Musicologists are increasingly focusing upon less formal private "institutions" and traditions of patronage: informal acad. and soc, the activities of individuals, and convivial aristocratic co. Early 16th-cent. Florence was characterized by the practices of a series of these vital institutions. Such informal institutions had considerable virtues as agents of patronage; their less routinized practices freed them to engage in experimentation that the more formal institutions would not support. This study reconstructs the memberships, cultural activities, and musical exper. of these informal Florentine institutions and relates them to the emergence of the madrigal, the foremost musical genre of early-modern Europe. Richly illus. with visual materials and musical examples.
Realities of Images
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In Feb. 1877, a letter from the county council of Telha, a town of 600 people located in the Serra da Mattos in Brazil reported that people were dying from starvation. The previous year's rainy season had been sparse, and the harvest, poor. Now, this season's rains still had not appeared. This was the Great Drought -- three years of failed rains enshrined in Brazilian memory as the worst drought ever to hit Brazil's northeast. Drought had visited the region throughout its history, with the earliest recorded occurrences dating back to the 16th century. The failure of rains in 1877 was devastating, for it caught the provinces of the north totally unprepared. The specter of periodic droughts producing dislocation and death continues to haunt the region.
Sophie de Grouchy Letters on Sympathy (1798)
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Sophie de Grouchy, marquise de Condorcet, was a woman of the French Enlightenment who was a member of the Girondin revolutionary faction, ran an influential salon, and translated Adam Smith and Thomas Paine. Her “Lettres sur la sympathie” is a work on moral philosophy, a theory of social progress, and a feminist reassessment of liberal philosophy and social contract theory. Editor Brown brings to light an important philosophical text from the end of the 18th cent. which will be valuable to scholars of the French Enlightenment, Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment, women’s studies, and the history of women in philosophy. “Succeeds in restoring Sophie de Grouchy’s text to its rightful place in the history of philosophy and ideas.” Illus.
Opening of the Maritime Fur Trade at Bering Strait
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Makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of the early maritime trade in the northern Pacific in general, & in the Bering Strait area in particular. The maritime fur trade was an important commercial force in the Bering Strait region from the early 19th cent. until the outbreak of WW2; nevertheless, its origins are not well understood. But two important documents shed considerable light on the genesis of this trade. These manuscripts describe the voyages of the Amer. trading brigs “Gen. San Martin” & “Pedler” in 1819-20. They provide info. on the relationships that existed between the Amer. maritime traders & the Russian officials in Kamchatka & Alaska, as well as with the inhab. of the Bering Strait region in the first qtr. of the 19th cent. Illustrations.
Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europe, CA 800-1500
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Early medieval astronomy, esp. in the era of Charlemagne & his successors, consisted of texts that went far beyond the boundaries of computus, which modern scholars have long believed to be the only significant context for astronomical studies of that time. The texts contained innovative diagrams where no other sign of divergence from the text could be seen. Such diagrams were found to provide an indication of understandings of the texts -- which were different from those of modern scholars. Contents: Astronomy & Its Teaching in Carolingian Europe; Functions & Locations of Planetary Diagrams; Sources & Topics of Planetary Diagrams; Plinian Diagrams; Macrobian Diagrams; Calcidian Diagrams; & Capellan Diagrams. Illus. This is a print on demand publication.
Continuations of the Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes
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Between 1949 and 1983, William Roach produced the sole modern ed. of the First, Second, and Manessier Continuations of the Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes, based on all the manuscripts. Most vol. are out of print, but the popularity of King Arthur and the Grail legend keeps interest in the subject high. Vol. I, containing the Mixed Redaction of the First Continuatio -- where Gauvain in the principal character -- is once again avail. This new ed., entirely re-set, incorporates all of the corrections indicated by Roach. The extensive introduction has been brought up-to-date. There are many new notes to the text, and a complete bibliography. A subject index to the notes provides easy access to the wealth of grammatical and linguistic analysis they contain.
Making of a Romantic Icon
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In this thought-provoking book, Gossman focuses on Overbeck’s “Italia and Germania” to discuss the importance of religious conversion in Romantic thought. Gossman gives excellent translations from original German sources that are not only accurate but may enable the Anglophone reader to truly grasp the spirit of the sources. This book serves as a thoughtful and elegantly written introduction to the way of thinking of one of the most important of the Nazerene painters. It treats the evolution of the Nazarene artists’ preoccupation with religious issues in an engaging manner and offers a social-historical and theological context to Overbeck’s painting by looking interestingly at a wide range of issues and contacts in his early Nazarene period. Illus.
Library of Benjamin Franklin
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Beginning in the 1950s, Edwin Wolf 2nd embarked on a biblio’l. quest to reconstruct the library of Benjamin Franklin, which was the largest & best private library in Amer. at the time of his death & was subsequently dispersed. The contents of Franklin’s library were virtually unknown until Wolf identified the unique shelfmarks that Franklin used to organize his books. That discovery allowed Wolf to locate 2,700 titles in 1,000 vols. that Franklin actually owned. Wolf also identified a further 700 titles owned by Franklin. After wolf’s death, Kevin Hayes took up the project & brought it to fruition. This catalogue includes almost 4,000 books known to have been owned by Franklin, & the Intro. tells the complete story of Franklin’s library, its dispersal, & its reconstruction.
Descartes and the Hyperbolic Quest
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In 1629, the natural philosopher René Descartes enticed a young artisan to undertake a secretive project, one that promised to revolutionize early modern astronomy. Descartes believed he had conceived a new kind of telescope lens, shaped by the light of reason itself, & surpassing anything ever to come from the hands of the glass-working craftsmen of the era. These novel lenses would never be touched by human hands -- they would be cut by an elaborate machine, a self-regulating & automatic device. This study traces the inception, development, & finally the collapse of this ambitious enterprise, which absorbed the energies & attentions of a broad range of 17th-century savants, including Huygens, Wren, Hevelius, Hooke, & even Newton. Illus.
