The Baconian oeuvre remains the most extensive and influential assault on Aristotelianism in English writing of the early modern period. Where convention respected Aristotelian logic as a viable instrument for studying natural philosophy, Bacon instead sought to initiate an instauration, or restoration, of learning by proposing his inductive…[Read more]

Historians have long argued that arbitration was the preferred means of
resolution for most disputes in later medieval England; but does this apply
also to the settlement of homicides? Despite the strenuous efforts of the
English legal system after the Norman Conquest to force homicides through
the royal courts, historians have argued that…[Read more]

Mensural MEI template for use with Encoding Mensural Notation with MEI slides. The slides are available at https://doi.org/10.17613/zqwr-xm82.

This set of slides was used both in a workshop, Digital Humanities in Early Music Research I, Session II – Early Music Databases and Encoding and in a Paleography course at University of Freiburg. They present the following topics: (1) A short introduction to MEI, (2) Basic Structure of an MEI file, (3) Examples, (4) MEI Technologies – Editors a…[Read more]

MEI template for use with the presentation, Codificación y publicación de música: Un taller sobre Music Encoding Initiative (MEI). Presentation slides can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.17613/fqbk-nz31.

This is a set of slides presented during the Semana de Humanidades Digitales (Week of Digital Humanities) organized by Digital Humanities associations in Mexico (Red HD), Colombia (Red Colombiana de Humanidades Digitales), and Argentina (Asociación Argentina de Humanidades Digitales). An MEI template (template_more_elements.xml) for use with the…[Read more]

The Measuring Polyphony YouTube channel has in-depth informational videos on using the MP Editor as well as short videos explaining individual functions of the editor. The Measuring Polyphony YouTube channel is organized into playlists that contain comprehensive training videos on how to use the MP editor: (1) Video summaries (1-3 mins) of how to…[Read more]

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]

Sometime in the second century CE, Pausanias of Magnesia (modern-day Turkey) wrote the Description of Greece. Ostensibly a tour of the places to see on the Greek mainland, the Description also provides historical accounts related to the topography through which Pausanias moves. Little attention has been given to how these building blocks of…[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]

In this book chapter, Dr. Davis examines the depiction of a dissimulated desire for material improvement (mejora) as it is expressed in the epic poetry of imperial Spain, particularly in Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana. She shows that within the aristocratic context of the times, the desire for personal betterment or “mejora” is always contingent…[Read more]

The nautical motif of the ex-voto (votive offering) is a lyric genre that reflects poetically the possible experience of a shipwreck survivor. Paradoxically, many of the poets who evoke the perils of sea travel never left Spain or, at most, sailed only the waters of the Mediterranean. Their writing of the sea remained consistently codified in…[Read more]