Right Of Kings Research Articles

Orhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature, by Gloria Fisk

Orhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature, by Gloria Fisk

Introduction: Imagining Alternatives

Imagining Alternatives Megan Condis (bio) If one wants to invent something new, one first has to imagine something new. Perhaps this is why so many scientists credit speculative fiction for helping them take the first steps along their paths to discovery. Were it not for the extraordinary voyages imagined by Jules Verne, Edwin Hubble (the American astronomer who was the first to prove that there were other galaxies out there beyond the Milky Way) would have followed in the footsteps of his father and gone into a career in law.1 Were it not for Dick Tracy’s wrist radio and the slick communicators worn by Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, Martin Cooper might never have invented the cellular phone. And were it not for fantastic tales of interstellar travel and alien invasion written by H. G. Wells, Robert H. Goddard might never have invented the multistage rockets that eventually made spaceflight possible.2 Science fiction might also help readers acclimate to the uncertainties posed by the unknowable future. According to Isaac Asimov, It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is but the world as it will be. . . . Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not. Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today—but the core of science [End Page 1] fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.3 Ursula K. Le Guin takes a similar view with regard to fantasy. She notes that the genre affords its readers with “a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence. It is not antirational but pararational; not realistic, but surrealistic, superrealistic, a heightening of reality.”4 In other words, far from serving as a diversion from the everyday world, fantasy can be imagined as a creative tool kit that allows readers to reconsider how the world has been built and to question whether it might be constructed differently if we are ever given the chance. It encourages a kind of literacy that allows one to go beyond the ability to “read the operating instructions,”5 literacy whose only purpose is to enable subjects to function efficiently within existing systems of labor and citizenship, and instead aims toward a critique of the status quo. In fact, in a speech that she gave at the National Book Awards in 2014, Le Guin specifically praised the ability of fantasy to help societies think through difficult social and political problems. “Hard times are coming,” she told the audience of writers, publishers, and booksellers, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. . . . We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art.6 This special issue aims to further the notion that speculative fiction (including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and all manner of other fantastical subgenres) has something more to offer humanity beyond mere escapism. Our contributors posit that these genres provide a unique opportunity for creators and audiences to imagine alternatives to entrenched political narratives and to the so-ordinary-as-to-seem-invisible structures of power that organize our existence. Just as a technology must be dreamed before it can be built, so must new ideologies be envisioned before they can be enacted. Indeed, one of the greatest tricks that an ideological system can pull [End Page 2] is to convince the world that it doesn’t exist, that it is simply a description of what is “normal” or “factual” or “natural” or just the way things have always been and therefore need not be examined. As José Esteban...

True-Born Nationality and Other Patriarchal Fictions in Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines (1668) and Daniel Defoe's The True-Born Englishman (1700/1)