Passion of George Sarton
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George Sarton animated the discipline of history of science (HoS) in America. This vol. traces his youth & educ. in Belgium, & his marriage to Mabel Elwes. It follows the Sarton’s in their path from idealistic refugees fleeing the invasion of Belgium in 1914 to destitute intellectuals at Harvard Univ. For 50 years, HoS as an acad. specialty owed much to Sarton’s visions & anxieties, esp. as they were expressed in his marriage. Mabel Sarton sustained his enterprise & contributed to its form, which included parts of socialism, pacifism, aesthetics, & faith. Themes present in Sarton’s early work include the common endeavor of artists & scientists, the private nature of scientific innovation, & the HoS as a bridge between the humanities & the natural sciences. Illus.
Peter Collinson and the Eighteenth-Century Natural History Exchange
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Collinson’s life is a microcosm of 18th-cent. natural history. A gardener and naturalist by avocation, he was what we would now call a facilitator in natural science, disseminating botanical and horticultural knowledge during the Enlightenment. He influenced the Comte de Buffon and Linnaeus. He found clients for the Phila. naturalist John Bartram. American plants populated great estates like those of the Dukes of Richmond, Norfolk, and Bedford, as well as the Chelsea Physic Garden, and the nurseries of James Gordon and Robert Furber. Botanic painters such as Mark Catesby and Georg Dionysius Ehret painted American plants in Collinson’s garden. He had an unprecedented effect on the exchange of scientific info. on both sides of the Atlantic. Illus.
Alexander the Great
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This English translation of Le Rider’s study of the coinage and financial policy of Alexander the Great brings the magisterial scholarship of one of the world’s greatest living numismatists before an Anglophone public. For more than 40 years Le Rider has published fundamental studies on the coinages of the ancient Middle East and eastern Mediterranean world, particularly from the time of Philip II (Alexander’s father), and Alexander himself. Throughout his career Le Rider has demonstrated a rare ability to combine the meticulous analysis of coins with interpretations that convey the historical significance of the finds. This study draws the reader from detailed analysis and scholarly controversy into a compelling evocation of a pragmatic world conqueror. Illus.
Essays and Reviews in History and History of Science
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A collection of essays of enduring interest in the history of science by Charles Coulston Gillispie, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History of Science, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He founded the undergraduate program in the History of Science at Princeton in 1956 and continues to work with students as they pursue their scientific studies. The pieces are arranged not chronologically but in broad topical categories: Early Papers; French Science; General Topics; Historians and Historians of Science; and Science and Society. Gillispie has provided introductory remarks in order to situate them in the circumstances wherein they were written.
John Haygarth, FRS
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An excellent biography of John Haygarth, an important 18th-century physician who is most well known for his visionary plan to eliminate smallpox from Great Britain through the careful practice of inoculation & isolation. Haygarth made many more innovative & far-reaching contributions to medicine & to philanthropy. He became a physician in Chester in 1767. There he introduced separate wards in the Chester Infirmary where patients with fever could be isolated & cared for. It was the stimulus for the development of the fever hospitals of 19th cent. England. He also played a major role in the foundation of the Bath Provident Institution for savings, a model for the savings-bank movement in England. Black & white illustrations.
Classical Romantic
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This book recuperates the Latin poetry of Vincent Bourne by exploring the poet’s unique techniques of self-fashioning that distinguish him from his neo-Latin forebears & contemporaries. Haan is the UK’s most eminent neo-Latinist. Through close & perceptive analysis of Bourne’s negotiation of poetic identity, Haan argues in new ways for the blend of classicism & Romanticism informing his marginalized status. She capitalizes on the familiarity with other 18th-cent. English poets about whom she has previously written (Cowper, Gray, & Addison) & she makes use of contemporary literary theory without becoming dependent on any single approach or disfiguring her writing with critical jargon. The connections with English-language poets that Haan adduces will be a very considerable resource for students of vernacular poetry.
Johann Schoner’s Globe of 1515
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The first detailed study of the terrestrial globe of Johann Schoner (1477-1547), a cosmographer and teacher of mathematics in Nurnberg, which he made as part of the first pair of celestial and terrestrial globes in 1515. The globe is not much younger than the earliest surviving terrestrial globe from 1492. The globe is an important part of early 16th-cent. cartography, and an important chapter in the cartographic history of the New World. Transcribing all of the toponyms and legends on the globe has entailed an examination of textual, catographic, and graphical sources which has shed light on the relationship of the globe to maps, globes, and books of the period. “A work of consummate scholarship.” Illustrations.
Beyond Combat
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Contents: Emancipation, Black Troops, & Hard War, by J. Paradis; A Reinterpretation of Sherman’s Generalship during the 1864 March to Atlanta in Light of the Logistic Strategy, by J. Britt McCarley; The U.S. Navy & the Genesis of Maritime Education, by J. Speelman; U.S. Military Attaches & Military Intelligence, 1885-1920, by J. Votaw; Col. Conrad Babcock & Command Development during WW1, by D. Johnson; The Politics of Soldier Voting in the Elections of 1944, by C. DeRosa; Eisenhower as Ground-Forces Commander: The Brit. Viewpoint, by G.E. Murray; Operation Rollup: The U.S. Army’s Rebuild Program during the Korean War, by P. Kindsvatter; Considerations on the Weakness of Brit. Imperial Power, by A. Lynde; & Weigley Bibliography.
