Fri - May 25, 2007

The readiness to deconstruct is all

A.D. Nuttall, Shakespeare the Thinker, Yale University Press. 428 pp.

Colin McGinn, Shakespeare's Philosophy, HarperCollins. 230 pp.

Review by Carlin Romano

To be or not to be a philosopher did not concern Shakespeare, so far as we know. And we know very little.
Indeed, it might be said that the endless interpretations of scholars who claim Shakespeare meant this or that, or wrote from a familiar ideological position - "closet Catholic" keeps rising as a trendy view in recent bios - die many times before their deaths (savaged by rival scholars), while modest approaches taste of deconstruction but once, when the books in which they appear get pulped.

And there's the nub - the paradox of Shakespeare scholarship that continues nearly 400 years after his death.

On the one hand - a phrase Shakespeare may have invented, along with a higher percentage of English truisms than anyone else - the Bard endures as the supreme writer in the history of the English language and, to many, the most profound ever across all cultures.

When we refuse to "budge an inch," excoriate "rotten apples," or admonish slackers to "sink or swim," we speak in his voice. Although the arts sections of newspapers teem with products from self-anointed "artists" who will not survive their publicity budgets, Shakespeare after roughly four centuries still pleases general audiences, challenges intellectuals, and provokes academics. How can we not presume that such a stupendous orchestrator of character and insight operated with a coherent, multifaceted theory of human nature?

On the other hand, our ignorance of Shakespeare the man - he left no diaries or letters in his short life of some 52 years - and the clashing multiple versions of some of his texts, have always dovetailed with a contrary belief that his greatness arises precisely from utter openness to the varieties of human behavior, emotion and thought, his ability to render in concrete scenes and daring metaphors more non-reductionist nuances of the heart and mind than an army of writers centuries later.

Full review at philly.com >>>

Posted at 08:38 AM    

Mon - May 7, 2007

Liberated by Skepticism

Edward Muir, The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance, Harvard, 175 pages

Review by FRANCIS X. ROCCA

Finding the roots of opera in the history of science is a task that would daunt even a polymath of Renaissance stature. Yet in "The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance," Edward Muir plausibly explains how the skepticism taught by a professor at the University of Padua in the early 17th century fostered a musical revolution in neighboring Venice -- and much else besides.

Could art really imitate nature? Followers of Cesare Cremonini (1550-1631) did not think so, elaborating their master's philosophical skepticism into a "profound rhetorical skepticism" that "eroded confidence in artistic norms and rules." Cremonini's thinking, Mr. Muir shows, helped to free up the whole idea of what the arts might do. Composers and librettists, under the influence of Cremonini's disciples, felt themselves set loose from convention. They made a place for "pure voice . . . utterly disconnected from the text of the libretto, a practice that led to the musical, lyrical and emotional excesses so characteristic of early opera." Mr. Muir's exhibit A is Monteverdi, specifically "L'Incoronazione di Poppea" (a work that is still in the repertory today).

Full review at wsj.com >>>

Posted at 11:22 AM    

Thu - April 12, 2007

New Audio Guide Reveals True Meaning of Fra Angelico Frescoes at San Marco, in Florence, Italy

Fra Angelico’s magnificent 15th Century frescoes at San Marco monastery in Florence are among the greatest achievements in the history of art. Now visitors can tour this historic site guided by the scholarship of a highly-regarded art historian.

Fra Angelico at San Marco: Audio Guide to San Marco in Florence and its Remarkable Fresco Cycle is the audio adaptation of a popular book in the series The Great Fresco Cycles of the Renaissance, written by William Hood, Professor of Art History at Oberlin College, and a renowned Fra Angelico scholar.

This audio tour is for use by travelers as a guide when they’re actually at San Marco, looking at the frescoes and wanting to understand the artistic and historical context of what they’re seeing. “Audio is an efficient and entertaining way to absorb a lot of information,” says Jane McIntosh, producer and narrator of Jane’s Smart Art Guides. “It’s like taking your favorite art history professor on your trip with you.”

Press release at mmdnewswire.com >>>

Posted at 05:27 PM    

Wed - February 28, 2007

Fri - December 1, 2006

1657: The rough guide to Europe

HIS was an epic traveller's tale, 1,000 handwritten pages recounting a journey that took him from Scotland to England and onwards across Europe.

An early budget traveller, James Fraser was an Episcopalian minister who set off from Scotland in the mid-17th century. His three-year journey from Inverness through Scotland, England, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Holland, led to him compiling an extensive travel diary, written with a crow quill, and stretching over three volumes.

Now, almost 350 years since the Rev Fraser first put quill to paper, his diaries have been rediscovered and are set to be published for the first time.

Full article at news.scotsman >>>

Posted at 09:14 AM    

Wed - November 1, 2006

Mon - August 21, 2006

Swedish scholar of late 17th-century fascinates

David King, Finding Atlantis: A True Story of Genius, Madness, and an Extraordinary Quest for a Lost World, New York: Harmony Books 2005, 320 pages.

