Houses,Objects, and the Politics of Inheritance in Josep Maria de Sagarra's Vida privada

Josep Maria de Sagarra's novel Vida privada (1932) portrays an upper-class Catalan family, the Lloberolas, as unable to adapt to the new economic and political situation taking place in the city of Barcelona at the end of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship and at the beginning of the Second Republic in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Through a close reading of this family's houses, furniture, and personal belongings, I argue that material elements in this novel are central to the narrator's ethical critique and moral judgment of Barcelona's elite. The Lloberolas treat humans as objects and objects as humans, and I contend that, in an ironic emulation, the narrator also objectifies the Lloberolas and equates them with their objects. This comparison elucidates the family's superficiality and corrupted morals. Objects are also essential in destabilizing public and private boundaries because they often transcend the private domain and expose—to the readers and to the other inhabitants of Barcelona—the protagonists’ personality. Moreover, in Vida privada, houses, furniture, and surnames are understood as an inheritance that transfers very specific ideals of social status from parents to children. By presenting this material heritage with the exemplifying case of the Lloberola family, Sagarra offers a sharp critique of the Catalan upper classes and their superficial values. Their necessity to cling to an inherited world centered on material possessions finally results in their loss of power and evidences their economic and moral decline.     

King Pedro IV of Aragon, royal propaganda and the tradition of royal speechwriting

In the medieval Crown of Aragon it was customary for the corts to begin with a proposicio or opening speech made by the king. These Aragonese royal speeches were not merely confined to a brief summary of the political situation or a series of points to be considered but were elaborately constructed political sermons, in which affairs of state were portrayed in terms of Christian morality and nationalist pride, with the aid of exempla drawn from the Bible and other religious and classical works. An example is the speech made by Pedro IV ‘the Ceremonious’ of Aragon against the rebellion of the Judge of Arborea in Sardinia. A copy of this speech survives written in the king's own hand which raises the interesting question of whether the kings of Aragon were themselves responsible for the ideas expressed in these speeches and for composing them or whether their efforts were confined to reading out propaganda which was primarily the creation of royal officials.     

Dominican Dignitaries and Private Preaching at Papal Avignon Part I: The Sermon by Pierre de Palme (12 March 1340)

ABSTRACT

Private preaching at papal Avignon (or in general, for that matter) has yet to receive much scholarly attention, in part because the texts of private sermons are not always easy to come by. The survival of two private sermons, both by Dominican dignitaries and both delivered to the same audience (a cardinal and his familia) in the same venue during the same Lenten preaching cycle, provide an opportunity to explore the phenomenon of private preaching at the Avignonese curia. In the first article of a three-part series, I present the edited text of the sermon by Pierre de Palme, Prior of the Dominican Province of France; the second text will appear in part II, with analysis and observations in the third and final part.     

Food in the accounts of a travelling lady: Maria de Luna,queen of Aragon,in 1403

ABSTRACT

A household account book of Maria de Luna, queen of Aragon, dated 1403, serves as a guide to her everyday life and especially her diet. Its contents give us details that normally go unnoticed, about the court, the quantities and qualities of their foods, the means of preparing them, and the spectacle of the queen and her courtiers at table. The peripatetic nature of the queen’s household brought her to different towns in the interior of the kingdom of Valencia, and the document provides important – and rare – evidence of the impact of the court on these small markets, and the strategies for providing foods of the highest quality to meet the demands of the queen. The household is compared with others of similar rank in the Iberian Peninsula and nearby.     

Documenting the indignation: Responses to the 2008 financial crisis in contemporary Spanish cinema

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to analyze two Spanish documentary films that reflect on the 2008 financial crisis in Spain, Mercado de futuros (Mercedes Álvarez, 2011) and No estamos solos (Pere Joan Ventura, 2015). These movies could be marked as political for their choice of a collective protagonist and for dealing with the issues of inequality with the purpose of appealing to mobilization and resistance to the neoliberal Western agenda that have provoked social cutbacks after the 2008 crisis. Mercedes Álvarez and Pere Joan Ventura follow the tradition of political documentaries traced by filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov, Joris Ivens, Pere Portabella, and Basilio Martín Patino and open the debate on how people can contribute to searching for renewal policies in times of crisis.     

