This essay reads Raphael, the principal expositor of scientific knowledge in Milton’s Paradise Lost, as embodying divergent, virtually antithetical, dispositions towards the prospect of free engagement with natural philosophy within the public sphere. At once stimulating Adam’s curiosity about the natural world while also overzealously cur…[Read more]

This article examines how Thomas Hughes’s “The Misfortunes of Arthur” pays homage to Elizabeth I through its eclectic use of Arthurian traditions and deployment of imagery centered on corrupted sexuality and the body politic.

This article examines how Thomas Hughes’s “The Misfortunes of Arthur” pays homage to Elizabeth I through its eclectic use of Arthurian traditions and deployment of imagery centered on corrupted sexuality and the body politic.

From antiquity, Galenic physicians extensively discussed the active powers of simple and compound drugs. In their views, simple drugs, that is, single ingredients, acted according to their material qualities and the properties of their substance. As for compound drugs, their efficacy resulted from the mutual interaction of their ingredients and…[Read more]

Este artículo visibiliza el uso que se le puede dar a una serie de proyectos de Humanidades Digitales, como son las bases de datos de Rolecall, DICAT y CATCOM o la biblioteca digital EMOTHE, a la hora de analizar las dinámicas escenográficas en el teatro español de finales del siglo XVI y principios del siglo XVII, coincidiendo con las déc…[Read more]

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]

This preface introduces in the main issues of the volume.

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]

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]

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.

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]