Allegory and the Art of Memory

Scholars of early modern literature often consider allegory inherently idealist, particularly in its exploitation of visual description, which, they argue, produces a spurious vividness that tries to pass off the schematic and the ideal as natural. Critics who subscribe to this view often celebrate Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (1590/96) as both a pinnacle of the genre and a skeptical anatomy of it—a great allegory that is great because it exposes allegory's illusions. As the argument goes, Spenser reveals the false visuality at the heart of allegory by complicating his imagery with naturalistic description. By turning allegorical images against themselves, the poem prevents allegory from subordinating the world of matter and appearances to a timeless conceptual order.This dissertation, Allegory and the Art of Memory, offers an alternative framework for understanding allegory's visuality and Spenser's use of it: the mental visualization techniques of the classical and medieval memory arts. Because these mnemonic methods draw mental imagery into the service of memorizing words and ideas, they too have been accused of visual bad faith, but recent scholarship has excavated the practical and philosophical contexts in which these methods were used, and this visual regime gives us a new way to think about allegorical imagery as well. I argue that in adapting the memory arts to narrative poetry, medieval allegorists did not aspire to impress an idealist image of cosmic harmony upon the empirical world but to lead readers through a voluntary and collaborative process of composing meditative imagery. In the following pages, I analyze three pre-Spenserian allegorical poems particularly engaged with the theory and practice of memory: Guillaume de Deguileville's Le Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine (1330-32), Olivier de la Marche's Le Chevalier Délibéré (1483), and Stephan Batman's loose adaptation of Le Chevalier Délibéré into The Trauayled Pylgrime (1569). I use these analyses to illuminate crucial episodes of The Faerie Queene to show that, rather than revealing the fissures in the earlier poems' methods, The Faerie Queene continues their project by adapting allegory to the transformed media environment of sixteenth-century England, where the visual mnemonics of the memory arts had mostly been discarded. The pre-Spenserian poems I analyze borrow formal elements from mnemonic techniques while critically evaluating the practices and the role of memory in human life. The Faerie Queene, I argue, follows their trajectory into the age of print. Whereas the older poems treat their imagery as a script for composing mental images, Spenser uses the formal tropes of the memory arts—image (imago), place (locus), and order (ordo)—to represent memory-processes, not just of the individual but of an entire culture, a collective record that is both analogous to memory and radically unaccommodating to the human mind

From Court to Collar: Post-Elizabethan Poetics and the Submissive Stance

This project was created out of one key observation about the English Renaissance: that the poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries had to deal with social pressures, influences, and expectations far more directly than their eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth-century, or contemporary counterparts. The struggle to establish an individual and innovative identity was as much a motivation for these poets as for any artists, yet the unique political circumstances that surrounded them called for a clever strategy, one inspired by continental models, the taking on of the submissive stance

Concepts of infectious, contagious, and epidemic disease in Anglo-Saxon England

This thesis examines concepts of disease existing in the Anglo-Saxon period. The focus is in particular on the conceptual intricacies pertaining to pestilence or, in modern terms, epidemic disease. The aim is to (1) establish the different aspects of the cognitive conceptualisation and their representation in the language and (2) to illustrate how they are placed in relation to other concepts within a broader understanding of the world. The scope of this study encompasses the entire corpus of Old English literature, select Latin material produced in Anglo-Saxon England, as well as prominent sources including works by Isidore of Seville, Gregory of Tours, and Pope Gregory the Great. An introductory survey of past scholarship identifies main tenets of research and addresses shortcomings in our understanding of historic depictions of epidemic disease, that is, a lack of appreciation for the dynamics of the human mind. The main body of research will discuss the topic on a lexico-semantic, contextual and wider cultural level. An electronic evaluation of the Dictionary of Old English Corpus establishes the most salient semantic fields surrounding instances of cwealm and wol (‘pestilence’), such as harmful entities, battle and warfare, sin, punishment, and atmospheric phenomena. Occurrences of pestilential disease are distributed across a variety of text types including (medical) charms, hagiographic and historiographic literature, homilies, and scientific, encyclopaedic treatises. The different contexts highlight several distinguishable aspects of disease, (‘reason’, ‘cause’, ‘symptoms’, ‘purpose’, and ‘treatment’) and strategically put them in relation with other concepts. Connections within this conceptual network can be based on co-occurrence, causality, and analogy and are set within a wider cultural frame informed largely though not exclusively by Christian doctrine. The thesis concludes that Anglo-Saxon ideas of disease must be viewed as part of a complex web of knowledge and beliefs in order to understand how they can be framed by various discourses with more or less diverging objectives. The overall picture emerging from this study, while certainly not being free from contradiction, is not one of superstition and ignorance but is grounded in observation and integrated into many-layered systems of cultural knowledge

