For forty years, American priest and friar Reginald Foster, O.C.D., worked in the Latin Letters office of the Roman Curia’s Secretary of State in Vatican City. As Latinist of four popes, he soon emerged as an internationally recognized authority on the Latin language—some have said, the internationally recognized authority, consulted by scholars, priests, and laymen worldwide. In 1986, he began teaching an annual summer Latin course that attracted advanced students and professors from around the globe. This volume gathers contributions (...) from some of his many students in honor of his enduring influence and achievements. Its chapters explore a wide range of linguistic and literary evidence from antiquity to the present day in a variety of theoretical perspectives. If the motivation for putting together this collection has been to reflect (and reflect upon) Foster’s influences on Latin scholarship and pedagogy, its title alludes—via the medieval folk etymology of the word labyrinthus (“quasi labor intus”)—to its theme: ambiguity in Latin literature. (shrink)
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, new ways of storytelling and inventing fictions appeared in the French-speaking areas of Europe. This new art still influences our global culture of fiction. Virginie Greene explores the relationship between fiction and the development of neo-Aristotelian logic during this period through a close examination of seminal literary and philosophical texts by major medieval authors, such as Anselm of Canterbury, Abélard, and Chrétien de Troyes. This study of Old French logical fictions encourages a (...) broader theoretical reflection about fiction as a universal human trait and a defining element of the history of Western philosophy and literature. Additional close readings of classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and modern analytic philosophy including the work of Bertrand Russell and Rudolf Carnap, demonstrate peculiar traits of Western rationalism and expose its ambivalent relationship to fiction. (shrink)
This is an excellent book on Santayana. It establishes Lovely as a Santayana scholar, ranking him with the likes of Lachs, Levinson, and Woodward. He has a thorough command of both the primary sources and secondary literature. Since many American naturalists writing on religion have either a liberal Protestant or a liberal Jewish background, Santayana’s Roman Catholic background provides a needed balance. Santayana, like many great American philosophers, helps point the way to a truly postmodern appreciation of religion. The (...) first chapter considers Santayana’s paradoxical relationship to Catholicism. His outlook was nontheistic yet included a Catholic cultural sensibility, theological .. (shrink)
The Roman philosopher Boethius is best known for the _Consolation of Philosophy_, one of the most frequently cited texts in medieval literature. In the _Consolation_, an unnamed Boethius sits in prison awaiting execution when his muse Philosophy appears to him. Her offer to teach him who he truly is and to lead him to his heavenly home becomes a debate about how to come to terms with evil, freedom, and providence. The conventional reading of the _Consolation_ is that (...) it is a defense of pagan philosophy; nevertheless, many readers who accept this basic argument find that the ending is ambiguous and that Philosophy has not, finally, given the prisoner the comfort she had promised. In _The Prisoner's Philosophy_, Joel C. Relihan delivers a genuinely new reading of the _Consolation_. He argues that it is a Christian work dramatizing not the truths of philosophy as a whole, but the limits of pagan philosophy in particular. He views it as one of a number of literary experiments of late antiquity, taking its place alongside Augustine's _Confessions_ and _Soliloquies_ as a spiritual meditation, as an attempt by Boethius to speak objectively about the life of the mind and its relation to God. Relihan discerns three fundamental stories intertwined in the _Consolation_: an ironic retelling of Plato's _Crito,_ an adaptation of Lucian's _Jupiter Confutatus,_ and a sober reduction of _Job_ to a quiet dialogue in which the wounded innocent ultimately learns wisdom in silence. Relihan's claim that Boethius's text was written as a Menippean satire does not rest merely on identifying a mixture of disparate literary influences on the text, or on the combination of verse and prose or of fantasy and morality. More important, Relihan argues, Boethius deliberately dramatizes the act of writing about systematic knowledge in a way that calls into question the value of that knowledge. Philosophy's attempt to lead an exile to God's heaven is rejected; the exile comes to accept the value of the phenomenal world, and theology replaces philosophy to explain the place of human beings in the order of the world. Boethius Christianizes the genre of Menippean satire, and his _Consolation_ is a work about humility and prayer. _“Acknowledging that the _Consolation of Philosophy_ is ‘over-familiar and under-read,’ Joel Relihan puts to the side old bromides about the work and instead pays careful attention to the narrative Boethius constructs, grounding his readings in the contexts the work cultivates, especially its Menippean elements. The result is perhaps the first satisfying reading of the _Consolation_ to be produced, a satisfaction felt also in the ways Relihan mirrors Boethius himself in the thoroughness of his scholarship and the elegance of his exposition. No one who studies Boethius will be able to ignore this book.“ — Joseph Pucci, Brown University _ "Anyone who has been fascinated, intrigued, or perhaps puzzled by the meaning, structure, or argument of Boethius's _Consolation of Philosophy_ will find Joel Relihan's new book a welcome addition to the study of this core text of the early medieval world whose influence extends to the present time. Relihan's study is a tour de force that belongs in the library of all those who appreciate Boethius's depth and subtlety. Fortune's wheel has indeed turned in the favor of those who wish to explore with Relihan the intricacies and brilliance of the _Consolation_." —_Fr. John Fortin, O.S.B., Saint Anselm College _. (shrink)
