Legitimate Heir Research Articles

<em>Crónica de Flores y Blancaflor</em>: Romance, Conversion, and Internal Orientalism

A Mediterranean FictionThe story of Floire et Blancheflor circulated widely in medieval western Europe. It is one of a group of orientalizing medieval romances, based on Byzantine models, that deal with the confrontation of Western Latin Christendom and the Muslim East. These narratives, including Floire et Blancheflor, Aucassin et Nicolette, and later Tirant lo Blanc play out the anxieties of Western elites over the political fate of the Mediterranean in fijictional stories.1 Castilian version, Flores y Blancaflor (fourteenth century), is repurposed as a foundational narrative meant to link the Castilian monarchy to the Carolingian legacy and to fijictionalize the dream of a fully Christian peninsula. A tale that on the northern side of the Pyrenees is an allegory for Christian imperialism becomes in Spain a more problematic fantasy of Christian political and spiritual hegemony. In this essay I will demonstrate how Cronica de Flores y Blancaflor is an internal-orientalizing tale of boy meets girl meant to legitimize the regime of Sancho IV while providing a fijictional happy ending to a thorny political and religious problem.The story of Flores and Blancaflor (Floire et Blancheflor in French) is thought to be of Eastern origin, perhaps Byzantine, Persian, or Arabic. Western authors begin to mention it in the late twelfth century. earliest fragment is an early thirteenth-century French manuscript, and complete versions begin to appear in French manuscripts in the late thirteenth century.2 In the Iberian Peninsula, troubadours mention it starting in the late twelfth century, Juan Ruiz references it in his Libro de buen amor in the middle of the fourteenth century, and the version we discuss here is thought to have been composed in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, surviving in a late fourteenth-century manuscript of the Estoria de Espana, begun by Alfonso X The Learned and completed by his son Sancho IV. It is most likely that the compiler of the manuscript in which Flores y Blancaflor appears was not at court. Diego Catalan believes him to have been a monk writing outside of the court, and as such more whimsical in his representation of the past than his counterparts at the court of Castile-Leon (Catalan Estoria, 354).The present version is interpolated into an account of the history of the kings of Asturias and their struggles with the Umayyad Caliphate in Cordova. This episode in Iberian history was very important for the chroniclers of the Castilian kings Alfonso X and Sancho IV because it demonstrates political continuity with the Asturian kings, who are credited with the fijirst signifijicant Christian military incursions against the Umayyad Caliphate. In this way the Castilian kings connect the earliest campaigns of the Asturian kings against Umayyad Cordova with their contemporary struggles with Nasrid Granada. This sort of propagandistic historiography is not peculiar to the Estoria de Espana. What is most noteworthy about it is the way in which the compiler places the entirely fijictional Flores y Blancaflor in the service of royal history, specifijically in order to underscore the image of the Castilian kings both as military and spiritual conquerors of al-Andalus, and as legitimate heirs to the legacy of Charlemagne, whose campaigns in al-Andalus took place when Flores y Blancafor is set.A Political FictionIn Flores y Blancaflor, a French countess in the third trimester of her pregnancy is on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela when Muslim raiders from al-Andalus attack her entourage. She is taken captive and brought to the court of King Fines, the Muslim king of Almeria. It so happens that Fines's wife is also pregnant; she and the countess give birth on the same day, and so the two children, the Muslim boy, Flores, and the Christian girl, Blancaflor, are both nursed by the countess and raised together at court.3 Eventually they fall in love. In order to separate the two, King Fines sends Flores away to Seville, then sells Blancaflor into slavery and fakes her death. …

Heirs to World Culture: Being Indonesian 1950–1965 ed. by Jennifer Lindsay and Maya H. T. Liem

