Chapter

Scottish Modernism

January 2010

DOI:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199545445.013.0043

Authors:

This article examines the cultural revival that took place in Scotland in the years after the end of World War 1. It explains that the Scottish Renaissance, initiated by C. M. Grieve, was primarily a literary movement, although there were individual visual artists and musicians who interacted with it. The article argues that it was the final poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Muir which brought to a close one of the most vital periods in Scottish literary activity, one that not only restored a distinctive and diversified identity to Scottish literary culture but also restored the connections with European art and thought which had been an intrinsic element of the Scottish culture of the late medieval and eighteenth-century periods.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.

Article

The Spiritual History of Ice

May 2003

Eric G. Wilson

At the end of the eighteenth century, scientists for the first time demonstrated what medieval and renaissance alchemists had long suspected; ice is not lifeless but vital, a crystalline revelation of vigorous powers. Studied in esoteric and exoterical representations of frozen phenomena, several Romantic figures - including Coleridge and Poe, Percy and Mary Shelley, Emerson and Thoreau - ... [Show full abstract] challenged traditional notions of ice as waste and instead celebrated crystals, glaciers, and the poles as special disclosures of a holistic principle of being. The Spiritual History of Ice explores this ecology of frozen shapes in fascinating detail, revealing not only a neglected current of the Romantic age but also a secret history and psychology of ice.

Book

Making Ireland Roman: The Latin Writing of Early Modern Ireland, ed. Jason Harris & Keith Sidwell, C...

January 2009

Jason Harris

This collection of articles by leading scholars focuses on Irish writing in Latin in the Renaissance and aims to rewrite Irish cultural history through recovery and analysis of Latin sources. This book renders accessible for the first time the vastly important Irish contribution to the counter-reformation, to European Renaissance and baroque literature in Latin and to the intellectual culture of ... [Show full abstract] European Latinity. The ethnic, cultural and religious divisions within Ireland produced a divided Latin writing and reading community. The Latin language became the medium in which the Catholic Church operated. When Christianity took root in Ireland so too did Latin. It became one of the principal languages of Ireland for over a thousand years resulting in over one thousand books being published by Irish authors. In order to convey the idiosyncrasies of Gaelic culture in the language of European scholarship to an international audience, Irish authors had to engage in a process of cultural translation. Many were Catholic exiles who attempted to promote an alternative to the English colonial narrative being written by domestic scholars. Some writers felt compelled to defend their country’s reputation as a result of defamatory comments made by other writers. Articles include a detailed reconstruction of a feud with Scottish historians about the identity of medieval ‘Scotia’ as they claimed that it referred to Scotland rather than Ireland. Other articles include a contextual study of the political epic poem ‘Ormonius’, an examination of the major Latinist Richard Stanihurst and an evaluation of the literature of Catholic exile.

Article

La tradició poética i moralitzant del cérvol: la poesia 89 de March

Llúcia Martín Pascual

El motiu del cérvol té una ampla tradició en la literatura medieval ja que es tracta d’un símbol relacionat, per una banda, amb la purificació de l’aigua –la qual cosa suposa una mena de renovació o ressurrecció– i, per una altra banda, amb el desig de morir per amor a Déu. Es tracta, a més, d’una de les imatges animals que més ocurrències té en la tradició poética, ja que el sentit religiós ... [Show full abstract] original es transforma en la mort per amor a la dama i la ressurrecció en la renovació vital que sorgeix de l’amor. Aquesta difusió de la simbologia del cérvol és tan extensa, segons veurem en aquest treball, que fins i tot ultrapassa els límits de la poesia medieval, ja que continua en la poesia del XVI. Treball realitzat en el marc dels projectes d’investigació BFF-2002-1273 i BFF-2002-1254.

