{"title":"Milton’s Late Poems as Anti-Liturgy","authors":"Feisal G. Mohamed","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04501005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04501005","url":null,"abstract":"This essay suggests “anti-liturgy” to describe Milton’s three late poems as a unified project in devotional verse, and to account for their avant-garde impulse to make the present strange. These qualities are brought into conversation with the posture on liturgy in Milton’s early poems, with Milton’s remarks on justification in De doctrina Christiana, with Catherine Pickstock’s arguments on liturgy, and with Alain Badiou’s thought on poetry and truth. For the late Milton, knowledge of futurity is a potter’s vessel dashed to pieces in an encounter with the eternal.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04501005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45453613","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Money and Future in Late Ming China","authors":"W. Luo","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04501004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04501004","url":null,"abstract":"Chinese imperial dynastic time represented the cyclical change of regimes with a naturalized moral order. A linear lineage time and synchronic communal time were often eclipsed by the more ritually visible and well-documented cyclical imperial time. The dawn of China’s “silver century” (1550–1650,) however, disrupted the cyclical temporality of the dynasties and revealed other time-orders that had been usually subsumed under the dynastic time. Late Ming China (fifteenth to early seventeenth century), like many parts of Europe in the early modern period, experienced commercial accumulation, competitive consumption, desire for capital, reformulation of norms and traditions, bringing China into a globalized world historical process. This change in economy brought to the fore the many layers between imperial dynastic time and that of the individual. Money also influenced existing philosophies of past and future, as well as techniques of prognostication. Manipulation of the future often took the form of calculation of good deeds inspired by accounting. In short, money transformed what we can call “the practice of future” in two ways. First, it reemphasized the importance of linear lineage time instead of dynastic time through emphasizing the longevity of descendants and fortunes in the afterlife. Second, through the discussion of capital acquisition and the popularization of accounting, it also introduced “balance” into temporality through the discourse of just and unjust accumulation, allowing a synchronized and more egalitarian communal time to disrupt lineage time.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04501004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47207952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Illusion of a Future: Early Modern Conceptions of the World to Come","authors":"John S. Garrison, Marissa O. Nicosia","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04501001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04501001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04501001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42880708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Optics of Prediction in The Faerie Queene: Merlin’s Reflecting Telescope","authors":"Kyle Pivetti","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04501002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04501002","url":null,"abstract":"A mirror or a crystal ball? That interpretive crux arises at the heart of Book iii of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene – when Britomart discovers Merlin’s “glassy globe” and first sees Arthegall in its surface. The “looking-glasse,” that is, not only reflects Britomart but also tells the future. This essay revisits the problem of Merlin’s glass by locating it in the context of rapidly developing sixteenth-century optics, and one invention in particular: the reflecting telescope. By 1590, a range of thinkers from John Dee to Leonard Digges discovered in the reflective properties of mirrors innovative ways to understand human sight, cognition, and prediction. And it is Digges that proposes a reflecting telescope, a device that Merlin employs in Book iii. These scientific advances, in turn, inform Spenser’s references to vision and reflection throughout the poem, granting his allegory the ability both to distort sight and counter-intuitively to produce the future. Indeed, The Faerie Queene uses misrepresentation to protect its queen and to protect budding projects of nationalism. To see, for Spenser, is to change “the world it self” and to bring about its British futures.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04501002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48525230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ritual Time and Popular Expectations of Papal Rule in Early Modern Rome","authors":"John M. Hunt","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04501003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04501003","url":null,"abstract":"The political and ritual life of early modern Rome provided its inhabitants ample opportunities not only to express grievances with papal government but also to voice expectations of newly elected pontiffs. Three ritual moments in particular—each linked as a cycle related to the pope’s reign—looked toward the future. These were the papal election, the possesso (the newly elected pontiff’s procession to San Giovanni in Laterano), and the pope’s death. As the papal election commenced in the conclave, Romans communicated their hopes for a pontiff who would adhere to a traditional moral economy by keeping the city abundantly supplied with grain and other foodstuffs. The ceremonies connected to the possesso reinforced these concerns; during the pope’s procession from Saint Peter’s to San Giovanni, the people greeted him with placards, statues, and ritual shouts, which reminded him to uphold this sacred duty. A pope who failed to abide by this moral economy faced popular discontent. This took the form of murmuring and pasquinades that wished for his imminent death, thus anticipating an end to his odious reign and to the future freedoms of the vacant see, a time in which the machinery of papal government and justice halted, allowing the people to vocalize their anger. Immediately on the heels of the pope’s death came the papal election, starting the cycle anew. This paper will argue that the rhythms of papal government enabled the people to articulate their expectations of papal rule, both present and future, grounded in traditional paternalism.