Of Sceptres and Censors: Biblical Interpretation and Censorship in Seventeenth-Century France

In 1676 Pierre-Daniel Huet, scholar and tutor to the Dauphin,encountered difficulties with state censorship. Bishop Bossuetwas blocking the publication of his Demonstratio evangelica,a recasting of an ancient Christian apologetic. The Sorbonnetheologian and censor, Edme Pirot, was caught in the middle.An analysis of the interaction between these three men revealsAncien Régime censorship as a series of negotiationsshaped by the different stakes, personalities, ambitions andstatus of the participants. Huet and Bossuet’s quarrelalso echoed the confessional debates of the sixteenth centuryand reflected disagreements within the Catholic Church thereafter.It raised such important questions as whether the Bible shouldbe subjected to the same types of analysis as secular textsand anticipated concerns about the relationship between biblicalcriticism and the rise of irreligion. Throughout, Bossuet skilfullymanipulated the mechanisms of state censorship to defend hisvision of Church Tradition by delaying the publication of Huet’sDemonstratio and suppressing Richard Simon’s L’histoirecritique du Vieux Testament.     

Notes,Bibliographies, And Documents

The Activities of Polish Communists as a Source for Stalin's Policy Towards Poland in the Second World War     

Notes,Bibliographies, And Documents

The Royal Navy's Blockade in New England Waters, 1812–1815     

Clio, Columbia, And The Cosmopolitans: Beyond American Exceptionalism And The Nation–State

Books reviewed in this article:
Thomas Bender, Rethinking American History In A Global Age     

Telling Times: History, Emplotment, And Truth

In Time, Narrative, and History , David Carr argues against the narrativist claim that our lived experience does not possess the formal attributes of a story; this conclusion can be reinforced from a semiotic perspective. Our experience is mediated through temporal signs that are used again in the construction of stories. Since signs are social entities from the start, this approach avoids a problem of individualism specific to phenomenology, one which Carr takes care to resolve. A semiotic framework is also explicit about a theme Carr handles implicitly: the status of representation. Representation is internal to signification, mediating our experience not just retrospectively but prospectively in the planning and execution of action.
A model is presented in which the temporal organization of experience and action is formally coordinated with the temporal organization of narrative. The model is then applied to a historical event: John Batman's attempt in 1835 to purchase land from some Aboriginal tribes around what is now Melbourne. The meaning of this event is not located only in historical writing about it but in the semiotic constitution of the event itself. Changes of meaning emerge from relations between events as new events–in this case the Australian High Court's Mabo decision–align with old ones. Finally, a number of contrasts are indicated between this model and proposals made by Arthur C. Danto, Hayden White, F. R. Ankersmit, Fernand Braudel, and Paul Ricoeur.     

History,Sex And Scenography In The Octavia

With the Cambridge commentary by Rolando Ferri (2003) as point of departure, the article examines the claim that the Octavia is dependent on historians of the Flavian reign, but concludes that the case is unproven. As for the alleged allusions to the love poetry of Statius, the article argues that the similarities are coincidental and points instead to the striking parallels between the drama's depiction of the beautiful Poppaea as the darling of Venus and the short-lived Neronian cult of Poppaea as Diva Poppaea-Venus. Focusing on dramaturgy, the final section examines the commonly discarded links between the drama's implied scenography and the rich and varied resources of the imperial stage, concluding that the ignotus at each and every turn is laying out his plot ‘in accordance with the custom of those working for the stage’ (secundum consuetudinem scaenicorum).     

Man And Nature

In an introductory lecture to freshmen of Moscow University's Geography Faculty, the man-nature relationship is analyzed in terms of the interplay of entropic and negentropic processes. Entropy is used in the sense of a leveling trend or degradation, and involves the dissemination of materials and goods. Negentropy refers to accumulation, concentration, enhancing of diversity and contrasts. In the original world of inert nature, entropy was dominant. With the appearance of life on earth, the negentropic process assumed significance as living matter accumulated the sun's energy and concentrated it in the form of fossil fuels, forests, etc. In the present man-altered environment, termed the noosphere (sphere of the mind), both entropic and negentropic trends are apparent. First, man concentrates chemical elements for processing; then, he disseminates them to users or, in the case of waste products, into the air and water. The dissemination of radioactive materials through fallout and waste disposal is the most hazardous form of the entropic process. The pollution danger may be reduced by adding to the present sequence of “concentration—dissemination” an additional element, namely “reconcentration,” meaning the recovery of useful products from wastes.