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Chartist historiography is inevitably inflected by the political desires of its authors. This desire, combined with the contingent nature of history, imparts a fictive dimension to Chartist historiography. In support of these claims, this article applies the literary concepts of plot and character to Mark Hovell’s The Chartist Movement (1918). It argues that Hovell’s political desire leads him to construct a tragic and entropic plot for Chartism, which is often contradicted by his own assessment of the movement’s vitality. Similarly, Hovell’s plotting is also driven by his reading of Chartism as a conflict between two characters, a flawed hero (Lovett) and a villain (O’Connor). The article closes with a close reading of Hovell’s characterisation of O’Connor, which demonstrates the skill with which he interweaves fact and interpretation.
Taking inspiration from a famous manuscript illumination of Fortunes Wheel, this article argues for a reconsideration of diverse uses of repetition legible in accounts of medieval curiosity, and in the association of curiosity with the figure of the ape.
The theological energies released by Martin Luther in 1517 created a set of theological insights and problems that eventually led to the development of kenotic Christology (i. e., the view that in order for the Son of God to become incarnate and live a genuinely human life, he emptied himself of his divine prerogatives or attributes). This article traces how kenotic Christology originated in the Eucharistic Controversy between Luther and Zwingli, before receiving its first extensive treatment in the debate between the Lutheran theologians of Tübingen and Giessen in,the early seventeenth century. Attention then turns to the nine-teenth century, when doctrinal tensions resulting from the enforced union of the Prussian Lutheran and Reformed churches created the conditions for a new flowering of kenotic Christology in the theologies of Ernst Sartorius and, subsequently, Gottfried Thomasius. Kenotic Christology ultimately originates with Luther, however, for it owes its existence to the creative theological energies he unleashed and which remain his lasting legacy.
This article investigates a series of additions made to JRL Gaster MS 2037, a newly identified copy of Peter of Poitier‘s Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi. Following a detailed description and dating of the manuscript, it investigates two sets of additions to the roll in depth. It establishes that the first motive behind the inclusion of such additions was educative – serving to extend the historic information given in the Compendium, while the second motive was devotional – elevating the status of the Virgin Mary through the enhancement of her genealogical record. Given the fact that the manuscript was produced in the mid-fifteenth century, this focus on the Virgin likely had a polemic purpose, situating the manuscript in the context of debates over the Immaculate Conception, and using Alexander Nequams Expositio super Cantica canticorumto this end. In identifying the sources used, as well as the limits on the compiler imposed by the physical form of the roll, this examination of Gaster MS 2037 offers an insight into the later reception of this popular text.
Conrad Gessner (1516–65) was town physician and lecturer at the Zwinglian reformed lectorium in Zurich. His approach towards the world and mankind was centred on his preoccupation with the human soul, an object of study that had challenged classical writers such as Aristotle and Galen, and which remained as important in post-Reformation debate. Writing commentaries on Aristotles De Anima (On the Soul) was part of early-modern natural philosophy education at university and formed the preparatory step for studying medicine. This article uses the case study of Gessners commentary on De Anima (1563) to explore how Gessners readers prioritised De Animas information. Gessners intention was to provide the students of philosophy and medicine with the most current and comprehensive thinking. His readers responses raise questions about evolving discussions in natural philosophy and medicine that concerned the foundations of preventive healthcare on the one hand, and of anatomically specified pathological medicine on the other, and Gessners part in helping these develop.
This article explores the contributions of women scholars, writers and artists to our understanding of the medieval past. Beginning with a contemporary artists book by Liz Mathews that draws on one of Boethius‘s Latin lyrics from the Consolation of Philosophy as translated by Helen Waddell, it traces a network of medieval women scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries associated with Manchester and the John Rylands Library, such as Alice Margaret Cooke and Mary Bateson. It concludes by examining the translation of the Old English poem, The Wife‘s Lament, by contemporary poet, Eavan Boland. The art of Liz Mathews and poetry of Eavan Boland and the scholarship of women like Alice Cooke, Mary Bateson, Helen Waddell and Eileen Power show that women‘s writing of the past – creative, public, scholarly – forms a strand of an archive of women‘s history that is still being put together.
Rylands Latin MS 164 is one of over forty manuscript books of hours in the John Rylands Library. It was made in France in the middle of the fifteenth century and its extensive, high quality illumination associates its production with the worshop of the so-called Bedford Master. However, it has not been the subject of any sustained published research and consequently the significance of variations in the mise-en-page of the books pages has not been scrutinised. This article focuses on the variations in two replacement pages, one within the calendar and one beginning the Penitential Psalms, and in the case of the page beginning the Penitential Psalms considers whether the replacement could have been made by Sir Gregory Osborne Page-Turner, the owner of Rylands Latin MS 164 in the early nineteenth century.