Comparative & cultural studies through literature
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The Imagery and Aesthetics of Late Antique Cities
While the role of the city in Late Antiquity has often been discussed by archaeologists and historians alike it is only in recent years that scholarship has begun to offer a more nuanced approach in our understanding to how such cities functioned stepping away from the traditional paradigm of their decline and fall with the collapse of the Roman Empire. In line with this approach this deliberately interdisciplinary volume seeks to provide a more multifaceted understanding of urban history by drawing together scholars of literary and material culture to discuss the concepts of imagery and aesthetics of late antique cities.
Gathering together contributions by historians philologists archaeologists literature specialists and art historians the volume aims to explore the imagery and aesthetics of cities in Late Antiquity within a strong theoretical framework. The different chapters explore the aesthetics of cityscape representations in literature and art asking in particular whether literary representations of late antique urban landscapes mirror the urban reality of eclectic ensembles of pre-existing architecture and new buildings as well as questioning both how the ideal of the city evolved in the imagination of the period and if imperial ideology was reflected in literary depictions of cities.
Reconsidering Consent and Coercion
Power, Vulnerability, and Sexual Violence in Medieval Literature
How can contemporary theorisations of consent help us to nuance our understanding of consent and coercion in the Middle Ages? And what can reconsidering medieval attitudes towards consent offer to our own ‘consent culture’? Contemporary feminist approaches have identified consent both as a potent political framework for liberation and as an inherently limited concept that opens out onto other important ethical questions. Proceeding from this moment this book looks in two directions to understand the varied ways in which structural inequalities impact meaningful consent and facilitate coercion in the Middle Ages and today.
Building upon the momentum of ‘medieval consent studies’ as a newly defined field this volume expands the focus beyond rape and raptus assessing more varied representations of consent and coercion through an intersectional consideration of power inequality and sexual violence. The contributions bring together different methodologies cultural contexts and literary traditions to highlight literature’s capacity to reflect otherwise undocumented forms of sexual vulnerability. Offering a compelling case for integrating critical approaches like trans history codicology animal studies ecocriticism and disability studies into this field Reconsidering Consent and Coercion demonstrates the vital necessity of a nuanced and inclusive understanding of the past for our present discourses of consent.
Notions of Privacy in Early Modern Correspondence
Our modern notions of privacy have their roots in the early modern period. When studying this historical background one of the most important sources is correspondence. Letters sent from one person to another reflect specific situations ideas thoughts emotions and experiences. Contextualizing an epistolary exchange provides information about the world and values of past individuals.
This volume presents essays that deal with a variety of early modern correspondence. The letters analysed written in French Dutch German and English speak to very different contexts and cultural codes. While each of the letters in question has its own unique story to tell all contributions come together by focusing on notions of privacy. From the intimacy that unfolds in educational exchanges to specific letter-writers and their strategic use of the private this volume offers ground-breaking insights that will be relevant to many different researchers and their respective fields: the history of science the history of Christianity the history of travel writing and education gender studies and the history of diplomacy. In addition the contributions also tackle the issue of publishing letters in the early modern period both as a cultural phenomenon and as a material praxis.
Together the essays show how ‘privacy’ was an ambiguous term in the early modern period; the letter as literary genre and a means of communication demonstrates how privacy was perceived both as valuable and as a potential threat.
Nouvelles traductions et réceptions indirectes de la Grèce ancienne. Tome 2 : Traductions de traductions de textes grecs et translatio studii
L’essor des traductions directes du grec au français commence dans les années 1550. Du début du XIVe siècle jusqu’au milieu du XVIe siècle les auteurs-traducteurs en langue française qui représentent la Grèce ancienne n’ont sauf exception aucune connaissance directe des œuvres grecques. Les savoirs sur la Grèce qu’ils transmettent et réinventent sont médiatisés par des filtres divers. Leur réception est indirecte elle prend appui sur des œuvres antérieures textuelles et iconographiques dont les représentations de la Grèce ancienne sont déjà le fruit d’une ou de plusieurs réceptions.Les œuvres latines qu’ils traduisent et adaptentsont pour une part des œuvres antiques et médiévales qui ne sont pas des traductions et pour une part des traductions ou adaptations d’œuvres grecques avec parfois plusieurs transferts linguistiques à partir du grec. Elles sont très diverses : des textes antiques jusqu’aux traductions humanistes latines d’œuvres grecques réalisées en Italie et aux Pays-Bas en passant par des œuvres latines médiévales originales des traductions latines du français et des traductions arabo-latines et arabo-hispano-latines.
Les auteurs-traducteurs en langue française héritent ainsi de réceptions antérieures diverses qu’ils s’approprient et transforment poursuivant le processus d’invention de représentations de la Grèce ancienne. Comme les manuscrits et les imprimés de leurs nouvelles traductions sont souvent très illustrés les artistes offrent dans le même temps des traductions visuelles qui elles aussi s’appuient sur des sources diverses et des réceptions antérieures et donnent à voir de nouvelles images de la Grèce ancienne. La question de la réception de l’Antiquité grecque sera donc explorée par une entrée différente de celle qui a été adoptée jusqu’à présent et qui a consisté en l’étude de la transmission et de la traduction directes des œuvres grecques. Le présent volume se focalise sur les traductions au second degré de textes grecs.
