Humanistic Period Research Articles

Feminist Interpretation of Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the masterpieces of the famous British dramatist, Shakespeare, and themost famous work among his “Four Comedies.” The work was created during the humanist period of the 15th and 16thcenturies in Britain. The characters in the work are three-dimensional and their lines are exquisite and deep. This workalso has a strong feminist color. This article starts with a brief introduction to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, followed byan explanation of feminism and the internal relationship between feminism and humanism. Lastly, the heroine, Hermia, isanalyzed from a feminist perspective, about how she broke through the exploitation and restrictions of women and realizedher ideals and values of life.

Aspetti semioforici della Bibliotheca Sartoriana

The Wrocław patrician Thomas Rehdiger (1540-1576), during his Wanderjahre, amassed a rich collection of books, manuscripts, coins, precious stones, and works of art. In his will, he bequeathed this collection—gathered mainly during his stays in Padua, Bologna, and Venice—to his hometown, thus giving rise to the first public library in the Wrocław metropolis. In 1589, the Bibliotheca Rhedigeriana was established in the Auditorium Theologicum of St. Elizabeth’s Church. In his youth, Rehdiger was educated in the school operating at the church; almost 100 years later, the school’s teacher, Daniel Sartorius (1612-1671), gathered a large collection of music prints, which were published in that period in Venetian publishing houses. This unique collection, stored together along with the Rhedigeriana Library, was later merged with the library’s content. What was the significance of this collection in the culture of 17th-century Wrocław? This collection, undoubtedly, was assembled based upon inspiration from the Humanistic period, which had been promoted in that Elizabethan school at least as of the times of Laurentius Corvinus. It was supposed to serve the teaching at the Elisabethanum and shape the artistic tastes of its students, who performed state-of-the-art Italian music during school activities or afternoon recess. Attempts were made to introduce the carefully collected repertoire into the liturgical practice of a nearby church, using the technique of contrafactum that was popular at the time. The Sartorian Library’s semiophoric function, however, was to define a new form of cultural memory for the Wrocław elites and to outline the original profile of their identity, which was oriented by the same ideals that guided the composers of the Italian Seicento.

Cancioneros manuscritos y mise en texte

Abstract Galician-Portuguese troubadours were able to bring their compositions to a close by means of one or a series of fiindas. The fiinda can be understood as a conclusive sequence, shorter than a cobra or stanza, which is harmoniously integrated into the composition in terms of both form and content. The principles governing the textual arrangement of the various Galician-Portuguese manuscript songbooks (the medieval A, fragmentary and unfinished, and the Italian apographs B and V of the humanist period) are of considerable help in identifying these final segments in texts where they are present. However, vicissitudes in the transmission of some compositions with fiindas have occasionally led to a blurring or obscuring of these sequences, which in turn may have been an obstacle to the correct perception and identification of the textual structure of fiindas by editors of these texts.

Inequality Rediscovered

AbstractWidespread recognition that economic inequality has been growing for forty years in most of the developed world, and in fact has tended to grow across most of the history of modern economies, shows that the period 1945-1973, when inequality of wealth and income shrank, was a marked anomaly in historical experience. At the time, however, the anomalous period of equality seemed to vindicate a long history of optimism about economic life:that growth would overcome meaningful scarcity and usher in an egalitarian and humanistic period that could almost qualify as post-economic. This has not been the experience of the last four decades. In this intellectual history of the anomalous period, we trace the main lines of that optimism and its undoing.

Scritture umanistiche elementari (e altro)

What do we mean by elementary writing? What are the parameters that allow to classify a writing as elementary and to judge a scribe as unskilled? Which informations can we infer from these writings and to what extent and under what profile can they be significant for the history of writing in general (beyond the most important documents of graphic pedagogy and literacy)? On the basis of some examples mainly taken from the humanistic period, the article deals with a situation far from infrequent in the late Middle Ages (and especially in Italy in the 14th and 15th century): that of scribes capable of copying long and challenging texts, but working with a rough technique, though not lacking a rustic efficacy, based on an unstructured graphic ability (and perhaps even without intending to reach a higher skill).

