From 1505 to 1689, Russia's tsars chose their wives through an elaborate ritual: the bride-show. The realm's most beautiful young maidens—provided they hailed from the aristocracy—gathered in Moscow, ...where the tsar's trusted boyars reviewed their medical histories, evaluated their spiritual qualities, noted their physical appearances, and confirmed their virtue. Those who passed muster were presented to the tsar, who inspected the candidates one by one—usually without speaking to any of them—and chose one to be immediately escorted to the Kremlin to prepare for her wedding and new life as the tsar's consort. Alongside accounts of sordid boyar plots against brides, the multiple marriages of Ivan the Terrible, and the fascinating spectacle of the bride- show ritual, A Bride for the Tsar offers an analysis of the show's role in the complex politics of royal marriage in early modern Russia. Russell E. Martin argues that the nature of the rituals surrounding the selection of a bride for the tsar tells us much about the extent of his power, revealing it to be limited and collaborative, not autocratic. Extracting the bride-show from relative obscurity, Martin persuasively establishes it as an essential element of the tsarist political system.
In this volume, Nicholas R. Jones analyzes white appropriations of black African voices in Spanish theater from the 1500s through the 1700s, when the performance of Africanized Castilian, commonly ...referred to as habla de negros (black speech), was in vogue.
Focusing on Spanish Golden Age theater and performative poetry from authors such as Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Rueda, and Rodrigo de Reinosa, Jones makes a strong case for revising the belief, long held by literary critics and linguists, that white appropriations and representations of habla de negros language are “racist buffoonery” or stereotype. Instead, Jones shows black characters who laugh, sing, and shout, ultimately combating the violent desire of white supremacy. By placing early modern Iberia in conversation with discourses on African diaspora studies, Jones showcases how black Africans and their descendants who built communities in early modern Spain were rendered legible in performative literary texts.
Accessibly written and theoretically sophisticated, Jones’s groundbreaking study elucidates the ways that habla de negros animated black Africans’ agency, empowered their resistance, and highlighted their African cultural retentions. This must-read book on identity building, performance, and race will captivate audiences across disciplines.
Becoming Christian argues that romance narratives of Jews and Muslims converting to Christianity register theological formations of race in post-Reformation England. The medieval motif of infidel ...conversion came under scrutiny as Protestant theology radically reconfigured how individuals acquire religious identities. Whereas Catholicism had asserted that Christian identity begins with baptism, numerous theologians in the Church of England denied the necessity of baptism and instead treated Christian identity as a racial characteristic passed from parents to their children. The church thereby developed a theology that both transformed a nation into a Christian race and created skepticism about the possibility of conversion. Race became a matter of salvation and damnation. Britton intervenes in critical debates about the intersections of race and religion, as well as in discussions of the social implications of romance. Examining English translations of Calvin, treatises on the sacraments, catechisms, and sermons alongside works by Edmund Spenser, John Harrington, William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and Phillip Massinger, Becoming Christian demonstrates how a theology of race altered a nation's imagination and literary landscape.
This interdisciplinary volume aims to address the multiple connections between emblematics and the natural world in the broader perspective of their underlying ideologies - scientific, artistic, ...literary, political and/or religious.
Hieronymus Fabricius ab Acquapendente, famous anatomist of the medical school of Padua, Italy, marked a further step not only in the morphological studies, but also in anatomical illustration and ...physiology. His researches were inspired by the work of Aristotle which was focused on the understanding of biological “functions” in an anatomo-comparative way. The anatomo-comparative approach of Fabrici allowed him to discover several specific features of human anatomy. His focusing on function marked the transition from a descriptive to a functional anatomy, paving the way to the birth of human physiology in the following century. To enhance the teaching and learning of anatomy, Fabrici realized the importance of the “dimension” and “color” of anatomical illustrations and introduced for first full-scale and colour painted plates. In this way, the images were closer to representing “living” parts, than previous black & white and low scale images. Moreover, Fabrici was the first to create an “anatomo-phisiological” image, namely the one representing the valves in the veins. His work was a fundamental inspiration for his students, in particular Gaspard Bauhin and William Harvey.
•Fabrici (1533–1619) is among the most important anatomists of the Renaissance.•Fabrici realized the importance of dimension and color of anatomical illustrations.•Fabrici was the first to create an “anatomo-phisiological” image.•Fabrici work was an inspiration for his students, in particular Bauhin and Harvey.•The discovery of the veins valve through anatomical images.
Knowledge of the pragmatici analyses pragmatic normative literature in colonial Ibero-America. It explores the circulation and the functions of these media in the Iberian peninsula, New Spain, Peru, ...New Granada and Brazil.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) contributed to the study of the nervous system. His earliest surviving anatomical drawings (circa 1485–93) included studies of the skull, brain, and cerebral ventricles. ...These works reflected his efforts to understand medieval psychology, including the localisation of sensory and motor functions to the brain. He was also the first to pith a frog, concluding that piercing the spinal medulla causes immediate death. After a 10-year interval in the early 1500s Leonardo resumed his anatomical studies and developed a method to inject hot wax into the ventricular system, creating a cast that showed the shape and extent of the ventricles. During this period he also progressed in his understanding of the anatomy of the cranial nerves. Besides being the first to identify the olfactory nerve as a cranial nerve, his dissections showed him that contrary to previous theories, the nerves do not converge on the lateral or third ventricles. Leonardo also performed detailed studies of the peripheral nervous system. Although his discoveries had little influence on the development of the field of anatomy, they represent an astonishingly sharp break from the field that had seen little if any progress in the previous 13 centuries. His work reflects the emergence of the modern scientific era and forms a key part of his integrative approach to art and science.
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