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Richard Lovelace and the End of Court Culture, 1647–1649

Nicholas Mcdowell

in Poetry and Allegiance in the English Civil Wars: Marvell and the Cause of Wit

Richard Lovelace is the best-known ‘Cavalier’ poet. He was a relative and close friend of Thomas Stanley; he was friends with both John Hall and Marvell. This chapter offers a revisionist ... More

Richard Lovelace is the best-known ‘Cavalier’ poet. He was a relative and close friend of Thomas Stanley; he was friends with both John Hall and Marvell. This chapter offers a revisionist interpretation of several of his most acclaimed lyric poems, including ‘The Grasshopper’, by placing them in the context of royalist disillusionment in the aftermath of the king's defeat but also of the cultural activities of the Stanley circle. These readings of Lovelace's verse show how his post-war lyrics dwell on the collapse of Stuart court culture and patronage. Lovelace looks rather to a recreation of the sort of literary circle over which Ben Jonson presided in pre-war London for the preservation of literary values against what he perceives as Puritan philistinism.Less

Marvell and the End of Court Culture, 1648–1649

Nicholas Mcdowell

in Poetry and Allegiance in the English Civil Wars: Marvell and the Cause of Wit

This chapter sets Marvell's two of published occasional poems of 1648–9 in the context of the literary community around Stanley in London. The first section examines John Hall's career as a ... More

This chapter sets Marvell's two of published occasional poems of 1648–9 in the context of the literary community around Stanley in London. The first section examines John Hall's career as a Parliamentarian propagandist and shows how he followed Milton in seeking to convince his literary friends to support a royalist–Independent alliance against the Presbyterians. The second section reads Marvell's An Elegy Upon the Death of My Lord Francis Villiers as concerned with similar themes of Lovelace's post-war verse––the destruction of court culture and the future for poetry and wit in a Puritan society. The third section is the most extensive interpretation to date of Marvell's verse epistle ‘To His Noble Friend Mr Richard Lovelace’, a poem which brings together central themes of the previous chapters and reveals Marvell's allegiance to the cause of wit above the defeated cause of the king.Less

The German Territories After c. 1760

Joachim Whaley

in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume II: The Peace of Westphalia to the Dissolution of the Reich, 1648-1806

The Aufklärung did not reject the governmental forms and institutions of the past but sought to give them a new purpose. Discussion of Aufklärung ideas was fostered by the explosive growth of the ... More

The Aufklärung did not reject the governmental forms and institutions of the past but sought to give them a new purpose. Discussion of Aufklärung ideas was fostered by the explosive growth of the print media. Aufklärung was defined by Kant and others; it suffused Protestant and Catholic thinking and many Jewish communities. The reforms of the period often responded to the problem of reconstruction after the Seven Years War, but they were shaped by new cameralist and physiocratic ideas. ‘Improvement’ soon became a general watchword leading to important new developments in administrative practice, law and justice, schools and universities, thinking about religious toleration and in the culture of the German courts. There is some evidence to suggest that the reforms in the German territories helped them avoid the kind of societal crisis that exploded in France in 1789.Less

The Last Portraits of the Valori Family

Mark Jurdjevic

in Guardians of Republicanism: The Valori Family in the Florentine Renaissance

The sixth chapter contrasts two seventeenth‐century histories of the Valori, the first a Savonarolan and republican interpretation by the Dominican friar Silvano Razzi and the second a skilful ... More

The sixth chapter contrasts two seventeenth‐century histories of the Valori, the first a Savonarolan and republican interpretation by the Dominican friar Silvano Razzi and the second a skilful reinterpretation of the family's traditions as essentially pro‐Medicean by the court historian Scipione Ammirato. Both texts were written with the evident blessing of Baccio Valori and both praise the Valori as an exceptional and distinguished Florentine family. In terms of political content, however, the two texts contrast markedly. Razzi's biography of Francesco Valori is a tenacious and outspoken republican critique of Medici power and praise of Francesco's principled stand against it, while Ammirato's family history criticises the anti‐Medicean members of the Valori family and implicitly advances an argument for the legitimacy and permanence of the new Medici duchy.Less

Women and Latin in Early Modern England

Jane Stevenson

in Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century

In 17th century England, women's Latin learning acquired a new utility since gentry-level women might find themselves impoverished by the Civil War. Some found that Latin gave them access to paid ... More

In 17th century England, women's Latin learning acquired a new utility since gentry-level women might find themselves impoverished by the Civil War. Some found that Latin gave them access to paid work. At the level of the court, Latin was out of fashion, but the educated provincial gentry continued to teach daughters Latin. Nuns, particularly Benedictines and Wardists, also studied Latin, and there is also some evidence for Irish women learning Latin. Women continued to study Latin in the 18th century, but learned women were increasingly anxious to conceal their learning.Less

The Seventeenth-Century Fashion Crisis

David Kuchta

in The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity: England, 1550-1850

