Nineteenth-century Interpretations Research Articles

Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach ed. by Christine Blanken, Christoph Wolff, and Peter Wollny (review)

Reviewed by: Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Johann Sebastian Bached. by Christine Blanken, Christoph Wolff, and Peter Wollny Daniel F. Boomhower Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach. 3rded. Edited by Christine Blanken, Christoph Wolff, and Peter Wollny. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2022. [xliv, 835 p. ISBN 9783765104008 (hardback), €410.] Music examples, bibliography, index. The systematic enumeration of the musical output of individual, primarily European, composers has proven captivating and confounding for generations. While the utility of a logically arranged presentation of any repertory seems to make immediate sense, the method of organization itself has often proven a complication. The chronological presentation of compositions often does not offer space for new discoveries, as seen with Ludwig von Köchel's catalog of the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ( Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Tonwerke Wolf-gang Amadé Mozarts[Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1862]), a reliable new edition of which has endured a protracted gestation. A more schematic approach, such as by genre, tends to yield rather opaque numbering schemes, as seen with Anthony van Hoboken's Joseph Haydn: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis(Mainz: B. Schott's Söhne, 1957) and the Bach Compendium: Analytisch-bibliographisches Repertorium der Werke Johann Sebastian Bachsby Hans-Joachim Schulze and Christoph Wolff (Frankfurt: C. F. Peters, 1985; hereafter BC). The definition and operability of the concept of a musical work represents an equally significant challenge with consequences for scholars, performers, and audiences interested in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. The compilers of this new third edition of the Bach Werke Verzeichnis(hereafter BWV 3) admirably address the challenges of concisely integrating vast expanses of knowledge about the corpus of Bach compositions while deftly navigating the pitfalls of this enterprise. The well-known and now firmly entrenched BWV numbering scheme, which originated with Wolfgang Schmieder's catalog of Bach's works, Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach: Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV)(Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1950; hereafter BWV 1), represents the first significant challenge of BWV 3. This ordering reflects the sequence in which the composer's music appeared in the edition prepared by the Bach Gesellschaft and published by Breitkopf & Härtel ( J. S. Bach Werke[Leipzig, 1851–99]; hereafter BG). In the BG, the ten sacred cantatas published in the first volume of the edition bear the designations "Cantata 1," Cantata 2," and so forth. Hence, "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" from March 1725 for the Feast of the Annunciation (Cantata 1) preceded "Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein" from June 1724 for the [End Page 602]second Sunday after Trinity (Canata 2) and "Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid" from January 1725 for the second Sunday after Epiphany (Cantata 3). As seen in these examples, the BGordering relies neither on the chronology of the compositions nor their place in the liturgical calendar. BWV 1also applies numbers to instrumental works based on the order in which they appeared in BG. Moreover, the BGcreates a static, even monolithic, identity to compositions, informed in no small part by nineteenth-century interpretations of the religious and artistic conception of Bach's compositions, that remains at odds with the reality documented in the sources containing Bach's output. Attempts have arisen to develop more intuitive numerical references to the cantatas, including alphabetical order based on text (e.g., Carl Tamme, Thematisches Verzeichniss der Vokalwerke Joh. Seb. Bachs[Leipzig: C. F. Peters, 1889]) and the Lutheran liturgical calendar (e.g., J. S. Bach: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke (Neue Bach-Ausgabe), ed. Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Institut, Göttingen, and Bach-Archiv, Leipzig [Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1954–]; hereafter NBA). To their credit, the compilers of BWV 3have embraced the firmly entrenched numbering scheme and adapted it as gracefully as possible, differentiating the distinct compositional phases of, for instance, BWV 36 as: Weltliche Fassungen (Glückwunschkantate): 36.1 Schwingt freudig euch empor (1725) 36.2 Steigt freudig in die Luft (um 1725–26) 36.3 Die Freude reget sich (um 1737–1738) Geistliche Fassungen (Adventskantate): 36.4 Schwingt freudig euch empor (um 1726–1730) 36.5 Schwingt freudig euch empor (1731) Subsequent entries for...

The two Tarquins from Livy to Lorenzo Valla: history, rhetoric and embodiment

ABSTRACT This article examines the figure of Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457), and challenges his nineteenth-century interpretation as a precursor of modern critical historiography and philology, by focusing on two of his works on the ancient Roman historian Livy. The first is the Letter to King Alfonso on the Two Tarquins (1444), where Valla claimed to have discovered a mistake in Livy, and the second is the Confutation against Morandi (1455), a defence of the former work against a critic. The article has two aims. The first aim is to offer a reassessment of the significance of these works, arguing against the view that Letter to King Alfonso represents the formulation of a radically new ‘critical' methodology. The second aim is to consider these works in the broader cultural context on ritualised performance in which they were conceived. Vital to their composition was the so-called ‘hour of the book’, ceremonial readings of classical authors at the court of King Alfonso, and the broader cultural context of the veneration of Livy in late medieval Italy.