Franz Boas and W. E. B. Du Bois at Atlanta University, 1906
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The papers of William Shedrick Willis (1921-1983), housed at the APS, include his drafts of the manuscript “Boas Goes to Atlanta.” They contain the fascinating story of Franz Boas’s visit to Atlanta Univ. in 1906, and more, because Willis intended the work to be a book on Boas’s work in black anthropology. Zumwalt focuses on what was to have been Willis’s first chapter, “Boas Goes to Atlanta.” She expands the sections on Boas’s trip to Atlanta, the time he spent on the campus of Atlanta Univ., the reaction to his talk by blacks and whites, and the conflict between W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Winner of the John Frederick Lewis Award for 2008. Photos.
Raising Kane
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Here is the cultural biography of Elisha Kane, a sickly physician, who transformed himself into an internationally celebrated Arctic explorer and author before his untimely death in 1857. This book is an important reinterpretation of the life of a prototypically American figure. Following Kane’s exploits from the Mexican War through his arctic adventures and ill-fated romance with the Spiritualist medium Margaret Fox, author Sawin ties this Kane into the main currents of mid-19th cent. popular culture, opening a new vista on the meanings of masculinity, celebrity, and heroism. This is an exhaustive research work into the life and accomplishments of a remarkable adventurer, and a sociological analysis of popular perceptions of Kane’s work and feats. Illus.
Grammatical Sketch of Chindali
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Chindali is spoken along the northern border of Malawi and in southwestern Tanzania. There are about 70,000 speakers in Malawi and 150,000 speakers in Tanzania. This grammatical sketch represents the language as spoken in the region of northern Malawi. It differs in important ways from the variety spoken in Tanzania, esp. in verbal morphology. It also differs from a closely related dialect called Chisukwa, primarily in tone and some sounds. Contents: Intro.; Phonology; Noun Morphology; Noun Modification; Verbs: Structure and Morphology; Verb Types; Verbs: Constructions and Phrases; Ideophones; Syntax; Invariable Forms. Append.: Verb Templates; Paradigm of the Verb “uku.lima” ‘cultivate; hoe’. References.
Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes
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Deals with the history of eyeglasses from their invention in Italy ca. 1286 to the appearance of the telescope three cent. later. “By the end of the 16th cent. eyeglasses were as common in western and central Europe as desktop computers are in western developed countries today.” Eyeglasses served an important technological function at both the intellectual and practical level, not only easing the textual studies of scholars but also easing the work of craftsmen/small bus. During the 15th cent. two crucial developments occurred: the ability to grind convex lenses for various levels of presbyopia and the ability to grind concave lenses for the correction of myopia. As a result, eyeglasses could be made almost to prescription by the early 17th cent. Illus.
“To Do Justice to Him and Myself”
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This translated Dutch account book of the fur trade with Indians yields essential data for understanding the workings of the intercultural fur trade in colonial North Amer. It contains accounts of hundreds of Indians, many listed with their own names, who purchased merchandise on credit from Evert Wendell (1681-1750) and his relatives in Albany, NY. Over 2,000 credit transactions and payments are recorded. This book has been praised as a major addition to the literature on the fur trade which challenges many widely held interpretations. “Offers many new insights into Native Amer. life, into the economics of colonial NY, into the persistence of Dutch culture and trade networks, and into countless other topics.” “A major achievement.” Illustrations. This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication.
Narratives of Chindali Life and Culture
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The Ndali people occupy a small area of northern Malawi and southern Tanzania. Relatively little has been published on their language, life, or culture. This volume presents short personal narratives on various aspects of the Ndali world in Malawi, as related by 16 individuals, men and women ranging in age from their late teens to early 40s. These texts are a representative sample collected in 1994 by Loveness Schafer. They provide a glimpse of Ndali culture and life. Contents: Folk Histories of the Ndali and Sukwa Peoples; Childbirth; Death and Funerals; Marriage; Food and Food-Producing Activities; Music; Musical Instruments; Old and New: ‘Traditional Beliefs’, and ‘A Person Who Has Never Seen a Plane’; Folk Art: 2 Folk Tales, 2 Poems.
Descended from Darwin
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This vol. has its origins in a conference, held October 22-23, 2004, at the Amer. Philosophical Society (APS) Library, Phila. The main focus was on evolutionary studies in America before, during, and after the famous “synthesis” period of the 1930s and 1940s. The synthesis period has been the focus of substantial new research and important new thinking. This vol. brings together 15 specialists to explore these developments and to press further. Questions shaping these essays focus on the following broad themes: Continuity and breaks across generations; Emerging narratives for the period; New research opportunities at the APS; New ideas from the research front; Placing evolutionists in the broader context of biology; and Future directions. Also includes a thoughtful intro. by Michael Ruse.
Invention of the Telescope
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Ours is an age of science and technology, based on precision instruments. The first such device to strengthen our feeble human senses in our striving to comprehend the strange and elusive universe around us was the telescope. Cornelis de Waard, in his “De uitvinding der verrekijkers” (The Hague, 1906), had uncovered many new documents bearing on the genesis of the telescope. Van Helden began this project as a translation of de Waard’s study. However, Van Helden decided that the profession and de Waard’s memory would be better served by a collection and translation of all the relevant primary sources named in his study. Contents of this volume: Intro.; The Background; Between Porta and Lipperhey, 1589-1608; and Documents. Illus. Reprint.