Reviewed by: Heirs to World Culture: Being Indonesian 1950–1965 ed. by Jennifer Lindsay and Maya H. T. Liem Howard Federspiel (bio) Jennifer Lindsay and Maya H. T. Liem, ed. Heirs to World Culture: Being Indonesian 1950–1965. Leiden: Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) Press, 2012. 529 pp. The title for this book, Heirs to World Culture, comes from a statement made in 1950 by an influential group of Indonesian intellectuals associated with the Siasat weekly magazine. The statement, given the title of “Testimonial of Beliefs,” was a declaration of intent and provided a general guideline for Indonesian artists and writers over the next decade, and is quoted in Lindsay and Liem’s introduction (p. 10): “We are the legitimate heirs to world culture, and we are furthering it in our own way.” Accordingly, the articles in this anthology examine the landscape of the Indonesian artistic scene in the period generally known as the “Sukarno era,” to test the legacy of that effort to advance Indonesian culture. The array of subjects is sufficiently broad to describe the many facets of the scene in those years and also rich enough in information and findings to invigorate studies of an era that has passed, yet was so pivotal to Indonesian national and societal development. The volume was prepared by independent scholars associated mostly with universities and think tanks across the world specializing in Indonesian studies. The group was organized by the prestigious Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asia and the Caribbean (KITLV), which has a record of a century and a half in sponsoring scholarly research on Indonesian themes. In this case, funding was provided by a grant from the Australian-Netherlands Research Collaboration program for two seminars that brought scholars together to discuss their findings and explore common themes in preparation for publishing a volume presenting the results of the research. Jennifer Lindsay and Keith Foulcher, two important scholars on Southeast Asia, were the primary movers of the intellectual part of the project. The effort aimed simply to bring together the important research being done on the era to give it common exposure. It was not expected that this publication would be a definitive study of the era under discussion, but rather a stepping stone to future research and understanding of arts from that era. As such, it has great value to other scholars, but less importance to groups looking for final answers. There is great range to the presentations in the volume. One group of studies centers on regional, ethnic, and religious diversity. Accordingly, there are studies about artistic development on Bali, among the Sundanese, at Medan, on Sulawesi, among the Indonesian Chinese, and with certain Muslim elements. A second collection addresses international audiences that were exposed to Indonesian culture through the efforts of these artists, notably the United States, Communist China, the Malay Peninsula and Singapore, and the Netherlands. A third category, which is really the heart of the study, centers on the organization known as Lekra (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat, the Peoples Institute of Culture), a communist cultural front, which acted as a dynamo for intellectual and artistic development during the latter part of the era under [End Page 109] study. The final group, less clearly defined, but still apparent in general terms, deals with efforts in the sub-eras of this time frame.1 The first group, on regional diversity, is illustrated by Marje Plomp’s article on Medan in North Sumatra, which for a time in the early and mid-twentieth century was renowned for being the region’s capital of pulp fiction. The article describes the growth of a group of intellectual writers who contributed to a distinctive style of writing detective novels set among Malays in North Sumatra, Singapore, and the Malay Peninsula. This genre used the jawi script2 as its principal medium between 1950 and 1965, the writers interacted with the rising cultural elite in Jakarta, thereafter turning away from detective novels in favor of novels embracing the realism of the post-World War II Indonesian literary movement. This change in direction drained off many of the best writers and led to a waning of the influence of...

Renaissance and ‘Made in Italy’: marketing Italian fashion through history (1949–1952)

Until 1950, Italian fashion did not exist: there were able tailors and creative designers, but they were known only as individuals and not as part of a wider movement that identified with a specific Italian style. Despite the existence of advanced skills, with the potential to realize an Italian fashion in its own right, there was neither a cultural identity to bind them together nor an international legitimization that would allow the new form to compete with the dominant haute couture of Paris. The revival of the Renaissance and its invention as an intangible asset was fundamental in resolving this ‘dual’ absence, and it therefore became a key factor in the international success of Italian fashion. From the 1950s to today – the period of increasing international success of the ‘Made in Italy’ label – in the rhetoric of entrepreneurs, managers and marketing experts, the Renaissance has become almost an integral part of the DNA of Italian fashion, itself at times represented as the direct descendant and legitimate heir of the excellence of Renaissance taste. This is a link, now taken for granted, for which a term has even been coined: the ‘Renaissance effect’. The fundamental argument that supports this so-called Renaissance effect is in fact that of the continuity between the craftsmanship of the Renaissance age and today's fashion houses; a continuity, however, that has been elaborated through ‘manipulations’ of history which are in part simplistic and in part distorted.

Robert W. Widell Jr.Birmingham and the Long Black Freedom Struggle.

Robert W. Widell Jr.'s Birmingham and the Long Black Freedom Struggle understands itself to be an account of the continuation through the late 1960s and 1970s of the city's much better known civil rights uprising of 1963. It focuses on four local movements: a campaign to open formerly white jobs at the American Cast Iron Pipe Company (ACIPCO) to black employees; the efforts of welfare rights activists to emphasize the grievances of Birmingham's black female welfare recipients; the attempts of black cooks and housekeepers in the city's hospitals and nursing homes to form a union; and the activities of Birmingham's small group of disciples of the Black Panther Party, the Alabama Liberation Front. Widell's telling of these stories derives primarily from police surveillance documents, supplemented by interviews and court records. Each of the stories is intrinsically interesting, and together they usefully supplement our knowledge of the period. The difficulty with the book derives from Widell's embedding of his accounts in a conceptual framework that depicts them as what he calls a “third phase” of the civil rights movement. It is clear that Widell conceives of the classic civil rights movement as a far-reaching mobilization of the black masses, and he wants to believe—almost in defiance of his own evidence—that the four poignant and stunted struggles he has uncovered constitute a continuation of that mobilization. Certainly the pervasive consequences of white supremacist iniquity do knit together both the earlier movement and these subsequent struggles. However, the mere fact that they faced similar social injustices does not make the latter the legitimate heir of the former.