Arnau de Vilanova at the summit of Oloron (1287): a major inflection point in the life of a medieval physician

In July 1287, during mediation by Edward I for the release of Charles, prince of Salerno, the kings of England and Aragon met with Charles' representatives at a large assembly at Oloron in Béarn, on the edge of the Pyrenees west of Bayonne. An English document deriving from this meeting reveals the presence there of the famous physician Arnau de Vilanova, a member of the Aragonese party, and recipient of a gift from the king of England. This article demonstrates how this document and other recent discoveries, properly contextualised, can illuminate an obscure period in Arnau's life in which he turned towards a new pattern of existence.     

Opposing Identity: Muslims,Christians and the Military Orders in Rural Aragon

THIS paper addresses the issue of identity among Christian and Muslim groups in medieval Spain after the Reconquest in the 12th century. A wide variety of archaeological evidence, including artefacts, graffiti, settlement morphology and standing buildings, demonstrates that ethnic and racial divides were etched into material culture and endured until the final expulsion of the Muslim population at the beginning of the 17th century.     

安徽舒城九里墩墓非钟离公鱼墓考

安徽舒城九里墩墓残存的大部分遗存呈现典型的楚文化风格和战国早期的时代特征,应是战国早期楚国贵族墓葬,而不可能是钟离公鱼的墓葬,更不可能是群舒墓、蔡墓或吴墓。这一看法与楚、群舒、蔡、杞、钟离诸国族的历史变迁也是一致的。     

Food, drink and ritualised communication in the household of Eleanor de Montfort, February to August 1265

This article investigates the use of feasts and gifts of food in the household of Eleanor de Montfort between February and August 1265. In his influential The dangers of ritual, Philippe Buc argued, through a study of early medieval chronicles, that rituals in medieval Europe were regularly targets for disruption and aggressive manipulation either in practice or in the texts reporting the rituals. This article tests Buc’s thesis against administrative records from thirteenth-century England. The evidence from Eleanor’s household accounts is illuminated through a study of contemporary literary sources and didactic texts. It concludes that the administrative records indicate that rituals in practice were less habitually the subject of manipulation and conflict than the literary evidence indicates.     

中世纪天主教的信仰与危机:1000-1500年

在1000-1500年间,天主教欧洲见证了信仰事务上的多次危机,它们的性质、规模、影响以及重要性各不相同。在此期间,"信仰"伴随着"危机";但信仰没有受到严重的威胁。大多数危机是地方性或区域性的,持续时间也不长,从未达到真正的临界点。它们是可以用这种或那种方法来化解的,并总是能够得到化解,天主教对中世纪整个西欧的掌控因而从未受到严重的威胁,直到宗教改革改变一切。     

太平天国幼天王、干王等未刊供词中的新史料及辨证

台北故宫博物院文献部藏有幼天王、干王、洪仁政、黄文英等人供词、自述共 2 8件 ,内多未刊发的重要史料 ,涉及天国晚期政治、军事、人事、生活等方面。如南京失陷后 ,幼天王、干王等南下欲投奔侍王李世贤、康王汪海洋 ,而李、汪对“迎驾”“护驾”并不积极。这些新史料对于研究太平天国历史 ,特别是天国晚期历史 ,有重要的价值。     

论中世纪晚期英国的圣徒崇拜

在中世纪晚期,英国的圣徒崇拜盛行,成为民众宗教信仰的中心。与中世纪早期相比,晚期的圣徒崇拜已发生了一些变化,民众已经开始关注到自己,具有了自我取向与现实取向。这表明在中世纪晚期,英国民众的宗教信仰中出现了“个人主义”倾向,在物质力量增长的同时,英国民众的精神力量也在发展。     