What Jesus Did, Does and May Do in Future: Gospel Miracles, Human Augmentation, Transhumanism and the Future of New Testament Studies

The quest of New Testament studies for a well-resourced future would be substantially aided by its explicit abandonment of a narrow methodological focus in favour of building links with other disciplines and by its acknowledgment that exegetical insights may arise from examining the impact of biblical texts down the centuries. In the potential appropriation of Jesus by Christian transhumanists interested in human bodily enhancement, for example, the healings of his earthly ministry are ignored because they are understood to restore human bodies to a previous form (a position recognizable in much of New Testament scholarship) rather than augment them to a new one. Building on deaf nineteenth-century interpretations which see the mental abilities of the deaf man in Mk 7.32-37 as being enhanced beyond human norms by Jesus, this article examines the healings of three blind men (Mk 8.22-26, Mk 10.46-52 and Jn 9.1-41). While the Johannine blind man is explicitly said to be blind from birth (whatever New Testament translations have often been made to say!), this article proposes that Blind Bartimaeus in Mk 10 should also be viewed this way. While their becoming sighted restores them to a common human pattern, their lack of prior sighted-experience means that it is their ability to see instantly that strongly implies the presence of an augmentative element to their healings. A postscript notes the different attitudes to the permission required to transform the human body within these narratives and suggests transhumanists consider the ethical implications of each story carefully before they incorporate the earthly Jesus into their arguments.

The Invention of Madness: State, Society, and the Insane in Modern China by Emily Baum

Reviewed by: The Invention of Madness: State, Society, and the Insane in Modern China by Emily Baum Nicole Elizabeth Barnes Emily Baum. The Invention of Madness: State, Society, and the Insane in Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. 267 pp. $112.50 (cloth), $37.50 (paper). The first English-language monograph on the history of madness in modern China, this book offers far more than a compelling story with new information. With clear writing and persuasive argumentation, Emily Baum argues that the treatment of “mad” people and evolving understandings of madness reflect China’s engagement with Western medicine and science, as well as with modernity itself. Following current interpretations of modernity as an interpolated and ongoing encounter, Baum treats Chinese people’s responses to Western psychiatry as means of molding imported institutions and ideas for themselves. She grants agency to intellectual elites and the gravely poor, noting that literary disquisitions and everyday applications of medical care alike constituted key facets of “inventing” forms of modern madness that suited a panoply of needs. In order to analyze Chinese modernity through the story of madness, Baum crafts a narrative that is simultaneously diachronic and synchronic. She traces developments in the understanding of madness from the nineteenth century through the onset of war in 1937 but focuses on Beijing and periodically isolates specific moments to explore the intersections between madness and gender, chronic poverty, and the reconciliation of Chinese and Western medical nosologies and treatment regimes. Such deft combination of two distinct types of historical narrative is difficult to achieve. Baum makes the sutures seamless, granting her readers a pleasurable encounter with a world that is at once deeply contextualized and subject to seismic shifts. Chapter 1 introduces madness in late imperial China as a temporary condition rather than an ontological state. No single medical theory or legal definition applied. Families and patients resorted to a variety of interpretations and treatment methods, including religious healing. The dominant medical theory located pathology in the chest, beginning when an excess of mucous obstructed the function of the seat of consciousness: the heart. Based on an androgynous body, this theory displayed no obvious gendered component. In contrast, both cultural explanations of madness were distinctly gendered. The first theory posited that the root of madness lay in excessive emotion—primarily worry for men, and a host of emotions for women (jealousy, lust, grief, etc.). Many people identified with these experiences and displayed sympathy for those who displayed pathological responses thereto. The second theory attributed madness to moral transgressions. This linked the condition to guilt and shame and caused families to hide or confine their mad relatives. Baum presents these nineteenth-century interpretations as indigenous constructions of madness, wholly consonant with Chinese medical theory and cultural practices and betraying no influence of Western beliefs. Her close attention to this “pre-contact” moment allows her to analyze ensuing developments as Chinese responses to and adaptations of [End Page E-1] Western ideas. It also sets up the narrative in keeping with medical anthropology frameworks that treat illness as a simultaneously biological and cultural phenomenon. Perhaps fortuitously, this also accords with Chinese understandings of mental illness, both then and now, and therefore supports an analysis that grants ontological parity to Chinese and Western belief systems. Chapters 2 through 7 move from the founding of the Beijing insane asylum (the nation’s first) in 1908 through the eve of war in 1937. Chapter 2 details the tremendous pressure that both the late Qing and Republican governments faced to prove their political legitimacy by policing the public in a manner that, Baum argues, transformed madness from a temporary condition to a permanent identity that marked one as deviant and open to discipline. This she terms “an act of political invention” (62) because it satisfied political rather than cultural needs. Chapter 3 employs a clever interpretation of agency to argue that Beijing poor who availed themselves of free institutionalization at the insane asylum served their own needs but also legitimized the expansion of police power and expanded definitions of madness to include socially troublesome but not necessarily ill individuals. Though not directly juxtaposed in Baum’s structure, chapters 4...

