The Trentham MS (British Library Add. MS 59495) is well known to Gowerians. It contains our only texts of "In Praise of Peace" and the "Cinkante Balades" as well as copies of the "Traitie" and some ...of the minor Latin poems, and it is expressly addressed to the newly crowned Henry IV. Its contents are usually examined separately, however. Bahr studies the manuscript as a whole, but not as the simple product of Gower's attempt to honor and flatter the king. He treats the collection itself as an independent aesthetic object, and he argues that the choice and the arrangement of the texts open up interpretive possibilities that both enrich the reading of each separate work (in many cases running counter to their ostensible meaning) and that add up to a whole that is different from, and greater than, the sum of its parts. Justification for treating the book as a single object is provided by the evidence of its careful design. Though diverse in contents, it is not difficult to find continuing themes, in particular a recurring emphasis upon kingship; the texts are provided with links that help tie them into a coherent whole; and there is a striking symmetry in the arrangement of the texts, as Bahr illustrates in his outline on pp. 225-26. The "Cinkante Balades" stand at the center, and the three texts on either side answer to each other either formally or thematically or both. The most surprising correspondence is that between "In Praise of Peace" and the "Traitie," standing opposite one another in the manuscript, Gower's only two independent compositions in rime royal, and each containing precisely 385 lines. That pairing, and the differences that exist between these two works and the other pairs, draw our attention to the possibility of reading each work in light of the other rather than taking each solely on its own. In this broader reading, not everything is as it seems to be. The celebration of Henry at the beginning yields to hesitation, reservations, ambivalence at the end, suggesting a tension between initial hopes and darker possibilities. Bahr finds the same sort of ambivalence emerging from the opening texts themselves when they are viewed in relation to Gower's own earlier writings. As has been noted before, "In Praise of Peace" reverses the roles of Solomon and Alexander from their use as examples in "Confessio Amantis," suggesting an instability and a "tension between moral idealism and political reality" (231) that might apply to Henry too. The opening of "Rex Celi Deus" repeats lines used in a passage laudatory of Richard II in Book VI of "Vox Clamantis," invoking in a different way the possibility of a fall. The "Cinkante Balades" at the center of the book also constitutes a rewriting, in this case of authorial history, since Gower had twice before (in "Mirour de l'Omme" and at the end of the "Confessio Amantis") turned away from the composition of lyrics about love. Bahr's discussion of the "Cinkante Balades" emphasizes the connections it offers between the "bon amour" that it celebrates and the peace and political harmony that Gower urges in "In Praise of Peace" and the subtle ways in which ambivalences in the treatment of love itself undercut some of the ostensible celebration. In the two works that follow, "Ecce patet tensus" offers a blind and tyrannical Cupid as a mirror image to Gower's real king, and the "Traitie" continues the emphasis upon kingly conduct while also, by its juxtaposition of exempla, raising more questions about the virtuous force of love. If these latter texts have a relevance to Henry, Bahr observes, they do so only in the context of the manuscript as a whole in which they are contained. But his evidence, which we have only barely summarized here, lends strong support to his conclusion regarding the manuscript's "codicological form": "My larger argument about Trentham . . . is not that it conveys a specific 'message,' or is 'about' a specific figure. It is an artfully constructed meditation on the multiple natures and implications of kingship, and the very complexity of its construction serves to acknowledge both the visceral pleasure of using aesthetic modes to grapple with such vitally important questions and the impossibility of creating clear-cut 'propositional content' as answers to them" (261). PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1
La Histoire de Charles XII, roi de Suède (1731) es un texto a menudo desvalorizado por los especialistas en los trabajos históricos e historiográficos de Voltaire, en la medida en que ven en éste una ...obra menor, que se encontraría más cerca de la Henriade, el poema épico que el filósofo había publicado en 1728 en honor a Enrique IV, que de sus grandes trabajos históricos, el Siècle de Louis XIV (1751) y el Essai sur les moeurs et l´esprit des nations (1756). El objetivo de este trabajo es demostrar que la Histoire de Charles XII anticipa, a pesar de ser uno de los primeros escritos históricos de Voltaire, el método que utilizaría a partir de los años 40? en sus obras mayores. Además, el texto pone de relieve la existencia de cierta distancia entre el programa que el filósofo se propone ejecutar en el escrito y su materialización. Por otra parte, el artículo arroja algunas luces sobre el papel de