Visual Culture and Mathematics in the Early Modern Period. Ingrid Alexander-Skipnes. ed. Visual Culture in Early Modernity 59. London: Routledge, 2017. x + 204 pp. $160.

The special issue at hand provides a contribution to the historical exploration of early modern carmina heroica (epic poems) in the German area of the early modern period, especially of the ‘long’ 17th century. To this purpose, perspectives of Latin and German Studies, of researchers with expertise in medieval and modern literary history, are brought together. This introductory article puts the following theses up for discussion: 1) The view that epic poems of the early modern period are a genre with little relevance for the history of literature is wrong and has to be corrected. 2) Accordingly, the view has to be corrected that the history of narrative in the modern era leads teleologically to the modern novel. 3) For the exploration of the history of carmina heroica, the traditions of didactic poems and heroic poems have to be taken into consideration together. 4) Epic poems of the ‘long’ 17th century have a particular tendency to generic hybridization. 5) The genre history of carmina heroica can be reconstructed appropriately only by taking into account the vernacular as well as the Latin tradition.

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Jesuit Visual Culture: Communication, Globalization, and Relationships

Journal of Jesuit Studies ◽

10.1163/22141332-00602001 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 187-195

Author(s):

Alison C. Fleming

Keyword(s):

Visual Culture ◽

Material Culture ◽

Early Modern ◽

Visual Arts ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Society Of Jesus ◽

Modern Period ◽

Works Of Art ◽

Art And Architecture

The visual arts are a powerful tool of communication, a fact recognized and utilized by the Jesuits from the foundation of the order. The Society of Jesus has long used imagery, works of art and architecture, and other aspects of visual and material culture for varied purposes, and the five articles in this issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies explore how the art they commissioned exemplifies the ideals, goals, desires, and accomplishments of the Society. In particular, these five scholars examine a wide array of images and ideas to consider myriad relationships between the Society and works of art in the early modern period, and the implications of their increasingly global footprint.

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A Woodblock’s Career

Nuncius ◽

10.1163/18253911-03501002 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 20-63

Author(s):

Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen

Keyword(s):

Knowledge Transfer ◽

Visual Culture ◽

Early Modern ◽

Publishing House ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Low Countries ◽

Modern Period ◽

Botanical Knowledge ◽

The Press ◽

History Of

Abstract The Antwerp publishing house Officina Plantiniana was the birthplace of many important early modern botanical treatises. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the masters of the press commissioned approximately 4,000 botanical woodblocks to print illustrations for the publications of the three Renaissance botanists – Rembert Dodoens, Carolus Clusius, and Matthias Lobelius. The woodcuts became one of the bases of early modern botanical visual culture, generating and transmitting the understanding of plants throughout the Low Countries and the rest of Europe. The physical blocks, which are preserved at the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp, thus offer a material perspective into the development of early modern botany. By examining the 108 woodblocks made for Dodoens’ small herbal, the Florum (1568), and the printing history of a selected few, this article shows the ways in which the use of these woodblocks impacted visual botanical knowledge transfer in the early modern period.

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Sri Lanka in the Long Early Modern Period: Its Place in a Comparative Theory of Second Millennium Eurasian History

Modern Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0026749x07003447 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 43 (4) ◽

pp. 815-869 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

ALAN STRATHERN

Keyword(s):

Sri Lanka ◽

Early Modern ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Early Modernity ◽

Solid States ◽

The Third ◽

Modern Period ◽

Comparative Theory ◽

The Impact ◽

Eurasian History

AbstractThis paper explores how Sri Lanka might fit into Victor Lieberman's theory of Eurasian history. Lieberman's work to date has focused on the ‘protected rimlands’ which he sees as sharing the same historical path from a milieu of warring little kingdoms to increasingly large, solid states. But what happens in a land, such as Sri Lanka, which can be considered ‘protected’ before 1500, and ‘unprotected’ thereafter? Political integration and boundaries are first discussed, followed by ethnic and historical awareness before 1500. The third section sketches the chronological development of Buddhism before 1500, while the fourth considers the impact of the European interruption, and the fifth briefly looks at the results for 1600–1800. Along the way, some problems with applying the notion of ‘early modernity’ to Sri Lanka are disclosed.

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The Gift and Art in Early Modernity

10.5117/9789463726429_ch01 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Michael Zell

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Gift Exchange ◽

Gift Giving ◽

Early Modern Europe ◽

Common Assumption ◽

Early Modernity ◽

Modern Period ◽

Symbolic Economy ◽

The Gift

This chapter examines the centrality of gift giving to the developing commercial cultures of early modern Europe and the rise to prominence of works of art, especially paintings, in circuits of gift exchange. Contrary to common assumption, gift giving in the early modern period acquired renewed importance as a mode of negotiating professional, social, and personal ties in a rapidly changing, increasingly commercialized environment. Art also emerged as an essential gift currency for negotiating relationships of patronage and clientage, and highly selfconscious artists increasingly turned to the gift’s symbolic economy to negotiate with patrons and set their transactions apart from ordinary forms of exchange. I probe the interconnections between gifts and art in various overlapping contexts of early modernity.

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