul V (1605-1621)

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 525-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Opher Mansour
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Papal Court

Abstract This article examines the progress of a series of ambassadorial visits to Rome by emissaries from the Kongo, Japan, and Safavid Persia as they unfolded over the reign of Pope Paul V. Close attention is paid to the visual representation of the ambassadors, and of their actions, in engravings and in the decoration of the Quirinal Palace. The author argues that the public aspects of diplomacy, and of the visual representations based on it, played a significant role in articulating the Papacy’s missionary ambitions and sense of its global position. Furthermore, it is argued that the diplomatic and courtly practices of the papal court played a significant role in mediating the representation of “other” cultures in early modern Europe.

Andrew Marvell in Russia

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 565-586
Author(s):  
Jan Hennings ◽  
Edward Holberton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Significant Influence ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Andrew Marvell ◽  
Lower Ranking ◽  
State Bureaucracy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
At Home

This article examines interactions between diplomatic representation, state bureaucracy, and rhetoric in early modern diplomacy. It analyzes manuscripts in the hand of the poet Andrew Marvell, which he wrote as secretary to the Earl of Carlisle’s 1663–64 embassy to Moscow. The manuscripts show how a battle over diplomatic ceremony and honor unfolded into disputes over the forms and decorum used in a lively exchange of diplomatic letters and written complaints. These texts were edited, translated, and published for English and international audiences by another embassy secretary, Guy Miège. The article traces the afterlife of the embassy letters in print, arguing that Marvell and Miège became central agents in shaping how the embassy was perceived at home and further afield. The wider context of public diplomacy drew from the secretaries’ considerable skill in framing diplomatic letters for consumption by different audiences. Early modern ambassadors performed rituals of sovereignty, symbolizing status and rank, but the complex art of diplomatic image-making was also directed by lower-ranking embassy personnel. Examining the relationship between bureaucratic practices and the performative nature of diplomacy, this article shows how secretaries exerted significant influence on the reception of early modern diplomatic relations.

Volpone's Bastards

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac Hui
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Woody Allen ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
The City ◽  
Monty Python

Through studying Volpone’s three bastard children – the dwarf, the androgyne and the eunuch – from the theoretical arguments of Freud, Lacan, Derrida and Foucault, this book discusses how Jonson’s comedies are built upon the tension between death, castration and nothingness on one hand, and the comic slippage of identities in the city on the other. This study understands Jonson, first and foremost, as a comedy writer, linking his work with modern film comedies such as the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Monty Python. It is a new approach to Jonsonian studies, responding to the current Marxist-Lacanian studies of literature, film and culture made popular by scholars such as Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupančič and Mladen Dolar. While the book pays close attention to the historical context of Jonson’s time, it brings him into the twenty-first century by discussing early modern comedies with modern critical theories and film.

scholarly journals Antiquarianism: A Reinterpretation

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelsey Jackson Williams
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
First Century ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Breaking Work

Antiquarianism, the early modern study of the past, occupies a central role in modern studies of humanist and post-humanist scholarship. Its relationship to modern disciplines such as archaeology is widely acknowledged, and at least some antiquaries—such as John Aubrey, William Camden, and William Dugdale—are well-known to Anglophone historians. But what was antiquarianism and how can twenty-first century scholars begin to make sense of it? To answer these questions, the article begins with a survey of recent scholarship, outlining how our understanding of antiquarianism has developed since the ground-breaking work of Arnaldo Momigliano in the mid-twentieth century. It then explores the definition and scope of antiquarian practice through close attention to contemporaneous accounts and actors’ categories before turning to three case-studies of antiquaries in Denmark, Scotland, and England. By way of conclusion, it develops a series of propositions for reassessing our understanding of antiquarianism. It reaffirms antiquarianism’s central role in the learned culture of the early modern world and offers suggestions for avenues which might be taken in future research on the discipline.

The Senses of Mixed Mathematics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Oosterhoff
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Mathematical Practice ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Renaissance Mathematics ◽  
The Senses

How did engagement with the new printed book reshape early modern disciplines? This chapter considers the rapidly changing area of Renaissance mathematics, focusing on two ‘mixed’ mathematical disciplines, cosmography and music. In cosmography, the new paratexts transformed a medieval standby, Sacrobosco’s Sphere, into a cutting-edge handbook that taught students the procedures of calculation. In music, Lefèvre’s sensory experience of sound prompted him to adopt new geometrical tools to solve old arithmetical problems. In both cases, a close attention to the roles of visualization, touch, and hearing in mathematical practice prompted a distinctive approach to the printed page, shifting the very structures of the mathematical disciplines. The underlying mental habits such books were intended to inculcate can be traced through the margins of Beatus Rhenanus’ mathematical books.

scholarly journals "Któż tam będzie wisiał?" – Bunt chłopski w miejskiej wyobraźni

2012 ◽  
pp. 1-52
Author(s):  
Marcin Starnawski
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Marketing Strategy ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Punk Rock ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Urban Imagination ◽  
Peasant Revolt

“Who’s going to dangle there?” – Peasant revolt in urban imagination. On the Gore album by R.U.T.A. and on its receptionThe author presents a review of a recent album “Gore: Songs of Rebellion and Misery from 16th to 20th Century” by a Polish punk rock / hardcore group R.U.T.A. The album, which combines traditional peasant lyrics with modern arrangements and folk instruments, has received acclaim from both fans and critics, while the band declared their commitment to struggles of contemporary progressive social movements. The author analyses the lyrics situating his reflection in sociological-historical framework to discuss realities of peasants’ lives and revolts during the second serfdom in early modern Poland. The author interprets the musical form of the songs as “punk-rock assimilation” of folklore themes. The final section contains critical reflection on the album’s marketing strategy and reception with the key dissected categories being “rebellion” and “authenticity.”

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