True-Born Nationality and Other Patriarchal Fictions in Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines (1668) and Daniel Defoe's The True-Born Englishman (1700/1)1 Amanda Louise Johnson "A True-Born Englishman's a Contradiction, / In Speech an Irony, in Fact a Fiction." (1.372-3).1 So says The True-Born Englishman, a satirical poem that by Daniel Defoe (ca. 1660-1731). Until recently, Defoe's early career as a poet has gone relatively ignored, perhaps because it reveals a Defoe living in the Restoration rather than the novel-dominated early eighteenth century. Written in heroic couplets and engaging with biblical allegories to discuss the English nation, The True-Born Englishman certainly shows the broad influence of Dryden's Absalom & Achitophel. Defoe biographers, moreover, have noted his admiration of Rochester and Milton, two men who deployed graphic language to expose the abuse of patriarchal power, another central theme of The True-Born Englishman.2 Neither Milton nor Rochester, though, linked dysfunctional monarchy with a vexed English identity quite as directly the republican satirist Henry Neville (1619-1694), an idiosyncratic figure most remembered for his fictional travel narrative, The Isle of Pines. Published in its first complete edition in 1668, Neville's The Isle of Pines relates the discovery of a fictional island that has been settled by several English-speaking castaways.3 Because of the text's frank discussions of polygamy, The Isle of Pines has been received somewhat uncritically by some as a light-hearted satire or "pornotopia."4 Polygamy in The Isle, however, has serious consequences that expose the fictionality of legitimate descent that underwrote hereditary monarchy as well as the nativist system of national belonging. In this respect, The Isle of Pines anticipates Defoe's thesis in The True-Born Englishman (1701) that the principle of legitimate descent—central to Stuart royalism, ethnocentric [End Page 3] nationalism, and white supremacy in the colonies—was a noxious fiction that would divide England against itself and render it vulnerable to foreign conquest. Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines and Patriarchal Dystopia The Isle of Pines begins in 1668 with a frame narrative in which a Dutch sailor, Captain Henry Van Sloetten, relates his discovery of an island near Madagascar.5 Surprised when the "naked Islanders" turn out to speak English, Van Sloetten and his crew land on the island to investigate further (3).6 They meet the island's current ruler, William Pine, who offers Van Sloetten the testimony of his grandfather George Pine, the founder of the community. George Pine's testament thus appears to the reader as an inset narrative within William Pine's inset narrative, and when it ends, William Pine resumes narrating to Van Sloetten the island's history under George's successors. The Dutch captain then observes more of the Pines' culture, quells an islander rebellion, and sails onto the East Indies, musing on the Isle of Pines' ripeness for European conquest. The narrative moves quickly, and in just over thirty pages from a modern octavo volume, The Isle of Pines deconstructs systems of privilege based on descent, suggesting that the social inventions of legitimacy and illegitimacy will ultimately undo the patriarchal structure from which they arise. The seeds of patriarchy's self-destruction first appear in The Isle of Pines' inset story, in which George Pine is a bookkeeper who joins a commercial vessel called The Indian Merchant, helmed by a man named "English," on a voyage to the East Indies (7). The year is 1569, during the reign of Elizabeth I, later idealized by seventeenth-century republicans as the antithesis of Stuart tyranny (7).7 Regarded by Restoration republicans as England's "Golden Age," the Elizabethan era comes to an abrupt end in 1603 with the queen's death and, because of the patriarchal laws of monarchical succession, the descent of the throne to James, who would alienate Parliament with his belief in the divine right of kings.8 For Restoration-era republicans looking back, England in 1569 must have seemed like a grand vessel unaware of its coming shipwreck. And of course The Indian Merchant does wreck, killing everyone except George Pine, the merchant's daughter Sarah...

Republicanizar la religión: el clero en el debate político de la independencia chilena, 1808-1814

This paper analyzes, from the perspective of intellectual history, the theological debate during the first period of Chilean independence. Focusing on the public role of religious discourse and the political dimension of the clergy’s activity, this work examines the discussions related to the problem of popular sovereignty, the theory of the divine right of kings, the religious justification of political change and the attempts to promote republican ideology from a Biblical perspective.

Jakub I (VI) STUART – łowca czarownic – część I.

Król Jakub VI (I) Stuart jest znany jako jeden z najważniejszych i najbardziej wyrafinowanych angielskich obrońców monarchii absolutnej i zajadły wróg purytanów. Jednakże nieliczni wiedzą, że Jakub był również sławnym łowcą czarownic i autorem Demonologie – rozprawy filozoficznej dotyczącej nekromancji, czarostwa i czarnej magii. W tej części autorzy dowodzą, że król Jakub nie zapoczątkował polowań na czarownice w Szkocji, lecz jego pisarstwo wpłynęło na prawną stronę procesów czarownic poprzez określenie definicji czarostwa oraz sposobów identyfikacji wiedźmy. Pozycja króla sprawiła bowiem, że jego koncepcje stały się wpływowe i szeroko akceptowane. Zgodnie z przekonaniem autorów osobiste doświadczenia Jakuba w tym względzie wpłynęły również na rozwój jego koncepcji boskiego prawa królów.