Playing with Fire
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This collection of historical and scientific studies shows the impressive significance of the invention, development, and use of the lightning rod in the past 250 years. The rod was a device long taken to be a symbol of enlightenment and utility, judged by some people the very first practical application of the experimental physical sciences to truly practical ends; opposition to its introduction was similarly taken to be a sign of superstition. These essays move beyond the lightning rods’ storied revolutionary symbolism to explore the range of techniques and experiments that fashioned conductors and their varied meanings. “An intriguing and entertaining history of one of modernity’s most cherished technoscientific objects.” Illustrations.
Magnetic Fever
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Explores the links between science and empire in the 19th cent\ury, focusing on the mutual interactions of British imperialism and geophysical empiricism. The 19th century was a time when science was becoming global, in part due to European colonial and imperial expansion. Colonies became not just propagation points for European science, but also collection points for geophysical investigations. These “colonial observatories” influenced the type of science that could be done. Comparing the development of British and American geomagnetic research during this period shows the dependency between the two influences. Both the scientific theories and the geopolitical realities played a role in creating the tool for studying global science still in use today.
Sporting with the Classics
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Focuses on the original Latin poetry of William Dillingham, a 17th-cent. editor, and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge Univ. It does so in an attempt to disprove claims that Dillingham’s talent lay in criticism rather than in original composition, and that his Latin verse shows his complete independence of the old school of classical imitation. This study highlights both the classical and the contemporary intertexts with which this hitherto neglected poetry engages. This highly talented verse “sports” with the classics in several ways: first in its self-consciously interaction with the Latin poets Virgil and Ovid; second in its appropriation of a classical world and its linguistic medium to describe such 17th-cent. sports or pastimes as bowling, horticulture, and bell-ringing.
Ground Sloth
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“Megalonyx” is one of the most widely distributed taxa of ground sloths in North America. Numerous Pleistocene sites contain isolated fossil elements. However, most fossils are of late Rancholabrean age, and relatively few “Megalonyx” fossils have been found in the southeastern United States outside of Florida. This work is unique because it describes more than 250 fossil elements from a single site of Irvingtonian age in South Carolina. It also includes detailed measurements of all teeth and postcranial elements. Morphometrics offers insights into hypsodonty and body mass, and comparisons with other “Megalonyx” across space and time suggest a need to revisit the current taxonomy. Illustrations.
Chindali and English Dictionary with an Index to Proto-Bantu Roots
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Chindali is a Bantu language of eastern Africa, spoken in the southwest Mbeya region of Tanzania and in the northern Chitipa District of Malawi. There are about 70,000 speakers in Malawi and 150,000 in Tanzania. In Malawi, not only are there varieties known as Chindali, but also the closely related variety known as Chisukwa. This dict. focuses on the Chindali varieties spoken in northern Malawi, excl. Chisukwa. Contents: Guide to the Dict.: Linguistic Studies of Chindali; Chindali-English Dict.; English-Chindali Index; Index to Proto-Bantu Roots; Append.: Chindali Kinship Terms; Paradigms of Chindali Pronouns; Paradigms of Chindali Demonstratives; Numbers and Time; Verbs of Perception; Verbes of Location and Position; Verbs of Motion.
Learning Greek in Western Europe, 1396-1529
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This book is a guide to the basic tools of Renaissance Greek studies and their use in the classrooms of the 15th and 16th centuries. Author Paul Botley examines the origins and diffusion of 21 Greek grammars composed during the period, explores the development of Greek lexicography during the Renaissance and its relationship with surviving ancient and Byzantine Greek lexica, and studies the fortunes of the Greek authors known to have been used by Renaissance students. The book concludes with two appendices that catalog all Greek grammatical and lexical works printed before 1530.
Polar Hayes
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In the mid-19th century, Dr. Isaac Israel Hayes was a member of the Amer. arctic expedition under the command of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane in search of the lost British explorer Sir John Franklin. Through his own hard fought experiences, combined with the knowledge learned from Polar Eskimos, he successfully influenced the course of Arctic discovery. As an elected politician in New York State during its Gilded Age, Hayes served the ‘public good’ for a decade, with accomplishments as far reaching as his Arctic service. In this book, the story emerges of a remarkable but forgotten explorer, writer, politician, and humanitarian who epitomized the rugged and restless spirit of adventure and individualism of 19th-century America. Illustrations.
Visual Mechanic Knowledge
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Markham’s 60 drawings are the earliest-known set of textile machine maker’s workshop drawings in the U.S. prepared primarily for cotton machinery but also for wool carding and spinning equipment. Prepared between 1814 and 1825, this book includes an examination of its provenance, a biography of the draftsman, and an analysis of the historical contexts shaping both draftsman and drawings. His drawings are evidence of the transition from pre-industrial to industrial visual forms of technical knowledge, and of a much wider knowledge revolution in the U.S. The drawings also demonstrate the ubiquity of inventiveness at the extremity of the well-known American and transatlantic mechanic networks. Black and white and color plates.
Patriot-Improvers
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When Ben Franklin adopted John Bartram's 1739 idea of bringing together the "virtuosi" of the colonies to promote inquiries into "natural secrets, arts and syances," the result was, in 1743, the founding of the Amer. Philosophical Soc. Whitfield J. Bell, Jr. records the early years of the Society through sketches of its first members, those elected between 1743 and 1769. This is the third of 3 vols. of sketches that represent, "the first systematic attempt to collect and preserve data on the lives of [the Society's first] members" and add much to our knowledge of the history and culture of 18th-cent. America. Contents: History of the Society; Sketches of Members inducted from Nov. 1767-1768; Reflections and Observations; Consolidated Index to volumes 1, 2, and 3.
Climate Crises in Human History
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This volume considers the response of selected cultures to climate events that have been documented from the archaeological and geological records. It includes articles by participants in a 2008 conference at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology as well as other prominent scholars. The essays, which range over the Americas, Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia and the Near East, and over several millennia, may serve as a corrective to dogmatic claims about the future of climate and of mankind, and as a spur to the dispassionate study of both. Illustrations.
