Rise Of Pluralism Research Articles

More than Luther: The Reformation and the Rise of Pluralism in Europe ed. by Karla Boersma and Herman J. Selderhuis

More than Luther: The Reformation and the Rise of Pluralism in Europe ed. by Karla Boersma and Herman J. Selderhuis

Bishop-Poets in the Shadow of the Council of Trent: Antonio Sebastiani Minturno and the Poemata Tridentina

The atmosphere of the Council of Trent was permeated by literature. Italian bishops at the time of Reformation were acquainted with the most significant humanistic literary culture of the sixteenth century. Antonio Sebastiano Minturno (1500–1574), an Italian bishop who actively attended the last phases of the Council, was author of two treatises on poetics, secular and sacred poems in vernacular (1559, 1561) and Latin poems. The importance of literature in his life can be seen in the network of his intellectual and political relations as well as in the use of poetry and literature in order to assert spiritual values and to represent the main events of his times. In particular, the Poemata Tridentina (1564), a collection of poems about the Council and its protagonists, can be read as a document of his spiritual life and of the catholic perception of the Council itself, since they are one of the rare literary works which explicitly deal with the Council of Trent as main theme. A different version of the paper was presented at the International Conference "More than Luther: The Reformation and the Rise of Pluralism in Europe" (Seventh Annual RefoRC Conference 2017, Wittenberg 10–12 May 2017).

Difference Unbound: The Rise of Pluralism in Literature and Criticism by Stamos Metzidakis (review)

Reviewed by: Difference Unbound: The Rise of Pluralism in Literature and Criticism by Stamos Metzidakis Abbey Carrico Metzidakis, Stamos. Difference Unbound: The Rise of Pluralism in Literature and Criticism. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012. Pp. 276. isbn: 978-9042036260 In the author’s note introducing the second edition of Difference Unbound: The Rise of Pluralism in Literature and Criticism, Stamos Metzidakis claims that due to several recent (re)defining events in American society, “[We] can never again pretend to live in some imagined homogeneous world.” From this, it would seem that Metzidakis advocates a pluralistic worldview in which “the promotion of [End Page 308] diversity, heterogeneity, multiculturalism and difference itself is a very good thing indeed” (Author’s note). And yet, through Difference Unbound, Metzidakis hopes to encourage fellow scholars to accompany him in examining and evaluating the unquestioned and non-historicized rise of pluralism in the academy so that “a more limited view of pluralism” can be established and can illuminate “the ways in which it actually benefits or hinders people working in the literary field” (3). A delineation is therefore set between “society at large,” in which heterogeneity is an aspired-to ideal, and literary/aesthetic domains, which, as Metzidakis argues, are in danger of internal and external expiration due to an “anything and everything goes” attitude (20). Through this “polemic against pluralism” (232), the author hopes to “stir up still more debate” (Author’s note) than did the first edition. However, apart from a new preface by Mary Ann Caws, an updated author’s note, and a concept index, the body of Difference Unbound does not include specific retorts to the “controversy” (Author’s note) the first incited. Rather than indicate a lack of subsequent research or dialogue, though, the reappearance of this relatively unchanged book suggests that Metzidakis’s evaluation of pluralism is even more pertinent today than it was in 1995 as scholars are continually called to justify and defend their ideologies and practices. As the author explains, Difference Unbound originated from a colleague’s question concerning interpretative practices: “‘What is wrong with one more new reading of Hamlet?’” (9). Here, Metzidakis redirects inquiry to an examination of whether there should be, not whether there can be, infinite textual interpretations. Through five chapters offering a balance of theory and example, the work serves as a history of literary modernity, focusing on both artistic creation and interpretation. In the first and final chapters, Metzidakis elucidates and then “re-views” the current “‘problem’ of literary pluralism,” situating its rise within nineteenth-century notions of originality and progress. In chapters three and four, he explores—through both epistemological and historical lenses—these concepts that have become, as he claims, obsessions within the fields of aesthetic production and criticism. Ultimately, Difference Unbound suggests that difference itself has come to reign as the new singular (and thus un-differentiated) reading in the very field that proclaims pluralism as dogma. As Metzidakis argues, scholars and artists alike have become apt to value originality, progress, and difference as the principle indicators of success without consideration for other evaluative criteria. Therefore, in order to deemphasize the “over-idealization of these concepts” (205), he would have us recognize and vocalize the fact that we work within boundaries even if unknown to us (or unacknowledged by us), and even if they go “against” what we proclaim to believe. Above all, Metzidakis asks us, as critics, to cease placing difference above all else merely for difference’s sake, and to admit that this gesture itself is essentially critical, evaluative, and judgmental. [End Page 309] Abbey Carrico Virginia Military Institute Copyright © 2014 University of Nebraska Press