Dos inscripciones sobre la fundación de Lara y una sobre sus siete infantes, con un análisis evolutivo de su iglesia parroquial

This paper studies the controversial topic of the origin of Castile in three epigraphic inscriptions from Lara de los Infantes,from a perspective both philological and historical. The making of the oldest inscription, found in the hermitage of SanJulian (and preserved at the Museum of Burgos since the early 20th century) must date back to the mid-12th century.It was written with the monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza (Burgos) in mind, since it highlights the preeminence of the former because of its links to count Fernan Gonzalez. It was also possibly based on a local tradition from Lara now lost to us and of spurious provenance. In the humanistic period, prior to 1600, a copy of this inscription was made, to which a new one was added, from an unknown source; and both were placed in the western gable of Lara’s parish church in the event of a structural alteration to enlarge the temple, thus counteracting the aims of the monasteries of San Millan (La Rioja), Santo Domingo de Silos (Burgos) and the neighbouring town of Salas de los Infantes to appropriate the memory of Fernan Gonzalez and the seven Infantes. The parish inscriptions, then, are also of use to outline a proposal of periods in the structural evolution of this Romanesque church.

Análisis epigráfico de la lápida sepulcral del arzobispo Joaquín de Osés de Alzua y Cooparacio

Epigraphic analysis of a Latin inscription found in the city of Santiago de Cuba, with the aim of rescuing the historical and cultural heritage contained in it was made. the epigraphic method supported by the Leiden Convention was used. two existing translations of the text were collated and corrections were noted, which allowed decipher the date of death of Archbishop Joachim of Oses Alzua and Cooparacio, the years he played in the pontificate and the place it occupied in the Episcopologio of the Archdiocese Santiago de Cuba as well as pinpointing the language and Latin alphabet used in the humanist period.

Saints, Scandals, and the Politics of Love: Simone Weil, Ingrid Bergman, Roberto Rossellini

Saints, Scandals, and the Politics of Love:Simone Weil, Ingrid Bergman, Roberto Rossellini Lisabeth During (bio) 1. The Trouble with Saints Now the problem is this. Have we found a positive foundation, instead of self-sacrifice, for the hermeneutics of the self? I cannot say this, no. We have tried, at least from the humanistic period of the Renaissance till now. And we can’t find it. – Michel Foucault, speaking in Berkeley, 1980 (qtd. in Irwin 169) The reputation of political thinkers is a tricky thing. Sometimes your strongest supporters are your worst nightmare. At other moments, your best friends can see you more clearly than is strictly comfortable. The French militant, philosopher, and mystic Simone Weil (1909-1943) is a good example. In the years 1932 to 1933, she was connected to the dissident, Trotsky-leaning Communist Boris Souvarine and his Cercle communiste démocratique. She taught philosophy to well-bred young women, organized the unemployed, led strikes and shouted from the barricades, while writing disciplined, methodical analyses of the limits of Marxism and the rational necessity of revolution. Édouard Liénert, who was her comrade on Souvarine’s journal La critique sociale, describes her: She was an unusual individual. Gifted with exceptional intelligence and erudition, her political judgment was very sound…But she had a strange taste for vain gestures, senseless risks, even for useless sacrifices. (Surya 521) Vain gestures, senseless risks, and useless sacrifices: the portrait seems familiar. Saintliness and politics are not a good match. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Gustave Thibon, Simone Weil’s great friend, editor, and executor of her writings, almost all of which were published posthumously, wrote in his introduction to the first of those publications (Gravity and Grace, 1947): Who was that kindly bishop who wanted to add to the Litany of the Saints the invocation: ‘From Living saints, Good Lord deliver us’? A [End Page 16] Francis of Assisi or a Joan of Arc in responding to their distant vocation would never hesitate to make their immediate neighbor suffer. (Thibon 111) Weil didn’t stop at theatrical gestures. “In a sense,” Thibon goes on, “she remained all her life the inflexible child who sat down in the snow and refused to go on because her parents had given the heaviest baggage to her brother to carry” (119). Never willing to sleep on a bed when she could sleep on the floor, to take the chair lift on the ski slopes when she could walk painfully up the hill, or to accept her full salary when others (lacking degrees from the Ecole normale supérieure) received less, Weil did not seem to realize the complications and even sufferings she caused in the lives of others as soon as there was a question of her own vocation to self-effacement…Though utterly and entirely detached from her tastes and needs, she was not detached from her detachment…In the great book of the universe spread often before her, her ego was, as it were, a word which she may have succeeded in effacing but which was still underlined. (Thibon 110, 112) Forced because of her Jewishness to leave France during the German Occupation, she refused safety in New York with her family. She volunteered for De Gaulle’s Free French government in exile, but her plan to form a company of front-line nurses to be parachuted behind the battle lines was rebuffed. In the early months of 1943, Weil was in London writing a program for the renovation of post-war France, and frustrated. Being a sedentary intellectual was not her idea of service. Weakened by a mixture of self-starvation, tuberculosis and despair, Simone Weil died on August 24,1943. History has known a few women in flight towards a political heaven or a personal disaster, women repudiating their bourgeois origins, women who sound like Simone Weil. They are attractive subjects for hagiography and for melodrama: they are avid for the dangerous and disturbing moments of the moral life, impatient with security and compromise, self-destructive (according to their enemies), or mad (according to many authorities, legal or psychiatric). One of these is Irène Girard, the wandering heroine...

