Introduction

Abstract

This paper examines mechanical drawings made between 1811 and 1835 by Cesar Nicolas Leblanc, draftsman and engraver for the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, for publication by the French patent ministry. It compares Leblanc's engravings with the original drawings of the same machines, drawings which mechanics and inventors had submitted with their patent applications and upon which Leblanc based his published copies. The paper further compares Leblanc's patent engravings with his engravings of other machines, ones of proven utility. Leblanc developed a visual vocabulary to accompany Conservatoire Director Gerard‐Joseph Christian's philosophy of industrial mechanics, and used it to expose a crucial ambiguity in French patenting practice. Patented machines were unproven machines, Leblanc's patent engravings argued, while his other engravings endorsed machines of known value.     

The Darkest Corner: documenting institutional abuse and its consequences at the Abbey Theatre

Documentary theatre, as a theatrical genre, has not maintained a continuous presence in Irish theatre. The Darkest Corner series, produced in 2010 by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Ireland's National Theatre is, therefore, one of the first examples of Irish theatre using the genre to address political and social issues. Presenting three plays, Gerard Mannix Flynn's James X, Richard Johnson's The Evidence I Shall Give and Mary Raftery's No Escape, the series examines the widespread abuse of children in state institutions. Before analysing the documentary play commissioned by the Abbey, Raftery's No Escape, this article will begin with an exploration of documentary theatre in Ireland. It will then examine the material used for the play, the Ryan Report, published following the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, something of great political and social interest to contemporary Ireland and, finally, the play itself.     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Back of Bourke, by R. L. Heathcote Land Use and Population in Fiji: a geographical study, by R. Gerard Ward, Department of Technical Co-operation New Guinea on the Threshold. Aspects of Social, Political and Economic Development, edited by E. K. Fisk     

Thomas Traherne,Thomas Hobbes,and the Rhetoric of Realism

Abstract

Thomas Traherne has often been seen as a mystic detached from the turbulence of his period. Recent scholarship has attempted to place him more firmly in context. This article contributes to this trend in arguing that Traherne's late works, especially Commentaries of Heaven, were shaped by the pressure of responding to Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. Though Traherne makes only one direct reference to Hobbes, his idiosyncrasies in thought, argument, and mode of expression are all fundamentally influenced by the need to counter Hobbes's account of ethics, metaphysics, and language. Traherne is particularly concerned to assert and display an ardent realism against Hobbes's nominalism. In doing so, he creates a complicated play of rhetorical figures, especially abusio or catachresis, as embodying theological commitments. This both places Traherne more clearly against the background of the intellectual history of the period in which he lived, and demonstrates his particularity as a writer.     

The uses and abuses of ‘secular religion’: Jules Monnerot's path from communism to fascism

From starting his intellectual career as a surrealist, communist and co-founder of the Collège de Sociologie in 1937, Jules Monnerot (1911–95) ended it as a candidate for the Front National in 1989. In this article I offer an explanation for the unexpected trajectory of this thinker whose work is little known in the English-speaking world. Without overlooking the idea that the infamous College encouraged such tendencies, I argue that the notion of ‘secular religion’, as Monnerot developed it in his Sociology of Communism (1949), goes some way to explain his gradual radicalization from Cold Warrior to fascist, a path that otherwise seems unlikely for a French intellectual after World War II. In order to emphasize the unusualness of Monnerot's case, I contrast it with that of his erstwhile collaborator, Georges Bataille. I show that accusations of fascism often levelled against Bataille should be more accurately directed at Monnerot, indeed that the fascism inherent within the College of Sociology was brought out not by Bataille but by Monnerot. Monnerot's case is unsettling first because his definition of ‘secular religion’ contributed to his pro-fascist stance; and second, because it forces us to rethink what is meant by ‘philosophy after Auschwitz.’ This term usually brings to mind scholars such as T.W. Adorno, Emil Fackenheim or Emmanuel Levinas. Monnerot provides a rare example of a thinker whose fascism only developed after the Holocaust, a shocking response that demands the attention of all those interested in the relationship between religion and politics.     

