I am interested in aspects of the European Renaissance, humanism, philosophy, rise of the vernaculars, prose styles, Neo-Latin, English, French, Spanish and Italian literary and cultural developments, the Reformation, New England sermons, Puritanism and multiple other topics related to the Renaissance.
The history of humanist dialectic is fraught with controversies, an indication of our modern prej... more The history of humanist dialectic is fraught with controversies, an indication of our modern prejudices and zeal to advance our own theses based on such prejudice. This is particularly evident when we try to come to terms with the works of a humanist like Lorenzo Valla. We are all aware of the Waswo-Gerl-Camporeale versus Monfasani debate over whether Valla was an ordinary language philosopher or not.11 We are also aware that even an attempt to read the development of humanist logic in the Valla-Agricola-Ramus tradition as a continuity of Academic scepticism has been questioned.22 However, let us consider an even more basic assumption lying behind most of these theses: that humanist logic with Valla advanced towards a deontologization of language.33 This thesis popularized the idea that Valla had revived the quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy and vindicated the standpoint of the Sophists. This question will lead us to an examination of Valla's conception of truth and the epistemological grounds of the humanist programme. An interpretation of the history of logic that neatly opposes scholasticism to humanism, Realism to Nominalism and a unidimensional conception of ontology to logic is at the root of this confusion. I would suggest that a Heideggerian interpretation of the history of philosophy as one of gradual decadence would help us to better understand how the ontology of 'presence' in Plato had been leaning towards language and in Aristotle became only a question of making a statement. Heidegger suggests that in Plato 'truth' was already made into a question of 'saying'
Before the Reformation the Roman Catholic liturgy comprised the Liturgy of the Word (Gathering, P... more Before the Reformation the Roman Catholic liturgy comprised the Liturgy of the Word (Gathering, Proclaiming and Hearing the Word, Prayers of the People) and the Liturgy of the Eucharist (together with the Dismissal), but the entire liturgy itself is also properly referred to as the Holy Eucharist. The Mass contained public prayers like the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar or the Penitential Rite, Kyrie eleison ("Lord, have mercy"), Gloria ("Glory to God in the highest"), the prayers said in connection with the scripture readings, Credo ("I believe in one God"), the Nicene Creed, etc. Whereas private prayer also has a place in this faith but in the Mass the public prayers and sacraments are predominant. Reformation leaders wanted to do away with the Roman Catholic Eucharist as a sacrifice or practices like the intercession of the saints, etc. Even though some of the forms of prayer survived, an attempt was made to alter their sense. Unlike Reformation in Europe, in England a middle way was imposed by the English Church after first Henry VIII and later Elizabeth I imposed the Act of Supremacy making themselves the supreme leaders in religion in England.1 Any attempt to understand devotional practices in Europe cannot do without a discussion of the multifarious developments within Protestantism in England and their continuities in New England in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
Papers are invited for the 14th and 15th issues of the peer-reviewed journal of biannual frequenc... more Papers are invited for the 14th and 15th issues of the peer-reviewed journal of biannual frequency: Trivium A Multi disciplinary Journal of Humanities of Chandernagore College. The scope of the journal includes humanities and social sciences, commerce and management without mathematical application.
The American Novel from Hawthorne to Heller:Cultural Contexts and Critical Perspectives, eds. Ashok K Mohapatra, Pritha Chakraborty, Sharbani Banerjee Mukherjee, 2020
It is apparent that Fitzgerald had not only represented the commercialism, consumerism and carele... more It is apparent that Fitzgerald had not only represented the commercialism, consumerism and carelessness of the Jazz Age in the best fashion, he had himself become the Age by moulding his life in an equally careless way. The “gaudy spree” of the age is not better represented in any other work than The Great Gatsby. The melancholy tone of jazz music can best be heard in Gatsby’s parties in their opulent consumerism, violent drinking and dispirited humanity: yet the hollowness of it all becomes apparent when the reader learns that Gatsby himself is not interested in all this because he hosts the parties to attract only one woman, Daisy. The superficiality of the motive of the disinterested host can only be redeemed with the full understanding of the symbolic significance of the quest; till then the noise is only of decadence.