Another Look at Adoption in Romans 8:15 in Light of Roman Social Practices and Legal Rules

This study investigates the legal and social background of Paul's adoption metaphor in its historical context (particularly, in terms of Roman social practices and legal rules), and applies it to an interpretation of Paul's adoption metaphor. Firstly, adopting complete strangers was rare in Roman society, and adoptees were usually chosen from among close relatives and friends' children. Secondly, adopting slaves should be distinguished from adopting freeborn children in Roman social practice and law. Thirdly, adoption in the presence of a legitimate heir was also regarded as unusual in Roman society. Therefore, it should be noted that Paul's adoption metaphor was unusual, because the metaphor refers to adopting slaves in the presence of a legitimate heir, and that this metaphor functions to stress God's unusual and extraordinary favour and love to the believers in the context of Rom 8:15.

Principles and Intuitions in Ethics: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

This essay situates some recent empirical research on the origin, nature, role, and reliability of moral intuitions against the background of nineteenth-century debates between ethical naturalism and rational intuitionism. The legitimate heir to Millian naturalism is the contemporary method of reflective equilibrium and its defeasible reliance on moral intuitions. Recent doubts about moral intuitions—worries that they reflect the operation of imperfect cognitive heuristics, are resistant to undermining evidence, are subject to framing effects, and are variable—are best addressed by ethical naturalism as part of a broad dialectical equilibrium.

Laying Down the Law in Ferragosto : The Roman Visit of Theodosius in Summer 389

The article looks at the ten constitutions and rescripts Theodosius promulgated during his stay in Rome in June to August, 389, after his victory over the usurper Maximus. It understands Theodosius’s activity as law-giver as part of his campaign to appear as the legitimate heir to a long series of exceptional emperors, from Augustus to Trajan to Constantine, with a deep concern for the civic side of Roman life; with the exception of his decree against Manichaeans ( CTh 16.5.1), his other laws that concern religion are part of this overarching effort.

Red Eagle’s Children: Weatherford vs. Weatherford et al. edited by J. Anthony Paredes and Judith Knight (review)

Reviewed by: Red Eagle’s Children: Weatherford vs. Weatherford et al. edited by J. Anthony Paredes and Judith Knight John T. Ellisor Red Eagle’s Children: Weatherford vs. Weatherford et al. Edited by J. Anthony Paredes and Judith Knight. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2012. 219 pp. $39.95 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8173-1770-6. In 1851 the Alabama Supreme Court heard an interesting case, Weatherford vs. Weatherford et al. This case involved a property dispute between the children of the legendary William “Red Eagle” Weatherford of First Creek War fame. He died in 1824, eleven years after he supposedly engineered the horrific Fort Mims Massacre, and he left behind a considerable estate in Monroe County, Alabama. His widow, Mary Stiggins Weatherford, lived on this estate until her death in 1833, and Red Eagle’s oldest son by an earlier marriage, Charles Weatherford, along with Mary’s brother, George Stiggins, then managed the estate until Mary’s children, Alexander and Levita Weatherford, came of age in 1842. [End Page 192] At that time, the estate managers and attorneys divided the property, consisting of land, slaves, animals, farm implements, crops and a cotton gin, equally between Alexander and Levita. But this division created a problem because Mary had raised another child in her household, and Alexander and Levita had called him brother. His name was William Weatherford, Jr. yet he received no share of his father’s estate because his half-siblings and apparently the community at large considered him to be Weatherford Sr.’s illegitimate son by a Red Stick woman with whom Weath-erford lived during the Creek War and for a couple of years thereafter. However, the defendants contended that their father had never married the woman under Creek or Alabama law and had sent her back to her people in the Creek Nation before he married their mother, Mary Stiggins, in 1816. Furthermore, they declared, William Jr. was born after their father broke with the woman, thus they did not know for sure if he really was their brother, even though their mother had taken in little William to raise after both Red Eagle and the boy’s mother, Supalamy Moniac, died. William Jr., however, had another story to tell when he stepped forward in 1846 to file an Alabama chancery court claim against Charles, Alexander and Levita as well as Levita’s husband, Dr. William F. Howell. He contended that they had “conspired to deny him a fair portion of his father’s estate (56),” and not only that, he declared that he was Red Eagle’s only legitimate heir and should therefore receive the entire estate. He believed that Weatherford Sr. had married his mother under Creek law, and had not yet divorced her under that law when he married Mary Stiggins. Consequently, the state of Alabama should not consider the Stiggins marriage legal or her offspring by those union legitimate heirs of the estate. However, the state supreme court decided in favor of the defendants largely because William Jr. could not prove the marriage of his parents. Remarkably, though, the case records seem to show that the court was willing to accept a pre-state-hood Creek marriage as legal in Alabama law if it could be proved. The case is important in that it reveals how a southern court attempted to reconcile the legalities of two different cultural systems. The editors of Red Eagle’s Children also see this case as significant in other ways. Consequently, they present the “edited and annotated transcript of the case as a cultural artifact” for the use of historians, anthropologist and other interested researchers (1). Indeed, the actual case testimony makes up a substantial body of the book’s text, though the editors do include an introduction, three short chapters by noted scholars to set the historical stage and legal context for the case, and a final summation chapter by a member of the modern-day Poarch Band of Creek Indians. And while the editors do not offer scholarly analysis of the case themselves, they do point to areas of research where the case records are useful. In particular, [End Page 193] the records provide...