Remember the Ladies: Gender Equity for Corporate Compliance Programs Using Nanotechnology

Her famous letters to her husband urged him to “Remember the Ladies” when declaring independent suffrage for humans who lacked the divine right of kings, and also described the hard work of managing a family business while raising and educating several children while combatting illness. Abigail Adams wrote a letter to her husband, John Adams, 95 days before Mr. Adams signed the Declaration of Independence “in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors”. Gender equity in the workplace is therefore an old problem, and a problem that has garnered significant attention in recent decades.

In the Jain Puranas, the King's Rights and Duties

In the Jain Puranas, the King's Rights and Duties

First and Second Drafts of History: The Case of Trump, Foucault and Pre-Modern Governance

How do we, as scholars – social scientists and historians – respond to momentous contemporary events? Our instincts urge caution, but the events demand action. While blogs and other media offer some paths, they can veer too much towards the snap judgments associated with bad journalism and simplistic representation. This paper consists of two essays, one embedded in the other, that challenge us to think differently about news, social science, and history. The impetus comes from an attempt to make sense of the first, muddled weeks of the new Trump administration in Washington. With reference to Foucault’s concept of governmentality, it reflects on how the CEO-in-Chief at the White House seemed to invoke a form of pre-modern governance, reminiscent of the divine right of kings and echoing a case in the not-too-distant past of a lapse in corporate governance. The main essay then resumes to consider what this means about academic writing and publishing, and what it might mean in terms of new forms of scholarly communication and impact about current affairs, as the first, rough draft of history passes into and through a second.

FIRST AND SECOND DRAFTS OF HISTORY: THE CASE OF TRUMP, FOUCAULT AND PRE-MODERN GOVERNANCE

How do we, as scholars – social scientists and historians – respond to momentous contemporary events? Our instincts urge caution, but the events demand action. While blogs and other media offer some paths, they can veer too much towards the snap judgments associated with bad journalism and simplistic representation. This paper consists of two essays, one embedded in the other, that challenge us to think differently about news, social science, and history. The impetus comes from an attempt to make sense of the first, muddled weeks of the new Trump administration in Washington. With reference to Foucault’s concept of governmentality, it reflects on how the CEO-in-Chief at the White House seemed to invoke a form of pre-modern governance, reminiscent of the divine right of kings and echoing a case in the not-too-distant past of a lapse in corporate governance. The main essay then resumes to consider what this means about academic writing and publishing, and what it might mean in terms of new forms of scholarly communication and impact about current affairs, as the first, rough draft of history passes into and through a second. [This paper is is available open access as a SHERPA/RoMEO publication by the publishers, Addleton Academic Publishers.]

Cross and Culture in Anglo-Norman England: Theology, Imagery, Devotion by John Munns