Prayer Book and Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 2023
Before the Reformation the Roman Catholic liturgy comprised the Liturgy of the Word (Gathering, P... more Before the Reformation the Roman Catholic liturgy comprised the Liturgy of the Word (Gathering, Proclaiming and Hearing the Word, Prayers of the People) and the Liturgy of the Eucharist (together with the Dismissal), but the entire liturgy itself is also properly referred to as the Holy Eucharist. The Mass contained public prayers like the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar or the Penitential Rite, Kyrie eleison ("Lord, have mercy"), Gloria ("Glory to God in the highest"), the prayers said in connection with the scripture readings, Credo ("I believe in one God"), the Nicene Creed, etc. Whereas private prayer also has a place in this faith but in the Mass the public prayers and sacraments are predominant. Reformation leaders wanted to do away with the Roman Catholic Eucharist as a sacrifice or practices like the intercession of the saints, etc. Even though some of the forms of prayer survived, an attempt was made to alter their sense. Unlike Reformation in Europe, in England a middle way was imposed by the English Church after first Henry VIII and later Elizabeth I imposed the Act of Supremacy making themselves the supreme leaders in religion in England.1 Any attempt to understand devotional practices in Europe cannot do without a discussion of the multifarious developments within Protestantism in England and their continuities in New England in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
Spenser and Donne: Thinking Poets, ed. Yulia Ryzhik, 2019
This essay attempts to read Donne’s poetry and the sermon Deaths Duell from a rhetorical perspect... more This essay attempts to read Donne’s poetry and the sermon Deaths Duell from a rhetorical perspective indicating how the contemporary fashionable rhetoric of Peter Ramus has a penetrating influence in conceptualization as well as execution of the literary works of Donne. The essay breaks new ground in asserting that the same may also be said to be true with respect to Spenser. It attempts to make a selective analysis of The Faerie Queene to indicate that Spenser in the invention of his image-arguments takes the help of binary concept-clusters in opposition to each other as practiced in the Ramist pairing of dichotomous thoughts. The paper asserts that Spenser’s principal debts to Ramist logic are in the preferential use of place-logic in invention of images and wide use of oppositional arguments like contrary, comparison, contradiction and relation. The use of logical arguments in Spenser goes hand in hand with that of rhetorical figures promoting the harmonious conjunction of sense, sound, and persuasion.
Trivium A Multi disciplinary Journal of Humanities of Chandernagore College, 2018
This essay begins with the debate in the Italian Renaissance on the question of the primacy of La... more This essay begins with the debate in the Italian Renaissance on the question of the primacy of Latin vis-à-vis Italian. Whereas Imitation theory in writing Latin was well established, the pioneers in vernacular Italian like Giovan Francesco Pico and Pietro Bembo debated the pros and cons of imitation of Latin writers in Italian. Sperone Speroni in a dialogue formulated the various opinions on the question. French Renaissance poet Joachim du Bellay, faced with a similar task of forging the vernacular in France, took a leaf from Speroni and Bembo. Both Bembo and Du Bellay conceived of their theory of imitation as the principal instrument of reformation of the contemporary culture of poetry. Both of them took upon themselves the task of steering the poetic practice and its theory out of confusion and chaos into a deliberate, premeditated and enthusiastic course of action. The paper by following the trajectories of the Imitation theory in Renaissance Italy and France, attempts to demonstrate the connected nature of European discourse on the influence of the classics in the formation of the vernaculars.
