The Norman Conquest of the classical past: William of Poitiers,language and history

William of Poitiers' Gesta Guillelmi, written shortly after the Norman Conquest of England, remains surprisingly neglected, especially by historians. He is generally regarded primarily as a classical stylist who employed classical references to decorate his panegyric of William of Normandy. Poitiers' use of classical allusion was, however, far from superficial. In arguing for William’s legitimacy as king of England, Poitiers addresses a wider audience than is generally acknowledged, and appeals directly to the fears, expectations and values of his day. The article examines his three most sustained allusions to classical heroes of naval enterprises and conquest – Caesar, Aeneas and Theseus – as key components of the memory of the Norman Conquest, demonstrating that each allusion makes a specific moral and political point. Poitiers is a case study for medieval authorial ingenuity in applying classicism to the problems of the present.     

A Review of “Church,State, and Society: An Introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine”

Abstract

The Mandragola is a microcosm of Machiavelli's thought. As a comedy, every detail is under Machiavelli's control, and there are no losers: private vices yield public benefits. All Machiavelli's characters are not equal in either the choice worthiness of their goals or abilities. Who is the hero of this comedy? Machiavelli's clues prompts exploring his allusions to classical and patristic sources but, most importantly, to Livy. Parallels in The Mandragola and Livy connect Nicia with the Roman founder, Brutus. In his ambitious goal, freedom from conventional shame, and consequent triumph over misfortune, Nicia emerges as exemplifying Machiavellian virtue.     

Ancient Greek Myth in Angelos Sikelianos

Abstract

In the introduction to Angelos Sikelianos: Selected Poems, the translators speak of Sikelianos's ‘mythological attitude … toward life’ and of his conception of myth not so much ‘as a rhetorical or metaphorical device but as a spontaneous creation of the human soul directed toward the revelation of a hidden spiritual life’, in short, of mythology as a kind of religion closely related to Schelling's perception of the function of myth. These remarks, written originally some years ago, may have their just proportion of truth, but in keeping with most introductory remarks, they strike me as rather too general, rather too undiscriminating when one brings them face to face with Sikelianos's practice at different moments of his career. I want to try to be more discriminating by considering the role of myth – specifically ancient Greek myth – in the poet's work both early and late in his career. I think it is a changing role, perhaps not in his fundamental association of gods with a contemporary landscape and his revelation of those mysteries that lie hidden in our everyday lives, but in the mode of this association and this revelation, and in the depth of their poetic significance.     

Tannery and Duhem on the Concept of a System in the History of Philosophy and History of Science

ABSTRACT

This article examines John Toland’s Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews (1714) by placing it alongside other elements of his engagement with Jewish history, Mosaic principles and wider “Hebraica” – specifically, an appendix to his Nazarenus (1718) and his Origines Judaicae (1709). Although Toland’s case for Jewish naturalization shows the strong influence of Locke’s case for political and religious toleration, and also of a general “mercantilism”, it is argued that one of its main characteristics is a philosophical naturalism, shown in its treatment of the human species as a whole. Furthermore, it is also argued that this same naturalism is evident throughout Toland’s engagement with Jewish history and Mosaic thought. Accordingly, when we “fold” these works into each other, we find each enhancing our understanding of the others – not just as examples of Toland’s treatment of “Jewish affairs”, but also as illustrations of a consistent conceptual materialism. To emphasize this, the article concludes by suggesting that the figure of Rabbi Simone Luzzatto, author of a 1638 plea for tolerance, provides an important clue in understanding the links between Toland’s political injunctions and the philosophical foundation on which they are built.     

Patagonian Cinnamon and Pepper: Blending Geography in Alonso de Ovalle’s Tabula Geographica Regni Chile (1646)

ABSTRACT

The context and conditions under which early modern Europeans created images and maps that blended Asian and American geographies have recently received the attention of scholars. In this article I explore an example of this practice in the Chilean Jesuit Alonso de Ovalle’s mapping of Asian spices as it affected the southern region of his Tabula geographica regni Chile (Rome, 1646). I examine Ovalle’s inclusion of cinnamon and pepper in the Patagonian landscape as a persuasive allusion to the crucial role of the Strait of Magellan in his proposed revision of the trade route of the Spanish galleons.     

The politics of Greek tragedy in Samson Agonistes

ABSTRACT

This essay charts Milton’s engagement in Samson Agonistes with Greek political thought as critiqued in Athenian tragic drama, particularly that of Euripides. In early modern Europe, Euripides’ plays were not only understood to denounce tyranny but also to remain rigorously sceptical about the workings of Athenian democracy (in itself a highly limited kind of representational politics). Milton knew well the commentary tradition that framed Euripidean tragedy in such terms, and found a corollary to his own political views within it, most notably in the writings of Gasparus Stiblinus whose prefaces are included in the 1602 Stephanus edition of the playwright’s works, which he used heavily. Stiblinus shows how Euripides relentlessly scrutinizes corruption, which his tragedies reveal to be not only characteristic of tyrants but also to pervade democratic systems. Milton’s allusions to Euripidean tragic form in Samson Agonistes evoke these commentaries to denounce political corruption.     

