Jeffrey Jaynes, Christianity beyond Christendom: The Global Christian Experience on Medieval Mappaemundi and Early Modern World Maps. (Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 149.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018. Pp. 483; many color plates and black-and-white figures. €128. ISBN: 978-3-4471-0715-0.

Speculum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 517-518
Author(s):  
Alfred Hiatt
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Black And White

scholarly journals Marlowe and Shakespeare Cross Borders: Malta and Venice in the Early Modern World

Early Theatre ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shormishtha Panja
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Grand Narrative ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Decisive Victory ◽  
Early Modern Venice

This essay deals with the worlds of early modern Malta and Venice, two distinctly non-English locations, as depicted by Marlowe and Shakespeare. In particular, it considers the roles Jews played in The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice. I argue that while Shakespeare is completely accurate in his depiction of the spirit of financial and mercantile adventurism and huge risk-taking that characterized early modern Venice, he does not fully reflect the tolerance that marked this early modern trading capital. Shakespeare bases his play on binaries and antagonistic opposition between the Jews and the Christians in Venice while Marlowe consciously resists painting his world in black and white. Marlowe’s Malta is a melting pot, a location where boundaries and distinctions between Jew, Christian, and Muslim, and between master and slave, blur, and easy definitions and categorizations become impossible. In spite of borrowing many historical details of the Great Siege of Malta (1565), Marlowe refuses to end his play with the siege and its attendant grand narrative of heroic Christian troops defeating barbaric Turks and bringing about a decisive victory for the Christian world.

Allegra Iafrate, The Long Life of Magical Objects: A Study in the Solomonic Tradition. The Magic in History Series. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, xi, 235 pp., 19 b/w images, 2 tables.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-254
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modern World ◽  
State University ◽  
Eastern Culture ◽  
Historical Objects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Objects ◽  
The Middle Ages

Throughout times, magic and magicians have exerted a tremendous influence, and this even in our (post)modern world (see now the contributions to Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2017; here not mentioned). Allegra Iafrate here presents a fourth monograph dedicated to magical objects, primarily those associated with the biblical King Solomon, especially the ring, the bottle which holds a demon, knots, and the flying carpet. She is especially interested in the reception history of those symbolic objects, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, both in western and in eastern culture, that is, above all, in the Arabic world, and also pursues the afterlife of those objects in the early modern age. Iafrate pursues not only the actual history of King Solomon and those religious objects associated with him, but the metaphorical objects as they made their presence felt throughout time, and this especially in literary texts and in art-historical objects.

The Oxford History of Historical Writing

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
North West ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

How was history written in Europe and Asia between 400–1400? How was the past understood in religious, social, and political terms? And in what ways does the diversity of historical writing in this period mask underlying commonalities in narrating the past? The volume tackles these and other questions. Part I provides comprehensive overviews of the development of historical writing in societies that range from the Korean Peninsula to north-west Europe, which together highlight regional and cultural distinctiveness. Part II complements the first part by taking a thematic and comparative approach; it includes chapters on genre, warfare, and religion (amongst others) which address common concerns of historians working in this liminal period before the globalizing forces of the early modern world.

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