A peculiarity of early medieval geometrical texts was that alongside Euclid's Elements they transmitted remnants of the corpus of Roman land surveyors and metaphysical digressions extraneous to geometry proper. Rather than dismissing these additions as irrelevant, this essay attempts to elucidate the cultural grounds for the indiscriminate mixture of the three disciplines -- geometry, surveying, and metaphysics. Inquiry into the broader context of early medieval culture suggests that neither geometry nor surveying was treated as an independent discipline. (...) Texts on geometry and surveying were studied mainly because they were thought to provide good opportunities for enlarging the scope of meditation on spiritual subjects. Accordingly, the main concern of this essay is to show how Christian symbolism influenced both the composition and the study of geometrical texts. The essay is based on a wide range of sources: treatises on geometry and surveying, pictorial representations of Creation, and philosophical literature in which geometry was used in arguments about ontological doctrines. (shrink)
Roman property law and Roman contract law as well as the property centered Roman ethics put forth by Cicero in several of his works were the traditions Grotius drew upon in developing his natural rights system. While both the medieval just war tradition and Grotius's immediate political context deserve scholarly attention and constitute important influences on Grotius's natural law tenets, it is a Roman tradition of subjective legal remedies and of just war which lays (...) claim to a foundational role with regard to his conception of subjective natural rights. Grotius made use of Roman law and Roman ethics in order to submit a normative case for a rights-based just war in the East Indies. His conception of a law of nature was originally conceived to apply a theory of compensatory justice to the high seas of Southeast Asia, envisaged as a natural state lacking political authority. Eventually, however, this argument was to reveal its anti-absolutist implications, and contributed—by virtue of its applicability to individuals, private entities and commonwealths alike—to the emergence of a rights-based constitutionalism. This article discusses Grotius's early treatise De iure praedae commentarius and its offshoot Mare liberum, which already contained an inchoate version of subjective natural rights, as well as the elaborate natural rights doctrine which can be found in Grotius's early Theses LVI and in the Defensio capitis quinti maris liberi, a defense of the fifth chapter of Mare liberum, written around 1615 and directed against the Scottish jurist William Welwod's attack on Mare liberum. (shrink)
The thirteenth-century allegorical dream vision, the Roman de la Rose, transformed how medieval literary texts engaged with philosophical ideas. Written in Old French, its influence dominated French, English and Italian literature for the next two centuries, serving in particular as a model for Chaucer and Dante. Jean de Meun's section of this extensive, complex and dazzling work is notable for its sophisticated responses to a whole host of contemporary philosophical debates. This collection brings together literary scholars and historians (...) of philosophy to produce the most thorough, interdisciplinary study to date of how the Rose uses poetry to articulate philosophical problems and positions. This wide-ranging collection demonstrates the importance of the poem for medieval intellectual history and offers new insights into the philosophical potential both of the Rose specifically and of medieval poetry as a whole. (shrink)
This article concentrates on manifestations of medieval political philosophy in the Roman de la Rose. In particular, it focuses on two themes, which are crucial for understanding the very foundations of political and social life of human beings: (1) the origins of political community, private property and other social institutions; and (2) the relationship between love and justice, and the political relevance of these two concepts. -/- The first part of the article discusses Jean de Meun’s view concerning (...) the origins of social institutions, and relates it to Ciceronian and Augustinian traditions, which had a deep influence on medieval political philosophy. However, the main focus of the article is on the relation between Jean de Meun’s political ideas and medieval understanding of Aristotle’s political philosophy and moral psychology. Aristotelian influences are traced especially in relation to the second theme, which occupies the latter part of the article. It is argued that the political role of love and justice cannot be understood without taking medieval Aristotelian philosophy seriously. -/- Instead of trying to find historical and textual connections between individual medieval philosophers and Jean de Meun’s poem, the article embraces a different methodological approach: it aims to understand the philosophy behind the poem. This aim is achieved by providing a detailed reading of certain relevant passages, which are analysed against medieval adaptations of Aristotle’s practical philosophy. By such means, the article charts possible connections between scholasticism and La Rose and aims to show that they can—and indeed, should—be understood against thirteenth century Aristotelian philosophy. The result will be a philosophically informed understanding of the political dimensions of the poem. (shrink)