Anthropological Reformations - Anthropology in the Era of Reformation, 2015
The influence of Ramus’s logic on William Ames in particular and the Puritans of New England in g... more The influence of Ramus’s logic on William Ames in particular and the Puritans of New England in general is a known fact. However, Ramus’s theology in his Commentaria de religione Christiana (1576), being part of his technometry or encyclopaedic charting of knowledge highly influenced Ames’s theological works. Ames’sMedullaTheologiae (1623) may be seen as the perfection of the Ramistprogramme of theology, both in matter and in manner or method. In his soteriology as well as eccelesiology Ames appears to be echoing the Ramist idea of a meritocratic scheme of salvation and church polity. In this paper I argue that the New England divines John Cotton and Thomas Hooker carry on in their works the Ramist inspiration of a timocratic theology as earlier initiated by Ames. For this purpose I primarily look at Cotton’s The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared(1648) and The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven(1644) and Hooker’s A Survey of the Sum of Church Discipline(1648).
The history of humanist dialectic is fraught with controversies, an indication of our modern prej... more The history of humanist dialectic is fraught with controversies, an indication of our modern prejudices and zeal to advance our own theses based on such prejudice. This is particularly evident when we try to come to terms with the works of a humanist like Lorenzo Valla. We are all aware of the Waswo-Gerl-Camporeale versus Monfasani debate over whether Valla was an ordinary language philosopher or not.11 We are also aware that even an attempt to read the development of humanist logic in the Valla-Agricola-Ramus tradition as a continuity of Academic scepticism has been questioned.22 However, let us consider an even more basic assumption lying behind most of these theses: that humanist logic with Valla advanced towards a deontologization of language.33 This thesis popularized the idea that Valla had revived the quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy and vindicated the standpoint of the Sophists. This question will lead us to an examination of Valla's conception of truth and the epistemological grounds of the humanist programme. An interpretation of the history of logic that neatly opposes scholasticism to humanism, Realism to Nominalism and a unidimensional conception of ontology to logic is at the root of this confusion. I would suggest that a Heideggerian interpretation of the history of philosophy as one of gradual decadence would help us to better understand how the ontology of 'presence' in Plato had been leaning towards language and in Aristotle became only a question of making a statement. Heidegger suggests that in Plato 'truth' was already made into a question of 'saying'
Travels and Translations Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions eds. Alison Yarrington, Stefano Villani, and Julia Kelly, 2013
J.H. Whitfield, in his introduction to Hoby’s The Book of the Courtier perhaps rightly claims, ‘W... more J.H. Whitfield, in his introduction to Hoby’s The Book of the Courtier perhaps rightly claims, ‘What Castiglione is offering is the pattern of the cultured man’. The assertion is, however, vague, and ‘cultured man’ may include the medieval knight, the Italian courtier and the English gentleman. Castiglione, it is true, does use the word ‘gentiluomo’ in his book, but his sense of the word does not reflect the English idea of the gentleman and is hardly distinguishable from the meaning of ‘cortegiano’ (‘courtier’). It is important to understand how the concepts of the ‘cortegiano’ and the ‘gentleman’, belonging to two different cultures, enter into a dialectic of exchange and transfer through the process of Hoby’s translation.
Full fadom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes... more Full fadom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Burthen: Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them,-ding-dong, bell. (The Tempest, I.ii.399-407) The popularity of this song about the alchemical transformation of Alonso would indicate that Shakespeare's knowledge of alchemy is well-known. However, things are not so simple. A search on earlier writings on Shakespeare's Macbeth and magic proved to be almost fruitless. One small paragraph in Frances Yates' The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age has this to say on Macbeth: The world of Macbeth and his wife is a school of night indeed, where witches incite to murder. The deep damnation of this deed is trumpeted against by angels, by 'heaven's cherubins', whose universal harmony is heard only in the form of judgment. 2
The Editorial Board reserves the right of accepting or rejecting any contribution and of making s... more The Editorial Board reserves the right of accepting or rejecting any contribution and of making suitable alterations and amendments, without assigning any reason.