The Reward of a King: Machiavelli,Aquinas, and Shakespeare's Richard III

Abstract

Richard III centers on the rise and fall of a man who claims that he will “set the murderous Machiavel to school” and proceeds to seize the crown of England, only to lose his grip on that coveted prize in his own sudden personal and political unraveling. Insofar as we see Richard as a genuine but failed Machiavellian, it remains difficult to determine the extent to which Shakespeare's critique of Richard is a critique of Machiavelli. Yet Shakespeare's account of Richard's hopes, successes, and failures, examined in light of relevant classical texts, points to fatal flaws in Machiavelli's account of reason, conscience, and the end of human actions, demonstrating that the concept of the objective good is an essential component of any meaningful and coherent account of human action. Thus, Richard's ultimate descent into madness is a sign of the fate that even the “best” Machiavellian statesman or society is destined to share.     

'[…;] all poetry is difficult […]: the limitations of Seferis' modernist poetics

Abstract

In Greece, as in several other countries in the period between the two World Wars, one of the serious charges frequently made against Modernism was that it was impossibly bad mannered towards the reader – that it made no effort at all to communicate and that modernist poetry was ‘difficult’ or ‘obscure’. For example, as early as 1931, Kostis Palamas – the poet who had had an enormous impact on Greek literary affairs in the first half of this century – in a charming if not somewhat condescending letter addressed to George Seferis, noted that the poems of <inline-graphic href="splitsection4_in1.tif"/>were ‘cryptographic’ and stated that he was personally unable to find the ‘key’ that was needed for deciphering such difficult poetry (Palamas 1931). A few years earlier, Seferis himself had noted in his journals that whenever he tried to read Valery's poems to Palamas and his circle, they had reacted by saying that they did not have time to solve ‘puzzles’ (1975: 62).     

L'illusion métabiologique

In this article, I explore the complex and unappreciated relationship between the moral and political thought of Cicero and Adam Smith. Cicero’s views about justice, propriety, and the selfish love of praise find new expression in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. I illustrate the important ways in which Smith adopts – often without attribution – Cicero’s precepts and moral judgments. I then go on to demonstrate how Smith strips those Ciceronian conclusions from their original justifying grounds in teleology and natural law. In their place, Smith injects his own psychology based in sentiments as a new account of why it is that we prefer virtue and justice to their opposites. By exploring this relationship, I hope to shed light on an important dynamic whereby modern thought has creatively adapted classical moral and political concepts.     

Reconstructing Kilmainham: the topography and architecture of the chief priory of the Knights Hospitaller in Ireland,c.1170–1349

ABSTRACT

For almost 400 years the Knights of St John of Jerusalem – the Knights Hospitaller – maintained a priory in Kilmainham, Co. Dublin, as their principal residence in Ireland. Nothing survives of it above ground. The priory's early history and topography are mainly shrouded in mystery, but a fourteenth-century registrum illuminates the workings of its community and the character of its members, and provides valuable evidence relating to the appearance of its architecture and layout when it was at the peak of its prosperity. Yet the registrum has never been subjected to detailed scrutiny. Recent research on the Hospitallers in Ireland on the one hand, and on the organisation of domestic space in medieval contexts in Ireland on the other, has prompted this comprehensive appraisal of the evidence in Kilmainham's registrum.     

Gramsci and the issue of religion: Catholic modernism and the Italian Partito Popolare

ABSTRACT

Gramsci's interest in Italian politics led him to tackle a key issue in the present-day discourse: the relationship between the Holy See and the national State. Additionally, he paid close attention to internal issues of Christianity, from its origins to his own times and – similar to many other socialist thinkers – he believed that there were several echoes between the early Christian experiences and contemporary socialism. From this arose his concern with the religious crisis of the early twentieth century – so-called ‘Modernism’ – as well as the story of the Partito Popolare (Popular Party, PPI), the organization founded by the priest Luigi Sturzo after the First World War, which was marked – especially amongst its left-wing components – by its anti-fascist positions.     

Sentire Cum Brownsone: “Brownson’s Political Philosophy,Republican and Christian”

Abstract

Sentire cum Brownsone provides an exposition of the political philosophy of Orestes Brownson (1803–1876). Negatively, his disagreements with modern social contract theory and its underlying anthropology are laid out, while positively, his key concepts – the unwritten constitution, territorial democracy, and the American Republic – are unpacked. His thinking about the complex relationship between Christianity and America's constitutional order is also highlighted.     

The Presidency and the News Media

Abstract

Leo Strauss, often considered a critic of modernity, is famous for his claim that Machiavelli, in turning away from the classical tradition, is its originator. Yet his “Restatement on Xenophon's Hiero” presents a concise indictment of that tradition and a remarkably sympathetic account of the political and philosophic motives that led to the rupture. In light of this tension, Strauss's interest in Xenophon appears as a useful counterweight to both.     