Peiresc’s History of Provence
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This is both a historical detective work -- piecing together an innovative research project of the 1620s -- and a provocative argument, based on the reconstruction of Peiresc’s project. Our understanding of the history of historical scholarship needs to be turned upside down. In the “how” and “why” of Peiresc’s scholarly practice and, in the chain of those who understood and remembered him, we learn that far from disappearing, antiquarianism (AN) persisted as a major source of historical innovation and renovation, and that this continues up through the present time. Contents: Peiresc and AN; AN and an Archival “Science”; Researching the History of Provence; Peiresc’s Medieval Mediterranean in the History of Historiography. Illus.
The Bookrunner
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In the first decade of the 19th century the U.S. and Mexico reached out to one another to initiate diplomacy, trade, and cultural borrowings. Each faced the task of decolonization and nation-building. This book explores the political and cultural history of Mexico at the time of its independence from Spain. At the center of the study are letters written to the Philadelphia book publisher Mathew Carey by Thomas Robeson, a book agent Carey sent to Mexico in 1822. Author Vogeley demonstrates the important role that the inter-American book trade played in the formation of post-colonial national identities in the Americas and casts a new light on the historical interconnections between print capitalism and nationalism. Illustrations.
Figuring History
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In the past half-century the writing of history has been the object of much critical scrutiny by literary scholars, philosophers, and historians. History painting has traditionally been an important topic in art history. The illustration of history books, in contrast, has not attracted much attention. This study is a preliminary inquiry into the changing ways in which graphics, ranging from representational images to statistical charts, have been used to enhance or illuminate historical texts. Lionel Gossman, M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Romance Languages Emeritus at Princeton University, is the author of many books and journal articles on historians and the writing of history. Illustrations.
Circling the Square
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Since antiquity, time in the West has been represented in circular form, the gear wheels of time churning out duration in endless years. At the time of the Spanish conquest, dials on round clock faces looked down from facades of cathedrals, their tones chiming out the hours that directed people’s religious and workaday lives. Spanish chroniclers assert that the circle was also the principal mode of temporal expression among the New World natives they sought to Catholicize. Here, Anthony Aveni demonstrates that this was decidedly not the case. Rather, the indigenous quadripartite way of perceiving rendered the expression of time to have been decidedly square. He examines an array of calendar circles appearing in manuscripts from Central Mexico and the Maya area of Yucatan from the time of 16th-century contact up to the 18th century and follows the gradual intrusion of Western calendrical particulars into the native format. Dr. Aveni offers insight into the tension in the first generation of native scribes after the conquest, who were working with radically different ways of knowing between the imposed requirement to change the way they thought about time and the desire to preserve their heritage and their identity. Illus.
Both English and Latin
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This study examines the interplay of Latin and English in a selection of John Milton’s neo-Latin writings. It argues that this interplay is indicative of an inherent bilingualism that proceeds hand-in-hand with a self-fashioning that is bicultural in essence. Interlingual flexibility ultimately proved central to the poet of Paradise Lost, an epic uniquely characterized by its Latinate vernacular and its vernacular Latinitas. Author Estelle Haan (Sheehan) is Professor of English and Neo-Latin Studies at The Queen’s University of Belfast. She is a well-known and well-respected Neo-Latinist who has published several volumes with the American Philosophical Soc. and has recently edited Milton’s Latin and Greek poetry for Oxford University Press.
Pictograph to Alphabet -- and Back
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The Xajil chronicle of the Kaqchikel Maya of Guatemala is topically the most diverse, lengthy, and organizationally complex of the surviving highland-Maya historical texts that were first recorded alphabetically in the colonial period. In this monograph, the author demonstrates that much of the Chronicle was redacted from pre-conquest pictographic documents, documents that now are lost. Both the organization and topical coverage allow the author to identify the specific genres of the pictographic originals and to characterize the content of pre-conquest historical “archives,” as well as gauge the amount of information contained in such documents, which would necessarily have been committed to memory by indigenous historians. Illus.
Capital Problem
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Explores the history, application, and accrued meanings of the attic order in America, beginning with Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who employed the order. The author traces the genealogy of the architectural influence as it passes from Latrobe to his disciples to their disciples. Latrobe saw “a singular exception, a unique design feature that, besides having a direct and indisputable association with ancient Greece, also offered Americans an architectural order that might be naturalized, that might be made their own.” The work is extremely fine-grained, and rich in references, especially to 18th- and 19th-century architectural literature. 45+ b& w plates.
White Dog Sacrifice
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In a search for Iroquoian ritual uses for the marine shell beads now called “wampum” the authors identified the White Dog Sacrifice (WDS) as a possible candidate. The WDS involved ceremonial sacrifice and subsequent cremation of one, or sometimes two “white” dogs to carry away the sins of native believers. Outsiders have recorded their observations of various details of these rituals. Since these records of the WDS often mention the use of wampum, and ethnographic accounts of wampum as part of any religious contexts are extremely rare, this study focuses on descriptions of the WDS to see if wampum beads were essential to the ritual. Another discovery is the importance of burning baskets in connection with these Midwinter rituals. Basket burning survived long after the sacrificial offering of dogs had ended. Illus.
Some Architects’ Portraits in Nineteenth-Century America
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This is the first study devoted to the portraits of nineteenth-century American architects. It is an examination of the way the iconography of such images changed over time to reflect the changing social status of the architect as the profession evolved during the century. Portraits in oil on canvas, drawings, and photography in the text range from Charles Willson Peale’s image of William Buckland in the late eighteenth century to John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Richard Morris Hunt in the late 1890s. The book has been praised as “a unique use of visual resources, supported by formidable primary research and a thorough analysis of secondary literature.” Illustrations.