De don Álvaro de Luna a doña María la Brava: el fin de un ciclo

King Juan II of Castille’s court is a common topic in nineteenth-century literature, featured in novels, short stories, plays, and poems alike. When Eduardo Marquina’s Doña María la Brava (1909) was previewed in the early years of the twentieth century, critics objected to the blending of the legendary and the historical represented respectively by the characters of María de Monroy and Álvaro de Luna since they evaluated Marquina’s play according to nineteenth-century interpretations of the role of the constable Luna. Yet, as this article argues, Doña María la Brava appropriates the characters of King Juan’s court (Luna, the poets, and the noblemen) with the new objective of showing the decadence of Castille. Thus, Marquina’s play stages Castille’s crisis shortly after the political disaster of 98 and the significant historical events of the African war and “The Tragic Week.” I claim that this play inaugurates a new form of reading the fifteenth century which strongly differs from previous readings and necessarily means the end of the nineteenth-century literary cycle of King Juan II.

Embracing the Past—Forging the Future: A New Generation of Wesleyan Theology

This slim volume containing nine essays by junior and senior Wesleyan scholars teaching in the United States (or, in one case, the Philippines) stems from the contributors' shared conviction that the Wesleyan theological tradition has the potential to provide a distinctive contribution to the practice of Christian theology in the twenty-first century. It is their bold claim that the renewal of classical Wesleyan theology with its characteristic theological method offers a fresh approach to articulating core Christian truths in the context of a postmodern, post-colonial, and post-Christian intellectual landscape.Of course, the contributors are aware that the (modernist) theology of John Wesley and his nineteenth-century interpreters in the Wesleyan theological tradition will not provide ready answers to present-day questions. Significant changes in the intellectual (especially epistemological), historical, and socio-cultural landscape over the past 250 years inevitably affect contemporary theological methods, sources, and norms. In fact, these Wesleyan scholars acknowledge ‘that Wesleyan theology has yet to fully adapt to this changing landscape, and that the future of Wesleyan theology requires the bringing together of old and new voices’ (xi). Among the ‘old’ voices deserving to be heard is that of Albert Outler, pioneer of modern Wesleyan studies in the twentieth century, who coined the (often misunderstood) term ‘Wesleyan quadrilateral’ to describe John Wesley's theological method of interpreting scripture in the light of tradition, reason, and Christian experience. Among the ‘new’ voices are those of contemporary biblical and patristic scholars, as well as the growing number engaged in Wesleyan and Methodist studies.In blending old and new voices, the renewal of any theological tradition involves continuity and change, though its resulting shape will look different depending on where the emphasis is placed. Bechtold's introductory essay on ‘Wesleyan Theology beyond the Wesleys: A “Post-modern” Proposal’ places the emphasis firmly on radical change to take account of today's pluralistic context.Just as Wesleyan theology should not be confused with John Wesley's theology (any more than Calvinism should be confused with John Calvin's theology), Ben Boeckel's essay illustrates how ‘The Hermeneutics of Wesley and “Wesleyan Hermeneutics”’ are also different entities because the epistemological and theological suppositions of Christian discourse in the twenty-first century are very different to those that gave rise to the eighteenth-century ideal of Enlightenment rationalism. According to Boeckel, embracing a postmodern Wesleyan theological method does not mean having to accept the inevitability of relativism in a pluralistic context, though it does entail recognition of the communal embodiedness of theological truth.An unanswered question arises from these essays. Given that radical change may lead to discontinuity, in what sense is it possible to speak of the renewal of Wesleyan theology? In particular, what does it mean to continue labelling a theological tradition ‘Wesleyan’ when its ‘renewal’ involves a radical reinterpretation of its classical methods, sources, and norms? For Bechtold, this is its virtue: ‘The beauty of “post-modern” Wesleyanism is that it does not really exist in any meaningful way. It is an idea, a goal, perhaps a practice’ (26).Potential readers should be aware that this volume is a study in theological methodology rather than an introduction to aspects of the Wesleyan theological tradition. As such, it requires some familiarity with the issues under consideration. Though disparate, the essays make for engaging reading, even if the reader does not wholly accept their argument or conclusions. The intended readership comprises ‘Wesleyan-Holiness theologians, students of Wesleyan, Holiness, Methodist, Pietist, and Pentecostal theology, as well as pastors and interested lay persons from across Evangelical Christianity’ (xi). Each essay contains footnote references and concludes with a useful bibliography for further reading.The project to publish a critical edition of the complete works of John Wesley continues apace, making available to a new generation of students the primary sources for a fresh evaluation of his theology and its subsequent development into a Wesleyan theological tradition. This collection of essays reinforces a growing awareness that John Wesley was not merely a ‘folk theologian’ or theological educator for early Methodism but a theologian of considerable stature and enduring importance. That his approach was unsystematic makes his theology less interesting to academic scholars; however, by adopting a soteriological perspective, Wesley was an immensely practical theologian for the Christian community at a particularly energetic and creative juncture in the changing religious and intellectual landscape in the West. If the continuing renaissance of interest in Wesley and Methodist studies extends to the renewal of Wesleyan theology, this volume of essays will have served a useful introductory purpose.