Reviewed by: Cross and Culture in Anglo-Norman England: Theology, Imagery, Devotion by John Munns Catherine E. Karkov Cross and Culture in Anglo-Norman England: Theology, Imagery, Devotion. by John Munns. [Bristol Studies in Medieval Culture.] Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: The Boydell Press. 2016. Pp. xviii, 333. £60.00; $99.00. ISBN 9781783271269. John Munns describes his book as a "cultural history of an image, in which a period of English religious culture and society will be explored through one particular imaginative lens" (p. 5). The result is a truly impressive interdisciplinary study of a period of art history that has long merited more scholarly attention. As the title suggests, the book is divided into three interdependent parts: the theology of the cross, the image of the cross, and the way of the cross. It takes as its starting point [End Page 798] the changes that occurred in crucifixion imagery during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, attributing them to a constellation of phenomena that developed in and from the writings of St. Anselm, encompassing theological and political changes, and the influence of art and events from outside England. Part I focuses on the period c.1066 to c.1170, exploring the development of Anselm's affective devotional processes and practices, his theory of salvation and the debates that arose over the nature of the Eucharist, and the role of images in encouraging a more personal and mimetic devotion to the cross. Part II moves on to the variety of cruciform and crucifixion imagery that Christians would have encountered in England during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with chapters on public monuments, liturgical images, and narrative cycles in manuscript illumination. Part III focuses on ethics and aesthetics in the period c.1170 to c.1215, assessing the influence of Thomas Becket's Christo-mimesis and his promotion of aspects of Anselm's theology on visions of the cross, and exploring the rise of pilgrimage and the cult of relics in England after Becket's martyrdom, as well as the profound changes brought about as a result of the Third and Fourth Lateran Councils and the Crusades. The division of the book into three parts provides a convenient way for Munns to organize his material, but his analysis is scrupulous in providing the background to specific historical and art historical developments, as well as the larger national and international contexts in which they took place. One can quibble with certain elements of the analysis. Some mention of the proto-mystical nature of the Ruth-well Cross, for example, would have been helpful in the sections dealing with the Anglo-Saxon background to the development of Anglo-Norman crucifixion imagery. Some discussion of materials and techniques would also have been relevant to his mapping of the shift in depictions of the body of Christ on processional and altar crosses in chapter 4. The overall argument, however, is convincing. Throughout, Munns argues for the active role of art and images in the changes that occurred throughout the period covered. Far from being a simple reflection of events outside of itself, art shaped attitudes towards religion, devotion, political, and social events. Images provided models of spiritual balance that could be imitated by the faithful; they helped to define attitudes toward kingship and the divine right of kings; and, toward the end of the twelfth century, they helped to shape people's attitudes toward Jews and Judaism—attitudes that, Munns notes, included support and friendship as well as violence and antisemitism. The book is beautifully illustrated, and there are only a few minor editorial errors. Cross and Culture in Anglo-Norman England is a monumental work of scholarship that will long be a primary point of reference for medievalists in a variety of fields. [End Page 799] Catherine E. Karkov University of Leeds Copyright © 2017 The Catholic University of America Press

Ecological Civilization and the New Enlightenment

Ecological Civilization and the New Enlightenment

Enlightened Sexism, Structural Violence or the Failure of Representative Democracy: The 2016 Gender Equality Referendum

The Bahamas has a structure of inequality built into its colonial heritage and post-colonial governance. Women are not considered equal to men. In fact, many women do not see the need for equality. Some branches of the Church encourage the idea that women are less equal than men interpreting it as divine Christian law. Much like the divine right of kings, there is no challenging the doctrine. As the gender equality referendum failed once again after a 15-year gap between the vote in 2002 and the vote in 2016, can one be surprised. The failure of the referendum seems to speak to a distrust of government and a contempt for the political system, particularly in the wake of the gambling referendum, that was really an opinion poll, but, a poll that government refused to heed. The failure was also based on xenophobia, homophobia and clannishness. Enlightened Sexism seems to be an appropriate description of the policies and laws as well as attitudes of a large portion of the Bahamian population that agreed that women should not have the same rights as men.

‘God's hangman’: James VI, the divine right of kings, and the Devil

This article considers James VI and I's treatise on the divine right of kings, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies (1598), in relation to his earlier treatise on witchcraft Daemonologie (1597). James's articulation of divine right kingship not only served to refute the arguments of his former tutor, George Buchanan (1506–1582), and the Jesuit, Robert Persons (1546–1610), but also served as a bulwark against the perceived threat of the supernatural to his rule. James incorporated the ideal of a stoic subject previously put forward in his Daemonologie into the Trew Law, offering a doctrine of non-resistance that both Catholic and presbyterian subjects were expected to follow. The ideal stoic subject would remain firmly in command of their passions, enduring the ‘curses’ of tyranny or of witchcraft without actively seeking relief for their circumstances.

Literature, Religion, and the Evolution of Culture, 1660–1780. Howard D. Weinbrot. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. Pp. viii+371.

<i>Literature, Religion, and the Evolution of Culture, 1660–1780</i>. Howard D. Weinbrot. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. Pp. viii+371.

