scholarly journals Virgilian fandom in the Renaissance

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Balaka Basu

Considered as fan works, early modern homages to, derivations from, and continuations of classical texts can help contemporary readers better understand the past and potential future of fan fiction as a queer, emotional, and affectionate investment in the universe of a text. Demonstrating that Sir Philip Sidney's queer, fractured Arcadia can be understood as fan fiction of Virgil's Eclogues shows how readers have always responded to the notion of beloved texts held in the creative commons with traditional fan practices such as subversive slash subtexts, inserted selves, feminine communities of reader-writers, and carefully orchestrated gift economies, whether in ancient Rome, Tudor England, or our own digital era.

Rural History ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Kent

A middle class ‘did not begin to discover itself (except perhaps in London) until the last three decades of the [eighteenth] century’. So wrote E. P. Thompson in the 1970s in a now-famous analysis which divided English society into patricians and plebeians, and which, along with J. H. Hexter's ‘The Myth of the Middle Class in Tudor England’, largely eliminated ‘middle class’ from the vocabulary of early modern English historians. During the past decade, however, there has been renewed focus on the middle ranks in early modern England, now commonly labelled ‘the middling sort’, and such studies explicitly or implicitly call into question Thompson's polarized portrayal of English society. A number of earlier works analyzed the middling in the countryside, particularly in the period 1540 to 1640; but recent discussions focus largely on townsmen, and most are concerned with a later period, the second half of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Even in a volume such asThe Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England 1550–1800, a collection of essays presenting recent scholarship on the subject, the rural middling sort receive very little attention (a fact acknowledged by one of the editors). This essay will draw upon detailed evidence from several parishes to consider characteristics of the middling in the countryside during the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.


2006 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 693-710 ◽  
Author(s):  
PATRICK J. O'BANION

Over the past forty years historians have demonstrated continued interest in tracing the development of radical early modern English apocalypticism. The Tudor and Stuart eschatological scene, however, encompassed more than just millenarian activism. This article emphasises the pastoral ends to which Revelation was used by a group of late sixteenth-century writers as they sought to make it accessible to the ‘common sort’ of Christian. Viewing interest in the Last Days through this pastoral lens highlights both the tense complexities present in the Elizabethan Church and the usefulness of eschatological themes in studying ordinary and normative aspects of religious experience.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Mike A. Zuber

The introduction outlines competing views on how to interpret alchemy, presents the book’s definition of spiritual alchemy, and provides an outline of the work. Throughout the past three centuries, alchemy has often been viewed as either fraudulent superstition, introspective religion, or practical science. Bringing together the latter two in a way that challenges our habit of distinguishing sharply between science and religion, spiritual alchemy was based on early-modern concepts of spiritus, a subtle matter pervading the universe. As a concept, spiritus transitioned freely between laboratory alchemy, medicine, cosmology, and even theology. In the process, it could give rise to heterodox implications, something that also affected spiritual alchemy.


Author(s):  
William Lane Craig

A survey of recent philosophical literature on the kalam cosmological argument reveals that arguments for the finitude of the past and, hence, the beginning of the universe remain robust. Plantinga’s brief criticisms of Kant’s argument in his First Antinomy concerning time are shown not to be problematic for the kalam argument. This chapter addresses, one by one, the two premises of the kalam, focusing on their philosophical aspects. The notion of infinity, both actual and potential, is discussed in relation to the coming into being of the universe. In addition, the scientific aspects of the two premises are also, briefly, addressed. Among these are the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, which proves that classical space-time cannot be extended to past infinity but must reach a boundary at some time in the finite past. This, among other factors, lends credence to the kalam argument’s second premise.