los "grandes hombres" en la filosofía de la historia de Voltaire. The Histoire de Charles XII, roi de Suède (1731) is a work often undervalued by specialists of Voltaire’s historical and historiographic works, insofar they see in it a minor work, which would be closer to the Henriade, the epic poem that he published in 1728 in honor of Henry IV, than to his great historical works, the Siècle of Louis XIV (1751) and Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations (1756) . The aim of this paper is to show that the Histoire of Charles XII anticipates, in spite of being one of the Voltaire’s earliest historical writings, the method that he would use from the 40’s in his major works. In addition, the text highlights the existence of a certain distance between the program the philosopher intended to implement on the writing and its material form. On the other hand, the article sheds some light on the role of the “great men” in Voltaire’s philosophy of history. Fil: Ratto, Gustavo Adrián. Centro de Investigaciones Filosoficas. Instituto de Filosofia "ezequiel de Olaso". - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Oficina de Coordinacion Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Filosofia "ezequiel de Olaso".; Argentina
Recent investigation into Joan Boscan’s 1534 Castilian translation of Baldassar Castiglione’s Libro del cortegiano has focused on how Charles V’s Spanish courtiers appropriated Castiglione’s lessons ...in order to affirm their own status as the elite nobility of their society. These studies, however, overlook the wider European context of international politics, where Charles and his courtiers constantly faced foreign leaders and diplomats to whom they wished to prove that a cultural equality, if not superiority, had indeed accompanied their emperor’s political dominance. In Boscan’s translation, it is possible to note a desire to produce a Spanish book which will replace its Italian counterpart as an elegant source of humanist conceptions of language, history, and rhetoric, already well adapted to a monarchical-imperial ideology. In fact, soon after the publication of this translation, Charles himself demonstrated his own sprezzatura in a speech, steeped in the humanist tradition, given to the European political community.
AbstractIn this second part of the book, I examine the French political terminology throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth century to contextualise the chapter on Brittany. Crucially between 1570 ...and 1620, the language changed fundamentally. During the sixteenth century, the focus was on le bien public and le bien de la chose publique. Under King Henry III and King Henry IV, this shifted to le bien de l’état. During the seventeenth century, this language became consolidated. Likewise, a shift from the use of patrie was visible from a province to the whole of France: during the sixteenth century, it was often used to indicate one’s province (e.g. Brittany) but could, in case of the king, be used for the whole of France.
Sharpe illustrates Herrick's classical influence. By arguing that Herrick praises Charles I by anointing him as a kind of new Caesar, Sharpe demonstrates a connection between Herrick's aesthetics and ...politics. In the same way that Herrick praises the literary present through his return to the past, he validates his own political position through its identification with the past greatness of Rome. Essentially, the political and religious honors that should be given to Charles I are sourced in Rome's celebration of Caesar. The British monarchy is thus given value by connecting it to an established, celebrated past. Sharpe suggests that Herrick constructs his political ideology in the same way he creates his poetic voice: a return to and a revision of the authority of the classical world.
During the years of 1617-20, a little-known polemical debate raged between the Protestant ministers, led by Pierre du Moulin, in the town of Charenton, just outside of Paris, and the Jesuit Jean ...Arnoux, confessor to Louis XIII. Marked by the crisis of Henry IV's assassination in 1610 and the revolt of the princes against the regency government of Marie de'Medici, the first decades of the seventeenth century witnessed an intense debate over the nature of royal authority. The author argues that the Charenton Controversy, influenced by the ideological clashes that occurred during the Estates-General, demonstrates that the ambiguous notions of royal authority were beginning to take concrete form.
Of all the great questionsof Habsburg history, perhaps the greatest is this: What would have been the consequence if Charles V had decided to prioritize differently his dealings with France, the ...Ottoman Empire, and Christian reformers? It is certain that the House of Habsburg would have proceeded along a different path, but such a truism hardly advances a better understanding of events in the empire, or in Europe more widely, in the sixteenth century. Charles V, aspater ecclesiaeand as head of amonarchia universalis, stands astride the traditional and the modern. To him is attributed the last opportunity for Habsburg universal empire, with the long hand of thecasa de Austriaimprinting Habsburg ambitions on the world.