scholarly journals New ways of looking into handwritten miscellanies of the seventeenth century: the case of “Spes Altera”

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 205-225
Author(s):  
Purificación Ribes Traver
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Inns Of Court ◽  
Structural Coherence ◽  
Manuscript Copy

A large number of copies of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 2 circulated in handwritten miscellanies from the second quarter of the Seventeenth Century. Eleven of those copies have significant variant readings that have led critics to put forward different hypotheses regarding their nature and quality. Most critics, taking into account stylometric analyses, have regarded them as early drafts of Shakespeare’s printed version, and have agreed on their poor quality.By paying due attention to the text’s context of production and reception, we have reached a different conclusion regarding both the nature and quality of the handwritten versions of Sonnet 2. In our view, they are the product of a conscious rewriting on the part of some educated member of the universities or Inns of Court. Close reading of the manuscript copy text (Spes Altera, Bellasys Ms, c.1630), and a line by line comparison with the 1609 Q text, suggest a deliberate attempt on the part of its adapter at increasing the poem’s metrical regularity and structural coherence.

Naturalizing Sharīʿa: Foundationalist Ambiguities in Modern Islamic Apologetics

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 45-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew F. March
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Ethical Systems

This essay discusses an important feature of much modern Islamic writing on law, politics and morality. The feature in question is the claim that Islamic law and human nature (fiṭra) are in perfect harmony, that Islam is the “natural religion” (dīn al-fiṭra), and thus that the demands of Islamic law are easy and painless for ordinary human moral capacities. My discussion proceeds through a close reading of the Moroccan independence leader and religious scholar ʿAllāl al-Fāsī (d. 1974). I discuss the ambiguities within Fāsī’s theory and suggest that the natural religion doctrine might be better understood less as a reduction of Islamic law to “natural law” and more as an apologetic effort to defend the realism and feasibility of Islamic law. In the hands of reformers like Fāsī, this project is beset with unresolved ambiguities around the constraining quality of revealed law in practice and the moral validity of non-Islamic political and ethical systems.


Serjeant Knight's Discourse on the Cross and Flags of St George (1678)

2001 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 351-390
Author(s):  
C S Knighton ◽  
Timothy Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Dominant Feature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Manuscript Copy ◽  
Samuel Pepys ◽  
Original Drawings

In January 1678 John Knight, the Serjeant Surgeon of Charles II, sent to Samuel Pepys a ‘Discourse containing the History of the Cross of St. George, and its becoming the Sole Distinction = Flag, Badge or Cognizance of England, by Sea and Land’. Knight argued that St George's cross should become the dominant feature in English flags and supported his argument with a history of the cross.A manuscript copy of this discourse, with Knight's original drawings, survives in the Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge, and is published here. A brief biography of Knight is presented and an account of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century controversies about St George. The latter was an issue which caused acrimony between Royalists and Puritans. An Appendix reconstructs Knight's library, principally consisting of books concerning heraldry, topography and history.

The Textual Evolution of the Ottoman Şeyhülislams’ Fetvas: A Cross-Corpora Computational Analysis

Der Islam ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 516-545
Author(s):  
Boğaç Ergene ◽  
Atabey Kaygun
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Computational Analysis ◽  
Computational Techniques ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Institutional Evolution ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Term Evolution ◽  
Speed Up ◽  
Over Time

Abstract In this article, we use a mix of computational techniques to identify textual shifts in the Ottoman şeyhülislams’ fetvas between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Our analysis, supplemented by a close reading of these texts, indicates that the fetvas underwent multiple forms of transformation, a consequence of the institutional evolution of the şeyhülislam’s fetva office (fetvahane) that aimed to speed up and streamline the production of the fetvas: over time, the texts appropriated a more uniform character and came to contain shorter responses. In the compositions of the questions, we identified many “trigger terms” that facilitated reflexive responses independent of the fetvas’ jurisprudential contexts, a tendency that became stronger after the second half of the seventeenth century. In addition, we propose in the article a methodology that measures the relative strengths of textual and conceptual links among the fetva corpora of various Ottoman şeyhülislams. This analysis informs us about possible paths of long-term evolution of this genre of jurisprudential documents.

Stancetaking in seventeenth-century prefaces on obstetrics

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Alonso Almeida ◽  
Margarita Mele-Marrero
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Epistemic Stance ◽  
Authorial Identity ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Relationship

This paper deals with authorial stance in prefatory material of Early Modern English manuals on women’s diseases. Publications on this field from between 1612 and 1699 constitute our corpus of study. Original digitalised texts have been analysed manually to identify and detect structures concerning authorial identity and stance, according to the model developed by Marín-Arrese (2009). This model for the identification of effective and epistemic stance strategies enables us to describe both the relationship between the authors and their texts and, more specifically, the power relationship between the writers and their audience. One of the most important conclusions of this study concerns the strategic use of stance markers to enhance the quality of these books and make them appropriate for a wide variety of readers.