Border Law: The First Seminole War and American Nationhood, by Deborah A. Rosen

Border Law: The First Seminole War and American Nationhood, by Deborah A. Rosen. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2015. ix, 316 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). In 1816 and 1818, General Andrew Jackson led US troops into Spanish Florida, where they seized forts, razed towns, executed Creek and British prisoners, and killed or enslaved dozens of Seminoles, Creeks, and black people. In Border Lazo, Deborah A. Rosen analyzes congressional and public debates that followed this invasion and evaluates their implications for American nation-building. In seven meticulously-researched chapters, Rosen demonstrates how Jackson's supporters rejected Enlightenment concepts of universal natural law and embraced ideas of positive, utilitarian law in order to justify US ambitions. Americans used this new legal framework in four ways: to demand US inclusion into European family of nations; to differentiate between Old and New Worlds; to define national borders and limits of legal protection along racial and cultural lines; and to change rules for acting across territorial borders in order to secure US interests abroad. As Rosen shows, these debates provided Americans with an opportunity to express their core values and to define their nationhood at a key moment in history of Early Republic. Ultimately, legal demarcations they created laid groundwork for the Monroe Doctrine, Dred Scott decision, US westward expansion, and late nineteenth-century interpretations of international law and overseas imperialism (p. 219). Although acquiring Florida had long been a US policy goal, Jackson's invasion of Spanish territory set off a political firestorm. Monroe administration officials launched a public relations campaign to justify general's actions to American public and international community. The invasion, they argued, was both necessary and entirely defensive in nature since Spain had failed to control so-called Seminole bandits who raided frontier settlements (p. 36). Jackson's critics retorted that along Florida border was mostly result of American aggression, rather than Indian violence (p. 75). They declared invasion unnecessary, unlawful, and unconstitutional since Jackson had not waited for Congress to declare war before entering Florida. To make their cases, groups cited legal writings of Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel, but they interpreted his work to suit their own purposes. Ultimately, arguments of Jackson's supporters resonated with Congress and American public. Spain's weak colonial hold on Florida put United States in danger. The United States had a right--even a duty--to secure its borders and expand throughout continent. In making these arguments, supporters maintained that United States was natural leading power in Western Hemisphere--an idea that found full expression in 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The claim that United States acted in self-defense rested on premise that Creeks, Seminoles, and allied blacks posed a serious threat to American settlers. …

Gendervooroordelen en de Romeinse census

Abstract Gender biases and the census of the Roman citizensThe Roman census figures are a fundamental source of demographic information for the classical world. Since the nineteenth century historical demographers have used these figures to calculate the number of Roman citizens. The resulting population figures, however, vary considerably between different interpretations. This article aims to show that the numerical differences can be associated with different views on Roman citizenship. A gender bias played a role, in particular a one-sided emphasis on male citizenship which has kept attention away from women as independent citizens in the census figures. This bias, which is already visible in Roman sources, was strengthened in the nineteenth century. Roman citizenship terminology was used to describe the contemporary liberal citizenship ideal with its emphasis on the male citizen-soldier as the head of his family. This liberal citizenship ideal in return influenced nineteenth-century interpretations of Roman citizenship which are still central to our understanding of the Roman census figures today.

In the Name of the Americas: The Pan-American Redefinition of the Monroe Doctrine and the Emerging Language of American International Law in the Western Hemisphere, 1898-1933

The historiography of the Monroe Doctrine has tended to concentrate on nineteenth century interpretations, as proposed by U.S. politicians. More importantly, Latin American interpretations of the doctrine have been overlooked. This article explores the hemispheric intellectual history of the doctrine in the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, examining its re-interpretation by Latin American jurists and politicians, such as Luis María Drago, Alejandro Álvarez and Baltasar Brum, and the reactions it provoked in the U.S. in the context of the emergence of the modern version of Pan-Americanism (1889) and a continental approach to international law. It argues that by re-interpreting the Monroe Doctrine as a Pan-American principle, these Latin American figures contributed in turn to redefining U.S. hemispheric hegemony along the lines of multilateralism and non-intervention. However, U.S. politicians and jurists were for the most part reluctant to renounce U.S. unilateral aspirations and interventionism on the continent until 1933.