The Romans commanded the largest and most complex empire the world had ever seen, or would see until modern times. The challenges, however, were not just political, economic and military: Rome was also the hub of a vast information network, drawing in worldwide expertise and refashioning it for its own purposes. This fascinating collection of essays considers the dialogue between technical literature and imperial society, drawing on, developing and critiquing a range of modern cultural theories. How was knowledge shaped into (...) textual forms, and how did those forms encode relationships between emperor and subjects, theory and practice, Roman and Greek, centre and periphery? Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire will be required reading for those concerned with the intellectual and cultural history of the Roman Empire, and its lasting legacy in the medieval world and beyond. (shrink)
The Allegorical Figure Genius Plays a significant role in three important works of medieval literature: Alain de Lille's De planctu Naturae, Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose, and John Gower's Confessio Amantis. Although scholars have commented extensively on the meaning and function of Genius in the first two works, the interpretation of this character in the Confessio Amantis has proven problematic. The crucial difficulty involves the dual priesthood of Genius in Gower's poem. As a priest of Venus (...) the character is commissioned to instruct Amans about love; but as an orthodox priest he must also teach virtue. This complication of Genius's role is considered the source of the poem's most serious fault, for, as G. C. Macaulay observes, the “conception of a Confessor who as priest has to expound a system of morality, while as a devotee of Venus he is concerned only with the affairs of love, can hardly be called altogether…consistent….” More specifically, Gower is accused of inconsistent characterization because Genius's repudiation of Venus's divinity and his discussion of the education of Alexander allegedly violate his role as Venus's priest. jQuery.click { event.preventDefault(); }). (shrink)
Machine generated contents note: Introduction: love after Aristotle; 1. Enjoyment: a medieval history; 2. Narcissus after Aristotle: love and ethics in Le Roman de la Rose; 3. Metamorphoses of pleasure in the fourteenth century Dit Amoureux; 4. Love's knowledge: fabliau, allegory, and fourteenth-century anti-intellectualism; 5. On human happiness: Dante, Chaucer, and the felicity of friendship; Coda: Chaucer's philosophical women.
This chapter evaluates the use of rabbinic literature in the study of the history of Christianity in Roman Palestine. It explains that this issue goes back to medieval Jewish-Christian controversy and intertwines with the whole history of the reception of the Talmud in Europe and the western world. It suggests that the view that Christians are most often envisaged in the rabbinic references to minim is consistent with the likelihood that Christianity is envisaged in a number of rabbinic (...) and targumic passages which do not mention minim. (shrink)
Numerous studies covering courtly dancing and its portrayal in medieval European religious art and literature seem to have, to a large extent, exhausted this subject. Nevertheless, works on courtly dances remain, for the most part, more speculative in nature than apparent at first glance. This is amazing when we consider the importance of courtly dance in literature and art dating from the Middle Ages, as there are only few Middle High German poems in which collective dance is not mentioned. (...) Contrasting with this great number and wide range of references to dance is its small footprint in works dealing with the history of dance. Only a small number of works touch up this issue, and these have only collected and analysed fragments of the source material available. Hence, any conclusions cannot but lack critical depth with regard to the varying degrees of stylisation present, and their importance when attempting to draw comparisons between reports bound by tradition and stereotyped in nature, and those that exhibit greater literariness. This paper aims to discuss these problems and serves as a contribution to the field of the history of dance as reflected in medieval literature. (shrink)
The article examines the developments that made the legend of an Asian migration into Europe part of mainstream historiography during the eighteenth century. It was believed that the Norse god Odin was in fact a historical person, who had migrated from Asia to with the north of Europe with his tribe. The significance of this legend to how medieval poetry was received and debated in England has received little attention. The study falls into three sections. The first will trace (...) the significance of the Odin migration legend in discovering Germanic cultural origins. The second section examines the impact of the legend on philological studies, primarily in establishing a new category: the Gothic poetic tradition. The final section will focus on the debate between two of the most important eighteenth-century pioneers of vernacular poetic tradition: Thomas Percy and Thomas Warton. Their discussion over whether the Asian foundation of Germanic tradition had paved the way for later Arabian influences is instructive, as it shows how Eastern “others” were negotiated in the discovery of cultural and national roots. (shrink)
Though it is inter-disciplinary in scope, situated as it is on the borderlines of ontology and logic, philosophy of literature and theory of language, Ingarden's work has a deliberately narrow focus: the literary work, its structure and ...