The Word Witch at Work in New Zealand’s School Journal, 1960s–1980s: Margaret Mahy’s Writing as a Reflection of Pedagogy and the Spirit of the Times

Between 1961 and 1984 the renowned New Zealand writer, Margaret Mahy, wrote over seventy-five pieces for the School Journal (a graded reading book provided free to New Zealand primary schools since its inception in 1907). It was a liberal humanist period in New Zealand education during which the 1940s’ and 1950s’ rolling reforms implemented by Clarence Beeby had had time to settle, and John Dewey’s progressive system, influenced by ideas associated with European romanticism, had taken hold. With a new appreciation of nationhood and the arts, School Publications sought to publish material that was not only instructional, but also of high literary quality, by reputable New Zealand authors such as Margaret Mahy. Indeed, the School Journal provided Mahy not only with an opportunity to publish her vividly imagined poetry and prose, but also with the additional challenge of writing for an audience of Māori and Pākehā primary school children who needed to learn to read. This article considers ways in which Mahy’s Journal work reflected (or did not reflect) the spirit of the times.

L’étude de la production manuscrite d’un copiste de la Renaissance au service de l’histoire des textes : le cas du crétois Zacharie Calliergis

The article examines to what extent a detailed palaeographical and codicological description, as well as research on a manuscript’s history and provenance, may be important to a textual editor for the verification or modification of conclusions based only on the examination of common errors between manuscripts and other textual particularities. Palaeography and codicology are important to philology and textual criticism, even with regard to the later manuscripts, which rarely capture the editor’s attention. A particular category of manuscript is highlighted in the article by the study of a number of codices copied by Zacharias Kallierges, an eminent Greek scribe and publisher in Renaissance Italy. The author investigates how information about the physical aspects and history of a manuscript are of value to the study of the textual tradition and the relationships between manuscripts. The study of manuscripts during the Humanistic period illustrates the complex work of a modern philologist and the many aspects that must be considered during the editing procedure.

Law and Literature in the Humanist Period: Encyclopædic versus Specialised Thought

A discussion that humanists employed the linear structure of the encyclopedia, in which all arts and sciences are linked together in a circular formation which serves to strengthen and enrich each discipline through four case studies: Guillaume Bud (1460-1540), Andrea Alciato (1492-1550), Andre Tiraqueau (1480-1558), and Francois Rabelais (1483 or 1494-1553) is presented.