Oh, Vladimir, King of Dioclea, Hard Headed, Heart Full of Pride!” Isaiah Berlin and Nineteenth Century Interpretations of the Live of Saint Vladimir of Dioclea

Saint Vladimir of Dioclea (i.e. Zeta) (c. 990-1016) left very few traces in medieval sources, and yet, for centuries now, he is present throughout the Balkans, notably in the areas of modern Albania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia. Compared to other notable medieval holy kings (e.g. Saint Stefan of Dečani), Saint Vladimir is a “vague“ character; he was never as popular and his representations were never fully standardized nor uniformed – he is often simultaneously addressed with few names (Vladimir/Jovan/Jovan Vladimir) and with more than one title (an emperor/Tsar, king or prince). However, this “vagueness“, and yet persistence of the story about this saint makes an interesting research topic. The first elaborated narrative about the saint, the Life of Saint Vladimir of Dioclea, was published in 1601. as part of the Annals of the Priest of Dioclea, a chronicle depicting the history of an imagined early medieval Slavic dynasty and used as an introductory chapter to the Kingdom of Slavs by Mauro Orbini. The Life represents a developed hagiographic narrative with two main lessons – the value of (Saint Vladimir’s) martyrdom (following the model of Christ’s Passion) and of divine punishment awaiting the sinners. Furthermore, as part of the Annals of the Priest of Diocela (and of the Kingdom of Slavs), the Life depicts Vladimir as a Slavic holy king. Since its first edition, the Life remains the main source of inspiration and a starting point for most of the later interpretations of the story of Saint Vladimir’s life and death. In the focus of the article is a specific transformation that occurred in the nineteenth century regarding the story, within Serbian romantic literature. The approach to the transformation is based on the interpretation of the Romantic Movement provided by Isaiah Berlin in his 1965 Mellon lectures delivered in Washington DC (The Roots of Romanticism). I observe the transformation through the analysis of three representative nineteenth century interpretations of the story of Saint Vladimir: the historical dramas Vladimir and Kosara (1829, by Lazar Lazarević) and Vladislav (1843, by Jovan Sterija Popović) and the short story Vladimir of Dioclea (1888, by Stevan Sremac). Comparison of the Life with these narratives reveals significant shifts in main motives and lessons one finds in the story. Thus, instead of focusing on the notions of a holy man who serves as a tool of God’s will and of a Slavic holy king, one finds in nineteenth century interpretations the notions of man’s will, desire and utter loyalty to his own principles and values, one of them being his (Serbian) nation, as key ideas and supreme virtues. In spite of keeping certain hagiographic traits, these romantic interpretations bring reversals of main lessons of the story of Saint Vladimir and thus contribute to Berlin’s observation about the process of conscious creation of new mythologies within Romantic Movement with long-term consequences.

Olbers's Planetary Explosion Hypothesis: Genesis and Early Nineteenth-Century Interpretations

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1. IntroductionThe origin of the asteroids has been a subject of controversy ever since they were discovered in the early nineteenth century. The first suggestion as to how they might have originated - as the result of a catastrophic collision or explosion - was widely regarded as a tenable hypothesis by many in the scientific community. Even though he did not develop the idea on his own, Wilhelm Olbers accepted the concept and gave it life. This paper looks at how the idea developed in its early stages, and the ways it was both accepted and rejected by a range of different thinkers in the first half of the nineteenth century.2. GenesisThe first asteroid, Ceres, was discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi on 1 January 1 80 1 . On 28 March 1802 Wilhelm Olbers discovered the second, Pallas.' One of the first persons he notified was his close friend Ferdinand von Ende, who worked as a senior appellate official in the duchy of Brunswick Luneberg. Ende was an amateur astronomer, and was one of the twenty-four observers selected in 1800 to be a member of the 'Celestial Police', that loosely-knit organization formed by Baron Franz von Zach to search for the 'missing planet' between Mars and Jupiter.Less than ten days after the discovery of Pallas, Ende wrote to Olbers:Since your Pallas or Olbers, as de la Lande will certainly call it, will finish its revolution faster than Ceres it was possible for someone searching for Ceres to find it, and mistake it for Ceres. What conflicts originated between the new and old elements! What confusion did not originate from this, what conclusions of a totally perturbed orbit were not drawn - to cut a long story short: only experience or the accidental discovery of the true Ceres made it possible to escape out of this labyrinth. Thus, your discovery is extremely important at this point, so that, as both planets will probably hide in the rays of the Sun, they are not mistaken for each other when they reappear. - Furthermore now we can easily explain some of Mars's irregularities, whose orbit they must considerably perturb etc. And it is also remarkable that there where we expected one planet, we find two very small ones and if we can trust the observations made hitherto, they are still developing [planets]. - One almost wishes to say: once those two small planets had formed a bigger one; at least a comet shock is not more unlikely than throwing a comet against the Sun and the planets splinter off. Maybe, if de la Place's hypothesis of a contraction of the Sun's atmosphere is correct, a comet could be seized at exactly that moment which consequently would, as your Pallas does, complete its revolution on a very inclined orbit. - But these are only dreams that belong in the bedroom and not good society.2As this insightful letter makes clear, it was Ende who was the first to suggest in correspondence that Ceres and Pallas had once formed a larger planet later destroyed by a cometary collision. Olbers took the idea and propounded his own hypothesis, but he never credited Ende for planting in his mind the idea of a catastrophic origin for the small planets.3. Olbers Seeks the Opinion of Gauss and HerschelJust two weeks after reading Ende's letter, Olbers proposed very nearly the same concept to Carl Gauss:There is something unusual about the position of Pallas's orbit. In particular, the very close approach of the paths of Ceres and Pallas at some point gives rise to much thought. How? If Ceres and Pallas were fragments of a former larger planet that had been destroyed by colliding with a comet? It's still too early to indulge in such dreams; but a collision with a comet isn't totally impossible. A number of years ago I found the following solution to what was initially a seemingly difficult problem using probability theory. If I knew nothing more about a comet other than that it approaches the Sun closer than a planet, and the mean distance of the planet from the Sun is R, then the probability that it approaches the Sun before or after its passage through perihelion is as a. …

