Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714–1774), a Bolognese wax sculptor, overcame humble origins to become one of the most important anatomical artists of the eighteenth century. Working with her husband Giovanni Manzolini (c. 1700–1755), and continuing alone after his death, Morandi created remarkably lifelike and anatomically accurate wax models of the sen…[Read more]

“The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope published in 1712 is a mock-heroic narrative which satirically
glorifies trivial incident of cutting of locks of protagonist Belinda. This poem was written in the
Augustan Era (1660-1784) which is marked by the period of scientific reason and rationality, whose
effect can be seen on the writers of those…[Read more]

Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy creates a subtle apologia for the “middling sort” by challenging the socially constructed predicates of aristocratic privilege. A scrivener’s son, Kyd undertsood oeconomia, or household management, as both the means for material advancement among the “middling sort” and a potential threat to aristocratic insular…[Read more]

Examines Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors and the epistemological challenges of differentiating twins in light of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, specifically his theories of substance and individuation.

Shortly after publishing the first edition of his Essays in 1597, Francis Bacon drafted De sapientia veterum, a series of unpublished essays designed to re-read classical mythology as indicative of political and scientific truths. An early, if partial, expression of Bacon’s project to facilitate mastery over the natural order, De sapientia has c…[Read more]

This essay examines English Renaissance chess manuals in order to understand why chess, a game that encourages subterfuge and stratagem, was nonetheless figured as the paradigmatic example of a virtuous pastime. Particular attention is given to da Odenara Damiano’s The Pleasaunt and Wittie Playe of the Cheasts (1564), Arthur Saul’s The Famous Gam…[Read more]

After the period of splendour experienced by the musical chapel of the Collegiate Church of Santa María la Mayor in Talavera de la Reina during the 18th century, we witnessed a period of decline, which was part of the crisis experienced by Spanish religious music during the 19th century. The effects of the War of Independence, the successive…[Read more]

This article focuses on Spanish music in the 18th century, which experienced one of the most brilliant periods in its history. This was undoubtedly due to the splendour achieved by keyboard music, which reached an extraordinary level of development after the arrival in Spain of the Neapolitan composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), harpsichord…[Read more]

The musical chapel of the Collegiate Church of Santa María la Mayor in Talavera de la Reina is a significant case of how an ecclesiastical institution articulates the musical life of a city: in this sense, it can be stated that the main musical activity in the aforementioned Toledan city has revolved around the chapel of the Collegiate Church…[Read more]

The publication of Cervantes’ Don Quixote served as inspiration from the very moment of its creation for a whole series of artistic manifestations, among which those related to the art of sound stand out. Among the famous Spanish composers of Romanticism, the Sevillian composer Manuel del Pópulo García shines and stands out with his own light. H…[Read more]

This article focuses on the personal and artistic career of one of the most representative composers of Spain in the second half of the 18th century and the first third of the 19th century. Ramón Garay, born in 1761 in Asturias, held the post of Chapel Master of Jaén Cathedral for 36 fruitful years, which saw the birth of an extraordinary p…[Read more]

This article focuses on the decline of Spanish ecclesiastical music from the beginning of the 19th century, coinciding with the outbreak of the War of Independence. This decline worsened as a result of the application of successive disentailments by the various liberal governments and the signing of the Concordat of 1851. To remedy this situation,…[Read more]

The music chapel of the Cathedral of Segorbe has historically played a primordial role in the history of Spanish music, constituting a focus of musical activity that attracted a numerous group of singers, instrumentalists, organists and chapel masters who formed part of the aforementioned chapel, whose antecedents date back to the mid-13th…[Read more]

This article examines Mary Magdalene’s biblical identity and poetic representation in selected sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish texts. An alternative reading or “re-visioning” (Adrienne Rich’s term) of the narratives that tell her story reclaims her figure from masculinist characterizations of Mary Magdalene that have made an enduring…[Read more]

Osborn, Brad and D.K. Blake. 2019. “Triangulating Timbre in Sigur Rós’s Iceland.” In *Sounds Icelandic*, edited by Thorbjörg Daphne Hall, N. Dibben, Á.H. Ingólfsson, and T. Mitchell. Equinox Press, 208–219.