Poussin’s Elephant

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 548-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Rice
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Exotic Animals ◽  
Stylistic Development ◽  
The Alps ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

AbstractNicolas Poussin’s “Hannibal Crossing the Alps,” long considered one of his earliest surviving works, is here recognized as a portrait of a historical elephant who visited Rome in 1630 and re-dated accordingly. The article tells the story of this remarkable animal. It traces his passage from South Asia through Portugal, Spain, England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, and back again to France, and examines his encounters along the way with kings and courtiers, scholars, artists, and traveling showmen, giving insight into the diplomatic and economic uses of exotic animals in early modern Europe. Finally, returning to Poussin, it addresses the implications of the re-dating of the “Hannibal” for our understanding of the painter’s stylistic development and biography.

scholarly journals Humans as Animals and Things in Pre-Buddhist China

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 360
Author(s):  
Michael Nylan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Early China ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
East And West ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

This paper examines the way thinkers in the pre-Buddhist world in China viewed the animal-human divide. It argues that the boundaries between humans and animals were porous. The only unique capacities that human beings are credited with were first (widely) the ability to develop their unique potentials (chengren 成人), and, second (in a very few texts), the capacity to respond with greater sensitivity to the resonant world around them. In both contexts, the extant terms make use of two terms, ling 靈 and jingshen 精神. Part II of the essay then turns to examine the most influential Euro-American theories cited in today’s secondary literature regarding the animal-human divide. None of these seem remotely like the theories articulated in early China. In Part III, the essay examines vitalism, which is an unusual instance in early modern Europe where an important theory seems to approach the views of early China, with the express aim of reminding readers that we need not automatically posit an impassable gulf between East and West, but can, instead, profit from wider reading that yields more comparative insights.

“NOTHING IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE”: GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE TIME REGIME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 821-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEBASTIAN CONRAD
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New Technology ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Time Regime ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

When European clocks first arrived in seventeenth-century Japan they generated a commotion. The highly complex but also very precise instruments had been brought to Nagasaki by the Dutch East India Company that monopolized the sparse and highly regulated trade between Japan and Europe for more than two centuries. As an expression of the technological sophistication achieved in early modern Europe, mechanical clocks were hi-tech products of their time. They operated with a spring to store the energy, and their making required highly developed skills in casting and metalwork. The new technology made it possible to emancipate the measurement of time from sunshine and to achieve an evenness of temporal rhythms, not only during the day, but also at night.

OF LIVING LEGENDS AND AUTHENTIC TALES: HOW TO GET REMEMBERED IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 103-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Pollmann
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Memory Practices ◽  
New Criteria

ABSTRACTFolklore experts have shown that for a legend to be remembered it is important that it is historicised. Focusing on three case-studies from early modern Germany and the Netherlands, this article explores how the historicisation of mythical narratives operated in early modern Europe, and argues that memory practices played a crucial role in the interplay between myth and history. The application of new criteria for historical evidence did not result in the decline of myths. By declaring such stories mythical, and by using the existence of memory practices as evidence for this, scholars could continue to take them seriously.

Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe*

1990 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Findlen
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Scientific Texts ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

During The Sixteenth And Seventeenth centuries natural history, and to a certain extent science in general, rediscovered its capacity for playfulness in the form of the scientific joke. By scientific joke, I mean thelusus naturae, or joke of nature, and the lusus scientiae, or joke of knowledge, that populated the museums and scientific texts of the period. The relation between the natural paradox of lusus and the scientific demonstrations and experiments that were also lusus points to the way in which the dynamic between art and nature and between collector and audience unfolded in the spectacle of science.

scholarly journals The Hermeneutics of Transmission: Deciphering Discourses on Poetry and the Arts in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800)

2011 ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Déborah Blocker
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Political History ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
The Status ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

This article discusses how the constitution, circulation and institutionalization of discourses on poetry and the arts in early modern Europe could best be accounted for from a historical point of view. Pointing to various inconsistencies in the way historians of ideas have traditionally explained the rise of aesthetic discourses, the article examines the usefulness of the tools crafted by historians of the book for the development of such a project. Through an example, the drawbacks of interpretations based solely on serial bibliographies are also addressed, as the author argues for the importance of case studies, grounded in social, cultural and political history, through which various types of aesthetic practices may be made to appear. She also suggests that, to bypass the theoretical and practical deadlocks of traditional Begriffsgeschichte as far as the study of aesthetic practices is concerned, intellectual traditions and the actions that make them possible — that is “actions of transmission” — are to be promoted to the status of primary hermeneutic tools.