Concepts of infectious, contagious, and epidemic disease in Anglo-Saxon England

This thesis examines concepts of disease existing in the Anglo-Saxon period. The focus is in particular on the conceptual intricacies pertaining to pestilence or, in modern terms, epidemic disease. The aim is to (1) establish the different aspects of the cognitive conceptualisation and their representation in the language and (2) to illustrate how they are placed in relation to other concepts within a broader understanding of the world. The scope of this study encompasses the entire corpus of Old English literature, select Latin material produced in Anglo-Saxon England, as well as prominent sources including works by Isidore of Seville, Gregory of Tours, and Pope Gregory the Great. An introductory survey of past scholarship identifies main tenets of research and addresses shortcomings in our understanding of historic depictions of epidemic disease, that is, a lack of appreciation for the dynamics of the human mind. The main body of research will discuss the topic on a lexico-semantic, contextual and wider cultural level. An electronic evaluation of the Dictionary of Old English Corpus establishes the most salient semantic fields surrounding instances of cwealm and wol (‘pestilence’), such as harmful entities, battle and warfare, sin, punishment, and atmospheric phenomena. Occurrences of pestilential disease are distributed across a variety of text types including (medical) charms, hagiographic and historiographic literature, homilies, and scientific, encyclopaedic treatises. The different contexts highlight several distinguishable aspects of disease, (‘reason’, ‘cause’, ‘symptoms’, ‘purpose’, and ‘treatment’) and strategically put them in relation with other concepts. Connections within this conceptual network can be based on co-occurrence, causality, and analogy and are set within a wider cultural frame informed largely though not exclusively by Christian doctrine. The thesis concludes that Anglo-Saxon ideas of disease must be viewed as part of a complex web of knowledge and beliefs in order to understand how they can be framed by various discourses with more or less diverging objectives. The overall picture emerging from this study, while certainly not being free from contradiction, is not one of superstition and ignorance but is grounded in observation and integrated into many-layered systems of cultural knowledge

Science in Court Society: Giovanni Battista Benedetti’s Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum et physicarum liber (Turin, 1585)

Giovanni Battista Benedetti is counted as one of the most brilliant mathematical and philosophical minds of the late Italian Renaissance. However, the theoretical and historical relevance of his work is still obscure in many respects. This is due to several factors, principal among which is the relative rarity of his major work, Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum et physicarum liber (Book including various mathematical and physical speculations), 1585.This work was a major contribution to Renaissance science, especially due to its insights on mechanics, the mathematical approach to natural investigation, and the connection of celestial and terrestrial dynamics in a post-Copernican perspective. The first edition was an elegant folio, which includes heterogeneous writings not only on mathematics and physics but also on technical and philosophical issues. Benedetti presented these as short treatises or letters addressed to gentlemen, courtiers, scholars, engineers, and practitioners of different arts. The Diversae speculationes appeared in a series of prestigious volumes aimed at celebrating the magnificence of the court and the capital. It aimed to make the quality of the court mathematician’s research and skills publicly appreciable. It also bore witness to the intensity of the cultural debates going on in Turin or connecting it with other centers, especially Venice.This open access edition makes the Benedetti’s work accessible to a large scholarly readership. In the extensive introduction, his achievement is presented in its rich complexity. Benedetti is emblematic of his time and of the non-linearity of the historical process of Renaissance science with its multicentric institutions and scientific networks. The apparent fragmentary nature of his work hides a fundamental unity of the conception and the method, both of which rest on geometry. Benedetti regarded mechanics as a model, but he enlarged his perspective to include the most varied fields of investigation and concretely to demonstrate the fruitfulness of his approach to universal knowledge, astronomy, physics, meteorology, and even to ethics.Edition Open Sources (EOS) pioneers a new paradigm in the publishing of historical sources. Academic editions of primary sources in the history of science are published in online, digital, and print formats that present facsimiles, transcriptions, and often translations of original works with an introduction to the author, the text, and the context in which it was written. The sources are historical books, manuscripts, documents, or other archival materials that are otherwise difficult to access. EOS is a cooperation between the University of Oklahoma Libraries, the Department for the History of Science der University of Oklahoma, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Female characterisation in the epic poetry of P. Papinius Statius