This chapter covers the republican, Whig, mercantilist, and Puritan ideologies that opposed and undermined Stuart court culture and constructed a new political culture of masculinity, one that ... More

This chapter covers the republican, Whig, mercantilist, and Puritan ideologies that opposed and undermined Stuart court culture and constructed a new political culture of masculinity, one that influenced the introduction of the three-piece suit. It notes that the most visually obvious aspect of the general crisis in seventeenth-century England was the crisis of fashion, which was informed by political, social, religious, and economic events, and in turn helped give them shape. It further notes that contemporaries saw the crown's conspicuous consumption as a threat to the moral, economic, and political well-being of the nation. It explains that a crisis in the public image of monarchy helped precipitate its fall in the English Civil War, helped redefine its meaning during the Restoration, and helped expel James II in the Glorious Revolution.Less

The Women of the Court of Francis I: Wives and Mistresses, Sister and Mother

Kathleen Wellman

in Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France

This chapter focuses on Francis I, a handsome, tall, and richly attired king who epitomized the French Renaissance, and who, coming to the throne as a young man, embodied hopes for a new reign with ... More

This chapter focuses on Francis I, a handsome, tall, and richly attired king who epitomized the French Renaissance, and who, coming to the throne as a young man, embodied hopes for a new reign with his vitality, which offered a striking contrast to the enfeebled Louis XII. Francis I claimed that “a court without women is like a year without spring” and that, without women, a court “more resembles the court of a satrap or a Turk than that of a great Christian king.” In his estimation, a cultured court required women. As such, the royal court, the venue in which the Renaissance emerged in France, was more hospitable to women than other new cultural sites, especially when the king promoted their participation.Less

Making Hierarchy: Garrison, Court, and the Structure of Jiankang Politics

Andrew Chittick

in The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History

Chapter 6, “Making Hierarchy: Garrison, Court, and the Structure of Jiankang Politics,” analyzes the contrasting political cultures of two functional/occupational groups: garrison and court. While ... More

Chapter 6, “Making Hierarchy: Garrison, Court, and the Structure of Jiankang Politics,” analyzes the contrasting political cultures of two functional/occupational groups: garrison and court. While garrison culture emphasized relatively fluid patron-client ties, personal honor, violence, and vengeance, court culture emphasized rigid status hierarchy, calm restraint, and skillful deployment of the Sinitic paideia. The imperial household played a key brokerage role between the two cultures, but the garrisons dominated the process of imperial succession, which did not follow the rules of primogeniture and was always contested. The chapter then uses the Churen group (jituan) of the early fifth century as a case study to demonstrate that the strong regional basis of patron-client cliques, though similar in many ways to the rise of military groups such as the Tabgatch Compatriots in the north, did not result in significant ethnogenesis. The chapter offers as an alternative the model, taken from studies of Southeast Asian regimes, of the “man of prowess.”Less

John’s Court in a Comparative Context: A Preliminary Sketch

Hugh M. Thomas

in Power and Pleasure: Court Life under King John, 1199-1216

How did John’s court compare to those of other rulers in his own period and with earlier and later courts? Variation in the quality and quantity of sources makes precision difficult. Nonetheless, ... More

How did John’s court compare to those of other rulers in his own period and with earlier and later courts? Variation in the quality and quantity of sources makes precision difficult. Nonetheless, what we know about court culture in other European countries in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries suggests that many aspects of court culture were similar across a wide range of territories. Indeed, one can even find similarities with Byzantine and Islamic courts. The evidence also indicates a great deal of continuity across the long historic arc of court culture in Western Europe. However, this continuity was combined with gradual but cumulatively radical change, so that by the early modern period, courts had become much larger and more complex, and very different in other respects as well.Less

The Court as an Instrument of Power

Rolf Strootman

in Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic Empires: The Near East After the Achaemenids, c. 330 to 30 BCE

In Chapter 1, theoretical and methodological approaches to the court as a social and political system are introduced. A short overview of the history of court studies is given.

Sanskrit Textual Production for the Mughals

Audrey Truschke

in Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court

Chapter 2 analyzes Sanskrit literary and grammatical works that were composed under Mughal sponsorship or intended for consumption by the imperial elite. These works offer compelling insights ... More

Chapter 2 analyzes Sanskrit literary and grammatical works that were composed under Mughal sponsorship or intended for consumption by the imperial elite. These works offer compelling insights concerning the perceived and actual lines of Mughal political culture and how texts may have operated across linguistic boundaries.Less

The Abbasid and Byzantine Courts

Nadia Maria El Cheikh

in The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 2: 400-1400

This chapter discusses how research into court culture is an essential part of the growth in historical anthropology. The main historiographical developments have focused first, on the ritual and ... More

This chapter discusses how research into court culture is an essential part of the growth in historical anthropology. The main historiographical developments have focused first, on the ritual and symbolic aspects of rulership; and second, on the personal and domestic world. Any historical investigation of the court faces the problem of definition because courts were so diverse and also because any ruler's court could be different depending on the occasion. This may explain why it is that court studies are almost nonexistent for various periods of Islamic history. This is the same for the Byzantine court as well as the Abbasid society: the Byzantines, like the Abbasids, did not isolate the court as a social and cultural phenomenon worthy of literary attention; rather, court culture was a fact of life which those who lived in it did not feel the need to articulate.Less