Queen Anne's Lupus: Phospholipids and the Course of the Empire

Queen Anne's Lupus: Phospholipids and the Course of the Empire

Глава 5. Новые времена: проблема обоснования суверенитета и его границ в Великом княжестве Московском (XV−XVI вв.)

Chapter 5 of the history course A New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia is titled “Modern Times: The Problem of Defining Sovereignty and Its Borders in the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, 15th−16th Centuries.” It covers much of the fifteenth century and sixteenth centuries and is focused on the process of reinventing Muscovy as a sovereign polity, a legitimate heir to grand states of the past. While highly inventive and productive, this process of political innovation was largely pursued through direct political practices and experiments, as the sphere of abstract reasoning (rhetoric and pamphlet-writing) was all but nonexistent in Muscovy. It culminated during the reign of Ivan IV the Terrible, who attempted to find the essence of a true imperial power (as visibly distinctive from the “regular” authority of a king or grand duke), and expressed his experiments in political theory and ideology in the language of terror and institutional reforms (including the peculiar institution of oprichnina).

Левый неоимпериализм и состояние “российских” исследований: participant observation немецкого дискурса об украинском кризисе

German historian Anna Veronika Wendland offers her explanation for a most strange alliance between the German left-leaning intellectuals and the Kremlin oligarchic and autocratic regime in regard to the Ukrainian revolution. She identifies two main factors at work here: the influence of the complex of guilt espoused by the older generation of Germans (that, for some reason, singles out as the object of German guilt only Russia but not Ukraine as the legitimate heir to the Soviet Union); and the utter ignorance of the younger public about the actual situation in Ukraine, causing many leftists to support Russian aggression only to irritate their archenemy – the “imperialist United States.” Wendland exposes the superficial character of their criticism, which neglects the archetypal (socioeconomic) component of the left analysis in favor of ideological and even geopolitical speculations. She suggests that a proper leftist (arguably, truly Marxist) analysis would have revealed the real roots of the Ukrainian crisis in Russia’s own domestic problems, and have explained why Donbass became susceptible to Russian manipulations by means of applying political economy analysis.

EHEA, competences and learning of Roman Law through the case method (I): double marriage

With the accomplishment of the writing that follow we pretend to investigate what the current importance of applying the case method in the teaching of Roman Law, against the traditional theoretical and magistral classes. Repairing, especially, in the reach of the methodological requirements emerged with the new plans of study Law Degree under the EHEA; as well, in the development of a set of general and specific skills in students, that will be very helpful once time they finish the Degree and face the difficulties of today's labor market, because they are the true protagonists of the teaching and learning process. Therefore, with the implementation of this first case on double roman marriage, lack of testament and legitimate heirs, we try to approach the students to casuism roman jurisprudence; in this way, they will understand that the important thing is not to give the solution to case proposed but legal reasoning, through discussions in groups, getting a deeper knowledge of applicable rules and institutions.

De l'héritage politique napoléonien à la formulation du césarisme démocratique (1814-1848)

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte theorized Napoleonic Caesarism between 1832 and 1844, although he was only a child at the fall of the First Empire. He took into account the embedding of Napoleonic supporters in the broad-ranging Liberal party during the Restoration. Through personal relationships, he was particularly influenced by officers who bent the First Empire's doctrine towards liberalism during the Hundred Days and who engaged in national and liberal actions. In this respect, the fight for the unification of Italy was paramount. The new social networks (secret societies) and the events he himself took part in (such as central Italy's revolution of 1831) particularly inspired him. By taking up weapons, moreover, he appropriated the image of being his uncle's legitimate heir. That is why two generations of officers, including Italian officers, must be considered as transmitters of an inheritance that Louis Napoleon used to reflect on his Napoleonic legacy.

‘Holding up a lamp to the Sun’: Hiberno-Papal Relations and the Construction of Irish Orthodoxy in John Lynch’s Cambrensis Eversus (1662)

Competing confessional claims to the early church played a hugely significant part in the revival of the writing of ecclesiastical history during the period of the European Reformations. This question of Christian origins led rival religious groups to contest vigorously the right to claim to be the early church’s legitimate heirs. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century works of ecclesiastical history would, moreover, strive to attain and preserve the rigorous standards set by Renaissance humanist scholarship and, in turn, exploit any perceived weaknesses in the work of their opponents in this regard. This essay examines a seventeenth-century Irish example of such ecclesiastical history-writing: Cambrensis Eversus (‘Cambrensis Refuted’), written in Latin, largely for a continental audience, by a County Galway priest-scholar, John Lynch (1599/1600–73), and published in St Malo in 1662. The work is ostensibly a reply to the twelfth-century works of Giraldus Cambrensis (c.1146–1223) on Ireland, which had attained a new importance in the confessional controversies of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, cited afresh by scholars as evidence of the depraved nature of the medieval Irish (and, by extension, of medieval Irish Catholicism) and the need for their moral and religious reform. This had a particular resonance in the Reformation period: if medieval Catholicism could be proved to have been in a state of decay, then this would further legitimize the argument that it was in need of reform and would underscore the correctness of the Protestant return to a purer and more authentic early Christianity.

