History Commons^™

Book Review: Max Weber. Politik Als Beruf (“Politics As A Vocation”), Bertil Haggman

Comparative Civilizations Review

“Politics is a strong and slow drilling of hard boards.” (Die Politik bedeutet ein starkes langsames Bohren von harten Brettern….) This is a quote from the work of one of the most famous sociologists ever, German Professor Max Weber. In 2010 a new edition of his work Politics as a Vocation was published in Berlin, Germany. It is the first in a planned series of new editions of works of the great German sociologist including Staatssoziologie (Sociology of the State) and Wirtschaftsgeschichte (General Economic History).

Herodotus And The Histories: Accounts Of Intercivilizational Contact, Carlos Alberto Ríos Gordillo

Comparative Civilizations Review

The globalization of the earth, the old colonial dream of the sixteenth century, is still a challenge to historical understanding. In the contemporary debate, comparative history and global history have gained increasing interest as we try to explain the four parts of the planet in an overview, which allows us to think about the world, modernity, and universal history in a different way than a simple European expansion in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The theater of observation has become global when it relates Japan to China, India to New Spain, Portugal to Spain, Britain to the Netherlands to Indians, …

Politics And Play: The National Stage And The Player King In Shakespeare’S Henry V And Macbeth, Kristin M.S. Bezio

Quidditas

This article examines the intersection between theatrical and political discourse in early modern England. It argues that that the dialog surrounding early modern discourses of monarchy intersects specifically with theatrical notions of performance by means of the social contract implicit in English Common Law. The link between the political stage and the theater is perhaps most transparent in the metaphor of the theatrum mundi. Because the theatrum mundi requires the active participation of the audience, they must always be included in the theatrum mundi as participatory citizens in its illusory world. They are drawn into the conversation between stage …

Politics And Culture At The Jacobean Court: The Role Of Queen Anna Of Denmark, Courtney Erin Thomas

Quidditas

Until recently, analyses of the Jacobean court marginalized the important role played by James I and VI’s queen consort, Anna of Denmark. While historians and literary critics now acknowledge that Anna was a key player in patronage networks and artistic circles at the time, the extent of her political involvement remains largely unexplored in favor of portraying her solely as a cultural figure. This essay seeks to examine the connections between Anna’s cultural and political activities and suggests that, by viewing Anna’s involvements thorough a dichotomous lens as being either political or cultural, a truly textured and nuanced understanding of …

Temples Of Caesar: The Politics Of Renaissance Georgics Translations, Kimberly Johnson

Quidditas

Between the last years of Elizabeth I’s reign and the regicide of Charles I, three major English translations of Virgil’s middle poem, the Georgics, were published. Each translation appeared at a moment of religio-political crisis in England, a coincidence made more significant by the ambivalent political stance of Virgil’s text, which simultaneously communicates praise for Octavian and suspicion about an imperial program that disenfranchised the agricultural classes, an oversight which Virgil records in the Georgics as impiety. This paper charts the ways in which seemingly innocent translation decisions manage to perform a critical interrogation of monarchal authority, particularly as it …

Review Essay: Some Thoughts On The Greater Integration Of Islamic Sources Into The Wider Framework Of Medieval History, John J. Curry

Quidditas

The study of Islam has been attracting greater interest in recent years, due to high-profile political and economic events. In addition, the rise of world history programs has generated a need for resources by which both students and faculty alike can strengthen their knowledge in this field. Still, general knowledge on the field is limited. This disparity has occurred, in part, because the field of Islamic history, especially in its formative and medieval periods, has been oriented toward specialists rather than a general audience. Often, world history sourcebooks are content to give only short selections from religious sources such as …

Review Essay: Harris, Jonathan Gil. Foreign Bodies And The Body Politic: Discourses Of Social Pathology In Early Modern England, Julian Yates

Quidditas

Harris, Jonathan Gil. Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998. xi + 197 pp. $64.95. ISBN 0-521-59405-7.

Review Essay: Wayne, Valerie, Ed. The Matter Of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism Of Shakespeare, Peggy Muñoz Simonds

Quidditas

Wayne, Valerie, ed. The Matter oof Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y. 1991. x + 227 pp. $48.95 / $18.95.

Gajowski, Evelyn. The Art of Loving: Female Subjectivity and Male Discursive Traditions in Shakespeare's Tragedies. University of Delaware Press, Newark 1992. 153 pp. $32.50.

Sir Clyomon And Sir Clamydes: A Revaluation, Peter T. Hadorn

Quidditas

Long dismissed as an immature play with no intrinsic merit, Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes (ca. 1570-1583) quite thoroughly debates issues of contemporary political interest. This essay seeks to restore Clyomon from its undistinguished position in Renaissance studies by showing how it dramatically supports Queen Elizabeth's use of chivalry as an ideology of power and order and criticizes military adventurism. By reading this play as a political text, in this essay I employ the methodologies of New Historicism, which identifies literature as only one of many cultural discourses taking part in the negotiation of power. "Representations of the world in …

Review Essay: Leonard Tennenhouse, Power On Display: The Politics Of Shakespeare's Genres, Peggy Muñoz Simonds

Quidditas

Leonaard Tennenhouse, Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare's Genres, Methuen, 1986.

Machiavelli's The Prince: A Lexical Enigma, Jeane Luere

Quidditas

Italians today, especially Florentines, unreservedly venerate their native son, Niccolo Machiavelli, 16th century Italian political figure, along with Francesca Petrarcha, Dante Alighieri, and Michelangelo Buonarroti; they attach no stigma, no unfavorable connotation, to the adjective "Machiavellian," coined from the name so famous in literature and legend. An American abroad encounters this total veneration of Machiavelli with some bewilderment, for we are prone to attitudes like that of Thomas Babington Macaulay, who wrote, "We doubt whether any names in literary history be so generally odious as that of Machiavelli."