The Dulcimer-Playing Android; or, Furniture-Making in the Rhineland

Adelheid Voskuhl

in Androids in the Enlightenment: Mechanics, Artisans, and Cultures of the Self

This chapter takes the journey down the Rhine to the furniture manufacture of Abraham and David Roentgen in Neuwied, about seventy miles south of Cologne. David Roentgen became the most distinguished ... More

This chapter takes the journey down the Rhine to the furniture manufacture of Abraham and David Roentgen in Neuwied, about seventy miles south of Cologne. David Roentgen became the most distinguished and sought-after furniture-maker of his time, and his manufacture was the biggest and most productive of its kind in the entire Holy Roman Empire. His success, like that of the Jaquet-Droz clock-making workshop in Switzerland, had its roots in a society in which early industrialization and the court culture's continuing need for luxury commodities coincided. Roentgen's dulcimer player exemplifies the multifaceted social, spiritual, and political circumstances in the second half of the eighteenth century that facilitated the production of an android automaton.Less

The Visual Culture of a Lutheran Court: Dresden, 1650–1700

Bridget Heal

in A Magnificent Faith: Art and Identity in Lutheran Germany

Chapter 7 turns from the devotional to the magnificent image, exploring the role of religious art at the Dresden court of the Saxon elector. The chapter focuses on the second half of the seventeenth ... More

Chapter 7 turns from the devotional to the magnificent image, exploring the role of religious art at the Dresden court of the Saxon elector. The chapter focuses on the second half of the seventeenth century, on the period of religious and political stability that followed the Peace of Westphalia (1648). It investigates Dresden’s cultural connections to Italy. By the seventeenth century Lutheran texts provided a theologically grounded aesthetic that acknowledged the spiritual value of beautiful images. During this age of princely collecting—of the Kunstkammer—piety and politics merged. The castle chapel in Dresden provides a wonderful example, examined in detail in this chapter: here a rich visual and liturgical culture served not only to promote proper Lutheran piety but also to demonstrate the magnificence of the prince, in this case Elector Johann Georg II (r. 1656–80).Less

Travesties: William Wycherley, the Fop, and the Provincial Girl

Laura J. Rosenthal

in Ways of the World: Theater and Cosmopolitanism in the Restoration and Beyond

This chapter turns to the comedies of William Wycherley, which have long been taken to epitomize the libertine spirit of Restoration court culture. However, it argues that Wycherley (and others) ... More

This chapter turns to the comedies of William Wycherley, which have long been taken to epitomize the libertine spirit of Restoration court culture. However, it argues that Wycherley (and others) pushed back against the court. The playwright's close relationship with the monarch enabled this resistance: he enjoyed royal patronage, had an affair with a royal mistress, and even received a personal visit from a concerned Charles II when he fell ill. The connection began before the poet's birth: Wycherley's family lost much of their wealth supporting the Stuarts during the civil wars, which gave William access to the court's inner circle. Such deep connections have often been read to suggest that Restoration plays promoted the aristocratic ideology of the Stuarts. The libertinism in the comedies, Jeremy Webster, Harold Weber, and others have argued, emerged from a libertine court culture, and the scandalous nature of the plays reflected the scandalous experimentation at court. But Wycherley did not include scandalous scenes to create libertine solidarity; instead, he exploited the leeway created by libertine envelope-pushing to critique royal ambitions with two figures that have entered standard theatrical vocabulary: in The Gentleman Dancing-Master (1672), the fop, and in The Country Wife (1675), the provincial girl shocked into sophistication. Wycherley immortalized but did not invent these two figures; in different ways they each come to embody anxieties at the heart of many comedies of the period. The chapter concludes that Wycherley is an outlier for his extremity and wit, but representative in his concerns.Less

Baldassar Castiglione and the Art of Being Inconspicuously Conspicuous

in In Your Face: Professional Improprieties and the Art of Being Conspicuous in Sixteenth-Century Italy

This chapter describes a model of discretionary comportment both of and for court culture in sixteenth-century Italy, focusing on Baldassar Castiglione and his work as a diplomat. It explains what it ... More

This chapter describes a model of discretionary comportment both of and for court culture in sixteenth-century Italy, focusing on Baldassar Castiglione and his work as a diplomat. It explains what it meant, in theory and in practice, to be conspicuous and yet deftly inconspicuous in the courts of the period. It also explores how strategies for being conspicuous changed dramatically in the late Renaissance as some writers became more and more openly indecorous and manifestly aggressive in print, particularly after the Sack of Rome. Those strategies for being inconspicuously conspicuous also coincided with an unprecedented outpouring of books on proper conduct and professional propriety, which include Castiglione's own influential Cortegiano.Less