Una nueva fuente para la historia de la Sicilia islámica: un pasaje de <i>al-Muqtabis V</i> de Ibn Hayyān sobre la revuelta de Aḥmad b. Qarhab (300- 304/913-916)

Can a detail change the history of Islamic Sicily? The revolt of Ibn Qarhab is a well known issue that marks the island’s political transition from the Aghlabid sphere of influence to the nascent Fātimid caliphate in North Africa. Undoubtedly, the reconstruction of the revolt of Ibn Qarhab is based on a late and repetitive corpus of Arab-Islamic sources and, above all, on the irredentist and nineteenth century interpretation given by Michele Amari. The Andalusian source considered here, a passage from al-Muqtabis V of Ibn Ḥayyān, escaped from the mentioned historiographical networks as well as from the attention of current scholarship; it provides an opportunity to clarify some details and offer new interpretations of the event. The revolt of Ibn Qarhab can be interpreted as an informal quest for legitimacy obtained through alliances and contingencies that, unexpectedly, seems to move the island’s centre of gravity from the North African shore to the orbit of influence of the Umayyad emirate of al-Andalus

The Journey of Master Anthony Jenkinson to Persia, 1562-1563

AbstractThe article provides an account of Anthony Jenkinson's journey to Persia, and assesses the faithfulness of his narrative by examining it in a broader literary context consisting of his diplomatic instructions, the oral sources informing his narrative, and extracts from the Persian chronicles where possible. The second part of the article compares E. Delmar Morgan's nineteenth-century interpretation and presentation of Jenkinson's narrative with its reception in England when it was first published by Richard Hakluyt in the late sixteenth-century.

Filming Fairies: Popular Film, Audience Response and Meaning in Contemporary Fairy Lore

This study examines the idea of fairy lore (faery) as a modern concept with personal and humanistic overtones transmitted through mass media phenomena such as films. Analysis of the relationship between folk and popular culture has become increasingly sophisticated and has widened our appreciation of the ways in which mass-culture audiences use tradition to shape popular culture. Fantasy films draw on recognised traditional elements, but the significance of these elements has been mediated through nineteenth-century interpretations of fairy lore. Contemporary audiences are more likely to be exposed to such legends and beliefs in the context of mass media than by any other means, and visualisation of fairies in fantasy films is closely linked to these modern interpretations of traditional material. For cinema audiences, the idea of faery is no longer a traditional and immediate response to experience, it already carries overtones of nostalgia for the past, childhood innocence, utopian societies or sexual discovery. However, personal response and exegesis of this material, reinforced by repeated viewing, access to Internet sites and related activities such as role-play and merchandising, means that the interactions of these virtual communities can transmute and insert themselves into daily life through a shared appreciation of fantasy worlds. The ways in which these consumers of mass culture resemble or differ from a folk audience presents an interesting arena for understanding folklore as a living contemporary phenomenon.

Bloody good: chivalry, sacrifice, and the Great War

Frantzen, Alien. Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and the Great War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. 26 color plates, 350pp. $35.00 hardcover. Chivalry died in the trenches of World War I. The advent of mass warfare and the technologies of industrial killing (Omer Bartov) obliterated traditional notions of military chivalry. This is the conventional wisdom Alien Frantzen's imaginative and lavishly illustrated Bloody Good sets out to question. Despite the modern reality of Great War battles, Frantzen notes, chivalric imagery was common place. Swords, knights and dragon slayers could be found on war posters, post cards, and war memorials in Britain and France as well as Germany. Chivalry did not die with World War I, the author suggests, instead it continued to reinforce group identity and notions of heroic masculinity, making it essential to understanding violence in the modern world. In its attempt to comprehend the meaning of chivalric images during the Great War, Bloody Good pursues an unusual path. The entire first half of Frantzen's study is devoted to the rise of the concept of chivalry during the Middle Ages. The relationship of chivalry and sacrifice is central to Frantzen's reading of the (often contradictory) religious dimension of chivalry. Mirroring Christ's double identity as victim and avenger, the chivalrous knight found himself torn between the anti-sacrificial restraints of mercy and forgiveness and sacrificial notions of revenge. Heroic self-sacrifice gave meaning to a warrior's death by allowing him to resemble Christ. In World War I propaganda (as in medieval poetry), the image of Christ often became linked with that of the knight, promising the martyr salvation through his fight with the other. Over several chapters, Frantzen traces the making of the medieval concept of knighthood. He focuses on the development of chivalric themes in literature that increasingly intertwined prowess and piety. Medieval manuals of chivalry conceived of ladders of sacrifice as a scale of knightly achievement. The costs of chivalry and the grief and violence it could inflict, however, did not receive attention comparable to that of the knight as heroic self-sacrificer. For the second half of his study, Frantzen shifts his attention to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He considers the revival of chivalric imagery and notions of duty in Victorian Britain. Self-discipline rather than physical prowess was central to most nineteenth-century interpretations of chivalry. …