Author(s):  
Shushma Malik

This chapter explores how Wilde uses ‘historic sense’ (the intuition of a learned historian and the antecedent of historical criticism) as a tool with which to analyse the past, particularly the criminal emperors of ancient Rome. In his essay ‘Pen, Pencil, and Poison’, Wilde claims that ‘true historical sense’ in relation to the past allows us to ignore the crimes of Nero and Tiberius, and instead to recognize and appreciate them as artists. His decadent reading of the past is undermined, however, when we compare this version of historically guided intuition with his definition of the phrase in other works. By examining ‘Pen, Pencil, and Poison’ alongside The Picture of Dorian Gray and ‘Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis’, we can see how Wilde manipulates his readings of the criminal emperors of Rome in order to fit his own changing relationship with Decadence and the (im)morality of crime.


Author(s):  
Gianfranco Pacchioni

About 10,000 years ago, at the beginning of the agriculturalrevolution, on the whole earth lived between 5 and 8 million hunter-gatherers, all belonging to the Homo sapiens species. Five thousand years later, freed from the primary needs for survival, some belonging to that species enjoyed the privilege of devoting themselves to philosophical speculation and the search for transcendental truths. It was only in the past two hundred years, however, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, that reaping nature’s secrets and answering fundamental questions posed by the Universe have become for many full-time activities, on the way to becoming a real profession. Today the number of scientists across the globe has reached and exceeded 10 million, that is, more than the whole human race 10,000 years ago. If growth continues at the current rate, in 2050 we will have 35 million people committed full-time to scientific research. With what consequences, it remains to be understood. For almost forty years I myself have been concerned with science in a continuing, direct, and passionate way. Today I perceive, along with many colleagues, especially of my generation, that things are evolving and have changed deeply, in ways unimaginable until a few years ago and, in some respects, not without danger. What has happened in the world of science in recent decades is more than likely a mirror of a similar and equally radical transformation taking place in modern society, particularly with the advent ...


Author(s):  
Karel Schrijver

How many planetary systems formed before our’s did, and how many will form after? How old is the average exoplanet in the Galaxy? When did the earliest planets start forming? How different are the ages of terrestrial and giant planets? And, ultimately, what will the fate be of our Solar System, of the Milky Way Galaxy, and of the Universe around us? We cannot know the fate of individual exoplanets with great certainty, but based on population statistics this chapter sketches the past, present, and future of exoworlds and of our Earth in general terms.


Author(s):  
Donald C. Williams

This chapter is about the arrow or direction of time against the backdrop of the pure manifold theory. It is accepted that the fact that time has a direction ought to be explained. It is proposed that the arrow of time is grounded in deeper facts about the four-dimensional nature of each object in the manifold and in facts about the overall four-dimensional shape of the universe. Towards the end of the chapter the possibility of time travel is discussed. It is argued that time travel is metaphysically possible and that there is a reasonable and intelligible sense in which a time traveler can and cannot change the past, according to the pure manifold theory.


How was history written in Europe and Asia between 400–1400? How was the past understood in religious, social, and political terms? And in what ways does the diversity of historical writing in this period mask underlying commonalities in narrating the past? The volume tackles these and other questions. Part I provides comprehensive overviews of the development of historical writing in societies that range from the Korean Peninsula to north-west Europe, which together highlight regional and cultural distinctiveness. Part II complements the first part by taking a thematic and comparative approach; it includes chapters on genre, warfare, and religion (amongst others) which address common concerns of historians working in this liminal period before the globalizing forces of the early modern world.


Universe ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Verónica Motta ◽  
Miguel A. García-Aspeitia ◽  
Alberto Hernández-Almada ◽  
Juan Magaña ◽  
Tomás Verdugo

The accelerated expansion of the Universe is one of the main discoveries of the past decades, indicating the presence of an unknown component: the dark energy. Evidence of its presence is being gathered by a succession of observational experiments with increasing precision in its measurements. However, the most accepted model for explaining the dynamic of our Universe, the so-called Lambda cold dark matter, faces several problems related to the nature of such energy component. This has led to a growing exploration of alternative models attempting to solve those drawbacks. In this review, we briefly summarize the characteristics of a (non-exhaustive) list of dark energy models as well as some of the most used cosmological samples. Next, we discuss how to constrain each model’s parameters using observational data. Finally, we summarize the status of dark energy modeling.


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