Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Seventeenth Century England (seventeenth + century_england)
Selected Abstracts"Fill the Earth and Subdue it": Biblical Warrants for Colonization in Seventeenth Century EnglandJOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 1 2005PETER HARRISON The importance of conceptions of natural law in early-modern debates about the legitimacy of colonization is well known. The role played by specific arguments drawn from Scripture is less recognized. In seventeenth century England the biblical injunction to "fill the earth and subdue it," along with the account of the Exodus and the occupation of "the promised land," informed debates about the origins of private property, and was directly relevant to developing conceptions of indigenous property rights and the legitimacy of dispossession. Although there were powerful economic and evangelical incentives for the establishment of foreign plantations in the early-modern period, these were strongly reinforced, in the English context at least, by particular readings of Old Testament narratives. [source] Women's Early Modern Medical Almanacs in Historical ContextENGLISH LITERARY RENAISSANCE, Issue 3 2003A. S. Weber This article examines the prophetical and medical almanacs of two female authors of seventeenth century England, Sarah Jinner of London and Mary Holden of Sudbury. Their works do not resemble the writings of the ecstatic women prophets of the period, but should be contextualized within the increased interest in astrological prediction after mid-century, the increase in women's literacy, and the relaxation of censorship. The medical content of both almanac makers demonstrates a desire to preserve and transmit classically-based medical cures for women, and in the case of Jinner, possibly to inform women about abortefacient and emmenagogic drugs. Jinner's medicines are based on classical pharmacology, thus demonstrating that women's medicine of the period was not necessarily a distinct praxis from the Galenic and Hippocratic therapeutics of male university-trained physicians. [source] "Fill the Earth and Subdue it": Biblical Warrants for Colonization in Seventeenth Century EnglandJOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 1 2005PETER HARRISON The importance of conceptions of natural law in early-modern debates about the legitimacy of colonization is well known. The role played by specific arguments drawn from Scripture is less recognized. In seventeenth century England the biblical injunction to "fill the earth and subdue it," along with the account of the Exodus and the occupation of "the promised land," informed debates about the origins of private property, and was directly relevant to developing conceptions of indigenous property rights and the legitimacy of dispossession. Although there were powerful economic and evangelical incentives for the establishment of foreign plantations in the early-modern period, these were strongly reinforced, in the English context at least, by particular readings of Old Testament narratives. [source] Speculating on mysteries: religion and politics in King LearRENAISSANCE STUDIES, Issue 2 2002Frankie Rubinstein In a play about a pagan king and a mismanaged kingdom, where immorality, betrayal, civil strife and expectation of foreign intervention were omnipresent and the political landscape was beset by intrigue and domestic and foreign spies, Shakespeare created a surrogate for sixteenth and seventeenth century England. King Lear deals with theological ,mysteries' and doctrinal disputes and their political implications. Shakespeare exploits the fused religious and sexual language that was a tool in the deadly disputes, daringly conflating the sacrilegious and the religious: cannibalism is shorthand for the mystery of the Eucharist, and astrology, for divine influence. The pivotal speech of Act V, sc. iii, 9,20, alludes metaphorically to the profound religious and political issues of the Catholic,Protestant controversy; for example, King Lear takes upon himself ,the mystery of things' in his role as one of ,God's spies', in which we hear, also, ,God's (s)pies' or magpies, whose black and white plumage led to their being a frequent contemporary mockery of bishops in their black and white garb. Such crucial phrases and the punning changes Shakespeare rings on them lead to the core of the play and the divine denouement to come. Man's , and woman's , passing judgement on their fellows, presumptuous playing at God, and pretensions to the mantle of Christ are treated with a religious irony and irreverent levity in proportion to the moral falseness and religious and political bigotry of the times. [source] | ||||||||||