Who shall judge? Hobbes, Locke, and Kant on the construction of public reason

This paper investigates early modern and enlightenment roots of contemporary ideas of public reason. I argue that concepts of public reason arose in answer to the question ‘who shall judge?’ The religious and moral pluralism unleashed by the reformation led first to the weakening of authoritative common forms of reasoning, this in turn and more importantly led to the question who is the final arbiter when a political community is faced with deep disagreement about political/moral questions. The rise of pluralism meant that to the question ‘what are the standards of public right?’ is added the corollary and equally important question ‘who judges when those standards are violated?’ The answer is that the public judges. Public reason thus refers to the role of the public as judge of public right and not simply to a set of reasons that an actual public happens to share. On this reading of Hobbes, Locke, and Kant, the initial contract recedes in importance while the seat of authoritative political judgment comes to the fore.

Capital Punishment and Sexual Politics in Lecomte's La Veuve de Saint Pierre

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments Stamos Metzidakis has published three books: Repetition and Semiotics: Interpreting Prose Poems (1986), Difference Unbound: The Rise of Pluralism in Literature and Criticism (1995), and Understanding French Poetry: Essays for a New Millennium (1994, 2nd edition 2002). He is currently finishing two new books, one on French America, another on pre-Mallarmeen literary visuality. Notes Notes 1. It should also be noted that over a hundred and fifty years ago Victor Hugo wrote to the president of the United States to protest the execution of the abolitionist John Brown. 2. To appreciate how important this otherwise obscure tale has been for the inhabitants of Saint Pierre itself, see Eugène Nicole's L’Oeuvre des mers (Paris: François Burin, 1988), a novel about his own early education and life on this remote island. 3. In a letter addressed to me Jan. 24, 2002, Lecomte writes: “Je ne travaille jamais avec des références picturales directes, mais il est vrai que, sans en avoir vraiment conscience, je suis nourri de tout ce que mon oeil a pu enregistrer, et en effet la peinture française du 19ième siècle a pu, d’une manière souterraine, m’inspirer.” 4. Lecomte writes that “la dimension ‘légendaire’ ou ‘surhumaine’ de cette histoire et de ses personnages, est consciente et délibérée.” 5. Of course, this is ironic since in the film the Governor takes a stance on both capital punishment and sexual politics precisely opposite to the one taken by Lecomte. One might therefore interpret this irony as a sign of Lecomte's implication and eventual hope that the mindset of even the most hardened government official in favor of such traditionally conservative political stances can still one day be transformed given the right circumstances. What better French figure could one imagine of someone for whom antithesis functions so profoundly in human understanding and history than Hugo? See the essay by Stamos Metzidakis and Regina Young for the most recent study of the transformative role antithesis plays in Hugo's literary and political projects. 6. See note 5. 7. In this respect, the story's plot and setting on an island seems to have inspired the director to rewrite, indirectly and probably unconsciously, certain parts of François Truffaut's famous film, “Adèle H,” which deals with similar (Hugolian) themes and characters. Lecomte writes: “Ce qui, indirectement, crée un lien entre le film et Hugo, c’est sans doute cette parenté qui existe avec “Adèle H”. Et si l’on peut penser au beau film de Truffaut, c’est sans doute parce que les personnages vivent un destin très ancré dans cette période romantique, et puis aussi parce que le cadre visuel (une île) est très proche.” 8. Such recurrent images of knives and cutting also occur in another of Lecomte's films, “La Fille sur le pont.” In his letter to me, however, the director writes: “Je n’ai jamais eu aucun goût pour les lames, au contraire! Tout ce qui peut couper m’effraie. Mais il n’en reste pas moins que votre analyse à ce sujet est juste et pertinente.” 9. This same characterization of the foreigner also forms the basis of Kristeva's main arguments in her Etrangers à nous-mêmes. 10. This, in essence, is the thesis advanced by Cixous in her now classic essay “Castration or Decapitation?”

