The Limits of Sense and Transcendental Melancholy in the Philosophy of Love

Peer reviewe

Kantian Anti-Theodicy and Job's Sincerity

Reprinted in Eike Broch & Ana Honnacker (eds.), Das Böse erzählen: Perspektiven aus Philosophie, Film und Literatur, LIT, München, 2017, pp. 147-169.Peer reviewe

Kääntäminen muodonmuutoksena

Publius Ovidius Naso: Metamorphoses selectae. Valikoima metamorfooseja. Suom. Päivö ja Teivas Oksala. Toim. Teivas Oksala. Espoo: Artipictura Oy. 2000

Satiirikon lääkärikirja: sairaus latinankielisen satiirin moraalikritiikissä

The satirist's medical book: Disease imagery and moral criticism in Latin satire Satirists have often applied medical and bodily imagery in their art of moral castigation. The tradition of Latin satire is filled with images where the satirist acts like a medical doctor to reveal the patient's real, corrupted and diseased nature. Physical and moral sicknesses are often paralleled in Latin satire; physical illnesses are represented as symptoms of a moral failure and indices of the sick human condition. This article examines how medical terms were important in constructing moral criticism and how physical symptoms conveyed moral values in the genre. It focuses on two specific pathological symptoms (hidden wounds and paleness) and two sensory defects (deafness and blindness). Hidden wounds and pallor are metaphors of latent diseases and the sick soul, whereas blindness and deafness are more ambivalent. The emphasis of the discussion is on Roman verse satire (i.e, Horace, Persius and Juvenal), which established an imagery that was then adopted and further developed by later Latin satirists. The article concludes with a short account of two parodic disease eulogies from the seventeenth century, Marten Schoock's In Praise of Deafness (Surditatis encoruiurn) and Jakob Guther's Teiresias, or, In Praise of Blindness (Tiresias seu caecitatis encomium)

Crime and its Punishment : Alfonso Ceccarelli's False Chronicles

This article focuses on the tradition of false chronicles in the early modern period, presenting some famous impostors and forgers, their motives, methods and justifications for their work. One interesting figure in the history of forgeries was Alfonso Ceccarelli (1532–1583), a medical doctor who, in order to acquire easy money, began composing fictive historical documents such as family trees that traced a family’s roots to important bishops, popes and ancient heroes. To give credibility to these fictive genealogies, Ceccarelli compiled historical manuscripts, which he passed off as genuine documents, and he referred to non-existent chronicles to verify his claims. When his frauds and forgeries were finally revealed and he was publicly accused in court, Ceccarelli confessed that he had indeed created many kinds of documents, but he appealed to his good intentions and insisted that when he added something to an old book, he justified it by adding truth. Ceccarelli’s case is particularly fascinating because he was severely punished for his forgeries; before his death he produced an apology that questioned the distinctions between true and false histories. This article argues that Ceccarelli’s story reveals important conventions in traditional historiography (to use his expression) and broadens our notions of the functions and significance of such falsifications in rewriting the past

Satirical Apotheosis in Seneca and Beyond

My article has as its starting point the well-known ancient satirical work, L. Annaeus Seneca’s Divi Claudii apotheosis per saturam, also known as Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii. Seneca’s satirical novel describes the death of the Emperor Claudius and his ascent to heaven where his request for deification is discussed by the gods. The gods decide to deny Claudius admission to Olympus, a decision followed by his expulsion and dispatch to the Underworld for his many crimes. My main concern is with the later Neo-Latin tradition: Seneca’s work inspired many imitators, including Erasmus of Rotterdam and Daniel Heinsius, who described other-worldly journeys, ascents to heaven or descents to the Underworld in the spirit of the genre. These later works included descriptions of the apotheoses of various authorities, (in)famous poets, emperors and allegorical figures. I will examine the functions of the apotheosis motif in the satirical literature written in imitation of Seneca, and I will show how the motif of the elevation into the divine status was used to ridicule authorities and examine conflicting value systems