Orderic Vitalis and the First Crusade

This article examines the narrative of the First Crusade written by the Norman monk and historian Orderic Vitalis, which spans Book IX of his Historia ecclesiastica. Though hitherto little-studied, Orderic's account of the First Crusade, which was probably written in 1135, occupies an important place in the Historia and reveals much about his wider historical method. The significance of Orderic's editorial interaction with Baldric of Bourgueil's Historia Ierosolimitana, through the omission and addition of material, forms the focus of the study. By making only a small number of insertions into the story of the First Crusade which he had inherited from Baldric, Orderic transformed its meaning so that it became suitable for incorporation into the Historia as a whole, linking the First Crusade to the history of his monastery, Saint-Evroult.     

Walter Taylor and the history of American archaeology

Walter Taylor’s place in the history of archaeology is well secured. Not only is he noted for his uncredited anticipation of the theoretical and methodological innovations of the 1960s and 1970s in his infamous book A Study of Archeology, but he is also well-known for committing professional suicide by short-sightedly attacking numerous key figures in American archaeology for their methodological shortfalls, and yet never publishing a report utilizing his controversial method. Although these statements have inundated the historical literature on American archaeology, they are received wisdom rather than the reality of Taylor’s contributions to the field. Many aspects of Taylor’s conjunctive approach were at odds with the stated aims of processual archaeology. Although Taylor did not live up to his critics’ (or his own) demands for a grand display of his approach, he did on several occasions demonstrate its potential. The irony of Taylor in the history of archaeology is not that he was uncredited for his prescience or that his attacks on the archaeological establishment were a naïve failure; but rather that he receives too much credit for what he didn’t do, and not enough for what he did.     

Reading versus Seeing? Winckelmann's Excerpting Practice and the Genealogy of Art History

From his arrival in Italy in 1755, Winckelmann's work is infused throughout by a fundamental antinomy: reading versus seeing. This antinomy possesses for him a decidedly epistemological significance: it allows him to present himself as the father of a discipline deserving of its name, i.e., the history of art. In Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764), he claims to break with a long tradition of art discourse which had been primarily supported by ancient texts, basing his book instead on the direct observation of the artworks. The aim of this paper is to critically examine this antinomy. How does seeing relate to reading in his working method? What relationship does art history, in the empirical dimension Winckelmann wanted to give it, have to book knowledge? Winckelmann's excerpts collection provides valuable answers to these questions. Following an old scholarly tradition, Winckelmann used to write down passages of his readings, constituting a vast handwritten library of excerpts which never left him. The result of this intense excerpting practice consists in some 7,500 pages, which allow to better define the share of empirical observation and book-based knowledge in his approach to ancient art.     

Urban domestic slavery in medieval Ragusa

The orthodox account of the Bayeux Tapestry takes Bishop Odo of Bayeux to have been its probable patron. This article argues that a very feasible alternative candidate for the Tapestry's patron is Count Eustace II of Boulogne. The traditional theory fails to explain the prominence of Count Eustace in the Tapestry, given that, with English support, he launched an attack on Odo's castle at Dover in 1067 and that a close kinsman of his (his nepos) was captured by Odo's men. The relationship between Eustace and Odo, post-1067, is seen as the key to understanding the Tapestry's origin. It is suggested that the Tapestry was commissioned by Eustace as a gift to Odo and that it formed part of the process of their reconciliation. This thesis is examined in the context of the Tapestry's relatively sympathetic attitude to Harold and the probability of English design and manufacture. The minor characters Wadard and Vital are identified conjecturally as Odo's knights who defended Dover castle against the Anglo–Boulonnais attack, a conjecture for which there is at least some circumstantial evidence. The strength of the identification of the figure traditionally taken to be Eustace is also discussed.     