The history of humanist dialectic is fraught with controversies, an indication of our modern prej... more The history of humanist dialectic is fraught with controversies, an indication of our modern prejudices and zeal to advance our own theses based on such prejudice. This is particularly evident when we try to come to terms with the works of a humanist like Lorenzo Valla. We are all aware of the Waswo-Gerl-Camporeale versus Monfasani debate over whether Valla was an ordinary language philosopher or not.11 We are also aware that even an attempt to read the development of humanist logic in the Valla-Agricola-Ramus tradition as a continuity of Academic scepticism has been questioned.22 However, let us consider an even more basic assumption lying behind most of these theses: that humanist logic with Valla advanced towards a deontologization of language.33 This thesis popularized the idea that Valla had revived the quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy and vindicated the standpoint of the Sophists. This question will lead us to an examination of Valla's conception of truth and the epistemological grounds of the humanist programme. An interpretation of the history of logic that neatly opposes scholasticism to humanism, Realism to Nominalism and a unidimensional conception of ontology to logic is at the root of this confusion. I would suggest that a Heideggerian interpretation of the history of philosophy as one of gradual decadence would help us to better understand how the ontology of 'presence' in Plato had been leaning towards language and in Aristotle became only a question of making a statement. Heidegger suggests that in Plato 'truth' was already made into a question of 'saying'
Anthropological Reformations - Anthropology in the Era of Reformation, 2015
The influence of Ramus’s logic on William Ames in particular and the Puritans of New England in g... more The influence of Ramus’s logic on William Ames in particular and the Puritans of New England in general is a known fact. However, Ramus’s theology in his Commentaria de religione Christiana (1576), being part of his technometry or encyclopaedic charting of knowledge highly influenced Ames’s theological works. Ames’sMedullaTheologiae (1623) may be seen as the perfection of the Ramistprogramme of theology, both in matter and in manner or method. In his soteriology as well as eccelesiology Ames appears to be echoing the Ramist idea of a meritocratic scheme of salvation and church polity. In this paper I argue that the New England divines John Cotton and Thomas Hooker carry on in their works the Ramist inspiration of a timocratic theology as earlier initiated by Ames. For this purpose I primarily look at Cotton’s The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared(1648) and The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven(1644) and Hooker’s A Survey of the Sum of Church Discipline(1648).
The history of humanist dialectic is fraught with controversies, an indication of our modern prej... more The history of humanist dialectic is fraught with controversies, an indication of our modern prejudices and zeal to advance our own theses based on such prejudice. This is particularly evident when we try to come to terms with the works of a humanist like Lorenzo Valla. We are all aware of the Waswo-Gerl-Camporeale versus Monfasani debate over whether Valla was an ordinary language philosopher or not.11 We are also aware that even an attempt to read the development of humanist logic in the Valla-Agricola-Ramus tradition as a continuity of Academic scepticism has been questioned.22 However, let us consider an even more basic assumption lying behind most of these theses: that humanist logic with Valla advanced towards a deontologization of language.33 This thesis popularized the idea that Valla had revived the quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy and vindicated the standpoint of the Sophists. This question will lead us to an examination of Valla's conception of truth and the epistemological grounds of the humanist programme. An interpretation of the history of logic that neatly opposes scholasticism to humanism, Realism to Nominalism and a unidimensional conception of ontology to logic is at the root of this confusion. I would suggest that a Heideggerian interpretation of the history of philosophy as one of gradual decadence would help us to better understand how the ontology of 'presence' in Plato had been leaning towards language and in Aristotle became only a question of making a statement. Heidegger suggests that in Plato 'truth' was already made into a question of 'saying'
Before the Reformation the Roman Catholic liturgy comprised the Liturgy of the Word (Gathering, P... more Before the Reformation the Roman Catholic liturgy comprised the Liturgy of the Word (Gathering, Proclaiming and Hearing the Word, Prayers of the People) and the Liturgy of the Eucharist (together with the Dismissal), but the entire liturgy itself is also properly referred to as the Holy Eucharist. The Mass contained public prayers like the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar or the Penitential Rite, Kyrie eleison ("Lord, have mercy"), Gloria ("Glory to God in the highest"), the prayers said in connection with the scripture readings, Credo ("I believe in one God"), the Nicene Creed, etc. Whereas private prayer also has a place in this faith but in the Mass the public prayers and sacraments are predominant. Reformation leaders wanted to do away with the Roman Catholic Eucharist as a sacrifice or practices like the intercession of the saints, etc. Even though some of the forms of prayer survived, an attempt was made to alter their sense. Unlike Reformation in Europe, in England a middle way was imposed by the English Church after first Henry VIII and later Elizabeth I imposed the Act of Supremacy making themselves the supreme leaders in religion in England.1 Any attempt to understand devotional practices in Europe cannot do without a discussion of the multifarious developments within Protestantism in England and their continuities in New England in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
Papers are invited for the 14th and 15th issues of the peer-reviewed journal of biannual frequenc... more Papers are invited for the 14th and 15th issues of the peer-reviewed journal of biannual frequency: Trivium A Multi disciplinary Journal of Humanities of Chandernagore College. The scope of the journal includes humanities and social sciences, commerce and management without mathematical application.