This article explores the use of imagery drawn from the legal sphere to describe intertextual relations in Roman culture, drawing attention to the interconnected nature of contemporary debates on ownership and private property in law and literary criticism. Taking as my starting point a remark by Seneca the Elder on Ovid’s “borrowing” of Virgil’s text, I show how the distinction often invoked between legitimate imitation and literary theft is explained by a deep-seated and multi-faceted analogy between literary and legal (...) judgment. Moreover, I show how the use of legal metaphors derives special meaning from the context of Seneca’s work, in which readers are asked to judge both the legal and the literary merits of the cases presented. (shrink)
In reaction against an earlier tendency to identify Carolingian estate organization directly with that of the Roman epoch, recent historians of the seigneurie have been inclined to leave unanswered the question of the transition from Roman to mediaeval forms of management and to begin their expositions in the ninth century, when the sources become abundant for the first time. This decision has unquestionably been wise, in that it allows many old scholarly disputes to be bypassed. Nevertheless, the problem (...) of the transition continues to exist. We know the Carolingian seigneurie, as described in the famous polyptychs, but we continue to be unclear as to when or how it came into being. Sooner or later, this gap in our knowledge deserves to be filled. It must be if we are ever to understand the dynamics of economic life in the early Middle Ages. jQuery.click { event.preventDefault(); }). (shrink)
By examining in particular Augustan notions of probability and the way they provided a framework for thinking about and organising experience, Dr Patey ...
Resumen: Para reconstruir el pasado de Europa, los cronistas medievales debieron recurrir a un cúmulo de textos narrativos de origen griego y romano, atiborrados de elementos de carácter mitológico, dioses y héroes. En el presente artículo exponemos el proceso de evemerismo empleado por esos clérigos cristianos para depurar doctrinalmente la historia antigua. El análisis de las crónicas universales redactadas en el siglo XII muestra la construcción de un discurso narrativo basado en un rico lenguaje compuesto de sustantivos, adjetivos y sus (...) derivados adverbiales, tendiente a desacreditar la veracidad de la mitología clásica.: In order to reconstruct Europe’s past, the medieval chroniclers had to resort to a series of narrative texts of Greek and Roman origin, which were full of mythological elements, gods and heroes. In this paper we present the process of euhemerism used by these Christian clerics to doctrinally purify ancient history. The analysis of the universal chronicles written in the XII century reveals the construction of a narrative discourse based upon a rich language composed of nouns, adjectives and adverbs, with the purpose of discrediting the veracity of classical mythology. (shrink)
As organizations place greater emphasis on environmental objectives, business educators must produce the next set of leaders who can champion corporate environmental sustainability initiatives. However, environmental sustainability represents a polarizing topic with some students dismissing its importance and legitimacy. Limited research exists to understand student behavioral influences on sustainability education, especially as it translates to environmental sustainability behavior in the workplace. This gap challenges our ability as educators to understand how to best teach environmental sustainability in order to reach (...) diverse student mindsets. We apply the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to address this gap, investigating the influence of student attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control on environmental sustainability intention and behavior. A structural model tested with student survey data finds that student attitude represents the strongest influence on environmental sustainability intention. The model also validates that subjective norm affects sustainability intention with students considering professors along with business leaders and politicians as valid references for sustainability knowledge. To tie the results to effective educational interventions, we use the TPB to organize an extensive review of the sustainability pedagogy literature and identify specific teaching recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of environmental sustainability education. (shrink)
This study attempts to refine and test a theory of social influences on ethical decisions of journalists. The theoretical model proposes that several social factors influence any given decision, and that a hierarchy of influences assigns relative value to each: individual, small group, organization, competition, occupation, extramedia, and law. Print and broadcast journalists reacted to 3 hypothetical scenarios that raised ethical problems. The journalists then rated the salience of various reasoning statements, each representing 1 of the 7 social (...)influences. No single source of ethical guidance appeared; in many cases different influences emerge as powerful under different circumstances. But of the 7 proposed influences, 5 showed consistent strength in predicting the decision the journalist makes. The individual influence was the weakest of the 7, despite its prominent strength in the literature. The organizational and small-group strength suggests company-level strategies for media policy-makers who wish to increase journalists'ethical awareness. Overall, the study seems to challenge a traditional assumption that in ethical dilemmas journalists are autonomous moral agents, acting on the basis of their own values alone. The data support the notion of a far more dynamic and complex pattern of social influences. (shrink)
The hermit posed a challenge to a medieval Church that emphasized rule, order, and discipline since oversight of their life could be virtually non-existent. The writings of Richard Rolle, hermit, negotiates the space between Foucauldian exomolgesis and exoagouresis as Rolle strove to articulate the identity of the hermit without any kind of church endorsement. As well, he forged his life out of a struggle with concepts of medieval sin, specifically Pride, which placed him in a queer position in (...) terms of relationships with his surrounding community. His way of life was highly influential in his local community, however, and, through manuscript dissemination, beyond. Because he experienced mystical visions without church oversight, his eremitic life and example inspired a movement toward lay, affective piety in the later Middle Ages. The hermit, in his case, challenges the medieval Church’s hierarchy in that hermits practice a form of living at a local level, placing them in dangerous, sometimes heretical, positions that force the Church to either absorb their practices or suppress them. (shrink)