"No serious Latinist will deny the probability that Statius will again emerge from the current scholarly re-evaluation of Silver Age Epic as the great poet he seemed to the finest spirits of High Middle Ages and Renaissance, rather than as the pale imitator of Virgil he appeared to the censorious criticism of the nineteenth century, obsessed as it was with its twin heresies of originality and inevitable progress." (Tanner, R G 1986. Epic Tradition and Epigram in Statius ANRW II 32.5, 3020) Publius Papinius Statius (c.AD 40-96) is best known for his occasional poetry, the Silvae, which is in scholarly vogue at present. He also composed a monumental twelve-book epic, little known until this century, concerning the myth of the Seven Against Thebes, as well as beginning a poem, popular in the Middle Ages, intended to chronicle the full career of the hero, Achilles. Death prevented the completion of the latter work, so that there are only 1127 lines extant. I here undertake an evaluation of female characterisation in the Thebaid and Achilleid, as a positive contribution to the rehabilitation programme described in the quotation above. Because Statius' poetry properly observes the ancient literary convention of imitatio, an examination of any feature thereof necessarily first takes account of the treatment of these myths before Statius. Although there is no precise literary precedent for the Achilleid, there are various possible Greek and Roman sources for the Thebaid, among them Euripides' Phoenissae and Hypsipyle, Apollonius' Argonautica and Seneca's Phoenissae. Naturally Homer's Iliad provided many of the poetical techniques for depicting the pathos of young warriors killed in battle and the subsequent grief of their relatives. A vital consideration, given Statius' reputation as a "pale imitator of Virgil", is to identify the influence of the Aeneid on Statius' techniques of characterisation, as well as to assess his usage of Virgilian style and phraseology. An equally significant contribution to Statius' presentation of women, and one of especial importance for the Achilleid, is made by Ovidian poetry, particularly the Metamorphoses and Heroides. To a lesser extent Statius was influenced by contemporary Latin epics: Valerius Flaccus' mythological Argonautica, Lucan's politico-historical Pharsalia and Silius Italicus' Punica. In analysing the presentation of heroines and goddesses in the Thebaid, little attempt is made to divine a method or spirit of characterisation "common" to both poems. Rather, the contrast between the portrayal of female personality in the two epics emphasises the very different tone of each: the distinctly comic tone of the Achilleid is reflected in the light-hearted portrayal of the three main characters Thetis, Deidamia and Achilles; on the other hand, the tragic atmosphere of the Thebaid is reflected in the intense portrayal of the chief female characters, Argia, Antigone, Jocasta and Hypsipyle. Insofar as it is ever valid or possible to expect literature to reflect the "real" perceptions and ideals of author and audience, I make some brief attempt to set Statius' treatment of his female characters against the prevailing attitudes and socio-cultural norms of his day. Statius' portrayal of women in his Silvae is of some relevance here, though chiefly the poems are to be regarded as literary texts rather than sociological documents

Platonic Reflections in Apuleius

Apuleius is often considered to be a Latin sophist, a master of narratological and hermeneutic games, with no particular philosophical agenda. But complexity and playfulness are not necessarily synonymous with intellectual or moral emptiness. Indeed, Apuleius’ self-proclaimed Platonism links him to a figure whose very choice of medium, the dialogue, always plays philosophical games with the reader. This dissertation shows that Apuleius engages with Plato on a deeper level than has previously been thought, framing both his own texts and those of Plato in terms of a high-stakes choice to the reader in the spirit of the ‘choice of Heracles’. I focus on Apuleius’ use of the mirror trope – a trope he inherits from Plato but refracts through the Roman literary tradition. I argue that when Lucius looks into mirrors in the Metamorphoses, such as the mirroring water of Byrrhena’s atrium or the catoptric hair of the maid-servant Photis, Apuleius invites the reader into a complex game of identification and criticism. Lucius’ specular contemplation, though he attempts to fashion it after idealized Platonic mirroring encounters, begins to appear more like the delusional mirror-gazing of Ovid’s Narcissus or Seneca’s Hostius Quadra upon further analysis. Readers, who have been tricked into participating in a shared voyeurism with Lucius, are compelled to see themselves at the same time as they see Lucius in the mirror. At that moment, the reader is put into a kind of Platonic bind, whereby he or she is forced to choose whether or not to continue following Lucius into voyeuristic delusion

The satiricon

XL, 228 p

Political Landscapes of Capital Cities

"[Political Landscapes of Capital Cities] is a welcome contribution to the study of the spatialization of society and suggests paths that anthropologists can take to analyze political space in urban and non-urban settings alike." —Anthropology Review Database "[O]utstanding contributions of an interdisciplinary group of authors trained in different methodologies. . . . offer[s] both scholarly and popular audiences wide-ranging perspectives in exploring, imagining, perceiving and experiencing capital cities." —Journal of Urban Cultural Studie