Bad King Research Articles

Ethical Thoughts in Nalavenba

Nalavenba deals with Nalan-Damayanti's love life and the evil caused by gambling. Although it is a romantic epic, it is seen as a work filled with many virtues. Even though it is a story of a gambling bad king, there are many virtues. The people of the Mavinda city are well educated, they do not beg, and are not deceitful. Nalan is seen as one who distributes love and saves the country with good rules, strength and better mind. Nalan is seen as an expert in offering to the people. Veeman's capital was well guarded by guards. Gambling destroys one's moral behaviour, removes compassion in the mind and creates enmity. The book talks about the disgrace of gambling. Nalan loses his country by gambling, leaves the country with his wife and children. Nalan-Damayanti's familial life is highlighted. The incident of king saving Damayanti from the snake's mouth shows a life-saving feature. Thus, many virtues and ethical thoughts are abounded in this book.

Henry III: The Rise to Power and Personal Rule, 1207–1258 by David Carpenter

Reviewed by: Henry III: The Rise to Power and Personal Rule, 1207–1258 by David Carpenter Linda E. Mitchell Henry III: The Rise to Power and Personal Rule, 1207–1258. By David Carpenter. [Yale Monarchs Series.] (New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2020. Pp. 800. $23.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780300259193.) David Carpenter has devoted his life’s work to King Henry III (r. 1216–1272), eldest son of King John and Isabelle of Angoulême. This book—the first volume of a two-volume biography—covers Henry from his birth to the year of what Carpenter calls “The Revolution of 1258” (also known as the Second Barons’ War). Carpenter’s earlier book, The Minority of Henry III (1990), covered the time between 1216 and 1228 in 400 densely packed pages. A collection of essays, The Reign of Henry III, was published in 1996. Thus the scholarly community has had to wait thirty years for Carpenter to address in detail this unusual king, whose fifty-six-year reign spanned more than half the thirteenth century. The second volume, covering 1258 to 1272, is presumably forthcoming. I use the word “detail” deliberately, because Carpenter’s work—both the book on the minority and the present volume that clocks in at over 750 pages—is a granular study of the grainiest variety. It is impossible to describe in a review of this length the sheer quantity of detail Carpenter provides. One reason for this is his own obsession with the reign. Another reason is Henry III himself, who oversaw the enormous expansion of the English chancery in the thirteenth century and the consequent survival of a vastly larger body of public documents than in previous reigns. Even as I am grateful for Carpenter’s tracking of every royal activity for every month of Henry’s reign after he assumed independent control in 1225, I was weighed down by it. Carpenter decided to present a narrative string of facts, peppered with the opinions and gossip of medieval chroniclers, especially Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris—themselves highly influential historians of their era—that offers mountains of detail but not much in the way of analytical discernment. This could be considered traditional history at its best, but perhaps also at its most traditional. For readers of this journal, Henry III is important because of his patronage of Westminster Abbey, his notable piety, and his embrace of Edward the Confessor as his and his family’s personal saint. Henry III was, indeed, a genuinely pious man, one whose faith was never brought into question, even as his judgement frequently was. Carpenter acknowledges Henry’s devotion to the Church, featured in a chapter on its own, “The Piety of Henry III,” while at the same time subtly denigrating it by contrasting the king’s lack of interest in martial activities with his enthusiasm for church beautification, almsgiving, and generosity to mendicant friars of all kinds. In making this contrast, Carpenter draws from similar criticisms voiced by chroniclers like Matthew Paris. Carpenter’s own indecision about Henry (was he a good king or a bad king?) is particularly in evidence when he juxtaposes the political crises Henry did a poor job of managing with the king’s interest in domestic decorative arts, especially after his marriage to Eleanor of Provence and the quick inflation of his family. Carpenter [End Page 806] is as unimpressed with Henry’s homebody-ness as his monastic chroniclers were and he spends little time on the possible reasons for the king’s obsession with supporting and sustaining his extended family. Carpenter adopts the standard masculine tropes of martial success and vigorous physical activity as legitimate assessments of a monarch, thus refusing to question the conclusions of men whose lives were spent in cloisters and far away from contact with women and families. In this day and age, it might be useful to raise an eyebrow to such presentations. Henry’s own growing dependence on his wife, a very intelligent and opinionated woman who was twelve at the time of their marriage—he was twenty-eight—was, as usual, added to the list of the king’s sins of “simplicity” and “immaturity” (read...

Politics of Valluvam

The state that Valluvam insists depends on the rights of the people. To abolish slavery, demand good government otherwise to exclude. Valluvam adores good government and good king at the same time abhor the bad king, and throw such a tyrannical king away. Valluvam, which claims to be a superpower, says it will protect it from enemies. The Government and Government rule that Valluvam insists are not in the category of Monarchy, Force and republic Government. Whatever the type, the scepter government is the government that Valluvam insists. The essay for this study is in the context of Valluvam politics.