Graphic Practices and Literacies in the History of English
Graphic devices such as tables and diagrams and other visual strategies of organising text and information are an essential part of communication. The use of these devices and strategies in books and documents developed throughout the medieval and early modern periods as knowledge was translated and circulated in European vernaculars. Yet the use of graphic practices and multimodal literacies associated with them have mostly been examined in the context of Latin Greek Arabic and Hebrew and early vernacular writing remains an under-researched area. This volume brings together contributors from English historical linguistics and book studies to highlight multimodal graphic practices and literacies in texts across a range of genres and text types from the late medieval period until the eighteenth century. Contributions in the volume investigate both handwritten and printed materials from books in the domains of medicine religion history and grammar to administrative records and letter writing.
Diplomatics in the Netherlands
The Use, Editing, and Study of Charters by Dutch Historians from the Middle Ages to the Present
Charters and other administrative texts have long had the full attention of medievalists as primary sources in their historiographical work. This also applies to scholars from the Netherlands. Ever since the late Middle Ages they recognised the value of these sources included them as testimony in their historiography and gradually began to realise that charters and other documents required a specific form of textual criticism and a special way of editing. In this Dutch historians usually followed developments abroad. Sometimes as in the early seventeenth century they were ahead methodologically but for long periods they depended for new insights on developments elsewhere. This was especially true in the nineteenth century when scientific diplomatic methods and editing techniques emerged which would only be introduced and applied in the Netherlands in the next century. In the twenty-first century Dutch scholars are fully participating in the ‘digital turn’ that is creating new research tools in diplomatics.
Ultimately the history of diplomatics in the Netherlands is part of the broad development of historiography in the country and therefore a valuable aspect of the history of scholarship in general.
Accountability in Late Medieval Europe
Households, Communities, and Institutions
This volume brings together studies of late medieval accountability in both the domestic and the public realms. It traces practices of accountability across the social spectrum from households to small businesses to communal and regnal administrations highlighting the intersections between competing conceptions of personal and institutional responsibility. Focusing on France and Italy from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries the case studies follow territorial officers consular agents and town notables co-opted into local governance from Avignon and Marseille to Tuscany and the Venetian and Genoese overseas territories. The studies explore both personal and institutional accounting registers as well as records of a textual nature such as rulebooks and inquests in an effort to reflect the range of records and procedures relied on to achieve a measure of accountability in late medieval Europe.
Les aléas du répertoire scénique de Voltaire sous la Révolution. Jouer, bannir ou guillotiner ?
[Voltaire’s Plays During the Revolution: To Stage to Ban or to Guillotine?]
The paper has two main objectives. The first is to discuss the popularity of Voltaire’s repertoire during the French Revolution. Some of his plays were rejected by consecutive Revolutionary governments because they reminded the audience too much of the Ancient Regime whose values had nothing to do with the new republican circumstances. Consequently different plays were popular under the constitutional monarchy during the rule of Gironde or the Jacobin government. Understanding these fluctuations in popularity of Voltaire’s plays constitutes the second objective of this paper. Such fluctuations should not be surprising since the theatrical scene at that time served as one of the major centres of Revolutionary propaganda: some of the plays created before 1789 needed to be banned or rewritten. Voltaire’s dramatic works did not escape the Revolutionary guillotine even though he was considered at the time to be one of the founding fathers of the Revolution itself. In the second part of the paper four case studies of Voltaire’s plays are presented: Mérope Mahomet Brutus and The Death of Caesar.
Traduire le théâtre au doigt et à l’œil. La matérialité de l’écriture dans les traductions de Corneille, Molière et Racine en Europe des Lumières
[Translating Theatre with the Finger in the Eye: The Materiality of Written Word in the Translations of Corneille Molière and Racine in the Enlightenment Europe]
The paper examines the role played by the materiality of books and manuscripts in the international dissemination of French theatre. The first part describes the editorial form adapted to dramatic translations in different countries. The second part addresses the question of theatricality and performativity showing every contact with the printed drama as a powerful sensory experience. The final section analyses the theatricalization of the manuscripts during social interactions. Even off-stage the world of performance still lays claim to Enlightenment theatrical writings.
Nicola Sabbattini, témoin d’une (r)évolution scénographique européenne. La Pratique pour fabriquer les scènes et machines de théâtre (1637/1638)
[Nicola Sabbattini Witness of an European Scenographic (R)evolution: Practica di fabricar scene e machine ne’teatri (1637/1638)]
The paper aims to situate Sabbattini’s treatise Pratica (1637/1638) within the history of European techniques in particular in the field of theatrical machinery. This publication unique in the editorial world reveals secrets that have hitherto been little known and only to a few people. Sabbattini far from being totally obsolete explains numerous theatrical mechanisms and techniques that date back to antiquity while talking about modern devices and designs. Nevertheless his treatise gradually became obsolete from the 1640s and in particular after the scenographic and technical revolution inspired by the Italian machinist Giacomo Torelli.