Hobbes's Thucydides and the Colonial Law of Nations

This article attempts to make sense of Thomas Hobbes's 1628 translation of Thucydides, published as Eight Bookes of the Peloponesian Warres, in terms of seventeenth-century interest in and debates over the law of nations, or ius gentium. Its aim is to shift the scholarly focus on Hobbes's translation from its most often assumed context, that of royalism, to what I will argue is a more fitting context, that of the law of nations, and by extension, the intellectual history of international law. Among Hobbes scholars, the fact that the first publication to which Hobbes gave his name was a classical translation is often noted but rarely considered in much depth.1 For many years, orthodoxy held that Hobbes started his brilliant philosophical career with a humanistic period before he encountered the Euclidean geometry that would occasion his turn from humanism to 'political science' - a turn variously construed as virtue to vice or vice to virtue, depending on the critic. Recent scholarship has rightly questioned such narratives, noting for instance that Hobbes late in his life wrote a verse autobiography and an anticlerical poem in Latin and translated Homer from the Greek. The insistence that Hobbes's humanism persisted throughout his lifetime, however, does not fully account for the Thucydides translation: acknowledging Hobbes the humanist only spawns further questions. 2 Now that Hobbes's Thucydides translation is seen less and less as something from which Hobbes would later turn, questions of what sort of project was signalled by the Thucydides translation come to the fore. Recent work by Jeffrey Collins and Kinch Hoekstra, taking aim, on the one hand, at the story of Hobbes's purportedly consistent royalism, and, on the other, at Hobbes's supposed turn to de facto-ism in Leviathan (it turns out it was there all the time), has made interpreting Hobbes's intentions with the Thucydides volume all the more significant.3 In this vein, a number of diachronically conceived studies have linked Thucydides and Hobbes's later work, Leviathan in particular, yet they have often treated Hobbes's encounter with Thucydides as an inevitable communion of like political minds rather than as an encounter encouraged and surrounded by other texts and historical events.4 It remains an open question, in other words, why Hobbes chose to translate Thucydides in the first place. This article therefore takes a more synchronic approach and seeks to reconstruct the intellectual context in which Hobbes translated and then published his Thucydides, asking two interrelated questions: why Thucydides? And why 1628? Ultimately, I will argue, Hobbes's translation should be seen not just as a precursor to his later treatises but as part of broader attempt on the part of English humanists in the mid-1620s and early 1630s to make available to English readers the stories and exempla - the raw materials - necessary to underpin an ethical, English law of nations. Hobbes's Thucydides, it will be suggested, was vitally concerned with the law of nations and concerned particularly with the legal justifications and moral obligations of empire.In making such an argument, this article will develop in three stages. First, identifying some limitations of existing literature on the context for Hobbes's Thucydides translation, I will propose that Hobbes's Thucydides should be seen not solely in terms of domestic English politics, but in more global terms that, while encompassing domestic English politics, also resonate out into England's growing empire. This section will briefly discuss Parliamentary politics in 1627-28, not for its own sake but for the wider purpose of dislodging some prevailing assumptions about Hobbes's intentions with the Thucydides volume. I will then turn to two theorists of the ius gentium, Alberico Gentili and Hugo Grotius, both of whose works could be found in the library Hobbes tended in the 1620s, to explore the unique demands the genre of the early modern Latin ius gentium tract made on ancient histories, which were seen to hold the potential to speak about the ius gentium by indicating the laws 'common to all known legal systems' and 'all known peoples. …

The Authority File of the Biblioteca di Cultura Medievale

SUMMARY The Authority File of the Biblioteca di Cultura Medievale is an archive of personal name forms and uniform titles (about 34,000 entries of authors' names and subjects) that have been indexed while producing a catalog for a substantial specialized bibliographic collection. It covers the classical and late-antique periods through the humanistic period, and comprises all literary genres, disciplines, and texts relevant to the institutional history of the time. Considering the complexity and multiform nature of the entries registered in the library, and due to the international character of its use, a large number of analytics were created for works from the classical period through the sixteenth century (about 5,300 entries). The development of the Authority File has been completed thanks to the automated tools and particularly favorable circumstances that have enriched it, making it useful both to librarians and students who want to consult the catalog. The collaboration of BISLAM, for example, besides ensuring the scientific character of the archive's content and assisting in the research of relevant repertories, has helped to distinguish the characteristics of the respective products and, consequently, the diversity of methodological approaches, as well as other choices. The choice of the ALEPH500 software, a program which effectively and completely supports the format UNIMARC, has led the Biblioteca not only to discover and resolve the problems connected with the structure and content of the archive, mainly through the use of UNIMARC/Authorities, but also to search for every possible interaction with the bibliographic catalog. Moreover, the specificity of the proper names and titles selected by us, in addition to the international profile of our users, has required us to consider, from the first phases of the Authority File, the rules of national and international catalogs and other issues concerned with them, such as the language of the catalog itself, the standard formulation of the proper names and uniform titles for all cases of ambiguous or pseudo-epigraphic works, and the cross-references between them.