Literary Character: The Human Figure in Early English Writing by Elizabeth Fowler

REVIEWS offer a slightly different, though no less learned, perspective on medieval women’s cultural commitments. The pupil of Cambridge reformer and martyr Thomas Bilney, Manne received economic, spiritual, and political support from influential and distinguished patrons. Erler suggests that Bilney gave Manne copies of Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man and the New Testament, though the anchoress evidently escaped her mentor’s fate. Erler concludes that Manne remains one of the few identifiable female participants in ‘‘the 1520s and 1530s nexus of theological and political issues’’ (p. 106). Elizabeth Throckmorton, abbess of the Franciscan community at Denny, was a contemporary of Manne’s and also a reader of Tyndale. London merchant Humphrey Monmouth sent her his copy of Tyndale’s translation of Enchiridion, Erasmus’s critique of corruption and greed in the established church. With her sisters and other family members, Throckmorton apparently sought ‘‘fresh vernacular treatments of spiritual and intellectual concerns’’ (p. 114). The book’s final chapter explores surviving incunabula and identifies what we might call the ‘‘best-sellers’’ of early printed books among women. Erler’s three appendices likewise contribute significantly to our understanding of medieval women’s literacy, book ownership, and patronage . Appendix I offers a list of surviving books owned by medieval religious women and religious not identified by Ker-Watson or Bell; Appendix II tracks multiple book ownership by medieval religious women; and Appendix III details the surviving copies of incunabula owned by women. The book is superbly researched and bolstered by substantial endnotes. Ultimately, this short book raises more questions than it answers, but this in no way diminishes its value. Further scholarship will amplify the stories that Erler tells here and will tease out their implications, interconnections, and theoretical dimensions. In the meantime, this book advances enormously our understanding of medieval women. Anne Clark Bartlett DePaul University Elizabeth Fowler. Literary Character: The Human Figure in Early English Writing. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. xii, 263. $45.00. The main title of this ambitious, learned, and complex book should not mislead any reader whose notions of literary character are based on the PAGE 391 391 .......................... 10906$ CH11 11-01-10 13:59:37 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER novel and nineteenth-century interpretations of Shakespeare. Elizabeth Fowler’s principal purpose is to theorize, historicize, and complicate the idea of ‘‘literary character’’ as it applies to ‘‘Early English Writing.’’ Her aim is not primarily to analyze literary characters but to demonstrate the processes by which literary character gets made and is understood by the reader. Her principal topic is ‘‘social persons,’’ which she defines as ‘‘a paradigmatic representation of personhood that has evolved historically among the institutions of social life’’ (p. 2n; Fowler’s emphasis). The lead footnote in three of the main chapters refers the reader back to the introductory discussion of this term, ‘‘which is central to the argument of the book.’’ The ‘‘Human Figure’’ here includes not only characters in fiction such as Chaucer’s fictional pilgrims (the dramatis personae in what Kittredge described as Chaucer’s ‘‘Human Comedy’’), but personifications such as ‘‘Mede the maid’’ in Passus II–IV of Piers Plowman and the River Thames in Book IV, canto 11, of The Faerie Queene. Although she refers widely to literary history and other disciplines, especially legal history, Fowler disclaims any intent of writing a comprehensive theory or study of character in the period she designates as Early English. Rather, her book focuses on texts by four authors, each selected to illustrate a different aspect of the category ‘‘social person.’’ The main texts are Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, Langland’s Passus II–IV (the Marriage of Lady Mede), Skelton’s The Tunnynge of Elynour Rummynge , and Spenser’s Letter to Ralegh, cantos 11–12 of Book IV, the The Two Cantos of Mutabilitie, and A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande. A ‘‘social person’’ is one of many conventions through which we are ‘‘habituated’’ by experience and by reading to apprehend and understand literary characters; a literary character ‘‘is cobbled together out of allusions to a number of social persons’’ (p. 17). Thus the ideals, crusades , lords, demeanor, and costume in...

Bevochten eendracht? Beklonken tweespalt!