L’esthétique du spectacle dans les écrits de Diderot, Murray et Humboldt
[Aesthetics of the Spectacle in the Writings of Diderot Murray and Humboldt]
If aesthetics did not exist as such in Denis Diderot’s times questions and reflections on art run through a large number of works by French philosophers of the 18th century who were writing about aesthetics without using the actual term. Amongst others Diderot and Emmanuel Murray can fall into this category. As for Wilhelm von Humboldt he was the first to consciously consider the aesthetics of the spectacle in his essay written in 1799 and entitled Observations on the Art of French Tragic Actors by a German.
Diderot, Est-il bon ? Est-il méchant ? ou la tentation nouvelle de parler de soi au théâtre
[Diderot’s Est-Il Bon Est-Il Méchant ? or a New Temptation to Talk about Oneself in the Theatre]
The paper aims to evaluate the autobiographical section contained in one of the late plays by Diderot Est-il bon ? Est-il méchant ? (1775-1781) at a time when this kind of writing was not yet popular and seemed especially in the theatre out of place and even obscene. The paper queries Diderot’s ability to deal in this play – reserved for the théâtre de société and through the transparent character of Hardouin the writer – with subjects that were important to him such as the difficulty for a public figure to write in loneliness; for an atheist to maintain virtuous conduct; for a man to hope for a paternity that is both biological and intellectual. These three dilemmas set against the backdrop of farce and comedy delicately convey subjects that really darkened Diderot’s life.
La force féminine confrontée à la cruauté d’un dilemme moral. La quête de nouveaux enjeux dans Les Maures d’Espagne de Pixerécourt et dans Les Hussites de Duval
[The Female Force Confronted with the Cruelty of a Moral Dilemma: The Quest for New Issues in The Moors of Spain by Pixerécourt and in The Hussites by Duval]
This paper focuses on the representation of moral dilemmas in The Moors of Spain by Pixerécourt and the Hussites by Duval. This comparative analysis is necessary for two reasons. As for The Moors critics only saw it as a plagiarism of Duval’s play. On the other hand Duval was criticized for creating a simplistic and unmoving play. However the sacrifice of children for the good of the country is a source of new social and aesthetic issues. The fight against the boredom of the audience by returning to exoticism and to the Middle Ages reveals the need for new scriptural subterfuges such as the oneiric dream. The unprecedented moral dilemma confronting the spectator makes us wonder whether audiences have the ability to take on this new responsibility. The courage of the heroines makes it possible to consider the woman as the pivot of the social system even if the reversal of roles between man and woman is only momentary or only achievable in an intimate setting.
Traduction théâtrale et références à l’actualité socio-politique. La Mère coupable de Beaumarchais en polonais et en italien
[References to the Current Socio-Political Climate and Theatre Translation: Beaumarchais’ The Guilty Mother in Polish and Italian]
Beaumarchais’ drama L’Autre Tartuffe ou La Mère coupable [The Guilty Mother] (1792) is an increasingly appreciated part of the trilogy following the family of count Almaviva and Figaro. This article presents the results of a comparative analysis of the first translations of the French play into Polish and Italian (published in 1827 and 1874 respectively) focusing on the cultural references related to the circumstances of its creation. The research has shown that the Italian version in most cases closely follows the original while the Polish one contains several alterations such as loss deformation or substitution.
Front Matter ("Introduction")
Le théâtre de femmes : auctorialité et évolution des genres. Exemples d’Habis de Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez et du Dédain affecté de Mlle Monicault
[Women’s Theatre: Authorship and the Evolution of Genres (Based on the Example of Habis by Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez and Dédain Affecté by Mlle Monicault)]
This paper deals with selected aspects of women’s theatre: the non-recognition of women as authors and their contribution to the evolution of genres. These issues are discussed using the example of two plays from the early 18th century a tragedy entitled Habis by Madeleine-Angélique de Gomez and a comedy entitled Le Dédain affecté by Miss Monicault. The history of both texts shows men’s attempts to appropriate women’s works to negate their status as independent authors and resentment of these practices expressed by Mme de Gomez in the introduction to her play. At the same time both works testify to women’s search for a new contemporary formula for tragedy and comedy and confirm the contribution of female playwrights to the changes to genres taking place in theatre that resulted in the emergence of sentimental drama and comedy.
Révolutionner le théâtre tragique ou le métathéâtre à l’épreuve des genres dramatiques
[Revolutionising Tragic Theatre or Metatheatre in the Face of Dramatic Genres]
The tragedies of the last third of the 18th century abound with hanging settings engineered spaces and action scenes. This aesthetic and technical revolution was preceded by diffuse dramatic processes even before the technical means of the time allowed a satisfactory scenic set. Thus the metatheatre in the French tragedy of the beginning of the century would announce the shift in the genre as a whole without affecting the noble style or reducing its moral or political significance. This type of tragedy revolutionised theatre up until the dawn of Romanticism.