Circean transformation and the poetics of Milton’s Masque

ABSTRACT

Circe’s presence in A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle (Comus) invites readers to read both Milton’s Circe and Milton’s own poetic activity through long and intertwined traditions of theology and literary commentary. Stretching from Augustine and Aquinas to the commentaries and translations of Homer and Ovid by Sponde, Sandys, and Chapman, these traditions use Circe to explore and conflate the possibility, the permanence, and the experience of both human and literary transformation. Taken up by Townshend and Jones in their Caroline court masque Tempe Restored, they become essential intertexts for Milton’s Masque. Milton embeds this discourse in his masque – a genre that places metamorphosis at the heart of its poetics – to examine the nature of Renaissance intertextuality and the authorial self and interrogate his own use of Renaissance practices of imitatio and aemulatio. In Comus’ wood, Circean transformation becomes a touchstone for the virtuous soul and the virtuous poet alike.     

Sacred Geography,Antiquarianism and Visual Erudition: Benito Arias Montano and the Maps in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible

The final volume of the Polyglot Bible, edited by Benito Arias Montano and printed in Antwerp by Christophe Plantin, was published in 1571–1572. Forming part of the Bible's Apparatus, the volume contains a number of essays, illustrations and maps by Montano relating to questions raised by the biblical text. Montano's maps were a product of his philological training in Oriental languages and exegesis, his profound interest in antiquarianism and geography and his practice of visualizing and tabulating knowledge. He designed his maps both as study aids and as devotional‐meditative devices. Moreover, the maps reflect his wider philosophical outlook, according to which Holy Scripture contains the foundations of all natural philosophy. Montano's case encourages us to re‐examine early modern Geographia sacra in the light of the broader scholarly trends of the period.     

The Mid-Tang Scholar-Monk Shenqing and His Beishan lu

Abstract

This article investigates the thought of the mid-Tang scholar monk Shenqing through an examination of his Beishan lu. In this work, Shenqing launched a fervent attack against Southern Chan, while pressing for the harmonization of the Three Teachings. His critique of Southern Chan reflects his Theravadin tendency, as he expressed negative views about Southern Chan's violation of traditional Buddhist teachings. He specifically attacked its de-emphasis on the vinaya, and the fabrication of the 28-Patriarchs theory of transmission. In an effort to establish the orthodoxy of Southern Chan in early Northern Song, Chan clerics found it necessary to respond to Shenqing's critique, as clearly reflected in the writings of the monk Qisong. Beishan lu is a valuable source for a study of Shenqing's thought, and the unfolding of the harmonization of the Three Teachings. It also allows us to trace the historical unfolding of the Southern Chan movement from a different perspective.     

Thomas Hobbes and the Term ‘Right Reason’: Participation to Calculation

Three times between 1640 and 1651, once at considerable length, Hobbes used and accepted, and then mocked, repudiated and discarded, the ancient/medieval term recta ratio/right reason. These repeated fluctuations in his thinking and rhetorical strategy occurred during the writing of his three major treatises on moral and political theory, one additional note on the term in De Cive, and an unpublished commentary on Thomas White's De Mundo. They are made obvious by his substitution of recta ratio for reason or natural reason when recycling passages from Elements of the Law for use in De Cive, and by his subsequent reversal of that substitution when revising other passages in De Cive for use in Leviathan. Despite incorporating recta ratio as a structural element in De Cive, he finally reverted in Leviathan to regarding the term as a deceptive verbal construct, non-existent in rerum natura, and ridiculing its users and proponents. Right reason carried connotations linked to it in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, and Hobbes's reversals in his view and use of it, and his final dismissal of it, provide further evidence and justification for the now familiar modern claim that he was a herald of modernity.     

Between parson and poet: a re-examination of the Latin Continuation of William of Tyre

Although historians of the crusades and the Latin East are familiar with the Old French translation and continuations of William of Tyre’s Historia, very little has ever been written about the narrative of the Third Crusade generally known as ‘the Latin Continuation of William of Tyre’. This article re-examines the probable date and sources of the Continuatio. Challenging long-standing assumptions about when the Continuatio was written and where the continuator drew his information from, it argues that the evidence points to an original date of composition in the early thirteenth century, not c.1194, as is commonly believed, and that the continuator used Roger of Howden’s Chronica, not his Gesta, as a principal written source. Furthermore, analysis of numerous parallels between the Continuatio and the vernacular Estoire de la guerre sainte attributed to the poet Ambroise reveals a possible relationship between the two texts that has hitherto gone largely unnoticed.     

