Recent Work in Renaissance Studies: Psychology Did Madness Have a Renaissance

1991 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 776-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Thomas Neely

All the terms in the title of the plenary session, “Recent Work in Renaissance Studies on Psychology,” at the Renaissance Society of America's 1991 annual meeting (where this paper was first delivered) are matters of conflict and debate. In this discussion I shall examine current debates about the “Renaissance,” “psychology,” and “madness” to account for the paucity and insufficiency of current work on early modern madness by historians and literary critics and theorists, to raise issues about current trends in Renaissance studies, and to elicit new kinds of scholarship.

Dialogue ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Christopher Thomas

Abstract Spinoza's philosophy is often celebrated for its strong anti-normative current. Spinoza argues, for instance, that good and bad do not indicate anything positive in things, and that affects are always particular to the situation in which they arise. And yet Spinoza argues that melancholy is “always evil,” and cheerfulness “always good,” thus problematizing a key metaphysical principle of his system. Turning to select sections in the Ethics and Theological-Political Treatise, this article offers a reading of these two problematic affects before connecting Spinoza to recent work on early modern melancholy that conceptualizes it as an ‘assemblage.’


Rural History ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Heather Falvey

AbstractIn the early summer of 1588, twenty-seven inhabitants of the large parish of Rickmansworth (Hertfordshire) presented a petition to two local Justices of the Peace complaining about disorder in Mill End, on the outskirts of the main town, caused by those frequenting Richard Heyward’s alehouse. Most recent work on alehouse sociability has considered attitudes towards drinking and its regulation after the early Jacobean legislation; in contrast, this article considers attitudes towards drunkenness in late sixteenth-century England, including the views expressed in the official ‘homily against drunkenness’ and in the Sabbatarian pamphlet published in 1572 by Humfrey Roberts. Similarly, most work on early modern protest considers complaints against the activities of the protestors’ social superiors; in this instance petitioners complained about the conduct of their inferiors. Although, due to archival attrition, it is impossible to determine what action the authorities took against Heyward and his clientele, thanks to the chance survival of a personal letter it is possible to reconstruct the reactions of the JPs to whom the petition was addressed, thus shedding light on how JPs might act outside the Quarter Sessions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-160
Author(s):  
Jorge Ledo

The aim of this volume is not to offer a comprehensive overview of the multifarious aspects of fiction and its implications for early modern philosophy, but to be an invitation, from the standpoint of the history of philosophy, to survey some of the fundamental problems of the field, using six case-studies written by some of the finest international scholars in their respective areas of Renaissance studies. Although perhaps not evident at a first reading, these six studies are linked by common concerns such as the theoretical relationship between (literary) history, rhetoric, poetics, and philosophy; the tensions between res, verba, and imago; and the concept of enargeia. They have been arranged according to the chronology of the corpus each one considers.


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