What is “good criticism”? A conversation in progress

Where does drama get its materials? From that is going on at point in history when we are born. Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, discussion had already begun long any of got there, so that no one present is to retrace for you all steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught tenor of argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him [or her]; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself [or herself] against you, to either embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon quality of your ally's assistance. However, discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with discussion still vigorously in progress. It is from this ... that materials of your drama arise. (Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form 110-11) Some forty-two years after Kenneth Burke described history, from a dramatistic perspective, as an unending conversation, Sonja Foss offered as a metaphor for rhetorical criticism's process of development (Criteria 288). In rhetorical scholarship, knowledge and progress cannot be measured in terms of linear accumulation, which assumes that a single vocabulary or metaphor is used by all so that pieces of are built on previous ones.... Given that data cannot be verified objectively, our aim becomes to continue conversation about data rather than to discover truth about them (Foss, Criteria 288). The topic of what constitutes rhetorical scholarship is one for which an unending conversation is, indeed, in progress, a conversation into which Editor Mike Allen has asked this volume's contributors to dip their oars. Therein lies challenge. As I enter this ongoing conversation I face twin risks that I will say too much, repeating what others have already said, and that I will say too little, failing to remember what others have said. Aware of this, I still want to provide a (recognizably incomplete) summary of what I have heard in conversation (while constantly reminding myself that I am qualified to retrace for you all steps that had gone before especially since much of it transpired the point in history when [I was] born either as a body or as a scholar.) Beginning with Spring 1957 special issue of what was then called Western Speech (edited by Ernest Wrage), rhetorical scholars sought to define and clarify what constituted good rhetorical scholarship. In 1957, main problem was uniformity of critical method and concomitant search for more diverse approaches. The renamed Western Journal of Speech Communication revisited rhetorical criticism in its Fall 1980 special issue, devoted to State of Art (edited by Michael Leff. By this point in time, a diversity of approaches to criticism existed: neo-Aristotelian, movement criticism, critical models, genre analysis, and dramaturgical (later called dramatistic). Writing elsewhere, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell celebrated diversity available to scholars on eve of 1980s, arguing it was not a sign of chaotic instability but evidence of health and maturity of our discipline (The Nature 9). However, Leff still worried that, with proliferation of theoretical approaches, critics lack perspectives that enable to make adequate connections between theoretical constructs and concrete data of rhetorical experience. The rise of pluralism has broken us loose from old constraints and encouraged fresh activity in field, but multiplication of theories does resolve tension between theory and practice (Interpretation 342). …

Difference Unbound: The Rise of Pluralism in Literature and Criticism (review)

Difference Unbound: The Rise of Pluralism in Literature and Criticism (review)

Difference Unbound: The Rise of Pluralism in Literature and Criticism

Difference Unbound: The Rise of Pluralism in Literature and Criticism

The decline and rise of pluralism in East Central Europe, 1949–1989, or how not to see the forest for the trees

The decline and rise of pluralism in East Central Europe, 1949–1989, or how not to see the forest for the trees

America in Search of a New Ideal: An Essay on the Rise of Pluralism

Demands by ethnic and cultural groups for equal power in society have increased steadily over the past two decades. The Protestant Anglo-American ideal of assimilation has failed in important ways and cannot continue to guide the policies of our social institutions. The result in education has been movements for alternative schools, community control, vouchers, ethnic studies, and bilingual programs. In this essay, the author explores the reasons behind the rise of pluralism. First he describes the elites' style of leadership by distance and their attempts to exclude or denigrate people of other than Protestant, Northern and Western European origin. The author suggests that the resulting decline of Protestant domination has left America without an ideal to direct the socialization process. In its place, he recommends support of pluralistic institutions and communities,setting policies that honor diversity as a way of maintaining unity, and, at the same time, developing a new, universal ideal.