Northern Light and Northern Times
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Swedish biomedical researchers were important in the early development of the study of biological rhythms in the mid-20th century. This study looks at the foundation of biological-rhythm research (today called “chronobiology”). The first international society (Society for the Study of Biological Rhythm) was formed by a core group of Swedish scientists, who held their first meeting in Sweden, and who dominated the activities of this Society until the 1950s, when its membership became more international. Swedish researchers were therefore important for the emergence of this interdisciplinary field and for establishing its autonomy as a distinct field. The bulk of the book is a description of the early meetings of the International Society and the papers presented at those meetings, with biographical information on some of the key Swedish researchers.
Nino Pirrotta
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As a scholarly discipline and doctoral-level univ. course, musicology (the academic study of music in its historical and anthropological contexts) is about a century old. This is the first full-scale portrait of one of musicology’s most distinguished practitioners. Nino Pirrotta (1908-98) was educated in Palermo and Florence, but was not able to study music history systematically, so he created his own distinctive vision of the discipline. After appointments at the conservatories of Palermo and Rome, Pirrotta was named head of the music library and Prof. of Music at Harvard (1956-71) and thereafter Prof. of Music History at the Univ. of Rome (1972-78). Cummings analyzes and interprets Pirrotta’s writings and identifies the features that characterize the celebrated humanist. Illus.
North by Degree
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In this vol. of papers on the history of late 19th- and early 20th-century Arctic exploration, the authors have examined the social, cultural, technological, and environmental settings in which exploration endeavors were conceived, carried out, described, and understood by the public. The conference honored the 100th anniversary of Robert E. Peary’s historic 1908-09 North Pole Expedition. These papers are a subset of those presented at that gathering in May 2008 and are authored by scholars from various disciplines, incl. English, art history, anthropology, archaeology, history, ethnohistory, and Native Amer. studies. They cast light on aspect of exploration initiatives not examined in most biographies of explorers, official expedition narratives, or overviews of the history of Arctic exploration. Illus.
Letters of Rowland Whyte (1595-1608)
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Provides the first complete edition, annotated and with modernized spelling, of these important late-Elizabethan letters, written by Rowland Whyte as the personal agent and advisor at court of Robert Sidney, Viscount Lisle and first Earl of Leicester. His series of 292 surviving letters to Sidney, written between September 1595 and December 1602, were partly intended as intelligence documents, keeping Sidney fully briefed on court affairs and gossip. This edition also includes a shorter sequence of Whyte’s surviving letters to Gilbert Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, concerning the marriage of Talbot’s daughter, Lady Mary, to Robert Sidney’s rich and increasingly powerful nephew, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. A useful resource for the last years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Illus.
Royal Taxation in Fourteenth-Century France
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A history of the development of French royal finance in the 14th century. An earlier work studied the crown’s finances between 1322 and 1356 when France was still in the “age of the war subsidy” and taxes were temporary wartime expedients. This book, a sequel to that study, shows how the capture of King John II in 1356 led to a critical change in the history of royal taxation. In the king’s absence, the Estates General failed to secure adequate revenues, fell victim to factional strife, and were discredited. To ransom the monarch, the government imposed the first regular taxes in French history. With these annual revenues, the monarchy was able to finance an army that won important victories in the 1370s. This vol. continues the detailed political history of royal taxation up to 1445.
Transfer of Early Industrial Technologies to America
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Contents: Part I: A Survey: The Transfer of Industrial Technologies to Early America; Part II: Case Studies: William Weston, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and the Philadelphia Plan for Internal Improvements; Eleuthere Irenee du Pont: “Eleve des Poudres” to American Gunpowder Manufacturer; Moncure Robinson and the Origin of American Railroad Technology; and David Thomas and the Anthracite Iron Revolution. Bibliography. Maps and drawings.
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law
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This Dictionary: explains technical Roman legal terms, translates & elucidate those Latin words which have a specific connotation when used in a juristic context or in connection with a legal institution or question, & provides a brief picture of Roman legal institutions & sources as a sort of an introduction to them. The objectives of the work, not the juristic character of available Latin writings, therefore, determined the inclusion or exclusion of any single word or phrase. This dict. is not intended to be a complete Latin-English dict. for all words which occur in the writings of the Roman jurists or in the various codifications of Roman law. The reader must consult a general Latin-English lexicon for ordinary words that have no specific meaning in law or juristic language. Reprinted 1980.
Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571), Vol. III
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The third of 4 vols. which trace the history of the later Crusades & papal relations with the Levant from the accession of Innocent III (in 1198) to the reign of Pius V & the battle of Lepanto (1566-1571). Contents: Pius III, Julius II, & the Romagna; Venice, the Soldan of Egypt, & the Turks; The League of Cambrai, the Turks & the Gallican Conciliarists; The Council of Pisa-Milan & the Battle of Ravenna, the Fifth Lateran Council & Selim the Grim; Leo X, the Lateran Council, & the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt; Leo X & Plans for a Crusade against Selim the Grim; Hadrian VI, the Fall of Rhodes, & Renewal of the War in Italy; Pavia & the League of Cognac, Mohacs & the Turks in Hungary, Bourbon’s March on Rome; The Sack of Rome & the Siege of Naples; Before & After the Turkish Siege of Vienna; Clement VII, Francis I, & Hapsburg Opposition to the Turks; Paul III, the Lutherans, Venice & the Turks; Paul III, the Hapsburgs, & Francis I, the Turks & the Council of Trent; & The Election of Julius III, the Council of Trent, the Turks & the War of Parma. Reprinted in paperback on demand.