Algunos moros muy sabidores: Virtuous Muslim Kings in Examples 30 and 41 of El conde Lucanor

This article analyses the representation of Muslim kings in Examples 30 (King al-Muʿtamid of Seville) and 41 (Umayyad Caliph al-Ḥakam al-Mustanṣir) of El conde Lucanor by Juan Manuel, sustaining that they offer models of positive leaders whose virtues and morals help the author construct an idealized model of kingship. Central to the study is an examination of how Juan Manuel adapts Andalusī historical chronicles and folkloric traditions in the examples in order to offer his readers exemplary, although hyperbolic, models of how a good king should behave towards his subjects. Ultimately, it is argued, this exercise of cultural translatio, from al-Andalus to Castile, serves a political purpose: to criticize the inefficient politics and behaviour of a bad king, Alfonso XI of Castile.

송대 제화시 속의 당 현종과 양귀비의 형상 연구

The Song poets were most politically sensitive because they were senior officials of the court. Through their history, they tried to understand real politics and society. For them, Tang Xuanzong and Yang Guifei were not only historical figures, but also persons in a textbook that had been processed into various shapes for a long time. They were valuable as illustrations for understanding and criticizing the problems of the real society, in which poets were lived, and to providing alternatives to poets. So it was no longer important whether the things related to Tang Xuanzong and Yang Guifei described in the poem were true or fiction. The intricate intentions and meanings were applied according to various demands of the era, and the story of Tang Xuanzong and Yang Guifei which was interpreted in various ways, became the motive of criticizing the political authority through Poems on Paintings. A good king turns into a bad king overnight, a good world can easily become a bad world like a in the turn of a hand. So the king must always beware of himself and be careful. The Song poems were a criticisms to the king, a public official and a poet himself.

John Gillingham, William II: The Red King. (Penguin Monarchs.) London: Allen Lane, 2015. Pp. x, 117; 14 color plates, 1 map, and 1 genealogical table. £10.99. ISBN: 978-0-141-97855-0.

John Gillingham, <i>William II: The Red King</i>. (Penguin Monarchs.) London: Allen Lane, 2015. Pp. x, 117; 14 color plates, 1 map, and 1 genealogical table. <i>£</i>10.99. ISBN: 978-0-141-97855-0.

Fragments and Reflexes of Kingship Theory in Ælfric's Comments on Royal Authority

ABSTRACTFor some time now, scholars have mined the homiletic writings of Ælfric of Eynsham in order to gain insight into late Anglo-Saxon notions of royal authority. While Ælfric generally preferred to talk about kingship in moral terms, discussing what constitutes a good or bad king, some passages have been interpreted as reflecting the homilist's own views about royal legitimacy. The utility of these passages as providing honest glimpses into Ælfric's theory of kingship have since been called into question based on the nature of the homilist's sources and our understanding of Anglo-Saxon political practices. On occasion, the relevant passages have also been read against each other as expressing potentially conflicting notions regarding royal authority. While acknowledging the difficulty of consulting passages that were originally applied in moral or theological contexts, this paper reassesses the usefulness of Ælfric's comments on kingship in reconstructing the homilist's views on royal authority and demonstrates that he likely viewed elective kingship, theocratic authority and hereditary birthright as complementary notions consonant with late tenth-century and early eleventh-century political ideologies.

Where's the Omelet? Bad King Deng and the Challenges of Biography and History

Stalinists legitimized their methods by saying “you can't make omelets without breaking eggs.” Others might ask, “you broke lots of eggs, but where are the omelets?” These three biographies of Deng Xiaoping are only the most recent of biographies of epoch-making Chinese leaders that assess the ratio of broken eggs to finished omelets. Reading them together with the body of reviews provokes questions about how biography as a genre can usefully address historical analysis and moral judgment. How much could a single leader transform China? Did Deng merely inherit institutions and decisive policies from earlier leaders or is China today somehow “Deng's China”? What can we learn about the problems from reviewers and critics?