New World Colonization and the De Navigations of Stephen Parmenius

Intcrtcxts, vol. 1, no. 2, Fall 1997 N e w W o r l d C o l o n i z a t i o n a n d the De Ncivi^atione of Stephen Parmenius Robert J. Barnett F r a n k l i n a n d M a r s h a l l C o l l e g e The 15 th and 16th centuries in western Europe were characterized by several interrelated historical movements; the assertion of sovereignty by nation states, religious antagonisms between Protestants and Catholics, the spread of Renaissance Humanism across the continent into England, and the westward voyages of exploration to theAmericas.The materials docu¬ menting and tracing these movements exist in many forms, but rarely does asingle piece of evidence reflect the several major trends of aparticular period. One such is the De Navi^atione by Stephen Parmenius, alargely neglected 16th-century Neo-Latin poem. The De Navi_gatione^ published in London in 1582, advocates and colonization of North America by England.^ Parmenius 1 legitimizes overseas dedicated his poem to the English soldier and navigator Sir Humphrey Gilbert (1539-1583), in anticipation of the latter’s voyage to North America(Quinn,Voyages).Thepoemtakesonadditionalinterestsinceitis apparently the very first verse composition of the English Humanistic period,orofanytime,toadvocatetheestablishmentofEnglishcoloniesin North America and to celebrate the man who hoped to do just that. Hence,itisanimportanthistoricaldocumentforestablishingthechronol¬ ogy of the English attitude toward the New World. Additionally, Parmenius ’semploymentoftheancientmythoftheGoldenAgeaspropaganda toenticeEnglishmenandwomentosettleinNorthAmericacontributes toourknowledgeofthestateofclassicallearningonthecontinentandin England during the Elizabethan period. The poem consists of 330 skillfully composed dactylic hexameters. In addition to his choice of the meter of Homer and Vergil, Parmenius, in an introductorypassageof36lines,makesclearthatthegenreisepicandthat his role is the classical one of recounting and celebrating the deeds of great m e n : vela quibus gentis decus immortale Britannae tendit ad ignotum nostris maioribus orbem vix notis Gilbertus aquis. Ecquando licebit ordiri heroas laudes et facta nepotum attonitis memoranda animis? (7-11 1 5 9 1 6 0 I N T E R T E X T S MilswithwhichGilbertonscarcelyfamiliarseasextendstheundyingglor>'ofthe bnglish race towards aworld unknown to our forefathers. When else shall it be permitted to recount the epic accolades and deeds of their descendants, deeds not tobeforgottenbymarvellingminds? Intheintroductoryportion,andingoodclassicalstyle,Parmeniusprepares us for his theme of v o y a g e : ■■.omne per undas Nereidumgenusexultat,faustoquetridenti ipse pater Nereus placabile temperat aequor. etpassimOceanocurvidelphinesabimo in summos saliunt fluctus. (14-18) entire brood of Nereus’s daughters merrily frolic through the waves and Nereus, the father himself, with trident of good omen, soothes the water)' expanse andmakesitcalm.Andhereandtherearcingdolphinsleapfromoceanfloor wave top. t o Thus, Parmenius usestheintroductiontounfoldthetraditionalclassical motifoftheherowhoistoleadhisfollowersonajourneytonewlands1 wordsreminiscentofHorace’sadmonitiontoRome{visconsiliexpersmT ruitsua^Odes3.4.65),heconcludestheintroductionbycautioningF^ land to be (31-3): non incauta sui, ne quando immensa potestas/ponder ruitura suo, nova moenia natis/quaerat (let England, attentive to he^^^f^ seek new settlements for her children, lest sometime soon her imm^^^^ power crash to destruction beneath its own weight). The remainder of poem is divided into five sections of unequal length. In the^ ^ (37-51), Parmenius , . „ . . P a s s a g e argues that since Europe,Asia, andAfrica have been and still are the subjects of various rulers from Babylon to Roman Cathof cism, America to the west is the only direction for expansion. H America has been saved for England (37-8): tibi per tot secula soli/ser^l estresionullisregnatamonarchis(alandruledbynomonarchshasbeen preservedthroughoutcountlessagesforyoualone). This section is r,nc ●● . fo*' the longest portion of the poem, apassage of 105 lines whose purpose is to attract people to the idea of resettling i America by describing her as presenting an opportunity to recover and reexperience the Golden Age. In this passage Parmenius must skillfully present America as desirable without denigrating England and thereby ottending the queen, whose support Gilbert requires. He does so by first describing Europe as having deteriorated, in its verynature , beyond the ironageintoanageofrock(85-6):injqenioreferuntferrumet,sidicere jerro/deteriora mihi licet, intractabilesnxtim ([ the curent strife and suffering in Europe] by their character evoke iron and, if Imay speak of things worse taniron,intractablerock.)HeacknowledgesthatEngland,underElizaethsguidance ,hasaccomplishedmuchthatmightwinherthenameof i n Barnett-New World Colonization and the De Navi^atione 1 6 1 golden. However, for all of Parmenius’s sincere praise of...