Greek Horoscopes
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This is a print on demand publication. What we know about Greek astronomy is dominated by Ptolemy’s “Almagest” (written c. 140 A.D.) & closely related works like Theon’s “Handy Tables” (end of 4th C.) but we have only very little info. about the practice of computing the positions of sun, moon, & planets during any period of antiquity. Now, the Greek horoscopes are available for study as a group which could be expected to reflect the current techniques of Greek astronomy. About 60 horoscopes from the first 5 centuries of our era have been published since Young (1828) & Champollion-Figeac (1840) in the papyrological literature, which comprises 18,000 texts. This vol. includes all horoscopes from this widely scattered material & a few unpublished pieces. Illustrations.
King of the Alley
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William Duer belonged to the middle ranks of those who led America to success in her struggle for independence, standing just behind such men as John Jay and Robert R. Livingston. Duer, as a member of the N.Y. State Convention and the Continental Congress, as Sec. to the Board of Treasury under the Confed. and Assist. to the Sec. of the Treasury when the fed. govt. was organized, had a role in all the significant changes which occurred during the revolutionary period. Yet interspersed with his public career was his career as a stock speculator, land promoter, army contractor, and merchant. Duer never tired of trying to combine public office with private profit. This is the first full scale study of Duer’s entire career, although, due to lack of material about his personal life, it should not be taken as a biography.
Schmick's Mahican Dictionary
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This volume, a modern reworking of the manuscripts of Johann Jacob Schmick, is in the “Moravian” dialect of Mahican and is divided into an English-Mahican-German section and a Mahican-English section. It includes a Mahican historical phonology, with a background and explanatory description which can be used as a study of linguistic influences. This dictionary is useful for Indians of the East Coast who want to know their ancestral languages better, for Algonquianists—whether as linguists or ethnohistorians— for Germanists, and for general readers who are interested in Schmick’s era in Pennsylvania.
Astral Magic in Babylonia
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This is a print on demand publication. Author Erica Reiner collected the Near Eastern material for this book over many years of association with the “Chicago Assyrian Dictionary.” She culled her sources from such scientific texts as medicine, divination, & rituals, which are not usually included in anthologies of Mesopotamian texts & are rarely available in translation. Chapters: The Role of Stars; The Art of the Herbalist; Medicine; Divination; Apotropaia; Sorcerers & Sorceresses; The Nature of Stones; & Nocturnal Rituals. Illustrations.
Temple of Night at Schonau
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Between 1796 & 1800 Baron Peter von Braun, a rich businessman & manager of Vienna’s court theaters, transformed his estate at Schonau into an English-style landscape park. The most celebrated building was the Temple of Night, a domed rotunda accessible only through a meandering rockwork grotto. A life-size statue of the goddess Night on a chariot pulled by two horses presided over the Temple, while from the dome, came the sounds of a mechanical musical instrument. Only the ruins survive, & the Temple has received little scholarly attention. This book brings it back to life by assembling the descriptions of it by early 19th-cent. eyewitnesses. “Will appeal to anyone interested in the history of garden design, arch., theater, & music.” Illus.
A Portrait of Elizabeth Willing Powel (1743-1830)
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Drawing on original manuscript sources, Maxey has produced a persuasive study of a late-18th-century portrait and its subject. He has focused attention on an enigmatic painting, and the person portrayed in it -- a woman of talent and verve, whose life has remained undeservedly obscure. Elizabeth Willing Powel presided over a salon; spoke her mind freely; and maintained, for a period of 40 years, an extensive, illuminating correspondence. She was the trusted confidante of the country’s first president, whom she did not hesitate to instruct on where duty summoned him. At a critical moment, the Philadelphia painter, Matthew Pratt, was commissioned to capture on canvas the grief she experienced. Color portrait.
The Long Route to the Invention of the Telescope
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After the telescope became known in 1608-1609, a number of people in widely separate locations claimed that they had such a device long before the announcement came from The Hague; in the summer of 1608, no one had a telescope, in the summer of 1609, everyone had one. For a number of years author Rolf Willach has quietly tested early spectacle lenses in museums and private collections, and now he reports on this study, which gives an entirely new explanation of the invention of the telescope and solves the conundrum mentioned above. Willach is an optical engineer and independent scholar who worked for several years at the Inst. of Astronomy in Bern. He has written extensively on the history of the development of optics and the telescope. Illus.
Atlas of the World with Geophysical Boundaries Showing Oceans, Continents, and Tectonic Plates in Their Entirety
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This atlas of world maps is divided into 3 parts: maps with continental shorelines as natural boundaries; composite maps with continental shorelines as natural boundaries; & maps with tectonic plate margins as natural boundaries. All graticules on the illus. are 15 degrees spacing unless otherwise noted & can be computer drawn. All projections, incl. land masses & plates, are suitable for computer drawing although, in some cases, some data have been entered by hand. Latitudes & longitudes are given for the poles of the map & for the center of the map. Latitudes are expressed in degrees north or south of the Equator; longitudes are given in degrees east or west of the Greenwich Meridian. Note that the poles of the map are the continental shoreline coincidences or plate boundary coincidences chosen for the particular map. Includes 29 four-color maps.