Breeched and Unbridled: Bifurcated Equestrian Garments for Women in Early Modern Europe

Costume ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-185
Author(s):  
Valerio Zanetti
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Affective Meaning ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Modern Europe

This article discusses the wearing of bifurcated equestrian garments for women in early modern Europe. Considering visual representations as well as documentary sources, the first section examines the fashion for red riding breeches between the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Worn for their comfort and functionality in the saddle, these garments were also invested with powerful symbolic and affective meaning. The second section provides new insights about female equestrian outfits in late seventeenth-century France. Through the close reading of two written accounts, the author sheds light on the use of breeches as undergarments in the saddle and discusses the appearance of a hybrid riding uniform that incorporated knee-length culottes. By presenting horsewomen who wore bifurcated garments in the pursuit of leisure rather than transgression, this study revises historical narratives that cast the breeched woman exclusively as a symbol of gender upheaval.

Institutional memory and contemporary history in the House of Commons, 1547–1640

2018 ◽  
pp. 211-228
Author(s):  
Paul Seaward
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Institutional Memory ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

Parliament in the course of a century after 1547 became almost certainly the best-recorded institution in Britain. This essay considers the nature of institutional memory in the late sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century House of Commons. It concerns firstly the nature and quality of institutional memory, and how, while it relied considerably on non-inscribed memory, it changed with the growth of the written record. It discusses the importance of precedent to parliamentarians, and how precedents were identified and selectively used. But more broadly it considers how written records, both of a formal and official nature and a private and unofficial kind, were developed over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in order to generate a narrative about parliament that helps to consolidate its landmark status. As a result, parliament came to be recognised and revered as the key institution in the relationship between the state and the individual.

Enclosed Exhibitions : Claustrophobia, Balloons, and the Department Store in Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn A. Haklin
Keyword(s):  
Department Store ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Spatial Confinement ◽  
Visual Effect ◽  
Exterior Space ◽  
Spatial Framework ◽  
Literary Space

This chapter examines spatial confinement in the eponymous department store of Émile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames. A close reading of one of the novel’s sale chapters reveals that the store director mobilizes several strategies to engender a suffocating atmosphere at the temporary exhibition. Linking literary space and publicity, the chapter argues that the store’s promotional balloons act as ephemeral, yet dynamic advertisements that dismantle interior and exterior space. The balloons instantiate the ephemeral quality of the sales since, in spite of their brief duration, they produce a lasting visual effect that problematizes a spatial framework opposing interior and exterior spaces. This reading suggests that publicity contributes to the claustrophobia of commerce in Zola’s fictional ephemeral exhibitions.

Amy Beach, “Phantoms,” Op. 15, No. 2 (1892)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurel Parsons ◽  
Brenda Ravenscroft
Keyword(s):  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Victor Hugo ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Voice Leading ◽  
Solo Piano ◽  
Strategic Approach ◽  
American Composer

With “Phantoms,” the second solo piano piece from her Four Sketches op. 15 (1892), American composer Amy Beach adopts a “strategic” approach to tonality that manipulates formal, harmonic, and linear closure. The analysis presented in this chapter demonstrates, through a close reading of the phrase structure, harmonic vocabulary, textures, motivic design, and voice leading of the piece, Beach’s aptitude for tonal obfuscation, which she employs to convey a sense of the epigraph she borrowed from Victor Hugo: “Toutes fragiles fleurs, sitôt que nées” (“Such fragile flowers, as soon as they are born”). The melody she constructs is indeed fragile, floating as it does over various “misharmonizations,” and including not one but two gaps in its descent from ‸5 to the tonic. By avoiding explicit melodic reference to ‸4 and ‸2 and making abundant use of registral coupling, Beach compellingly captures the ethereal quality of the flowers described by Hugo.

scholarly journals Revisiting Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator” in Light of His Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism1

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
James St. André
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Doctoral Thesis ◽  
Definition Of

Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator,” the most widely cited twentieth century philosophical statement on translation, is commonly seen as one of the most opaque and misunderstood essays in the field. This paper uses a close reading of Benjamin’s doctoral thesis, “The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism,” to throw light on his thoughts on translation. I argue that the German Romantics’ definition of art, and art’s relation to criticism, are crucial to understanding why Benjamin conceived of translation as an “afterlife” of the work of art, why he believed that translatability is an innate quality of the work of art, and why he speaks of translation as moving the work of art onto a higher plane. I read Benjamin’s own essay on translation as a sort of “criticism” which seeks to “translate” the philosophical ideals of the Romantics, and thus give them an afterlife, and then reflect upon the implications for translation studies today.

Distant Reading the Body, 1640–1699

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (296) ◽  
pp. 681-701
Author(s):  
Rachel Mann ◽  
Michael Gavin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Distant Reading ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Conceptual Structures ◽  
Abstract Entities ◽  
Social Entity ◽  
Early English

Abstract This paper analyses seventeenth-century discourse of the human body over the Early English Books Online full-text corpus. Anatomy and medicine depict the body as a physiological object, knowable mainly through its parts and processes. Fiction and poetry tend to represent the body as a social entity, knowable primarily through intersubjective action and ethical ideals. In both contexts, bodies are perceived and described through close attention to their parts, but when bodies are conceived as such, they are described as abstract entities that organize the whole. This distinction is difficult to see at the level of close reading but unmistakable at larger scale. Deep conceptual structures at work underneath both anatomy and fiction, we argue, underlie a conception of the body that informs more particularized notions of mobility, sociality, and physicality.

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