Reviewed by Andrew McMichael, Department of History, Western Kentucky University

At first blush, a history of late-17th century Sweden might not seem like the first thing you would pick off the shelf of Barnes & Noble, or order from Amazon.com. After all, many Americans probably could not place Sweden on a map, and in their mind might confuse it with Switzerland. The history of that far northern country has often been obscured by the events and glory of nearby countries such as France and England.

Yet historic Sweden is not entirely unknown in the States. A popular video game entitled “Europa Universalis: Crown of the North” is set in Renaissance-era Sweden and Norway and requires the players to navigate and prosecute the Great Northern War. Teenagers gobbled up this game, meaning that many of them knew more about Swedish history than their history professors.

It was during that period Swedish nationalist and professor at Uppsala University, Olof Rudbeck, lived with what was at once an understandable and, at the same time, very strange obsession. Like many before and since, Rudbeck set out to locate Atlantis, first described by Plato in his dialogues “Timaeus” and “Critias.” Rudbeck, however, was convinced it was in Sweden, and more peculiarly, that the town of Uppsala was the capital of the mythical city. Reaching deeper into a methodological fantasy world constructed out of wishful research, Rudbeck began to see Sweden as the cradle of Western and Mediterranean culture - the place to which the Argonauts fled after capturing the Golden Fleece, the land of the Titans and proto-Olympians, and the forebear of Greek and Roman civilization. Rudbeck also came to believe the Greek alphabet had its roots in the Swedish runes. He finally published his findings in a multi-volume work entitled “Atlantica.”

Full review at bgdailynews.com >>>

Posted at 09:41 AM    

Mon - May 15, 2006

Thu - April 20, 2006

Peripheries

Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels. A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds, 448 pages

Reviewed by Peter N. Miller

Al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Wazzan was born in Granada around 1486-1488. He died, perhaps in Tunis, sometime after 1532. Between 1518 and 1527, this same person lived in Rome and went by the names Joannes Leo (Latin), Giovanni Leone (Italian), and Yuhanna al-Asad (Arabic). Posterity knows him by still another name, given posthumously: Leo Africanus, his nom de plume. But who was he? This is the puzzle facing Davis. Unlike Martin Guerre, whose story lay buried in an archive, but buried whole, the man formerly known as Leo Africanus hides in plain sight.  

His great claim on posterity is an extraordinary book that he wrote during his Roman period, published in 1550 with the title The Description of Africa. It was the first modern treatment of northern and western Africa, written by someone who had traveled its length and its breadth (though there remains some dispute about how far south of the Sahara he actually went) as a diplomat for the sultan of Fez. When he was captured by pirates on the way back to Morocco from a diplomatic mission to Cairo, al-Hasan al-Wazzan was an important functionary. This much was recognized by the pirate chief who thought him a handsome-enough gift to present outright to the Medici Pope Leo X. This was the Rome of the High Renaissance, described for our time so memorably by Ingrid Rowland. Al-Wazzan was catechized by the pope's own master of ceremonies and two other bishops, and baptized under the godfathership of three cardinals, among them Egidio da Viterbo, diplomat, orator, and humanist, in whose orbit he would remain. Thus launched into the highest of Roman society, Joannes Leo the Christian spent a decade in Rome working as a scholar and scholarly informant.  

Full article at tnr.com >>>

Posted at 09:37 AM    

Thu - March 23, 2006

Marguerite de Navarre – Mother of the Renaissance

By Patricia Francis Cholakian and Rouben Cholakian. 448 pages

Exerpt from the Introduction

Some 450 years later, we wonder: Who was this princess who became a “writer” and saw herself as one when to be identified as such was rare indeed? Official documents help to situate the princess in this place at that time but tell us little about her inner life, what she thought, what she felt. A swirl of intriguing questions plague us. Some of these are inextricably bound up with contemporary politics. What, in fact, were her religious beliefs? Did she have a philosophy of governance? How did she define the role of women, especially an educated and privileged woman such as herself? Other questions are harder to get at. What were her family relations like? Did her love for her brother skirt the temptations of incest? Did she, as she often intimated, really feel herself the least important member of the famous Angoulême trinité, consisting of Marguerite; her brother, François; and their mother, Louise de Savoie? How did she envision her responsibilities toward motherhood? Was
there anything that approached real love between her and either of her two husbands?

Because it is our good fortune as biographers to have at our disposal the considerable body of Marguerite’s own writings, we have the rare opportunity to get at least a glimpse of the workings of her mind. The mores of her time would not have permitted her to do the kind of deep psychological self-probing we have come to expect from our modern writers. But with the right perspective, and by asking the right questions, this mother lode of words can nonetheless offer up valuable nuggets of information about the private person behind the public persona, some useful insights into the mentality and intellect of this gifted religious reformer, political operator, and cultural midwife who was also sister to a king, wife to another, and grandmother to a third.

Presentation of publication and full exerpt at columbia.edu >>>

Posted at 06:03 PM