European Journals of William Maclure
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William Maclure (1763-1840) was an Amer. geologist & philanthropist who traveled extensively in Europe during the early years of the 19th century, conducting geological surveys & collecting rock & mineral specimens for schools & scientific institutions in the U.S. He has been called “the Father of Modern Geology” for the extraordinary feat of having made a one-man geological survey of the eastern U.S. from Maine to Georgia, & from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. Maclure used his wealth to support such institutions as the Acad. of Natural Sciences of Phila. & to subsidize the work of a number of scientists & teachers. He was also concerned with the reform of education & set up libraries & schools for children of the lower classes. Scholars have questioned why Maclure retired early to devote the rest of his life to science & reform. Some answers may be found in this vol., which includes transcriptions from microfilm of some 20 journals which Maclure kept during his travels & research in Europe; they span the years 1805-15 & 1820-25. Illus.
Surveying the Record
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Papers given at a conference on Scientific Exploration in North America to 1930 with topics including Cartography, Oceanic Exploration, Art, Anthropology, Lewis and Clark, and the West. This book adds much to our quest for knowledge of who and where we are by illuminating such themes as the role of maps and mapmaking in defining our national identify, the origins of Western exploration, the cultural clash found in the best-selling account of a 19th-century physician-explorer with Arctic peoples, the role of art in the service of science in bringing these newly discovered places and peoples into the Amer. parlor, and the impact of Mormon farming techniques on John Wesley Powell’s famed 1878 Arid Region Report. Black and white maps and illus.
Cavendish
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Two gifted 18th-century Londoners, Lord Charles Cavendish and his preeminent son, the Honorable Henry Cavendish, were descendants of paired revolutions, one political and the other scientific. Scions of a powerful revolutionary family, they gave a highly original turn to their understanding of public service. Lord Charles began his career as a Member of Parliament and ended it as an officer of the Royal Society, and his son Henry made a complete life within science, in the course of which he demonstrated skills that rank him with the greatest scientists of all time. In the history of British aristocracy, in high tide following the revolutionary settlement, there was no action more remarkable than Henry Cavendish gently laying delicate weights in the pan of his incomparable precision balance. Illustrations.
Copepodologist's Cabinet
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Copepod crustaceans are the most numerous multicellular animals on earth. They occur in every free-living and parasitic aquatic niche. Copepods have been known since the time of Aristotle, yet there has never been a history of the study of copepods. This volume, the first in a planned three-volume series, reviews the discoveries of copepods to 1832, the year that the two distinct branches, the free-living copepods (long-known as insects) and the parasitic copepods (thought to be molluscs or worms) were finally acknowledged as members of the same Class Crustacea. The narrative includes the biographies of 90 early copepodologists and recounts their most important contributions to science. Portraits are included for two-thirds of the subjects, with considerable new material as well as information and illustrations from obscure sources. Milestones include the first description of copepods (ca. 350 B.C.), the first illustration (1554), the first free-living freshwater copepod (1688), the first explanation of a free-living copepod's metamorphosis (1756), the first permanently named copepod (1758), the first free-living marine copepod (1770), and the first description of a parasitic copepod's metamorphosis (1819). The work ends with a transition to the mid-19th century, previewing numerous personal connections that pointed toward copepodology's Golden Age in the 1890s, to be covered in Volume 2. A final volume will take the history of the study of copepods to ca. 1950.
Drawings of Stefano da Verona and His Circle and the Origins of Collecting in Italy
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In this comprehensive catalogue of the work of the 15th-century painter and draftsman, Stefano da Verona (1375-ca. 1438), Karet reviews past scholarship and corrects old misunderstandings that produced an inconsistent, heterogeneous and misinformed corpus. Her attributions are based on stylistic arguments, technical analysis, and the relationship of the drawings to a limited number of secure paintings by this important Late Gothic North Italian painter. The restricted but sound body of works Stefano da Verona executed is compiled in rich catalogue entries that include discussions of style, iconography, patronage, paper and sketchbook analysis, important issues of workshop production and of the history of drawings and collectionism.
Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667-1740) and the Vatican Tomb of Pope Alexander VIII
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Examines the commission of the Vatican tomb of Pope Alexander VIII Ottoboni by his great-nephew Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. Although neglected for centuries, the Ottoboni monument occupies the most strategic liturgical position in the complex of tombs in the Vatican basilica. It is impressive in scale, & offers a commanding presence on the path from the papal entryway to the apse & main altar, with a majestic papal effigy, a visually compelling narrative relief carving, & symbolically important allegories. Using unpublished archival documents in the Vatican & Lateran archives, this study discusses in detail the 30-year campaign for the construction of the tomb & identifies the artists & artisans responsible for the project. The monograph is comprehensive in its stylistic analysis, exploration of iconography, discussion of liturgical practice, & consideration of studio procedures beginning with patron & artist, architect & sculptors, & sculptor & artisans. reveals why the project required three decades to complete. "A well-written, informative, & important monograph. And, in the process, he has expanded our understanding of contemporary workshop practice and art making in the Rome of the later Baroque period. There are sections where the author's meticulous care & insightful reconstruction of events gives the reader a sense of ""being there"" in the day-to-day process of work on the site. These parts make for especially exciting and engaging reading." -- "An absolutely wonderful piece of work."
Parmigianino’s Madonna of the Long Neck
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This is a comprehensive overview of Parmigianino’s enigmatic painting of The Madonna of the Long Neck. It treats the subject in terms of iconography, semiotics, studio practice, and art theory. The painting is not merely an example of mannerist extravagance, but that the Virgin in her extraordinary distension can be explained by a litany in Ecclesiasticus, with her enlargement read as a signifier of her mercy. Parmigianino’s panel is interpreted as an Immaculate Conception. Because the magisterium had not fully defined the belief as dogma, the theological debate confused the artist and his contemporaries, but also gave them flexibility in their depictions of this abstract doctrine. The subject’s genesis as a theological exercise is traced through the artist’s drawings. Illustrations in full color and b&w.