Article

The Making of Medieval Forgeries: False Documents in Fifteenth-Century England (review)

January 2005 · Renaissance Quarterly

Bryan Davis

At first blush, the topic of medieval forgery would seem to be an unpromising one, because, as it says on the dust jacket to the volume, "the Middle Ages have long been famous for spectacular forgeries" that have been spectacularly easy to detect. However, Alfred Hiatt aims to take the blush off this assumption by showing that regardless of the authenticity of many medieval documents there are ... [Show full abstract] many important lessons to be learned from close investigation of specific instances of medieval forgery. Most importantly, this book reminds its readers about the continuity between late medieval English attitudes towards documents, authentic and inauthentic, and humanist attacks on the veracity of medieval documents, such as Lorenzo Valla's De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione. Hiatt accomplishes this feat by reading medieval forgeries "not as quasi literary products of a single author, but as narratives that circulate within a textual community, that are validated or rejected by its members, and hence that indicate the kinds of texts that are valued or required by the community" (15). In addition, he contextualizes humanist discourse on medieval forgery by showing that Valla's viewpoint was neither unanticipated nor unchallenged, especially in late medieval and early Renaissance England. The Making of Medieval Forgeries is organized into three main parts and a conclusion; the first two chapters of the book introduce the historiographic "problem" medieval forgery. On the one hand, a document that has been identified as a forgery has surely been compromised as a historical source since it has become in some sense false, while on the other, many medieval forgeries were made without the intention to deceive but rather with the intention of recording genuine facts that had not been committed to writing or with the intention of replacing documents that had been lost or destroyed. Furthermore, Hiatt also shows that at least in England medieval forgery was in most cases a result of local conditions of time and place. The second part of the book, which consists of three chapters, presents three fifteenth-century case studies designed to demonstrate how specific textual communities responded to local conditions by "forging" documents that they required. The case of Crowland Abbey shows that "not only did monasteries continue to produce forgeries, they also, in many cases, had to assimilate the legacy of eleventh- and twelfth-century fabrication into their histories" (36). Historiographers at the Abbey attempted to forge new, one might say nonexistent, links in the chain of the institution's history. Another case study examines Cambridge University's audacious fifteenth-century claims to greater antiquity than Oxford and shows how these claims were consistent with the western European mythology of the Studium. The fifth chapter of the book examines the case of John Hardyng who forged a variety of documents as evidence to support the argument of his metrical chronicle of English history, an argument that he adapted to the interests of both Lancastrian and Yorkist claims to overlordship of Scotland. In the final two chapters of his book, Hiatt turns to consider the Constitutum Constantini, the target of Lorenzo Valla's attack on medieval forgery, in its medieval context. Specifically, he argues that the medieval purpose of the Constitutum Constantini was devotional rather than historical or diplomatic. This section of the book also considers some late medieval pretexts for the humanist discourse on forgery that may be found in the works of Reginald Pecock and Nicolas of Cusa among others. From this contextualization of humanist discourse on forgery Hiatt concludes that the value and importance of medieval ideas on documents endure. He argues that the "modern discourses of liberty, empowerment, and authenticity, which take as their symbol the charter, owe a debt to a discourse which articulates principles for identification of truth and the relegation of falsehood — the discourse of forgery" (187). For my part, I would recommend this book to any scholar, medieval or renaissance, who wishes to reflect on the alterity of the past in its own terms.

Article

Review: The Transmission of Old English Poetry, Westfield Publications in Medieval and Renaissance S...

January 2001

CHRISTINE FRANZEN

Chapter

Reformers and Humanists

January 1978

Reinder P. Meijer

In the history of Dutch literature the sixteenth century is usually regarded as a period of transition in which the medieval conceptions gradually receded into the background and made way for those of the modern era. The term ‘period of transition’ is, of course, a facile one: from any given vantage point in time one can look down on a preceding period and regard it as a period of transition, ... [Show full abstract] pointing to the first appearance of certain phenomena of which one already knows the fully mature stage. But certain periods are characterized by particularly rapid and radical changes, and the sixteenth century in Dutch literature is undoubtedly one of those. The changes that took place are usually accounted for by that trinity of terms: Humanism, Renaissance and Reformation. These three factors, whether one regards them as an indivisible unity or as three separate movements, brought about a series of changes in the literature so far- reaching that the term period of transition is fully justified. These changes were on the whole international, and the change of direction which Dutch literature took was due to influence from outside. But apart from this, the direction of Dutch literature was also affected by an internal development: as a result of the war against Spain the centre of gravity of Dutch literature shifted from the southern to the northern provinces, and then stayed there. The province of Holland became the cultural as well as the economic and political centre of the Low Countries, and from the end of the sixteenth century onwards the most important writers lived in Holland. In view of all this one cannot object to a characterization of the sixteenth century as an age of transition, but the proviso must be added that no value- judgment is implied. It is true, the sixteenth century did not produce writers of the calibre of Vondel, Hooft, Bredero and Huygens, but it would be wrong to demote the sixteenth- century writers automatically to the status of fore-runners of the great writers of the seventeenth century. Their achievements are more satisfactorily, and more justly, assessed in terms of what they themselves accomplished than in terms of what the later writers made of their achievements.