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04501003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45887744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Executing Calyphas: Gender, Discipline, and Sovereignty in 2 Tamburlaine","authors":"Timothy A. Turner","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04402001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04402001","url":null,"abstract":"This essay situates the execution of Calyphas in 2 Tamburlaine in the context of the gendered disciplinary regimes imposed by Tamburlaine in his quest for global empire. The execution bears a double significance: a father disciplines his son and, simultaneously, a sovereign military commander exercises martial law. In this doubling, the episode fuses a number of related issues in the history of sovereignty, especially key concepts addressed in Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality and later taken up by Giorgio Agamben in works such as Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. By putting these historical models into dialogue with a revised account of the play’s source materials, this essay argues that Marlowe stages the violence embedded in both absolutist and republican models of governance when they are premised on the rigid enforcement of hierarchical disciplinary regimes.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04402001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47473814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Tribe of Roaring Girls: Crime and Gender in Early Modern England","authors":"Adrienne L. Eastwood","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04402004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04402004","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars who write about early modern women and crime have focused primarily on prostitution and witchcraft which they deem “feminine” crimes. Removing this gender bias by employing a non-essentialist perspective, reveals a more nuanced picture of women’s participation in crime. Women who were unwilling—or perhaps not feminine enough—to use their sexual attributes to make money existed and are reported in crime statistics and literature. Using both hard evidence from crime studies and soft evidence from literary sources, and considering a wide historical range (from 1600–1800), reveals a steady stream of references to masculine-female criminals on the margins of early modern culture. I argue that future crime studies of early modern periods should allow for the consideration of women who did not conform to their culture’s gender ideals. Making a space for the “masculine-female criminal” contributes to a more nuanced view of gender and early modern culture.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04402004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49234202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pacifism and Performance in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream","authors":"John S. Garrison, Kyle Pivetti","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04402003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04402003","url":null,"abstract":"This essay takes A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a case study for exploring Shakespeare’s relationship to pacifism. We argue that this play, which uses a love potion to end conflict and to suggest parity across various competing spheres, taps into early modern discourses about peace as well our own contemporary anti-war discourses. We take inspiration from Bernie Boston’s photograph “Flower Power” and Allen Ginsberg’s essay that first articulated that notion as we imagine the play’s faeries to be “flower children.” The essay ultimately argues that Shakespeare’s play, as well as its play-within-a-play, dramatize the power of love as an anti-war and pacifist force.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04402003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49169806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Ye Lovers of Physick, come lend me your Ear”: Dangerous Doctors in Early Modern London","authors":"Jillian Linster","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04402002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04402002","url":null,"abstract":"The highly recognizable title-page illustration from Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus was also used in the printing of a ballad to commemorate the death of “Doctor” John Lambe in 1628. This paper explores rhetorical, historical, visual, and bibliographic connections between the two works as well as the cultural significance of their relationship and the stories they tell, which are fraught with warnings regarding the inherent dangers of magic practiced by purported healers. The correspondence of the ballad and the play highlights challenges and changes in the medical marketplace of early modern London, demonstrating the complexity and consequence of the connections among historical events, textual records, and fictional literary representations. Finally, comparing the shared woodcut with an engraved frontispiece from a book written by a more reputable physician, Sir Thomas Browne, traces the rise of more trustworthy medical practitioners in mid-seventeenth-century England.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04402002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44606496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}