<em>Teza</em>: A Review

Close-Up:Teza: A Review Nubia Kai (bio) Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima is internationally renowned as one of the most innovative and radical writers/directors of African and African Diaspora films. His corpus of films dating back to his first film Hour Glass (1971), the highly successful Sankofa (1993), to his last documentary film, Adwa (1999), all display a continuity of sociopolitical relevance, collective memory, history, psychological introspection, and a relentless commitment to liberate the human spirit. Haile Gerima's most recent film Teza / Morning Dew, which was fifteen years in the making, is a cinematic masterpiece that has won over twenty international awards, including the coveted Etalon de Yennenga Grand Prize Award at FESPACO (2009), the Carthage African Festival Grand Prize (2008), and the Venice International Film Festival Special Jury Award (2008). Exploring a constellation of human behavior and ideas—civil war, imperialism, communism, nationalism, class struggle, racism, emigration, male-female relationships, generational ruptures, ideological conflicts, sibling rivalry, cultural practice—the inner and outer workings of a virtual universe are ingeniously compressed into 140 minutes of film. Tackling such a diverse range of topics is a formidable task, yet Gerima manages to make it work with his complex cinematic approach to filmmaking in which the cinematic technique itself is integrated into the text. Like impressionist painters whose free flowing strokes form part of the image, or Ethiopian muralists who fill every inch of space with a seamless, symbolic narrative, Gerima employs a semiotic filmic style that amplifies the meaning and beauty of the narrative by using the camera like a paintbrush to capture the mood, rhythm, color, iconic content, and deep emotion expressed in the pensive, transparent gaze of the protagonist, Anberber. A subjective camera mimics Anberber's eyes, the mirror of the soul, follows his wary footsteps across a contemplative landscape marred by civil war, conscription, murder, chaos. [End Page 134] Set in an Ethiopian village, Addis Ababa, and Cologne, West Germany, during the peak of the "Dergue" era, Anberber returns to his native land from Cologne where he has spent years studying medicine, world revolutionary movements, and Marxist-Leninist thought with a community of African intellectual expatriates. His dreams of a new socialist government and a medical career to help rid the country of diseases are soon shattered when the contradictions between theory and practice are shockingly exposed. The communist oriented social order under the dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam had replaced the three-thousand-year-old Solomonic monarchy with a system more brutal, corrupt, and dogmatic than their predecessors. Anberber's shattered idealistic world is reflected in the cross-cutting and jump-cut editing creating the illusion of dislocation, disruption, fragments of exploded reveries of an idyllic childhood. Haunted by hallucinations, nightmares, pastiches of memory, he envisions himself as a boy who fades into the backdrop of his village. There he embraces a monument on Mussolini Mountain where his father, a war hero who fought valiantly against the Italian invaders before he was killed by poison gas, is commemorated. Mussolini Mountain, an obvious symbol of European conquest and colonization of Africa that would forever change the political economy of the continent is, nevertheless, surmounted by the names of the freedom fighters who resisted, and this metaphorical mise-en-scène intimates the final meaning and outcome of the film. Anberber is a legitimate heir of this heroic legacy, but he has lost memory of his childhood, his youth, the college years in Germany; and neither his mother or the elders in his village understand his alienation and inner turmoil. Teza is about the recovery of memory, both historic and personal memory which in African epistemology is inextricable. While Anberber recovers from a near fatal beating, he is simultaneously reconstituting his memory, claiming and interpreting his past so he can recover and redefine his future. The entire film subverts linear chronology as Gerima constructs the narrative through the process of involuted montage, a series of repeated short shots and flashbacks strategically arranged in order to convey a great deal of meaning in a short span of time, and at the same time, probe the depths of the protagonist's psyche in an expressionistic exegesis. Anberber's stoic...

Ovid in the Age of Cervantes ed. by Frederick de Armas (review)