It is highly regrettable that a history of the Netherlands seen from five focal points starts with the year 1650. Could this be a nineteenth-century interpretation of Dutch history, to consider the Dutch Republic as the starting point of our past? The years 1500 or 1550 — or an even earlier date — would have been a far more appropriate starting point. Despite the fact that the Dutch pride themselves on being very European-minded, they often neglect the history of the Southern Netherlands and Belgium. This negligence has to do with the tendency of the Dutch to overestimate the importance of their own culture: Many historians believe that the entire world is fascinated by the (contemporary) history of the Netherlands. Within the series, the lack of coherence between the cultural and the political history of the country is striking. The authors and the publisher are also to blame for the inconsistency between the content and the illustrations. This review is part of the discussion forum IJkpunt 1650.

Scottish Heritage Southern Style

During the past four decades, growing interest in Americans' cultural and ancestral ties to Scotland has produced hundreds of clan and heritage societies and a steadily increasing number of Scottish Highland games. Scottish American ethnic awareness and organization has had other, briefer, periods of popularity in our nation's history. However, the growth of Scottish cultural groups and gatherings has proved most dramatic in the late-twentieth-century South, where a unique and distinctly regional style flavors events and perceptions of Scottish origins. Today, approximately half of all Scottish American societies base their associations in the South and more than one-third of the over two hundred annual Highland games/Scottish festivals occur in the region.(1) The popularity of the Scottish-heritage movement in the South is partly due to its double celebration of a reclaimed Scottish ethnicity and its particular relationship to southern regional identity. Southern Scottish-heritage societies emphasize kinship and bill clan society activities as family reunions. Scottish Highland games in the South are more likely to have barbecue stands, fiddle competitions, and time designated for religious events. At southern games, singers perform the Scottish tune Bonnie Dundee with the Confederate lyrics Riding a Raid, reenactors combine Confederate jackets and caps with their Scottish kilts, and bagpipe band renditions of Dixie leave crowds either cheering, in tears, or both. American celebrations of Scottish heritage draw on romantic nineteenth-century interpretations of Highland manners and Scottish identity--a mythic Scottish past that in the South blends harmoniously with nostalgic visions of antebellum southern society and the Lost Cause. Celebratory and commemorative reflections on ancestral experience commonly merge historical realities, religious inheritance, and folk memories with selected (and often invented) traditions to interpret the past in a form meaningful for the present. Southerners take to the Scottish-heritage movement so well because its present form draws on parallel mythologies, rather than actual cultural continuities, that underlie the construction both Scottish and southern identifies. Both derive from perceived historical injuries, strong attachments to place and kin, and links between militarism and religious faith, and both have produced symbolic material cultures. Scottish-heritage celebration in the South offers alternative interpretations of southernness. In heritage lore, the southern experience and identity unfold in continuous tradition from Scottish culture and history, rather than from a relationship to slavery or Jim Crow. Members of the southern Scottish American community are of the generations that experienced desegregation and the reinvention of the South. By attributing southern distinctiveness to Scottish roots, a post-Civil Rights movement celebration of southernness takes on an uncontroversial, multicultural dimension focused on ethnic identity rather than race relations. Mourning the Old South's defeat or displaying the Confederate baffle flag acquires less problematic meanings in the Scottish-heritage context. The new involved in Scottish heritage is no longer just a white, Anglo southerner, but an ethnically Celtic southerner with other reasons for being different and unassailable justification for celebrating that difference. HIGHLANDISM AND THE FORGING OF IDENTITY THROUGH DEFEAT The Scottish American community celebrates a conception of Scottishness engendered largely by the poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott long after the ancestors of many Scottish Americans had left Scotland. The celebrated heritage is that of one region of Scotland: the Highlands. How the Highlands came to represent the whole of Scotland is quite similar to the way in which plantation owners came to represent southerners generally. …

Imprisonment in Classical Athens

Nineteenth–century scholars assumed that the Athenians as a community punished citizens with death, exile, atimia, and fines and used imprisonment only to hold those awaiting trial, those awaiting execution, and those unable to pay fines.1 As they saw it, brief imprisonment in the stocks occasionally supplemented these penalties, but always as additional penalty–never as a penalty on its own. Barkan saw in the use of imprisonment as an additional penalty the likelihood of general penal imprisonment and used evidence from the oratorical corpus to make an argument therefore.2 His argument seems to have been largely ignored–the nineteenth–century interpretation continuing dominant; and the issue, largely unexplored but for a few glancing references in recent scholarship.3 The issue remains, thus, sufficiently vexed to make worthwhile a restatement of the argument for the use of punitive imprisonment. Also, the evidence provides clues worth setting forth as to why and when punitive imprisonment developed. Indeed, these are sufficient to make an argument about the relevance of the development to Athenian political history. For the introduction of penal imprisonment in Athens proves an extremely important historical moment, marking as it does both the completion of a general will institutionalized (in a punishment of consumption of the wrong–doer within, rather than of expulsion from, the community) and a significant point in the establishment of isonomia.

Economics as ethics: Bastiat's nineteenth century interpretation

Frederic Bastiat was an influential economic writer of the middle 1800s. In his work,Economic Sophisms (1848), Bastiat proposed a dual system of ethics, containing economic ethics and religious ethics.