Comment from the Field

In disability studies, the visual and performing arts simultaneously mirror and reshape increasingly complex critical questions about disability aesthetics. Can caregivers make disability art? Is casting non-disabled actors in disabled theatrical roles ever an appropriate choice? How do we access more complex notions of disability embodiment through art-ones that give a fuller sense of the disabled body's variability? The Bodies of Work Festival of Disability Arts and Culture, which ran 15-25 May 2013 in Chicago, Illinois, explored these and other significant questions. The festival contained an extraordinary series of events, including film, dance, theater, and an art exhibition. My time at the festival included participation on an opening panel that discussed current questions in disability art and culture; attending the theater performances Still/Alice (a play staged about early onset Alzheimer's) and Ganesh Versus the Third Reich (featuring the Australian theater company Back to Back, and largely acted by actors with intellectual disabilities); the dance performance Counter Balance IV; a reading by Susan Nussbaum from her 2013 novel about disability culture Good Kings Bad Kings; and viewing the art exhibition Humans Being II, curated by artist Riva Lehrer. This comment is a state of the (disability) art report based on my five days at the festival and it asks: what are the exciting areas where disability culture's body of work in the visual arts is being invigorated and challenged? What are some of the emergent ideas that the rest of us can carry forward, even if we did not attend the festival itself ? For me, the festival queried the writing of disability history, expanded how we might innovate within disability aesthetics, and engaged controversial topics in disability representation. What follows is a series of observations and interpretive fragments-my thoughts on the responses that I think the festival offered to the very questions it raised.Writing Disability Histories, Political and PersonalHow do we continue to bring forward hidden histories? In other words, how do we do disability historiography, balancing the reality of oppression while also showing strategies for subversion and empowerment?For example, Ganesh Versus the Third Reich fantastically imagines the Indian God Ganesh coming to earth to reclaim the swastika from Nazi misappropriation, and brought to life the history of disabled people in the concentration camps of the Holocaust. It vividly portrayed Ganesh's guide as an intellectually disabled man whose loyalty to family and faith reflect his agency and personhood. Even as the play told the story of the eugenicist roots of the Holocaust, it put an individuated face on the disabled victims of genocide.Such nuance and complexity were likewise present in works of visual art on display in Humans Being II. For example, MK Czerwiec's graphic novel, Taking Turns: A Careography (from which original drawings were on display), depicts an oral history of the HIV/AIDS unit on which the author worked, using the vivid colors and forms of the graphic novel to bring it to life. The graphic novel is not a new form for disability narratives, but the intersecting stories of patients, caregivers, and administrators give a complex chronicling of HIV/AIDS from multiple perspectives: the individual, social, and medical. If the visual arts can be a place to make the disabled body known, then it follows they can be a place that further acknowledges the intersecting histories of diverse disability experiences, those lived personally as well as those lived in relationship to disabled people.Whose disability is it, anyway? How can art help us explore the complexities of self-advocacy? Susan Nussbaum read from her groundbreaking novel Good Kings Bad Kings (2013) for the first time at the festival; this novel, the first of this kind coming from within and focusing on disability culture, tells the story of a group of children and young adults living in a Chicago care facility that is, in effect, an institution. …

Antecedents of the Hanukkah Oil Story

When the rabbis in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 21b) recounted the miracle of the oil’s lasting for eight days as the etiology of the festival of Hanukkah, they were basing themselves on biblical antecedents, in which the dedication of the Temple/tabernacle was accompanied by the descent of heavenly fire. Although there is no trace of the legend of the oil in any source before the Talmud, an analogous story is found in 2 Maccabees 1 in relation to Nehemiah, whose dedication of the Second Temple was accomplished through the fire of the First Temple, which had in the meanwhile liquefied into naphtha and was kept in an empty cistern. Another story that adumbrates the same themes is the discovery of the lost scroll under Josiah, which leads to the purification and renewal of the Temple. In each case an object from the past survives catastrophe or the reign of bad kings to provide continuity. A final case is the narrative of the building of the Temple in Ezra 6, in which the discovery of a lost scroll in the Achaemenid summer palace authorizes the construction. The Talmudic Hanukkah story is thus seen as a midrash based on biblical precedents.

Book Review: Good Kings, Bad Kings, by Susan Nussbaum

Book Review: <i>Good Kings, Bad Kings</i>, by Susan Nussbaum

Review of Good Kings Bad Kings

No abstract available

Illegitimate monarchy and legally-sanctioned king-killing in Milton’s Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and Eikonoklastes

In my article, I establish how the poet’s pro-regicidal tracts The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and Eikonoklastes support an evolutionary notion of kingship, and in doing so seek to shift the balance from a concept of monarchical rule in which the differentiation between adequate versus criminal leadership is largely inconsequential to one in which the quality of sovereign leadership matters. I specifically demonstrate how Milton follows Dutch scholar Hugo Grotius, leading proponent of just/unjust martial theory during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to determine that restricted modes of battle were necessary means to the creation and perpetuation of an orderly and organized society, which more and more responded to misuses of sovereign authority by supporting the individual’s right to resist and expel a bad king.