The American Novel from Hawthorne to Heller:Cultural Contexts and Critical Perspectives, eds. Ashok K Mohapatra, Pritha Chakraborty, Sharbani Banerjee Mukherjee, 2020
It is apparent that Fitzgerald had not only represented the commercialism, consumerism and carele... more It is apparent that Fitzgerald had not only represented the commercialism, consumerism and carelessness of the Jazz Age in the best fashion, he had himself become the Age by moulding his life in an equally careless way. The “gaudy spree” of the age is not better represented in any other work than The Great Gatsby. The melancholy tone of jazz music can best be heard in Gatsby’s parties in their opulent consumerism, violent drinking and dispirited humanity: yet the hollowness of it all becomes apparent when the reader learns that Gatsby himself is not interested in all this because he hosts the parties to attract only one woman, Daisy. The superficiality of the motive of the disinterested host can only be redeemed with the full understanding of the symbolic significance of the quest; till then the noise is only of decadence.
Prayer Book and Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 2023
Before the Reformation the Roman Catholic liturgy comprised the Liturgy of the Word (Gathering, P... more Before the Reformation the Roman Catholic liturgy comprised the Liturgy of the Word (Gathering, Proclaiming and Hearing the Word, Prayers of the People) and the Liturgy of the Eucharist (together with the Dismissal), but the entire liturgy itself is also properly referred to as the Holy Eucharist. The Mass contained public prayers like the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar or the Penitential Rite, Kyrie eleison ("Lord, have mercy"), Gloria ("Glory to God in the highest"), the prayers said in connection with the scripture readings, Credo ("I believe in one God"), the Nicene Creed, etc. Whereas private prayer also has a place in this faith but in the Mass the public prayers and sacraments are predominant. Reformation leaders wanted to do away with the Roman Catholic Eucharist as a sacrifice or practices like the intercession of the saints, etc. Even though some of the forms of prayer survived, an attempt was made to alter their sense. Unlike Reformation in Europe, in England a middle way was imposed by the English Church after first Henry VIII and later Elizabeth I imposed the Act of Supremacy making themselves the supreme leaders in religion in England.1 Any attempt to understand devotional practices in Europe cannot do without a discussion of the multifarious developments within Protestantism in England and their continuities in New England in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
Spenser and Donne: Thinking Poets, ed. Yulia Ryzhik, 2019
This essay attempts to read Donne’s poetry and the sermon Deaths Duell from a rhetorical perspect... more This essay attempts to read Donne’s poetry and the sermon Deaths Duell from a rhetorical perspective indicating how the contemporary fashionable rhetoric of Peter Ramus has a penetrating influence in conceptualization as well as execution of the literary works of Donne. The essay breaks new ground in asserting that the same may also be said to be true with respect to Spenser. It attempts to make a selective analysis of The Faerie Queene to indicate that Spenser in the invention of his image-arguments takes the help of binary concept-clusters in opposition to each other as practiced in the Ramist pairing of dichotomous thoughts. The paper asserts that Spenser’s principal debts to Ramist logic are in the preferential use of place-logic in invention of images and wide use of oppositional arguments like contrary, comparison, contradiction and relation. The use of logical arguments in Spenser goes hand in hand with that of rhetorical figures promoting the harmonious conjunction of sense, sound, and persuasion.