Mongol inhospitality, or how to do more with less? Gift giving in William of Rubruck’s Itinerarium

This article examines the journey to the Mongol court by the Franciscan William of Rubruck and his unsuccessful attempts to negotiate his way through the Mongol hierarchy with gifts of food. Using William of Rubruck’s account of his journey, the Itinerarium, this article analyses the utility of gifts of food across different cultural contexts. Rubruck ultimately gained status among the Mongols through his ‘gift of self’, demonstrating how social standing can be negotiated through finding the appropriate cultural grammar for gift giving. Pervasive western medieval views on gift giving were not uncontested: alternate views of what constituted a gift existed within the broader thirteenth-century world.     

Hobbes on the supernatural from The Elements of Law to Leviathan

Hobbes's unusual religious views in his classical work, Leviathan, are often seen as a product of his attempt to reconcile Christianity with his philosophical materialism. Yet given Hobbes's materialistic view in his earlier works too, this explanatory framework alone is not sufficient for grasping distinctive features of Leviathan. This article remedies this lacuna by paying close attention to an understudied aspect of the development of Hobbes's religious theory from The Elements of Law to Leviathan: his treatment of the supernatural and, particularly, of matters of faith known by supernatural revelation as opposed to natural reason. I argue that over time Hobbes developed an epistemological analysis of supernatural revelation and refined his argument about the sense in which matters of faith are supernatural and about the extent to which they are found in the Bible. It was not materialism per se but the more sophisticated analysis of the supernatural in Leviathan that enabled Hobbes to admit the sphere of the supernatural to a much smaller extent than in De Cive and to discuss in detail what he sees as a matter of faith and beyond the scope of philosophy in De Cive.     

Leviathans Old and New: What Collingwood Saw in Hobbes

Summary

R. G. Collingwood presented his major work of political philosophy, The New Leviathan, as an updated version of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. However, his reasons for taking Hobbes's great work as his inspiration have puzzled and eluded many Collingwood scholars, while those interested in the reception of Hobbes's ideas have largely neglected the New Leviathan. In this essay I reveal what Collingwood saw in Hobbes's political philosophy and show how his reading of Hobbes both diverges from other prominent interpretations of the time and invites us to reassess Hobbes's complex association with the origins of liberalism. In doing so, I focus on Collingwood's science of mind, his ideas on society and authority, and his dialectical theory of politics, in each case showing how he engaged with Hobbes in order to elucidate his own vision of civilisation. That vision is based on the development of social consciousness, which involves people coming to understand the body politic as a joint enterprise whereby they confer authority upon those who rule.     

In Search of an Invisible Culture in David Plante’s American Ghosts and Robert Cormier’s Fade

David Plante’s American Ghosts (2005) and Robert Cormier’s Fade (1988), autobiographical narratives about growing up in southern New England in French Catholic neighborhoods called Little Canadas, both employ the trope of invisibility to convey the ethnic community’s lack of presence, agency, or permanence within an englobing American culture that progressively erodes the foundations of its cultural otherness. Both texts hinge upon cultural erasure. In Plante’s memoir, in which he seeks to gain access to his cultural past, his childhood self is haunted by the ghosts of his Indian forebears and his adult self, by the ghosts of his parish. These supernatural beings who shuttle between absence and presence signal the loss of cultural memory and identity that assimilation engenders. Cormier’s novel chronicles the effects of invisibility on three “faders” representing first-, second-, and third-generation French Canadians in New England. A metaphor for the progressive loss of ancestral heritage in the adopted land, Fade offers a portrait of the gradual disintegration of Frenchtown from its heyday in the 1930s to its dissolution in the 1960s.