The Paris Studium: Robert of Sorbonne and his Legacy. Interuniversity Exchange between the German, Cracow and Louvain Universities and that of Paris in the Late Medieval and Humanistic Period. Selected Studies.Astrik L. Gabriel , James J. John

<i>The Paris Studium: Robert of Sorbonne and his Legacy. Interuniversity Exchange between the German, Cracow and Louvain Universities and that of Paris in the Late Medieval and Humanistic Period. Selected Studies.</i>Astrik L. Gabriel , James J. John

The Paris Studium: Robert of Sorbonne and his legacy: interuniversity exchange between the German, Cracow and Louvain universities and that of Paris in the late medieval and humanistic period. Selected studies (review)

172 Reviews ingredient of self-preservation, which the whole political nation sought in 1640. Glyn Party Department of History Victoria Univeristy of Wellington Gabriel, Astrick L., The Paris studium: Robert of Sorbonne and his legacy: interuniversity exchange between the German, Cracow and Louvain universities and that of Paris in the late medieval and humanistic period. Selected studies (Texts and studies in the history of medieval education, No. XIX), Notre D a m e and Frankfurt am Main, United States subcomission for the history of universities and verlag Joseph Knecht, 1992; cloth; pp. 541; 33 plates; R.R.P. US$79.00. This handsomely produced volume is conceived as a homage to the author himself, reprinting, with updated information and bibliography, articles mainly published in the seventies and eighties. Thefirstone, however, on Robert de Sorbonne, saw the light of day in 1953. All the articles have been updated in one way or the other, in all cases bibliographical additions being included. Sometimes there is additional text. Recent discoveries by other scholars m a y have been inserted, new information added or illustrations replaced or even, in one case, reproduced for thefirsttime. Since the articles are all of a high quality, relate to the same basic area of study, the early life and influence of the university of Paris, and have been hitherto scattered through several journals, it was an excellent idea to gather them together in the one volume. The volume has all the trappings of a hommage volume. It is printed on afinequality glossy paper, is well bound and provided with an attractive dust cover, and offers intotalthirty-three plates, all black and white except for No. X X X which reproduces in colour the introductory page of the records of the Rectoratus of Henricus Stromer. The reader is well served by a full bibliography of works cited in the course of the nine articles or 'chapters' as weU as a section listing manuscripts and archival material, incunabula, and printed rare books mentioned in the articles. Access to information in the pages of the book is facilitated by a separate name and subject index. James J. John traces in his preface the cursus honorum of Gabriel, following his peripatetic path from Hungary to Paris to Canada to,finally,the university of Notre D a m e in Indiana, where Gabriel has completed the best part of bis Reviews 173 influential and extensive work on medieval education. Following the preface, the reader finds a Tabula gratulatoria and a List ofpublications of Astrik L Gabriel, in chronological order from 1934 to 1992. It is worth noting that a previous collection of Gabriel's articles appeared in 1969 under thetideGarlandia: studies in the history of the mediaeval university. In every way this earliertitlemay be considered a companion volume to the present one: same publication house, similar types of articles. The titles of the 'chapters' are, in each case, closely descriptive of the content: T. The spiritual portrait of Robert of Sorbonne'; 'U. "Via antiqua" and "via moderna" and the migration of Paris students and masters to the German universities in the fifteenth century'; TIL The house of poor German students at the medieval univeristy of Paris'; 'IV. Intellectual contacts between the university of Louvain and Paris during the fifteenth century'; 'V. Scholarly bonds of the university of Cracow with Paris schools in the late medieval period'; 'VI. German receptors, "reformators", and proctors at the university of Paris, (1495-1525)'; 'VII. Georgius Wolff (t 1499). Printer. Officer of the English-German nation at the university of Paris. His social, professional and academic connections'; 'VIII. The academic career of Gervasius Wain from Memmingen (ca. 1490-1554), rector of the university of Paris, envoy of Francois Ier to the German princes'; and 'IX. Franciscus Ossmanus from Alkmaar, proctor, receptor, (treasurer) and 'reformator' of the natio Alemanniae at Paris studium (15151524 )'. In the Table of Contents at the beginning of the book there is a more detaUed breakdown into subsections, so that the reader may more easUy locate at a glance the sort of information sought. Gabriel's style seems sometimes a litde too rhetorical, even fustian, especially in the article of Robert of Sorbonne. Sentences such...

