Perceiving Power in Early Modern Europe PDF Download

Author: Francis K.H. So
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137583819
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This collection conceptualizes the question of rulership in past centuries, incorporating such diverse disciplines as archaeology, art history, history, literature and psychoanalysis to illustrate how kings and queens ruled in Europe from the antiquity to early modern times. It discusses forms of kingship such as client-kingship, monarchy, queen consort and regnant queenship that manifest gubernatorial power in concert with paternal succession and the divine right of the king. While the king assumes a religious dimension in his obligatory functions, justice and peace are vital elements to maintain his sovereignty. In sum, the active side of governmental power is to keep peace and order leading to prosperity for the subjects; the passive side of power is to protect the subjects from external attack and free them from fear. These concepts of power find concurrence in modern times as well as in non-European cultures. Through a truly cross-cultural, transnational, multidimensional, gender-conscious and interdisciplinary study, this collection offers a cutting edge account of how power has been exercised and demonstrated in various cultures of some bygone eras.

Author: Nina Lamal
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004448896
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Print, in the early modern period, could make or break power. This volume addresses one of the most urgent and topical questions in early modern history: how did European authorities use a new medium with such tremendous potential? The eighteen contributors develop new perspectives on the relationship between the rise of print and the changing relationships between subjects and rulers by analysing print’s role in early modern bureaucracy, the techniques of printed propaganda, genres, and strategies of state communication. While print is often still thought of as an emancipating and disruptive force of change in early modern societies, the resulting picture shows how instrumental print was in strengthening existing power structures. Contributors: Renaud Adam, Martin Christ, Jamie Cumby, Arthur der Weduwen, Nora Epstein, Andreas Golob, Helmer Helmers, Jan Hillgärtner, Rindert Jagersma, Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba, Nina Lamal, Margaret Meserve, Rachel Midura, Gautier Mingous, Ernesto E. Oyarbide Magaña, Caren Reimann, Chelsea Reutchke, Celyn David Richards, Paolo Sachet, Forrest Strickland, and Ramon Voges.

Author: Sean McGlynn
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443868523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Monarchy is an enduring institution that still makes headlines today. It has always been preoccupied with image and perception, never more so than in the period covered by this volume. The collection of papers gathered here from international scholars demonstrates that monarchical image and perception went far beyond cultural, symbolic and courtly display – although these remain important – and were, in fact, always deeply concerned with the practical expression of authority, politics and power. This collection is unique in that it covers the subject from two innovative angles: it not only addresses both kings and queens together, but also both the medieval and early modern periods. Consequently, this allows significant comparisons to be made between male and female monarchy as well as between eras. Such an approach reveals that continuity was arguably more important than change over a span of some five centuries. In removing the traditional gender and chronological barriers that tend to lead to four separate areas of studies for kings and queens in medieval and early modern history, the papers here are free to encompass male and female royal rulers ranging across Europe from the early-thirteenth to the late-seventeenth centuries to examine the image and perception of monarchy in England, Scotland, France, Burgundy, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Collectively this volume will be of interest to all those studying medieval and early modern monarchy and for those wishing to learn about the connections and differences between the two.