Tradition as a governing theme in the writings of John Cassian

John Cassian has been criticized in recent scholarship for historical inaccuracy – but it is not self‐evident that his works were intended as histories in the sense that is supposed by that criticism. Instead, Cassian presents himself as the promoter of key traditions. This paper describes of Cassian's own thinking about ‘tradition’ as a key theme in his works. To that end, it aims to redress scholarly misgivings about the worth of Cassian's writings by taking them as the transmission of identifiable traditions into early to mid‐fifth‐century Gaul (rather than as documentary evidence for late fourth‐century Egyptian monasticism).     

Milton’s Euripides and the superior rationality of the heathen

ABSTRACT

If arguments have always been made either that Milton maintains the primacy of the Bible over classical literature, or that he often presents classical sentiments as congruent with the biblical, one claim that has rarely been made is that Milton is willing to assert the truth of classical literature over that of the Bible. This article argues that there are moments in the canon that show him capable of doing precisely this, with particular reference to the invocation of his favourite Greek dramatist, Euripides. The article considers Milton’s reading and interpretation of Euripides in his early poetry and prose, before examining more closely the citation of Euripides in two of the prose works which bear heavily on the question of how politically and religiously radical Milton was: The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and De Doctrina Christiana. The turn to Euripidean authority over the biblical reveals Milton’s willingness to subject Scripture to the test of pagan wisdom, if he judges that wisdom to have superior claims to rationality. This willingness derives from the development of his ethical thought in the 1630s and early 1640s, and from his understanding of classical, patristic and contemporary authorities, including John Selden.     

The Metrical Structure of the Oral Decapentasyllable

Abstract

What Milman Parry saw as his ‘historical method’ in Homeric criticism has paradoxically relieved students of the Greek folk song from the obligation to approach their subject of study from an exclusively genetic or ‘etymological,’ – in a word, historical – viewpoint. Instead of having to search for – or rather to speculate about – the origins of Greek oral poetry in the mists of antiquity or to assess the extent to which a song can provide reliable historical evidence concerning past events, we are free to turn our attention, as scholars such as Roderick Beaton (1980) and Grigoris Sifakis (1988) have done, to a synchronic study of the folk-song tradition, concentrating as much on the rules that generate the songs as on the significance of actual samples collected in the field (or in the scholar's study or the recording studio).     

Kazantzakis and the Cinema

Abstract

Alexis Zorbas unwittingly displays a knowledge of the cinema when he says to the Boss, <inline-graphic href="splitsection8_in1.tif"/><inline-graphic href="splitsection8_in2.tif"/><inline-graphic href="splitsection8_in3.tif"/>. [‘Anything we couldn't say with our mouths we said with our feet, our hands, our belly or with wild cries'.] Kazantzakis himself once said the same thing in a different way: ‘To succeed in transforming the abstract concepts into simple, clear images is my great aspiration’. These words – written to his future wife Eleni Samios and referring to the cinema's influence on The Odyssey – are the starting point for the rest of Kazantzakis' more complex theories on film, the distillation of the lessons he learned from motion pictures and later applied to his writing. But before continuing, we can create a helpful context for the author's concern with film by supplying some historical background.     

John Banville’s “monstrous child”: freedom and inheritance in Shroud

ABSTRACT

John Banville has described his novel Shroud (2002) – a fictionalised re-imagining of the 1988 scandal of Paul de Man, whose war-time publications for a collaborationist journal were discovered after his death – as his “monstrous child” that only he could love. This essay turns to Derrida’s thoughts on monstrosity, and in particular his framing of the future-to-come as an unforeseeable reckoning between Nietzsche and Rousseau, whose approaches to human freedom and authenticity remain philosophically irreconcilable. Shroud engages with these two inheritances on a thematic level, bringing them into conversation through the characters of Vander and Cass. The interruption of intergenerational love and the prospect of a child between them, however, makes Derridean monstrosity – that more properly deconstructive trope that opens to the future by unearthing traumatic inheritances from the past – into a structuring principle, and the means by which we might best understand the novel itself as a “monstrous child”.     

The Design of Historical Gardens Cultural,Magical, Medical and Scientific Gardens in Europe

Abstract

This review examines some little-known aspects of historical garden design, expecially those with meanings and complex allusions to ideas beyond the mere notion of an agreeable garden with plants to give pleasure. The author discusses some early gardens of classical times, including Roman funerary gardens, and describes mediaeval gardens in which certain allusions to the goddess Isis survived, especially when connected with the Marian cultus. Topiary is described in the contexts of several garden types, including the extraordinary battle-gardens, which are covered in some detail. The review reveals some unexpected aspects of the Enlightenment and traces the survival of certain ideas in garden design into recent times. Labyrinths, pilgrimages, healing springs, and enclosed gardens are shown to be much more than they appear on the surface.     

Everyone Begins as Fish & Captivated – by that

Abstract

An invited address in 1964 constitutes the pre-history of fractals, and a justification is given here why its publication is now of interest because of its interdisciplinary nature. Fractal geometry has been successful as mathematics and has – through computer graphics – pioneered a new art. But until 1975, the author's work was generally considered as premature. In the original address of 1964, which here follows the historical introduction, the author states the mathematical basis for his philosophy of the Second Stage of Indeterminism in Science. The term fractals was not coined until 11 years after the original address of 1964.