Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain Vol.1

AMS Press, Inc. New York 1966 London 1811 CONTENTS Geographical introduction.-Vol i. p. 1. BOOK I. General considerations on the extent and physical aspect of the kingdom of New Spain. Influence of the inequalities of the soil on the climate, agriculture, commerce, and military defence of the country. CHAPTER I. Extent of the Spanish possessions in America. Comparison of these possessions with the English colonies, and with the Asiatic part of the Russian empire. Denominations of New Spain, and of Anahuac. Boundary of the empire of the Aztec kings. - Vol. i. p. 5. CHAPTER II. Configuration of the coast.-Points where the two seas are least distant form one another.-General considerations on the possibility of uniting the South Sea and Atlantic ocean.-Rivers of Peace and Tacoutche-Tesse.-Sources of the Rio-Bravo and Rio-Colorado.-Isthmus of Tehuantepec.-Lake of Nicaragua.-Isthmus of Panama.-Bay of Cupica.-Canal of Choco.-Rio-Guallaga.-Gulf of St. George.-Vol. i. p. 16. CHAPTER III. Physical aspect of the kingdom of New Spain compared with that of Europe and South America.-Inequalities of the soil.-Influence of these inequalities on the climate, cultivation, and military defence of the country.-State of the coasts.-Vol. i. p. 46 BOOK II. General population of New Spain. Division of the inhabitants into casts. CHAPTER IV. General enumeration in 1793.-Progress of the population in the ten following years.-Proportion of births to burials.-Vol. i. p. 89. CHAPTER V. Maladies which periodically arrest the progress of population.-Small-pox, natural and inoculated.-Cow-pox.-Matlazahuatl.-Famine.-Health of miners.-Vol. i. p. 111. CHAPTER VI. Diversity of casts.-Indians or indigenous Americans.-Their number and their migrations.-Diversity of languages.-Degree of civilization of the Indians.-Vol. i. p. 130. CHAPTER VII. Whites, Creoles, and Europeans.-Their civilization.-Inequality of their fortunes.-Negros.-Mixed casts.-Proportion between the sexes.-Longevity according to the difference of races.-Sociability.-Vol. i. p. 204. BOOK III. Particular statistical account of the intendancies of which the kingdom of New Spain is composed.-Their territorial extent and population. CHAPTER VIII. Of the political division of the Mexican territory, and the proportion of the population of the intendancies to their territorial extent.-Principal cities.-Vol. i. p. 263. BOOK IV. State of the agriculture of New Spain.-Metallic mines. CHAPTER IX. Vegetable productions of the Mexican territory.-Progress of the cultivation of the soil.-Influence of the mines on cultivation.-Plants which contribute to the nourishment of man.-Vol. ii. p. 399

Memory and Imagination in the Ars Memorativa in Fifteenth-Century Italy

This thesis outlines and examines the relationship between memory and imagination in the ars memorativa in fifteenth-century Italy. Its principal focus is on selected texts from around 1420 to mid-century, all connected to Padua, Mantua and Venice. The dissertation investigates the role of imagination in the development of the ars memorativa and the techniques of memory employed to control and regulate the processes of both remembering and forgetting. Part One examines the memory-treatises of three authors who taught at the University of Padua: Matteo da Verona, De Arte Memorandi (1420), Ludovico da Pirano, Regulae memoriae artificialis (1422), and Giovanni Fontana, Secretum de thesauro experimentorum ymaginationis hominum (ca. 1430). Investigating how these texts were shaped by the Aristotelian tradition and by new theories connected to ideas of perception, imagination and memory, I demonstrate how the ars memorativa intersected with logic and grammar, in the treatises of Matteo da Verona and Ludovico da Pirano, and with optics in the work of the Venetian physician and engineer Giovanni Fontana. Part Two examines ars memorativa and pedagogy, focusing on the Gonzaga court in Mantua and the humanist school of Vittorino da Feltre, through Bartolomeo da Mantova’s Liber memoriae artificialis (1429) that includes one hundred unstudied illuminations and through Jacopo Ragona’s Artificialis memoriae regulae (1434), dedicated to Gianfrancesco Gonzaga. Part Three explores the inter-relationship between text and image and memory and oblivion in an anonymous Venetian treatise, Di l’Artifitial memoria, dating to c.1450. The Afterword explores parallels between the fifteenth-century ars memorativa and iconographic compilations of the late sixteenth century, particularly the Iconologia of Cesare Ripa. Overall, this study offers a contribution to our understanding of the degree of innovation and originality present in these fifteenth-century treatises and their importance in the development of the artes memorativae as an independent and interdisciplinary genre distinct from rhetoric

Maritime expressions:a corpus based exploration of maritime metaphors

This study uses a purpose-built corpus to explore the linguistic legacy of Britain’s maritime history found in the form of hundreds of specialised ‘Maritime Expressions’ (MEs), such as TAKEN ABACK, ANCHOR and ALOOF, that permeate modern English. Selecting just those expressions commencing with ’A’, it analyses 61 MEs in detail and describes the processes by which these technical expressions, from a highly specialised occupational discourse community, have made their way into modern English. The Maritime Text Corpus (MTC) comprises 8.8 million words, encompassing a range of text types and registers, selected to provide a cross-section of ‘maritime’ writing. It is analysed using WordSmith analytical software (Scott, 2010), with the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC) as a reference corpus. Using the MTC, a list of keywords of specific salience within the maritime discourse has been compiled and, using frequency data, concordances and collocations, these MEs are described in detail and their use and form in the MTC and the BNC is compared. The study examines the transformation from ME to figurative use in the general discourse, in terms of form and metaphoricity. MEs are classified according to their metaphorical strength and their transference from maritime usage into new registers and domains such as those of business, politics, sports and reportage etc. A revised model of metaphoricity is developed and a new category of figurative expression, the ‘resonator’, is proposed. Additionally, developing the work of Lakov and Johnson, Kovesces and others on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), a number of Maritime Conceptual Metaphors are identified and their cultural significance is discussed