Author: Jessica Goethals
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443812161
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Are images and spectacles fundamental mediators of power relationships in the West? This book draws upon the language of cultural studies to investigate a contemporary hypothesis in the shifting ideological landscape of early modern Europe. Apparently aesthetic choices by artists may also have been the means to consolidate and subvert institutionalized or non-institutionalized bodies of power. Meanwhile, communities in Europe reacted to the intrinsic power of the image in literature and letters, commenting upon both its use and abuse. Both diachronic and geographic connections are made among disparate but important moments of image making in the twelfth through seventeenth centuries. The influence of Descartes is traced from La Rochefoucauld and the communal spectacles of the Ancien Régime salon, to the Netherlands and Rembrandt’s sketch, Death of the Virgin. Shakespeare bears similar anxieties about Joan of Arc’s transgression of gender boundaries in Henry VI, as does Castiglione’s Courtier when serving the Renaissance Prince. Spenser’s dilemma about the (non)difference between fiction and history resolves itself in the same way as does the Byzantine rejection of iconoclasm. Other articles in the collection examine anomie in Vatican frescoes by Giorgio Vasari, corporeal decay and the supernatural as spectacle on the early modern English stage, and affective self-perception and subjectivity in the scoring of Italian opera. ""[..] not as "just" a conference volume, but [as] an organic group of essays on early modernity. The essays span an impressive number of cultures – from "Byzantium" to England, Italy and Spain to the Netherlands – and theorize the image from a number of disciplinary vantage points. Not surprisingly, art history and theatre are well-represented, but so are music history and literary studies. Most of the essays are short, but sufficiently developed to allow for thoughtful arguments on the status of the visual in early modern culture: on the stage, on the page, and as artistic and musical representation. […] "they [do] deliver fine close readings and leave me sufficiently intrigued to want to return to, or familiarize myself with, the original "texts." I come away from this collection encouraged about the state of graduate studies in Europe and North America." —Jane Tylus, Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, New York University "The essays are interdisciplinary and touch upon many themes that lie outside my own field of specialization. I was therefore surprised and pleased to find them not only original and instructive, but also inviting and accessible to the non-specialist. Although they range far with respect to chronology and theoretical suppositions, they are coherently united in their concern for the functioning of the image in the conservation, revision or critique of socio-political power in their respective cultural contexts. I will mention three essays, representing three different fields, as striking examples of disparate images used to consolidate, reconstruct or overthrow the dominant powers of their times. Kathryn Falzareno's essay, "Mother's Milk and Deborah's Sword," is a close reading of Shakespeare's portrayal of Joan of Arc in Henry VI. It is a close analysis of the paradoxical status of Joan, Saint of the French, strumpet for the English, Christian warrior maiden, contrasting with Deborah in the Ancient Testament. The dominant and totally unexpected image which brings together the contradictions embodied by Joan are the breasts, the source of nurture in the figure of Mary, but an encumbrance for the mythological amazons who removed one breast to facilitate their use of the bow. Ljubica Ilic's "Echo and Narcissus: Labyrinths of the Self," is an elegant reading of "echo music," the apparently impossible "translation" of the Ovidian story into music and opera. Ovid's story represents the nymph Echo as the auditory equivalent of Narcissus' reflection -- echoing sound as reflecting light. Ovid's echo myth undoubtedly influenced opera by Jacopo Peri (during the time of the Medici) and then, Monteverdi in the musical setting of "Orfeo." Finally, Elissa Auerbach's "Taking Mary's Pulse: Cartesianism and Modernity in Rembrandt's 'Death of the Virgin' " is a brilliant commentary on the Dutch painter's rendering of an ancient theme, the "dormition" of the Virgin, but at the center of the painting is the figure of a physician taking the pulse of her limp hand. The intrusion of this "scientific" element in the ancient iconography of the event of Mary's death is the unmistakeable sign of the wave of modernity that swept over the Netherlands with the popularity of Cartesian philosophy and science." —John Freccero, Professor of Italian and Comp. Lit., NYU

Author: J.R. Mulryne
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317168909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
The fourteen essays that comprise this volume concentrate on festival iconography, the visual and written languages, including ephemeral and permanent structures, costume, dramatic performance, inscriptions and published festival books that ’voiced’ the social, political and cultural messages incorporated in processional entries in the countries of early modern Europe. The volume also includes a transcript of the newly-discovered Register of Lionardo di Zanobi Bartholini, a Florentine merchant, which sets out in detail the expenses for each worker for the possesso (or Entry) of Pope Leo X to Rome in April 1513.

Author: ErinJ. Campbell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351564846
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
The goal of the twelve essays in this volume, contributed by scholars in the fields of history, literature, art history, and medicine, is to enrich our understanding of cultural discourses on ageing in early modern Europe. While a number of books examine old age in other eras, and a few touch on the early modern period, this is the first to focus explicitly on representations of ageing in Europe from 1350-1700. These studies invite the reader to take a closer look at images of ageing; they show that representations are embedded in specific communities, life situations, and structures of power. As well, the book explores how representations of old age function in various and often surprising ways: as repositories of socio-cultural anxieties, as strategies of self-fashioning, and as instruments of ideology capable of disciplining the body and the body politic. Since this book is about how old age as a cultural category was produced and maintained through representation, the essays in this volume are organised thematically across geographic, disciplinary, and media boundaries to foreground the politics and poetics of representational strategies. The contributors to this collection show that our understanding not only of ageing, but also of power, subjectivity, gender, sexuality, and the body is enriched by the study of cultural representations of old age. Through sensitive and sophisticated readings of a wide range of sources, these papers collectively demonstrate the formative influence and generative force of images of old age within early modern European culture.