Holy War or Sedition? The Prophetism of Parisian Preachers and Catholic Militancy, 1558–1588

The uses of prophetism—that is, prophetic activities and personas, as well as prophecy itself—by several celebrated Parisian preachers were transformed during the Wars of Religion. The personal charisma of the pulpits' occupants carried less weight than it had during the Middle Ages. By contrast, the collective identity of those preachers who were doctors of theology was affirmed by references to the sacerdotal Judaism of the Levites. As a result of this evolution, the Faculty of Theology came to lead the battle against religious pacification. Reinforcing the analogy between preachers' freedom of speech and that of the biblical prophets transformed the meaning of obedience to the king. At the same time, biblical imaginary promoted the politicization of sermons. Alongside the struggle against irenicism, a theocratic ideology came to oppose the divine right of kings. Prophetic preaching thus became an instrument for legitimating the right of resistance, which found its institutional form in the 1588 Edict of Union.

Doktryna władzy monarszej Jakuba VI (I) Stuarta

James I Stuart’s theory of the divine right of kings&#x0D; The author presents King James I Stuart’s theory of the divine right of kings as the modification of Bodin’s concept of the sovereignty. According to King James, a monarch is subjected to no earthly authority, as he derives his right to rule directly from the will of God. The king is thus not a subject to the will of his people, the aristocracy, or any other estate of the realm, including the Church. This doctrine implies that any attempt to depose a king or to restrict his power is contrary to the will of God and may constitute treason. The author argues, that the theory of the divine right of kings is rooted in the medieval idea that God had bestowed earthly power to the king, just as He had given spiritual power and authority to the Church, centering on a pope and in this way in protestant kingdoms may justifies the king’s absolute authority in both political and spiritual matters. The author points out that it is contrary to Bodin’s theory of sovereignty and he argues that King James’ general statements of divine right should not be read as claims about specific royal powers in any particular kingdom. Unlike the theorists of absolutism, King James thus believed the king to be bound to exercise his authority through defined constitutional channels. Such a requirement went beyond that expected of the absolute monarch, who was to rule well if he were to avoid the charge of tyranny. Finally the author argues, that King James’ theory of power is the attempt of the restoration of Christian uniformity and of the re‑Christianization of Bodin’s concept of the sovereignty.

Lectures on Political Right, Delivered at the Ateneo of Madrid. Lecture 2 (November 29, 1836): On Popular Sovereignty

In the second of ten Lectures on Political Right, delivered in Madrid’s Ateneo in November 29, 1836, Juan Donoso Cortes considers the notion of “popular sovereignty.” Distinguishing mind and will as two parts of human essence, Donoso deduces from the former the “law of the association” that unites all human beings, and from the latter, the “law of the individual,” that separates them. Hence, the main problem for Donoso as a liberal conservative is how to combine these two laws. Donoso states that while traditionalists propose to focus on the “law of the association” and ends with tyranny that destroys free will, revolutionaries, by contrast, focus on the “law of the individual,” which leads to anarchy as a variant of the same tyranny. In making a historical digression to the periods of the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, Donoso shows how the revolutionary idea of “popular sovereignty”, linked directly to the “law of the individual”, gradually overcomes the idea of “divine right of kings”, based on the “law of the association.” Donoso criticizes the English and French philosophers of the 17-18th centuries (Hobbes and Rousseau, above all) the most, as these philosophers laid the foundation for historical drama of the Great French Revolution. Offering his own liberal-conservative alternative for the two named extremes (traditionalism and revolution), Donoso calls to abandon the “atheist”, “immoral”, “absurd”, and “impossible” “popular sovereignty”, and combine the “law of the individual” and the “law of the association” on entirely different basis of the “sovereignty of reason, sovereignty of justice”.