Two Bad Kings and Two Bad Presidents

One of the rewards for those engaged in presidential studies is the opportunity to rank presidents. Identifying great presidents is often the focus of this pastime. As important, perhaps—and as engaging—is the identification of bad presidents. Is their “badness” the polar opposite of “greatness”? Is badness easier or more difficult to define than greatness? Based on the insights found in Shakespeare's treatment of two bad kings, I identify two kinds of bad presidents and suggest that the relationship between great presidents and bad ones is a complex one that may lead us to revaluate what makes some presidents great.

Good Kings and Bad Kings. Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies: European Seminar in Historical Methodology 393/5

Good Kings and Bad Kings. Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies: European Seminar in Historical Methodology 393/5

Good Kings and Bad Kings – Edited by Lester L. Grabbe

Good Kings and Bad Kings – Edited by Lester L. Grabbe

The benign versus malignant paradigm in oncologic pathology: a critique

ning. en to ly— a them i ant, tion t this t ntut” in m nant h ob ms at p given t ory l nant” t erson w in c who s was G ube f d us” a ided “ n to R in h “Ges art ks of t iven t p c a i In his enormously influential book Language in Though nd Action, S. I. Hayakawa 1 stated: “We tend to think pposites, to feel that what is not good must be bad an hat is not bad must be good. When children are t nglish history, for example, the first thing they wan now about every ruler is whether he was a ‘good kin ‘bad king’ [. . .] This penchant to divide the world in pposite forces—‘right’ versus ‘wrong’, ‘good’ vers evil’—and to ignore or deny the existence of any m round, may be termed the two-valued orientation.” He then roceeds to explain how, as individuals and socie volve, this primitive approach progresses into a “m alued orientation,” to reach its most advanced expres n the language of the science. He says: “Instead of s hot’ and ‘cold’, we designate the temperature in degree fixed and agreed-on scale : 20°F, 37°C, and so o nstead of saying ‘strong’ and ‘weak’, we designate stre n horsepower or watts; instead of ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ esignate speed in miles per hours or feet per se nstead of being limited to two answers or even to se e have access to an infinite number when we use umerical methods. The language of science, therefore, e said to offer an i finite-valued orientation. Having at i ommand the means to adjust action in an infinite numb ays, according to the exact situation at hand, sci ravels rapidly and gets things done.” Few of us would argue against such a logical reaso owever, when we look at the names we have giv umors in pathology, what do we find? That historical

Good Kings and Bad Kings. Edited by LESTER L. GRABBE.

This volume is the output of the seventh meeting of the European Seminar on Methodology in Israel's History held in Berlin in July 2002. The topic of the meeting was the history of Judah in the seventh century bce, with special focus on the Josiah tradition. (The subtitle of the book—‘Judah in the Seventh Century’—has been accidentally omitted from the hardback edition.) In keeping with the objective of this Seminar, the primary aim of the papers and of the volume is ‘to address questions of historical methodology’ arising in any attempt to reconstruct a history of ancient Israel. The editor provides an introduction which outlines some recent studies of the seventh century, and helpfully summarizes the essays that follow, some of which are of rather more than average length (at 60 pages one of them is virtually of monograph proportions). He also concludes the volume with reflections on the main issues that emerge in the essays—for example, the reputation of Manasseh, which some of the essayists contend is overdue for more positive reappraisal, whilst others, however, signal caution in the face of insufficient data to characterize his reign, and Josiah's political ambitions and the nature and scope of his cultic enactments, if, indeed, such there were—and the implications of the essays for writing a history of Israel, not least of all the problem of so-called ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ sources for such an enterprise and how these are to be distinguished and defined. This reviewer recommends any reader to read first the editor's Introduction and his concluding Reflections on the Discussion (Part III of the volume) before turning to the essays themselves.

L. L. Grabbe (ed.), Kings and Bad Kings: The Kingdom of Judah in the Seventh century BCE

Good Kings and Bad Kings: The Kingdom of Judah in the Seventh century BCE (ed. LESTER L. GRABBE), Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies 393 / European Seminar in Historical Methodology 5, T &amp; T Clark - London - 2005, xi + 371 pp. This volume gathers the works presented during the seventh meeting of the European Seminar in Historical Methodology (= ESHM) in Berlin in July 2002, under the auspices of the European Association of Biblical Studies in conjunction with the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting. The topic of discussion revolves around the status of the Judah during the 7th century BC, with special reference to the religious reform of King Josiah (640-609 B.C.). Here, particularly, the historical context of this small South-Eastern kingdom serves as a historical reference for the theological counterpoint that the Old Testament presents to us between "good king" and "bad king" in the biblical history of Israel.

Good Kings and Bad Kings: The Kingdom of Judah in the Seventh Century BCE

Good Kings and Bad Kings: The Kingdom of Judah in the Seventh Century BCE