Search Results

This chapter examines the conflicted renown of 19th-century German academic theology even as it charts the theological faculty’s steady diminution as a component of the overall university system. Five principal lines of inquiry contribute to this broader task. First, the chapter calls attention to how dominant intellectual, political, and social trends of the mid- and late 19th century affected university development. Second, in an effort to penetrate the internal dynamics of university theology, it focuses on Protestant theological education, that is, to what young theology students actually were supposed to learn during their university years. Third, it examines a number of histories of universities written in the late 19th and early 20th century, along with various documents from university commemorative celebrations and from international exhibitions on German higher education. Fourth, it examines the reactions of a number of foreigners to German universities, broaching also the broader international influence of German theology. Finally, it considers several issues that precipitated a crisis of identity for theology in the late 19th century.

When Richard II began to assert himself at the age of 15, it was still ambiguous whether he was of an age to exert his full authority. This chapter focuses on one strategy the king pursued to remedy this situation, namely the aggressive pursuit of a royal expedition, partly in order to promote his manhood in the sense of his renown and personal honour. Those who wished to contest this and other strategies to establish the king's authority took recourse instead to the topos of his inconstant youth. This chapter traces the project of a royal expedition from the first emergence of the king's ‘firm purpose’ in May 1382 to his attempts to intervene in Bishop Despenser's Crusade in autumn 1383. It places this in the context of other forms of evidence of the king's self-assertion, up to the tumultuous parliament held at Salisbury in April 1384.

This chapter details the growth of Learned Hand's national stature. By the end of World War I, after a decade on the bench, Hand was already considered an excellent judge in New York professional circles, but he was not yet nationally known. Soon, however, his reputation would rise dramatically: by 1930 he had received serious consideration for appointment to the United States Supreme Court. The most important ingredient of Hand's mounting renown was clearly his work on the bench. The public had no way of knowing about the great way he decided his numerous little cases; but reports did appear in the press, whether because of the notoriety of the litigants or because of a particularly well-turned phrase in his opinion. Lawyers, professional journals, law professors, and judges had more substantial reasons to appreciate his towering talents, and among this professional elite, Hand was rapidly elevated into the very front rank of American judges.

The Epilogue addresses Le Va's historical position, examining the way in which a kind of “minor status” has been ascribed to him since almost the beginning of his career. It suggests that while a number of factors likely contributed to Le Va’s comparative lack of renown the best explanation is Le Va’s own demonstrated reticence to pursue a higher artistic profile. This must be understood not only as an expression of an individual’s understandable desire to work outside of the limelight but also as a part of a critique of the mechanisms of art world fame. By not seeking a place in the pantheon of great artists, Le Va insists on a kind of art history—multiple, fragmented and temporary—that echoes his own work.

It is generally thought that the lyric poets were hostile to materialist as opposed to kleos-driven, orally delivered, forms of commemoration. However, an investigation of certain test-cases, as well as a broader view of the relation between lyric poetry and other artistic forms of commemoration, shows that the issue is in need of further clarification and modification. This chapter offers a contextually-nuanced interpretation of the available evidence for the inscribing of archaic and classical poetry on stone. The following issues are discussed: what account should we give of the relation between lyric poetry and epigraphy? What account are we to give of the nature of materialistic metaphors in lyric poetry; what contexts need we supply for such poems? And what of the corollary, the use of the orally-inspired language of kleos in epigraphic texts? Are there specific contextual conditions which invite a particularly close relationship between material and non-material forms of commemoration? What forms did inscriptions of non-epigrammatic texts take, and what functions did they have? Key texts include Simonides 581 PMG (on Kleoboulos of Lindos) and 531 PMG (the memorial for the Spartan war-dead). The aim is to produce a coherent account of the social and cultural impact of such interfaces between poetry and epigraphy, as well as art, as not only rival, but also complementary, and sometimes combined, modes of commemoration: part of a broader appreciation of ways in which archaic and classical Greeks thought about themselves, their dead, their gods, and their pasts.

This book examines traditional cluster of ideas about literary fame to discuss how Romantic writers became famous. Most writers have an innate desire for fame. Their seemingly universal and unquenchable urge to be known and talked about motivates their great efforts and exceptional achievements. This introductory chapter presents two kinds of fame—present fame (renown) and future fame (reputation). Present fame refers to fame in one's lifetime, while future fame refers to fame that lasts even after one's death. Those who achieved renown could expect the continuing reward of memorialization after their deaths, but even those who failed to be famous while alive might have a lasting reputation. Most writers considered fame as an organic process, in which their renown grows steadily into reputation after death.

The Introduction lays out the material under study, identifies the issues to be considered, and treats both crucial parts of the scholarly literature behind the study and certain theoretical questions such as the utility of letters as a resource for such histories, the difference between fame and celebrity, and the nature and status of “fan culture.” The chapter makes two key points. First, following Roger Chartier and others, it makes the case for the empirical study of particular acts of reading rather than relying upon a methodology that sees reading as embodied in texts. Second, it highlights the aim of describing both the tactics of readers who wrote to Scott and the author’s tactics as these are revealed in his responses.

In antiquity, the Latin term fama and the corresponding Greek φήμη were etymologically correctly associated with the roots of the verbs fari and φάναι, which mean ‘to speak while using words endowed with meaning’. The Latin term fama indicates what ‘is said’ about something or someone, and its meaning encompasses two different realms: that of rumours and gossip on the one hand, and that of renown and reputation on the other. This term places the focus on a unique and impersonal communicative mechanism at the root of rumour and renown, which is carried out through a more or less significant amount of ‘talk’ produced by an anonymous mass of people. In contrast to the corresponding Latin word, the Greek term can also indicate a divine prophetic voice of unidentifiable origin.

The first attestations of the most famous personification of glory in figurative art appear in three manuscripts of Petrarch’s De uiris illustribus. Two of them have been attributed to the painter Altichiero, and show Glory on a chariot, surrounded by little angels that play winged trumpets, as she throws crowns of laurels to a group of illustrious men. The third is the first instance of a rich iconographic tradition that gave Fama a form very similar to the one described by Boccaccio in the Amorosa visione. This image of Worldly Glory was regularly used to illustrate Petrarch’s Triumphus Fame. The context surrounding this figure reworks elements from ancient triumphal iconography, combining them with elements of religious medieval iconography. Worldly Glory rewards her champions with an ephemeral renown that is contrasted with ‘true’ immortality, reserved solely for those who partake in divine eternity.