Hobbes, the Rhetorical Tradition, and Toleration

Scholars disagree about whether or not there was a break between Hobbes's earlier, humanistic period and his later, scientific period. This article contends that, when judged on the epistemological level, Hobbes broke with his humanist past by exchanging the probability of the humanists' rhetorical epistemology for the certainty of scientific knowledge. Hobbes believed that only certainty could shield against the anarchy of civil war. Hobbes's rejection of the humanists' epistemology had practical consequences for the issue of religious toleration. The humanists, like the ancient rhetoricians, turned to consensus as the criterion of truth. By relying on consensus, the humanists were able to reduce the area of intolerance; only those beliefs on which there existed a broad-based agreement of the Christian faithful were viewed as essential. Hobbes's rejection of the humanists' epistemology, which included their concept of consensus, also entailed his rejection of their particular defense of toleration. Nevertheless, since Hobbesian political theory is, in principle, neutral on the question of toleration, there is nothing in the logic of Hobbes's argument that would preclude a greater degree of toleration, based on the sovereign's prudential assessment of existing circumstances.

German Children's Literature

German Children's Literature Ruth B. Bottigheimer (bio) Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur: Vom Beginn des Buchdrucks bis 1570, edited by Theodor Brüggemann and Otto Brunken. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1987. Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur: Von 1750 bis 1800, edited by Theodor Brüggemann and Hans-Heino Ewers. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1982. Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der Romantik, edited by Hans-Heino Ewers. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984. Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der Aufklärung, edited by Hans-Heino Ewers. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1980. Moore, Cornelia Niekus . The Maiden's Mirror: Reading Material for German Girls in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 36). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987. These books, as a group, exemplify new developments in the scholarship of children's literature—developments applicable to analyses in all areas of the subject, not merely those defined by the political and linguistic boundaries of Germany from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Taken together, they cover German children's literature from Humanism and the Reformation through the Enlightenment to Romanticism. One of them, Metzler's handsome Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur: Vom Beginn des Buchdrucks bis 1570, has both founded and facilitated a new area of study, early modern German children's literature. Both the handbook and Cornelia Niekus Moore's more specifically focused volume on girls' literature offer intensive discussions of German children's literature before 1570, a subject which, until recently, nearly everyone agreed did not exist. Taken together, the Metzler handbooks represent an extraordinary set of research tools. The format of each of the Metzler volumes is similar: introductory remarks are followed, in the "Historical Section," by discussion [End Page 176] of individual books and then by a bibliography that describes each of the works in bibliophilic terms, the bookbinder's craft keeping company with the illustrator's art. Each volume also includes several other listings that offer alternative means of locating, identifying, or assessing any given book: by chronology, genre, printer or publisher, and present library or archival location. All these listings are united by a clear system of numerical cross-referencing which is wonderfully error-free. Finally, an extensive bibliography of secondary literature is divided into two indexes in standard German fashion, one for people (Personenregister) and one for places and things (Sachregister). In both Metzler volumes the editors have adopted a relatively unified approach to diverse literary forms by including in their discussions categories that reflect a variety of critical and scholarly concerns: reader-response; readership (age, sex, social class, educational prerequisites); means of mediating (reading aloud, reading alone, being read to); intentions of the author/editor/publisher (amusement, instruction, circumstances of use); content and structure; and subsequent influence. Though these questions are not uniformly applicable, simply setting up the categories and trying to provide information within them introduces a wealth of new socio-historically based data and immeasurably enriches the study of children's literature. The historical section of the first volume (circa 1470 to 1570) is divided into four areas: religion, grammar and rhetoric, moral education, and didactic entertainment. The editors' inclusion of these categories clearly expresses an expansion of the genre. Comportment books and religious guides, until now considered only marginally a part of children's literature, join those literary forms which correspond to children's literature as it came to be known in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for the editors perceive an affinity and continuity between genres with behavioristically utilitarian intentions and modern literary forms. Otto Brunken's informed remarks, supplemented by those of Cornelia Niekus Moore on literature for girls and Wilfried Dörstel's on illustrations, constitute an enlightening outline and definition of children's literature in this early period. Brunken's discussion begins with an excursus into the earliest work known in the German language for children, Bishop Arbeo's 760 A.D. German-Latin dictionary. Its inclusion demonstrates Brunken's cautious attempt [End Page 177] to expand the boundaries of children's literature. If the genre is to encompass everything written for children's use, then instructional and catechetical books must join those produced for children's amusement; this is especially important to the Humanist period, when some of the greatest minds of the day—Erasmus...