Article

Harley 6919: Word and Image in Renaissance Scotland

March 2014 · European Journal of English Studies

Jane Stevenson

Engravings circulated in pre-Reformation Scotland, providing models for Scottish craftsmen: Antwerp and Bruges are likely sources. The Scots élite were visually literate, and commissioned artworks such as Books of Hours. Engravings were used both decoratively and devotionally as highly personal possessions: unfortunately the books that survive from pre-Reformation Scotland are mostly ... [Show full abstract] institutional and clerical, not those of the laity. Very few fifteenth-century prints survive at all, because print-collecting did not begin till the sixteenth, so evidence is scanty. There is direct and indirect evidence in Scotland for acquaintance with standard medieval Christian iconography, and it is likely that this was achieved by circulating prints. The Chepman and Myllar prints have woodblock printer’s marks, and there was a block-cutter in Edinburgh by 1539. William of Touris’ Contemplacyon of Synners, moralising poems each based on an engraving, is key evidence for familiarity with prints (a copy survives with drawings based on the print originals).

Article

The art of memory and rhetoric

Linda Theresa Calendrillo

This dissertation is a revisionist history of the art of memory in rhetoric. Chapter One argues for the need for such a history and introduces some issues and problems inherent in revising accounts of the role of memory and its arts historically in rhetoric and in developing a modern rhetorical theory of memory. Chapter Two describes the two major mnemonic systems, the loci and the textual ... [Show full abstract] strategies, which developed in classical rhetorical texts. As a whole, this study shows that the two arts of memory were not ignored after the classical period. Rather they have been influencing rhetorical practices throughout the historical periods that follow their introduction. This study also shows that the source of this influence has been ignored or forgotten while the use of mnemonic adaptations in rhetoric and other fields has flourished. Chapter Three describes the medieval and renaissance periods during which the arts are adapted in the work of Aquinas, Camillo and Ramus, and are used in the visual arts, commonplace books, and the emblem books. Chapter Four treats the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when memory's arts are used in the rhetorics of Bacon and Vico, and Campbell introduces an associative theory of memory to inform his rhetorical system. Chapter Five discusses the nineteenth century when the classical arts of memory appear in style and arrangement rhetorics and in popular mnemonics. Chapter Six examines the twentieth century, by describing how the arts are being studied in research on learning, creativity, schema, and reading theories and by arguing for modern uses of the two classical arts of memory and for the viability of both external and internal memory storage systems. It also suggests how modern rhetorical theory and current pedagogical practices might benefit from application of both the loci and the textual classical mnemonic arts to increase retention of information, to promote good thinking skills, and to enhance creativity.

Article

‘That suck’d the honey of his music vows’: Disability studies in early modern musicological research

May 2012 · postmedieval

Samantha Bassler

Disability studies as a sub-field of musicology is relatively new, but it has emerged as an exciting and growing methodology for scholarly analysis and understanding of music. To date, the major studies that have applied disability methodology have been on music written and performed after the eighteenth century. While disability studies of medieval and early modern literature are growing in ... [Show full abstract] popularity, there has not been a major study of disability in medieval or Renaissance music. This is unfortunate, since the healing and soothing properties of music were well known in the early modern period, and music therefore had a prominent place within the narrative of disability. In this essay, I will illustrate an enhanced understanding of the role of disability in early music scholarship through exploring disability and disease in the case studies of mad songs sung by Ophelia in Hamlet and Desdemona in Othello. I will also discuss specific challenges of scholarly work in disability studies that deals with femininity and early music, and provide a methodology for avoiding these difficulties.