Liberating Judgment

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas John Casson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Absolute Certainty ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

Examining the social and political upheavals that characterized the collapse of public judgment in early modern Europe, this book offers a unique account of the achievement of liberal democracy and self-government. The book argues that the work of John Locke instills a civic judgment that avoids the excesses of corrosive skepticism and dogmatic fanaticism, which lead to either political acquiescence or irresolvable conflict. Locke changes the way political power is assessed by replacing deteriorating vocabularies of legitimacy with a new language of justification informed by a conception of probability. For Locke, the coherence and viability of liberal self-government rests not on unassailable principles or institutions, but on the capacity of citizens to embrace probable judgment. The book explores the breakdown of the medieval understanding of knowledge and opinion, and considers how Montaigne's skepticism and Descartes' rationalism—interconnected responses to the crisis—involved a pragmatic submission to absolute rule. Locke endorses this response early on, but moves away from it when he encounters a notion of reasonableness based on probable judgment. In his mature writings, Locke instructs his readers to govern their faculties and intellectual yearnings in accordance with this new standard as well as a vocabulary of justification that might cultivate a self-government of free and equal individuals. The success of Locke's arguments depends upon citizens' willingness to take up the labor of judgment in situations where absolute certainty cannot be achieved.

Maintaining the Common Peace: Security and the Religious Peace of 1578 during the Dutch Revolt

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-250
Author(s):  
Erik Swart
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
The Common ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Religious War

Abstract This article analyses the failed Dutch Religious Peace of 1578 through the lens of security. As Wayne te Brake recently argued in Religious War and Religious Peace in Early Modern Europe, creating security for all parties is key for an effective religious peace. In the sixteenth century, communal security was deemed a collective responsibility. In practice this meant that religious peace – suppressing and preventing violence and threats between Protestants and Catholics – was framed as a matter of preserving the common peace. Theological questions were dissimulated or kept out of peace settlements. In 1578, the religious peace proposed that Catholics and Calvinists were to live in the Netherlands side by side, each allowed to worship publicly. Some 27 Dutch towns introduced this religious peace. Yet the municipal magistrates mostly did so reluctantly and generally declined to share political power, thus contributing to its failure. Moreover, there were different, conflicting conceptions at work concerning the common peace, as well as regarding how to keep it.

Ireland and the Monarchy in the Early Stuart Multiple Kingdom

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Perceval-Maxwell
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Foreign Intervention ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

Ireland's position as a kingdom in early modern Europe was, in some respects, unique, and this eccentricity sheds light upon the complexity of governing a multiple kingdom during the seventeenth century. The framework for looking at the way Ireland operated as a kingdom is provided, first by an article by Conrad Russell on ‘The British problem and the English civil war’ and secondly by an article by H. G. Koenigsberger entitled ‘Monarchies and parliaments in early modern Europe – dominium regale or dominium politicum et regale’. Russell listed six problems that faced multiple kingdoms: resentment at the king's absence, disposal of offices, sharing of war costs, trade and colonies, foreign intervention and religion. Koenigsberger used Sir John Fortescue's two phrases of the 1470s to distinguish between constitutional, or limited monarchies, and more authoritarian ones during the early modern period. Both these contributions are valuable in looking at the way the monarchy operated in Ireland because the application of the constitution there was deeply influenced by Ireland's position as part of a multiple kingdom and because Englishmen, looking at Ireland, wanted her to be like England, but, at the same time, did not wish her to exercise the type of independence that they claimed for England.

scholarly journals A CASA COMO MODELO ORGANIZACIONAL DAS NOBREZAS DE SÃO MIGUEL (AÇORES) NO SÉCULO XVIII

2002 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
José Damião Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Consanguineous Marriages ◽  
Property Transfer ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

Na Europa Moderna, o modelo central de organização dos grupos domésticos era o da casa. No arquipélago dos Açores, cujo povoamento se iniciou a partir de 1439, a casa era também a estrutura organizadora do universo nobiliárquico local, em estreita relação com o sistema vincular. A vinculação, associada às práticas endogâmicas e consanguíneas e ao sistema de transmissão de bens por via das alianças matrimoniais, constituiu um poderoso instrumento de reprodução social das nobrezas insulares. Neste artigo, são apresentados alguns dados relativos ao modo como as nobrezas locais da ilha de São Miguel utilizaram o morgadio como instrumento de reprodução social no século XVIII e aos problemas de gestão da casa nobre. Abstract In Early Modern Europe, the central model of the organization of domestic groups was the household. In the archipelago of the Azores, where settlement began in 1439, household was also the reference for the organization of local nobilities, in close connection with the system of entail. The entail, in association with endogamy and consanguineous marriages and the system of property transfer by means of matrimonial alliances, was a powerful tool converted by the Azorean gentry into a means of social reproduction. In this paper, we present some data concerning the way the gentry of the island of São Miguel used the entail with that purpose in the 18th century and also the management of the noble household.

House-Destruction as a Ritual of Punishment in Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-624
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Friedrichs
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
European Society ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Execution ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

The public execution of criminals was a familiar ritual of early modern European society. This article, however, examines the less frequent practice of ordering that a criminal’s house be ritually demolished following the execution. In many cases, the destroyed house was then replaced by a monument which was intended to simultaneously obliterate and perpetuate the criminal’s memory. Rare as it was, ritual house-destruction was a surprisingly widespread practice, undertaken at various times between 1520 and 1760 in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal and the Netherlands. Though punitive house-destructions had been undertaken in medieval Europe, the practice acquired new overtones in the early modern era. This article examines how and when this striking form of punishment was applied in early modern Europe and considers why authorities would order the destruction of property in order to enshrine the memory of particularly serious crimes.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document