Factor Markets in Hellenistic and Parthian Babylonia (331 BCE-224 CE)

AbstractBecause the evidence is meagre, this article takes a qualitative rather than a quantitative approach to the markets of land, labour, and capital in Hellenistic and Parthian Babylonia. The evidence consists of administrative documents from Babylon and Uruk (Babylonian clay tablets in cuneiform script), from Dura Europos on parchment or papyrus (in Greek and Aramaic), and from Avroman in (Greek and Pahlavi). These texts suggest that the land market was restricted by the legal rights of king and temple. There is little information on wage labour. Slave labour existed, but neither its role in the economy nor the importance of the slave trade has been adequately assessed. The use of credit, interest, cheques, and other financial instruments is attested, but its significance is small, not least because of the prevalence of iconic interest rates of 20%, set by tradition rather than by market forces. As far as the evidence goes, the markets for land, labour, and capital were restricted by tradition and by the claims of king and temples on land, while the commodity markets were much more market-oriented.

Anti-Catholicism, civic consciousness and parliamentarianism: Thomas Scott’s Vox Regis (1624)

&lt;p&gt;The Anglo-Spanish negotiations for a dynastic alliance which began in 1614 had never been popular among a large section of English Protestants, who felt that their monarch should demonstrate a more active commitment to European Calvinism. Such prejudices increased after 1618 when the Bohemian crisis began and James did not support the Elector Palatine against the Habsburg Empire. The anti-Catholic mood reached its peak in October 1623, when the Prince of Wales arrived in London after his failed journey to Madrid. Many Londoners viewed his return as a victory over Spain and demanded a shift in Anglo-Spanish relations. This article considers the political tract &lt;em&gt;Vox Regis&lt;/em&gt; (1624), written by Thomas Scott, one of the most prolific anti-Catholic pamphleteers at the time. In this work Scott develops many of the arguments proposed in Parliament in order to persuade James to change his religious and foreign policy. His anti-Catholic attacks vehicle debates on the role of citizens in the Commonwealth and more participatory types of government, in opposition to the crown’s appeal to the &lt;em&gt;raison d’état&lt;/em&gt; and the doctrine of the divine right of kings. Thus, Scott relates anti-popery to civic consciousness, linking his discourse to the humanist tradition and anticipating some of the ideological discussions prevalent in England during and after the civil war.&lt;/p&gt;

Hume as 'Tory Historian': Political Uses and Misuses of His History of England

When the volumes of Hume’s History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 appeared in print between 1754 and 1762, they were often read and appraised through the lens of contemporary political divisions. While this was true to some extent about all historical works written in the period, it was especially true for Hume, who chose to write his history backwards, beginning with the most recent era, that of the Stuart dynasty, which was full of highly contentious issues around which controversy still raged. His sympathetic treatment of Charles I, criticism of parliamentary leaders during the Civil War, disparaging of “fanatical” Puritans, and evenhanded treatment of issues like the “Popish Plot,” brought down the wrath of ardent Whigs upon his head. Conversely, Tories were pleased, though it did not escape their notice that Hume was far from endorsing doctrines like the divine right of kings. Similarly, in France, philosophes were appalled at his presumed endorsement of monarchical authority and the established church, while royalistes sang his praises. Such a conservative champion did le bon David seem through the rest of the ancien regime and revolutionary era that one modern scholar has dubbed him “prophet of the counter-Enlightenment.” In colonial America, recent scholarship has shown significant levels of interest in Hume’s History, contrary to earlier views that it was little read and slightly regarded. Initial American responses were somewhat more nuanced than those in France and Britain, though by the early Federal period, his history tended to be anathema to the followers of Jefferson, who famously denounced it as “poison.” A close examination of Hume’s History reveals a much more balanced, skeptical treatment than these polarized views suggest, with an overarching intent by the author to demythologize Britain’s past. In spite of his own Whiggish views, he took special pains to puncture the myths of the Whig party (like that of a supposedly free, representative constitution in Anglo-Saxon times), considering it unworthy of his fellow Whigs to ground their beliefs in anything other than a well informed, skeptical approach to history. Unbiased readers at the time in all three societies were aware of this, but by the closing years of the eighteenth century, the process of drastically Bowdlerizing Hume’s History was gaining ground, which only served to lock into place the author’s undeserved reputation as a Tory historian.