Trivium A Multi disciplinary Journal of Humanities of Chandernagore College, 2018
This essay begins with the debate in the Italian Renaissance on the question of the primacy of La... more This essay begins with the debate in the Italian Renaissance on the question of the primacy of Latin vis-à-vis Italian. Whereas Imitation theory in writing Latin was well established, the pioneers in vernacular Italian like Giovan Francesco Pico and Pietro Bembo debated the pros and cons of imitation of Latin writers in Italian. Sperone Speroni in a dialogue formulated the various opinions on the question. French Renaissance poet Joachim du Bellay, faced with a similar task of forging the vernacular in France, took a leaf from Speroni and Bembo. Both Bembo and Du Bellay conceived of their theory of imitation as the principal instrument of reformation of the contemporary culture of poetry. Both of them took upon themselves the task of steering the poetic practice and its theory out of confusion and chaos into a deliberate, premeditated and enthusiastic course of action. The paper by following the trajectories of the Imitation theory in Renaissance Italy and France, attempts to demonstrate the connected nature of European discourse on the influence of the classics in the formation of the vernaculars.
Anthropological Reformations - Anthropology in the Era of Reformation, 2015
The influence of Ramus’s logic on William Ames in particular and the Puritans of New England in g... more The influence of Ramus’s logic on William Ames in particular and the Puritans of New England in general is a known fact. However, Ramus’s theology in his Commentaria de religione Christiana (1576), being part of his technometry or encyclopaedic charting of knowledge highly influenced Ames’s theological works. Ames’sMedullaTheologiae (1623) may be seen as the perfection of the Ramistprogramme of theology, both in matter and in manner or method. In his soteriology as well as eccelesiology Ames appears to be echoing the Ramist idea of a meritocratic scheme of salvation and church polity. In this paper I argue that the New England divines John Cotton and Thomas Hooker carry on in their works the Ramist inspiration of a timocratic theology as earlier initiated by Ames. For this purpose I primarily look at Cotton’s The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared(1648) and The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven(1644) and Hooker’s A Survey of the Sum of Church Discipline(1648).
The history of humanist dialectic is fraught with controversies, an indication of our modern prej... more The history of humanist dialectic is fraught with controversies, an indication of our modern prejudices and zeal to advance our own theses based on such prejudice. This is particularly evident when we try to come to terms with the works of a humanist like Lorenzo Valla. We are all aware of the Waswo-Gerl-Camporeale versus Monfasani debate over whether Valla was an ordinary language philosopher or not.11 We are also aware that even an attempt to read the development of humanist logic in the Valla-Agricola-Ramus tradition as a continuity of Academic scepticism has been questioned.22 However, let us consider an even more basic assumption lying behind most of these theses: that humanist logic with Valla advanced towards a deontologization of language.33 This thesis popularized the idea that Valla had revived the quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy and vindicated the standpoint of the Sophists. This question will lead us to an examination of Valla's conception of truth and the epistemological grounds of the humanist programme. An interpretation of the history of logic that neatly opposes scholasticism to humanism, Realism to Nominalism and a unidimensional conception of ontology to logic is at the root of this confusion. I would suggest that a Heideggerian interpretation of the history of philosophy as one of gradual decadence would help us to better understand how the ontology of 'presence' in Plato had been leaning towards language and in Aristotle became only a question of making a statement. Heidegger suggests that in Plato 'truth' was already made into a question of 'saying'
Travels and Translations Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions eds. Alison Yarrington, Stefano Villani, and Julia Kelly, 2013
J.H. Whitfield, in his introduction to Hoby’s The Book of the Courtier perhaps rightly claims, ‘W... more J.H. Whitfield, in his introduction to Hoby’s The Book of the Courtier perhaps rightly claims, ‘What Castiglione is offering is the pattern of the cultured man’. The assertion is, however, vague, and ‘cultured man’ may include the medieval knight, the Italian courtier and the English gentleman. Castiglione, it is true, does use the word ‘gentiluomo’ in his book, but his sense of the word does not reflect the English idea of the gentleman and is hardly distinguishable from the meaning of ‘cortegiano’ (‘courtier’). It is important to understand how the concepts of the ‘cortegiano’ and the ‘gentleman’, belonging to two different cultures, enter into a dialectic of exchange and transfer through the process of Hoby’s translation.