Article

Paracelso e la tradizione paracelsiana

January 1998 · Bulletin of the History of Medicine

William Eamon

Bulletin of the History of Medicine 72.3 (1998) 539-541 This book is an Italian translation of a series of lectures given by Allen G. Debus in 1990 at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici in Naples. It presents a concise summary of Debus's views concerning the diffusion and influence of Paracelsianism in early modern Europe. Introductory in nature and containing little that cannot be ... [Show full abstract] accessed from Debus's well-known English works, it will be of interest principally to Italian readers. For those whose facility with the Italian language is limited, the book will not be missed. In the first chapter, Debus traces the emergence of Paracelsianism against the background of the humanist revival of Galenism. In addition to offering a concise description of Paracelsus's medical and philosophical views, he treats the rise and significance of the "chemical philosophy" in the Renaissance. Of particular interest to medical historians is his treatment of the introduction of alchemically prepared drugs in the Renaissance. In chapter 2, Debus discusses the diffusion of Paracelsian ideas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and shows that these doctrines led to rancorous dissension in the scientific community. A brief section on France summarizes the findings of his recent book The French Paracelsians (1991). Somewhat less satisfactory is Debus's discussion of Paracelsianism in Spain and Italy. His assertion, for example, that Spain remained "closed to foreign influences" as a result of religious orthodoxy (p. 37) repeats a well-worn formula that ignores recent findings of David Goodman and a host of Spanish historians to the contrary. In fact, a lively discussion of alchemy took place in Philip II's court -- only it was not Paracelsianism that interested the Spanish; rather, it was the medieval alchemical tradition stemming from Arnald of Villanova and pseudo-Ramon Lull. But this can hardly be attributed to Spanish closed-mindedness; indeed, a perusal of the vast library of Juan de Herrera, Philip II's architect and designer of the Escorial, would make it abundantly clear that the Spanish were anything but "closed to foreign influences." Similarly, in his brief treatment of the Italian context, Debus attributes (erroneously, I believe) to Paracelsian influences what was in fact the diffusion of the Arnaldian and pseudo-Lullist alchemical tradition. In the last two chapters, Debus discusses the wider significance of Paracelsianism for the development of early modern science. The "chemical philosophy," he asserts, emerged in the seventeenth century as a viable alternative to the mechanical philosophy. In particular, Jean Baptiste van Helmont appears in this analysis as the representative of a new, reformed chemical philosophy that competed, for a time, on nearly equal terms with the mechanical philosophies of Descartes and Newton. In his concluding chapter, Debus calls for a reevaluation of the scientific revolution that would take into account the chemical philosophy and, specifically, the Paracelsian tradition. As an example to illustrate the fruitfulness of such an approach, he offers a comparison of the scientific work of Hermann Boerhaave and Georg Ernst Stahl -- two chemists profoundly influenced by Paracelsianism -- with that of Robert Boyle. Without diminishing the seminal importance of Boyle, Debus asserts that Boerhaave developed an alternative, highly sophisticated mechanistic approach to matter, while Stahl's vitalistic matter theory dominated chemistry through much of the eighteenth century. A reevaluation of the scientific revolution is certainly long overdue. In fact, such a reevaluation is presently being undertaken, and Debus has contributed in important ways to this endeavor. However, in this book, as in much of his previous work, there is a tendency to fold virtually all alchemical influences into the all-encompassing envelope of "Paracelsianism," thus blurring important distinctions between Paracelsianism and other, specifically medieval alchemical traditions. A more balanced view of the significance of...

Article

Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome , edited by Richard Sherr

August 2001 · Journal of the American Musicological Society

Blake Wilson

Article

The El Paso Museum of Art announces New Perspectives: Hidden Masterpieces Visiting Scholar Lecture S...

Join fellow members of the El Paso Museum of Art as we continue to explore the Museum's permanent collection. This Fall, visiting scholars will participate in New Perspectives: Hidden Masterpieces, a lecture series that considers topics related to the Museum's late Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo art. In her lecture Sarah J. Lippert will discuss the work of Hyacinthe Rigaud, A French ... [Show full abstract] Magistrate of Requests, 1702, oil on canvas, which is on view in the Samuel H. Kress gallery.