Reviewed by: Ovid in the Age of Cervantes ed. by Frederick de Armas Ignacio López Alemany Ovid in the Age of Cervantes. Ed. Frederick de Armas. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. 291 pp. This book is the first comprehensive study of Ovid's influence during early modern Spain since Rudolph Schevill's Ovid and the Renascence in Spain (1913). This time, fifteen specialists have contributed to a volume with a great variety of perspectives and surprising cohesiveness. The opening pages of the book are used by the editor to explain the unusual label employed to designate the span of time these studies cover. De Armas suggests that the early modern, or Spanish Golden Age, could be referred to as "the age of Cervantes" because this writer "has become a symbol of change, experimentation, and breaking with the past" (xi). Although this is a very problematic argument to be broadly accepted, it serves as the point of departure for this book: the consideration of Ovid and Cervantes as literary banners of their times and the celebration of the latter as legitimate heir of the former. The volume is divided into four parts. The first section, entitled "Alternatives, diagnoses, and translations" begins with an essay about the medical and satirical writings of the Middle Ages in which Ovid's Remedia amoris is considered a reliable diagnostic source for curing the lovesick. The following chapters of this section study early modern approaches to Metamorphosis and its canonical status as an opportunity for self-fashioning through the examination the Classical heritage, taking into account the new role of science and current social issues. Finally, a lesser known text, Fasti, is studied for its productivity in didactic and humanistic writing of the time. Part two of this collection, "Ovid and Cervantes," comprises three chapters that separately explore not so evident echoes reminiscent of Ovid's Metamorphosis in the episode of the fulling hammers (batanes), the interpolated tale of "El curioso impertinente," as well as in some of the characters' transformations throughout the novel. Although the chapters constitute a well tightened triad, the reader will miss a study of other Cervantine works with rich presence of Ovidian themes such as La Galatea or Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda. Part three, "Poetic Fables," is an interesting read, but there is a feeling of disconnect between some of Ovid's Metamorphosis tales that are referenced [End Page 97] and the chapters' interpretations of texts by Garcilaso de la Vega, Lope de Vega, and Cristóbal de Castillejo. The final essay is a close reading of early modern texts that reflect the cultural tensions in scientific and moral discourse resulting from interpretations of Ovid's tale of "Hermaphroditus," and the issue of the "third sex." The final part, "Ovidian Fame," deals with reelaboration of myths for the purpose of self-fashioning and constructing poetic fame. This section studies the case of poets, Garcilaso de la Vega (Third Ecglogue) and Jorge de Montemayor (La Diana), who present themselves as orphic voices. Lope de Vega (El amor enamorado) and Calderón de la Barca (El laurel de Apolo) also use the Ovidian tale of Apollo and Dafne to praise themselves and to give cautionary advice to the king in their respective court plays. Another chapter discusses the argument that Gabriel Téllez, known to the stage as Tirso de Molina, composed his miscellaneous work, Deleitar aprovechando, as a public repudiation of Ovidian traditions that he had previously followed. The last chapter of this book is a fascinating study on Juan de Miramontes Zuázola's Armas antárticas (1608-9). Here, a former African slave claims Apollo and Andromeda as ancestors of his nation, which serves to whiten his past by linking it to Classical Antiquity. In this way, Miramontes makes the Ethiopian community a worthy opponent for the Spaniards by elevating their victory through a connection to the Ancient world, which also gives the story a classical heritage and noble literary genealogy. In summary, the reader should know that this book is a stimulating collection of studies about the presence of Ovidian themes in "the age of Cervantes," and although it does not provide a comprehensive study...

Editor’s Column

Editor’s Column John Zemke May 3, 2013 marked the first anniversary of the loss of John Miles Foley and a period of mourning at the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition. This issue proffers to you, the readers, additional evidence of one dimension of John’s extraordinary legacy, the establishment and nurturing for more than a quarter of a century of Oral Tradition. We open with Nina Livesey’s study of Romans 4:9–12, a dialogue between the apostle Paul and a fictitious Jewish teacher whose interpretation vexed scholarly analysis concerned with the ethnic identity of the people mentioned in Rom 4:12. At issue is the presence of a purportedly “anomalous” dative article that New Testament scholars have resolved on grammatical, ideological, or theological grounds by simple deletion. Drawing on Hellenistic authors’ attentiveness to euphony and sound mapping techniques systematized by Margaret Lee and Bernard Scott, Livesey identifies six structural periods coinciding with the passage’s dialogical form and elaborates compelling analyses of them. The map of acoustic patterns identifies recurring sound groups that provide an overarching structure within which certain recurrent metonyms, particularly terms for “circumcised” and “foreskinned,” are located. The placement and prominence of the sound patterns authenticate the legitimacy of the dative article and direct attention toward the sense of the passage, rhetorically framing the apostle Paul’s assurance to the Gentiles that the uncircumcised may by faith be legitimate heirs to Abrahamic rectitude since God declared Abraham righteous before his circumcision. Next, four successive articles cluster around the theme Archiving Orality and Connecting with Communities of the 2010 World Oral Literature Project workshop. Under the aegis of Cambridge University’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, the workshop explored professional and ethical issues entailed by the dissemination of oral arts through traditional and digital media. First in this group, Carole Pegg and Erkinova Elizaveta Yamaeva report and interpret fieldwork with Altaian speakers in their practice of Ak Jang (“White Way”) rituals. Biannual spring and fall rituals at the küree (“place of gatherings”) temple complex in a recondite locale above the village are conducted for the purpose of maintaining universal order and tranquility, clan and family harmony, and personal happiness. Led by ritual specialists who are expert in ancient Altaian epic and unfolding in pre-liminal, liminal, and post-liminal phases, the ceremonies connect participants with historico-mythical space and time while also anchoring them in the present, creating a phenomenological, topographic space; a numinous performance space, and a sense of “being-in-place.” This sense of being-in-place emanates from the worshippers’ awareness that earth, mountains, sky, ancestors, epic heroes, temple complex, gods, planets, kin, and community are all living entities that ground Altaian personhood. Participants report experiencing “the arrival of energy and good fortune encircling them with a constantly rotating belt.” An eCompanion presents photos of ritual sites and worshippers. Next, John Meza Cuero tells Margaret Field a trickster tale in the Tipaay dialect of the Kumeyaay language (and in Spanish) in Baja California, Mexico, prompting a joint reflection on ethical questions regarding a cultural group’s preferences for usage of audio or video recordings of the community’s heritage. For instance, in Mexico a prevailing “variationist” attitude that accords all dialects of Kumeyaay equal status appears to warrant the sharing of traditional verbal arts with outsiders while in the United States a “localist” language ideology keeps intangible heritage exclusively within the Kumeyaay community. Tale-telling doubly indexes group identity—the larger community by the tale and the local community by its idiom—and the authors urge researchers to maintain balance in intra-communal interests by judiciously publishing recordings from various dialect groups. Without such precautions unintended language standardization may undermine language revitalization schemes, and specific groups may perceive diminished local prestige with corrosive effects on collaboration. A video-taped performance of the Rabbit and Frog tale told by John Meza Cuero is available in an eCompanion for the viewer’s delectation. A Rajasthani folk epic, Pabuji ki par/phad (“Pabuji with the scroll”), is the focus for Elizabeth Wickett’s study of some of the consequences visited on oral tradition by the explosion in modern...