Full fadom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes... more Full fadom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Burthen: Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them,-ding-dong, bell. (The Tempest, I.ii.399-407) The popularity of this song about the alchemical transformation of Alonso would indicate that Shakespeare's knowledge of alchemy is well-known. However, things are not so simple. A search on earlier writings on Shakespeare's Macbeth and magic proved to be almost fruitless. One small paragraph in Frances Yates' The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age has this to say on Macbeth: The world of Macbeth and his wife is a school of night indeed, where witches incite to murder. The deep damnation of this deed is trumpeted against by angels, by 'heaven's cherubins', whose universal harmony is heard only in the form of judgment. 2
The Editorial Board reserves the right of accepting or rejecting any contribution and of making s... more The Editorial Board reserves the right of accepting or rejecting any contribution and of making suitable alterations and amendments, without assigning any reason.
The history of humanist dialectic is fraught with controversies, an indication of our modern prej... more The history of humanist dialectic is fraught with controversies, an indication of our modern prejudices and zeal to advance our own theses based on such prejudice. This is particularly evident when we try to come to terms with the works of a humanist like Lorenzo Valla. We are all aware of the Waswo-Gerl-Camporeale versus Monfasani debate over whether Valla was an ordinary language philosopher or not.11 We are also aware that even an attempt to read the development of humanist logic in the Valla-Agricola-Ramus tradition as a continuity of Academic scepticism has been questioned.22 However, let us consider an even more basic assumption lying behind most of these theses: that humanist logic with Valla advanced towards a deontologization of language.33 This thesis popularized the idea that Valla had revived the quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy and vindicated the standpoint of the Sophists. This question will lead us to an examination of Valla's conception of truth and the epistemological grounds of the humanist programme. An interpretation of the history of logic that neatly opposes scholasticism to humanism, Realism to Nominalism and a unidimensional conception of ontology to logic is at the root of this confusion. I would suggest that a Heideggerian interpretation of the history of philosophy as one of gradual decadence would help us to better understand how the ontology of 'presence' in Plato had been leaning towards language and in Aristotle became only a question of making a statement. Heidegger suggests that in Plato 'truth' was already made into a question of 'saying'
Anthropological Reformations - Anthropology in the Era of Reformation, 2015
The influence of Ramus’s logic on William Ames in particular and the Puritans of New England in g... more The influence of Ramus’s logic on William Ames in particular and the Puritans of New England in general is a known fact. However, Ramus’s theology in his Commentaria de religione Christiana (1576), being part of his technometry or encyclopaedic charting of knowledge highly influenced Ames’s theological works. Ames’sMedullaTheologiae (1623) may be seen as the perfection of the Ramistprogramme of theology, both in matter and in manner or method. In his soteriology as well as eccelesiology Ames appears to be echoing the Ramist idea of a meritocratic scheme of salvation and church polity. In this paper I argue that the New England divines John Cotton and Thomas Hooker carry on in their works the Ramist inspiration of a timocratic theology as earlier initiated by Ames. For this purpose I primarily look at Cotton’s The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared(1648) and The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven(1644) and Hooker’s A Survey of the Sum of Church Discipline(1648).
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Papers by Niranjan Goswami
Key Words: Donne, Spenser, Ramus, Rhetoric, Place-Logic, Invention Theory, Figures
Key Words: Donne, Spenser, Ramus, Rhetoric, Place-Logic, Invention Theory, Figures