The Consorts of King Wu and King Wen in the Bronze Inscriptions of Early Chou

Abstract

Daodejing is an essential text in Chinese culture. The number of its English translations exceeds a total of 112 editions. The first one was produced by John Chalmers, who was a Scottish missionary from London Missionary Society stationed in Hong Kong and Canton for a long period of time. Chalmers's close missionary colleague, James Legge, who was subsequently the first Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford, produced another translation. This paper aims at revealing the socio-cultural and intellectual processes behind the making of these two translations. In so doing, it discusses the differences in the two texts and explores the reasons for their differences.

Christian missionaries in China were the agents for the cultural interactions between China and the West. Not only did they bring the Christian message to China, but they also introduced the Chinese ideas through their translations and writings to their Western audience. This should be a fruitful and important topic for serious scholarship in both the studies in Sinology and in the history of translation.     

The role of the Parlement de Paris in the ratification and registration of royal acts during the reign of Charles VI

The following article corrects the mistaken assumption held by a number of historians that during the reign of Charles VI of France it was necessary for the Parlement de Paris to publish and register all important royal ordinances before they could be executed. Individual cases are discussed to show the nature of the prerogatives of the Parlement and the methods used for the ratification and registration of royal acts.     

A Once and Future Greatness: Raymond Aron,Charles de Gaulle andthe Politics of Grandeur

Charles de Gaulle devoted his life to cultivating French grandeur, a politics that attempted to carve out an equal and independent role for France among the great powers of the world. One who frequently criticized de Gaulle's ideas of grandeur was the eminent social theorist, Raymond Aron. Although Aron was generally supportive of de Gaulle and supported him ‘every time there was a crisis’, he never hesitated to criticize de Gaulle, sometimes quite sharply. Aron's lifelong friendship with de Gaulle was thus marked by alternating bouts of mutual irritation and respect: Aron worried that de Gaulle's theatrics were sometimes detrimental to French national interests while de Gaulle fretted that Aron's commitment to French greatness was less enthusiastic than it should havebeen.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Aron's reaction to de Gaulle's politics of grandeur. Despite his reputation for ‘lucidity’, Aron was often ambivalent about de Gaulle's ambitions for France. We argue that Aron's ambivalence stemmed from his political creed, or from his commitment to a political philosophy that - as de Gaulle sensed - allowed for few settled convictions. This paper reviews Aron's assessment of two issues at the heart of de Gaulle's politics of grandeur, namely, the effort to promote a sense of national unity and the effort to create a nuclear force. In both areas, we witness a remarkably ambivalent Aron, one who struggled to soften the harsher edges of the excesses of what he considered to be the excesses of grandeur and find his way to a more moderate and coherent position.     

Diversity of cultivars and other plant resources used at habitation sites in the Llanos de Mojos, Beni, Bolivia: evidence from macrobotanical remains, starch grains, and phytoliths

Although sparsely populated today, the Llanos de Mojos, Bolivia, sustained large sedentary societies in the Late Holocene (ca. 500 to 1400 AD). In order to gain insight into the subsistence of these people, we undertook macrobotanical and phytolith analyses of sediment samples, and starch grain and phytolith analyses of artifact residues, from four large habitation sites within this region. Macrobotanical remains show the presence of maize (Zea mays), squash (Cucurbita sp.), peanut (Arachis hypogaea), cotton (Gossypium sp.), and palm fruits (Arecaceae). Microbotanical results confirm the widespread use of maize at all sites, along with manioc (Manihot esculenta), squash, and yam (Dioscorea sp.). These integrated results present the first comprehensive archaeobotanical evidence of the diversity of plants cultivated, processed, and consumed, by the pre-Hispanic inhabitants of the Amazonian lowlands of Bolivia.