Financial, chivalric or religious? The motives of the Fourth Crusaders reconsidered

In early January 1203, the majority of the leading barons of the Fourth Crusade concluded the Treaty of Zara with Prince Alexios, son of Isaak II, the deposed Byzantine Emperor, thereby agreeing to divert the crusade to Constantinople in order to place the young prince on the throne of Byzantium. The treaty was ratified, despite fierce general opposition and dissension within the crusade, which led hundreds to leave the crusading army either to make their own way to Palestine or to return home. In April 1204, a year after the crusading fleet sailed from Zara to the Byzantine Empire on the pretext of defending the ‘rights’ of the ‘legitimate heir’ to the throne of Constantinople, the crusaders attacked and conquered the Byzantine imperial capital for themselves. Through a new and close examination of the primary evidence, this paper reconsiders the motives of the crusader leaders for their decision to conclude the treaty and then to conquer Constantinople. Although the crusaders proclaimed a range of high-minded motives, which have been largely accepted by modern historians, the real reason for the diversion to the Byzantine capital in 1203 by the Venetians and the French, and their subsequent attack on the city in 1204 was a simpler and, in the crusaders' minds, increasingly pressing concern: the payment of outstanding debts.

Claudius Caesar: Image and Power in the Early Roman Empire (review)

Reviewed by: Claudius Caesar: Image and Power in the Early Roman Empire Laura A. De Lozier Josiah Osgood . Claudius Caesar: Image and Power in the Early Roman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. xv + 357 pp. 63 black-and-white ills., 5 maps, 4 tables. Cloth, $80; paper, $32.99. This book explores the changes to the political culture of the principate caused by the Praetorian Guard's acclamation of Claudius as imperator in 41 C.E. Osgood approaches his subject through an art-historical model informed by Kaisergeschichte. He studies Claudius' symbolic role, what he calls the "powerful fiction" of the emperor (26), a focus that distinguishes Osgood's book from previous studies. The book is intended to be accessible to students from all disciplines (xi). Quotations in the original languages are avoided, except in an appendix (105-6). Brief surveys of imperial practices precede the laying out of [End Page 330] evidence. A bibliographic essay for each section of endnotes contextualizes the chapter's discussion. The book is attractively illustrated, and Osgood writes in a clear and engaging style. After sketching in the prologue what the imperial system looked like in 41 C.E., Osgood reviews in the introduction how the study of Claudius has evolved. He takes issue with Fergus Millar's formulation of the Roman emperor as merely the sum of his deeds; Osgood argues that the emperor actively disseminated policies and images (25-26). Twelve chapters follow tackling a problem or opportunity for image-making at a given moment in Claudius' principate. Osgood embraces discrepancies and hostility in his sources and concedes that some things are nearly impossible to recover. He does not shy from following more speculative lines of interpretation but acknowledges when he does so in the text and directs the reader to further literature in the endnotes. The first three chapters treat Claudius' accession and immediate responses to its legitimacy. The first chapter, "Claudius Caesar," emphasizes the extra-constitutional means Claudius used to secure power as the first Caesar who was not a Julius. In acquiring Caligula's residence Claudius obtained the empire's financial and military records as well as the slaves and freedmen who kept them and irrevocably altered the practice of letting these materials pass under private law to the legitimate heirs of the princeps (38-40). The second chapter, "A Statue in Silver," examines the visual culture from Claudius' first years: his coins and portraits; the pageantry for the consecration of his grandmother Livia (perhaps depicted on the "Reliefs of the Vicomagistri," 57-58); and monuments to his family in Rusellae and Ravenna. These early images highlighted Claudius' maturity; underscored his connections to Augustus through Livia, his mother Antonia, his father Drusus, and his brother Germanicus; and compensated for his inexperience by suggesting that he had inherited their skills and virtues, particularly constantia from his mother (56-61). In the third chapter, "Imperial Favors," communities and groups outside of Italy strategically deploy embassies to the new emperor to increase their visibility, to affirm his legitimacy through honors, and to secure his confirmation of their rights and privileges. The subsequent five chapters explore how Claudius began to fulfill the promises about his potential made in his earliest images. "Subduing the Ocean," the fourth chapter, considers the invasion of Britain. Osgood is sensitive to the campaign's planning and to how its successes were shared with potential successors (Claudius' son-in-law Pompeius, prospective son-in-law Silanus, and infant son Britannicus) and his wife Messallina. Osgood draws on the Villa Medici reliefs traditionally attributed to an Ara Pietatis Augustae to reconstruct lost visual elements from Claudius' victory celebrations (94-95). The acquisition of geographic knowledge and its ideological implications are the subjects of the fifth chapter, "Lists of Peoples and Places." Annexations in Mauretania, Lycia, Thrace, and Judea and the scrupulous avoidance of wars in Germany, Dacia, and Parthia illustrate a core concern for security (114). Imposing order was part of Roman self-identity, but Claudius and his officials matched [End Page 331] ideology with a genuine ability to bring stability. In drawing administrative units, setting each unit's status and fiscal responsibility, building roads, and lining them with...

