Rebellion from Below: Commonwealth and Community in The Life and Death of Jack Straw
The Life and Death of Jack Straw chronicles the main events of the 1381 Rising in England and has traditionally been viewed as a warning about the dangers of rebellion from below. While recent studies of the play have challenged this perspective, they have focused chiefly on the drama’s portrayal of the rebels and not on the relationship between elite and popular discourses in the text. This article bridges a gap in the existing criticism by investigating the references to commonwealth and community that are made by Jack Straw’s aristocrats and commoners respectively. The article argues that the conflict between the two groups stems from their divergent interpretation of these terms in their public speeches and private exchanges.
Quelle: http://jmems.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/short/45/2/343?rss=1
The „Holy Dictate of Spare Temperance“: Virtue and Politics in Milton’s A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle
This essay analyzes the treatment of temperance in Milton’s early entertainment, A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, within the context of the history of virtue ethics. It argues that Milton combines Aristotle’s version of temperance with Plato’s epistemology. In the masque, the Lady’s Platonic vision of the virtues is central to the formation of her temperate judgment. However, by foregrounding Plato’s account of motivation, Milton bypasses the central role that habituation plays in Aristotle’s understanding of education in the virtues. Milton’s suppression of the importance of habit allows him to depict the Lady’s development in the virtues as being independent of concrete social and political communities. The account of the virtues presented in A Masque anticipates some of the central aspects of Milton’s later attacks on the political reasoning of the English people.
Quelle: http://jmems.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/short/45/2/395?rss=1
The Restoration of All Things: John Bradford’s Refutation of Aquinas on Animal Resurrection
On July 1, 1555, John Bradford was burned at Smithfield, one of the Protestant divines executed during the reign of Mary Tudor. Shortly before his death he wrote a treatise entitled The Restoration of All Things to counsel a devout woman of his circle. This expounds Romans 8:21–22, where "the creature" is said to be groaning in pain, awaiting release from the bondage of corruption. Here Bradford follows the innovative exegesis of the exiled Strasbourg theologian Martin Bucer, with whom he had formed a close relationship at Cambridge. Contrary to centuries of Catholic theology, which held that all animal and plant life will perish after the Last Judgment and not be part of the promised "new heaven and new earth," Bradford argues that creation in its entirety—not just humanity—will joyously be freed from the suffering it has endured since the Fall.
Quelle: http://jmems.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/short/45/2/323?rss=1
Magic That Works: Performing Scientia in the Old English Metrical Charms and Poetic Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn
Is it possible to reach a deeper understanding of early medieval science through poetry of the period? This article examines how Anglo-Saxon scientia was performed in a practical way, as a kind of craft, in the Old English metrical charms and poetic dialogues of Solomon and Saturn. In the process, the article challenges modern readers to discard casual assumptions about benighted inhabitants of the "Dark Ages" and to engage with the nuances of Anglo-Saxon cognitive modes. This reassessment of the Old English texts aims to break down barriers to understanding created by terms like "superstition" and thus to extend scientific knowledge into the early Middle Ages, long before the much-lauded achievements of the "Renaissance" and "Enlightenment." From this vantage point, Anglo-Saxon ways of perceiving and knowing do not mirror or anticipate modern mental habits that split science and poetry apart; rather, the powers of science and poetry are fused together to create an impact in the world.
Quelle: http://jmems.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/short/45/2/219?rss=1
„In Things“: The Rebus in Premodern Devotion
A hybrid of letters and pictures arranged to signify a sentence or phrase, the rebus transforms objects into ideas more explicitly than any other kind of communicative system. Its fundamental mechanism of representation enacts a connection between words and things and evokes the ways in which ideas, when inscribed in letters, are necessarily grounded in physical reality. Although the rebus is usually considered a light and popular form, its playful mixture of ideas and things is also used to negotiate sacred meaning, and even to embody the divine. This essay explores the multiple signifying strategies of the rebus in late medieval and early modern Europe, focusing especially on its surprising potential for devotional expression. Combining both objects and words offers readers in this complicated moment of cultural and theological change a powerful way to approach the depiction of God, and also to articulate the contours of the devotional self.
Quelle: http://jmems.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/short/45/2/287?rss=1
Pygmalion’s Wax: „Fruitful Knowledge“ in Bacon and Montaigne
This essay documents the mutual interactions of philosophy and poesis in early modern theories of knowledge. It does so by following the trajectory of the wax image, or simulacrum, from Greek philosophy to Roman rhetoric and onwards to early modern philosophy and poetry. Ovid’s fable of Pygmalion—the artist who brings an ivory statue to life—evokes the wax simulacrum and thereby makes explicit the shared terrain of philosophy, poetics, and rhetoric around questions of knowledge and representation. Consequently, this essay uses Pygmalion as a hinge that links these disparate periods and discourses. Culminating in an analysis of works by Francis Bacon and Michel de Montaigne, the essay claims that the figure of Pygmalion is a vehicle by which the softening tendencies of poesis shape the theories of knowledge put forward in early modern philosophical writing.
Quelle: http://jmems.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/short/45/2/367?rss=1
Rethinking the Carmina Burana (I): The Medieval Context and Modern Reception of the Codex Buranus
This article combines medieval and modern studies, reconstructing the context in which one of the most celebrated manuscripts transmitting Latin and vernacular poetry of the Middle Ages, the Codex Buranus (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm. 4660), was produced and examining both its scholarly and "popular" reception, with attention to the musical settings by Carl Orff. Preliminary to a three-volume edition of the Carmina Burana being prepared for Oxford University Press, the study seeks to distinguish the main issues for future research and to stimulate interdisciplinary discussion. The article is based on research into primary sources, some of them unknown.
Quelle: http://jmems.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/short/45/2/245?rss=1
The Wannsee Conference in 1942 and the National Socialist living space dystopia
Volume 17, Issue 2, June 2015, pages 153-175
10.1080/14623528.2015.1027074
Gerhard Wolf
10.1080/14623528.2015.1027074
Gerhard Wolf
Quelle: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2015.1027074?ai=z4&mi=3fqos0&af=R