On the Education of the Pre-Reformation Clergy

No literary product of the humanistic period north of the Alps enjoyed a wider circulation or had a more lasting impact than satire. By far the best known of Erasmus's works today is In Praise of Folly, a satire that lays open and criticizes the foolishness of pre-Reformation society. Yet the prince of humanism had produced only a derivative of another satire, Sebastian Brant's Narrenschiff which also claimed a spot on the Western world's best-seller list for a few centuries. Sebastian Brant and Erasmus still are recognized as two of the severest critics of the society in which they lived, and their conception of pre-Reformation life set the trend for generations of historians to come. Erasmus's “Fool Stultitia continues, year after year, to climb her pulpit and deliver her oration to new audiences in every langauge…”

Hobbes's Study and the Hardwick Library

Notes and Discussions HOBBES'S STUDY AND THE HARDW/CK LIBRARY The widely held, scholarly maxim that all great theorists are the beneficiaries of the thought of their predecessors presents more difficulty to the scholar concerned with Thomas Hobbes's political and moral ideas than to most other scholars. The greatest frustration facing the Hobbes scholar must surely be the risky business of identifying previous thinkers who were influential in the development of Hobbes's political theory. Such an inquiry inevitably will involve a degree of informed conjecture . This essay aims at providing a basis for investigation that limits conjecture. There is direct evidence of only a few of the books Hobbes read, but it is possible to introduce method into an inquiry into the intellectual sources of his political theory by examining his account of his study and the contents of the library available to him during most of his study, the library of the Cavendishes at Hardwick Hall. A case for the influence of a given thinker can be made if textual analysis of Hobbes suggests that thinker's ideas, and if that thinker's works are, in addition, consonant with Hobbes's reports of his study or were in the Hardwick Library when Hobbes studied there. Some selections are provided below from the seventeenth-century catalogues of the library that are preserved today at Chatsworth. It is impossible to trace with precision all the intellectual influences on Hobbes. The chief problem is the paucity of references to the works of other writers in his letters, manuscripts, and printed works. In fact, Hobbes sometimes gives the impression that he read very little, that his philosophy and its doctrines, the only true ones, were developed from first principles and observation by his own creative genius alone. "He was wont to say," Aubrey reports, "that if he had read as much as other men, he should have known no more than other men. ''1 Even the most cursory examination of Hobbes's works suggests a profound originality. Hobbes expressly rejected the prevailing philosophical doctrines of his time and sought to build a new philosophy upon new foundations. He condemned appeal to authority. Accepting uncritically the vocabulary and conclusions of others is not science, he reasoned, but trust. If one does not conceive the meanings of words, one cannot verify experience and matters of fact. Wrong definitions will lead to utter nonsense, which is worse than ignorance. Moreover, the habit of taking opinions on trust may be dangerous, for some men--Hobbes had the scholastics particularly in mind--would manipulate the opinions of others for their own fraudulent ends.2 ' John Aubrey, "'Brief Lives, "' chiefly of Contemporaries, ed. AndrewClark, 2 vols.(Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1898), 1:349. [ have modernizedspellingsin all quotations. z Evidentlyreferring to his own relationship with a scholastic opponent, BishopBrarnhall, Hobbes laments that "by reading others, men commonly obstruct the way to their own exact and natural judgment, and use their wit bothto deceivethemselveswithfallacies,and to requitethose, whoendeavor at theirownentreatyto instructthem, withrevilings."ThusHobbesaccountedfor the violentopposition his doctrines were wont to exciteamong men of letters (Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. Sir WilliamMolesworth, 11vols. [London:John Bohn, 1839-45],5:441; hereaftercited as EW). [445] 446 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Hobbes must not be understood to mean that all reading is bad. Examination of the opinions of others may be profitable if it is done critically: "If in your own meditation you light upon a difficulty, I think it is no loss of time, to enquire what other men say of it, but to rely only upon reason. ''3 Hobbes's own study included reading as well as meditation. According to Clarendon, Hobbes was a man of "some reading, and somewhat more thinking. ''4 He undoubtedly read many of the most commonly read and the most important works of his time, such works as any educated man would have read, though he apparently owned few books himself. After his standard Aristotelian education at Oxford, Hobbes entered a long humanist period, which culminated in his translation of Thucydides, published in 1629. During this period he studied on the sufferance of his friend...