Author: Yuen-Gen Liang
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317177010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Bringing together distinguished scholars in honor of Professor Teofilo F. Ruiz, this volume presents original and innovative research on the critical and uneasy relationship between authority and spectacle in the period from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, focusing on Spain, the Mediterranean and Latin America. Cultural scholars such as Professor Ruiz and his colleagues have challenged the notion that authority is elided with high politics, an approach that tends to be monolithic and disregards the uneven application and experience of power by elite and non-elite groups in society by highlighting the significance of spectacle. Taking such forms as ceremonies, rituals, festivals, and customs, spectacle is a medium to project and render visible power, yet it is also an ambiguous and contested setting, where participants exercise the roles of both actor and audience. Chapters in this collection consider topics such as monarchy, wealth and poverty, medieval cuisine and diet and textual and visual sources. The individual contributions in this volume collectively represent a timely re-examination of authority that brings in the insights of cultural theory, ultimately highlighting the importance of representation and projection, negotiation and ambivalence.

Author: Penny Richards
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317875516
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Surveying court life and urban life, warfare, religion, and peace, this book provides a comprehensive history of how gender was experienced in early modern Europe. Gender, Power and Privilege in Early Modern Europe shows how definitions of sexuality and gender roles operated and more particularly, how such definitions--and the activities they generated and reflected--articulated concerns inside a given culture. This means that the volume embodies an interdisciplinary approach: literature as well as history, religious studies, economics, and gender studies form the basis of this cultural history of early modern Europe. There are new approaches to understanding famous figures, such as Elizabeth I, James VI and I and his wife Anna of Denmark; Francis I; St. Teresa of Avila. Other chapters investigate topics such as militarism and court culture, and wider groups, such as urban citizens and noble families. The collection also studies ways in which gender and sexual orientation were represented in literature, as well as examinations of the theoretical issues involved in studying history from the angle of gender.

Author: Marc Boone
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503547848
Category : Cities and towns
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume examines the politics of space in the most densely urbanized areas of Europe during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. It ranges from Italy to the Parisian region and then to the greater Low Countries, home of Europe's most powerful commercial cities of the period. Hardly inert sites on which political action took place, the spaces these authors investigate conferred power on those who possessed them. At the same time they were themselves transformed by the struggles, thus acquiring new powers that invited future contest. Thus implicitly responding to Georges Lefebvre's claim that space is produced, the authors ask how space was perceived and used in everyday life, giving specific spaces cultural, social, and political coherence (le percu); how it was represented or theorized, thus encoded in symbols, maps and laws (le concu); and how it was lived, in effect the result of the dialectical relation between the perceived and the represented (le vecu).

Author: Jeremy Robbins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134708548
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Arts of Perception offers a new account of a key period in Spanish history and culture and a fundamental reassessment of its major writers and intellectuals, including Gracián, Quevedo, Calderón, Saavedra Fajardo, López de Vega, and Sor Juana. Reading these figures in the context of European thought and the new science, and philosophy, the study considers how they developed various ‘arts of perception’ - complex perceptual strategies designed to overcome and exploit epistemic problems to enable an individual to act effectively in the moral, political, social or religious sphere. The study takes as its subject the distinctive epistemological mentality behind such ‘arts of perception’. This mentality was fostered by the creative interaction of scepticism and Stoicism, and found expression in the key concepts ser/parecer and engaño/desengaño. The work traces the emergence, development, and impact of these concepts on Spanish thought and culture. As well as offering new interpretations of specific major figures, Arts of Perception offers an interpretation of the mentality of an entire culture as it made the fraught transition to intellectual modernity. As such it ranges over numerous discourses and formative contexts and provides a wealth of new material which will be of use to all those seeking to understand and interpret the literature, culture and thought of Golden Age Spain. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Bulletin of Spanish Studies.