The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor by Martijn Icks (review)

Reviewed by: The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor by Martijn Icks Charmaine Gorrie Martijn Icks. The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. Pp. 304. CDN $33.44. ISBN 9780674064379. Although not as well known as Caligula or Nero, Elagabalus ranks among the more notorious Roman emperors. He is portrayed in the ancient sources as a cruel, cross-dressing, sexually depraved religious fanatic who transgressed Roman sexual and religious taboos, going so far as to marry a Vestal Virgin. With such press, it is not surprising that Elagabalus has enjoyed an interesting legacy in both ancient and more modern times. In The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor, it is Martijn Icks intent to examine both how this emperor has been constructed as one of Rome’s bad emperors in ancient literature and how he has been perceived [End Page 269] and reinvented in later times (5). The book is divided into two parts: the first reconstructs and interprets events during Elagabalus’ reign and the second describes and examines how the emperor has been perceived and reinvented through the ages. One of the problems with the study of a figure such as Elagabalus is to sort fact from fiction. In the first three chapters, Icks tries to determine “what happened” during the years ad 218–222. Recognizing the limitations and biases of the ancient literary sources writing about this period, and the tendency of modern scholarship to rely on these sources in their analysis, Icks argues that by including material culture such as coins, statues, papyri, inscriptions, and archaeological remains a more balanced account can be achieved. Using these resources, Icks examines how Elagabalus came to the throne, how much power he actually had, and what the regime hoped to accomplish. The emperor’s young age (he came to the throne when he was barely 14) necessitated that others were probably in charge. The emperor’s family from Emesa, which had played an important role in placing Elagabalus on the throne, had substantial control of affairs, but Icks also suggests that there was support and influence from a pro-Severan faction in Rome that included senators and equestrians. These men would have benefited politically from having the “heir” of Caracalla as emperor. Although Elagabalus is heavily criticized by the ancient sources for the way that he governed, Icks comes to the conclusion that in terms of political and economic reforms the reign was uneventful and the administration of the empire went on without disruption. He argues, in fact, that compared to the upheaval that was to come Elagabalus’ reign can be considered one of the most tranquil and peaceful periods of the third century (88). In this section, Icks also questions the view that Elagabalus’ reign represented a clash between the Syrian “East” and the Roman “West.” He points out that the emperor came from the local elite at Emesa, who had been Roman citizens for two centuries, and had spent some of his childhood in Caracalla’s court. He would therefore not have been a total stranger to Roman culture, nor would those who advised him. At the beginning of the reign, during the years ad 218–220, Icks shows that in order to shore up support the regime presented the emperor in a highly traditional manner. Taking the official name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, he was portrayed through coinage, inscriptions, and portraiture as the legitimate heir descended from Caracalla and the Antonines. Blessed by the gods, he would re-establish the dynasty and a period of peace and prosperity. Icks argues that Elagablus veered from Roman ways only at the end of ad 220 when the religious reforms were implemented and the emperor was voted “sacerdos amplissimus dei invicti Solis Elagabali” by the senate. The god Elagabal was now promoted to chief deity at the expense of the traditional Roman pantheon, but the intent was never to establish a monotheistic religion, as others have suggested. Icks suggests that the elevation of Elagabal may have been at the instigation of the emperor himself, who...