Language and Slavery


Book Description

This posthumous work by Jacques Arends offers new insights into the emergence of the creole languages of Suriname including Sranantongo or Suriname Plantation Creole, Ndyuka, and Saramaccan, and the sociohistorical context in which they developed. Drawing on a wealth of sources including little known historical texts, the author points out the relevance of European settlements prior to colonization by the English in 1651 and concludes that the formation of the Surinamese creoles goes back further than generally assumed. He provides an all-encompassing sociolinguistic overview of the colony up to the mid-19th century and shows how ethnicity, language attitude, religion and location had an effect on which languages were spoken by whom. The author discusses creole data gleaned from the earliest sources and interprets the attested variation. The book is completed by annotated textual data, both oral and written and representing different genres and stages of the Surinamese creoles. It will be of interest to linguists, historians, anthropologists, literary scholars and anyone interested in Suriname.




Choosing the Better Part


Book Description

Anna Maria van Schurman was in more than one aspect an unconventional woman in her own lifetime. As a gifted scholar in many foreign and ancient languages, as well as in philosophy and theology, she corresponded with other learned men and women all over Europe. She achieved international renown for her own defence of scholarly activity of women. Life and work of this Dutch femme savante of the 17th Century has thus far been studied by theologians, philosophers, literary scholars, historians, pedagogues and art historians, each concentrating on specific aspects of Van Schurman's biography or work. A rather fragmented image of this scholar was the result. This interdependent collection of essays describes the life and work of Anna Maria van Schurman from an interdisciplinary - or rather multidisciplinary - approach and will outline a more integrated yet at the same time subtly differentiated picture. Nine contributions - from the disciplines of philosophy, theology, Dutch language and literature, intellectual and art history, and women's studies - partly based on new source material, shed light on Van Schurman's ideas on erudition and femininity, ethics and philosophy, as well as on her religious beliefs, within the context of the early modern intellectual community to which she belonged. Audience: This collection of essays will therefore command the interest not only of historians, but also of scholars and students in theology, philosophy, art history, and women's studies.




David Gorlaeus (1591-1612)


Book Description

When David Gorlaeus (1591-1612) passed away at 21 years of age, he left behind two highly innovative manuscripts. Once they were published, his work had a remarkable impact on the evolution of seventeenth-century thought. However, as his identity was unknown, divergent interpretations of their meaning quickly sprang up. Seventeenth-century readers understood him as an anti-Aristotelian thinker and as a precursor of Descartes. Twentieth-century historians depicted him as an atomist, natural scientist and even as a chemist. And yet, when Gorlaeus died, he was a beginning student in theology. His thought must in fact be placed at the intersection between philosophy, the nascent natural sciences, and theology. The aim of this book is to shed light on Gorlaeus’ family circumstances, his education at Franeker and Leiden, and on the virulent Arminian crisis which provided the context within which his work was written. It also attempts to define Gorlaeus’ place in the history of Dutch philosophy and to assess the influence that it exercised in the evolution of philosophy and science, and notably in early Cartesian circles. Christoph Lüthy is professor of the history of philosophy and science at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands.




Looking East


Book Description

This is a fascinating exploration of the mystery that surrounds of Ruben's most well-known and intriguing drawings. Peter Paul Rubens was one of the most talented and successful artists working in 17th-century Europe. During his illustrious career as a court painter and diplomat, Rubens expressed a fascination with exotic costumes and headdresses. With his masterful handling of black chalk and touches of red, Rubens executed a compelling drawing that features a figure wearing Asian costume - a depiction that has recently been identified as Man in Korean Costume. Despite the drawings renown - both during Ruben's own lifetime and in contemporary art scholarship - the reasons why it was made and whether it actually depicts a specific Asian person remain a mystery. The intriguing story that develops involves a shipwreck, an unusual hat, the earliest trade between Europe and Asia, the trafficking of Asian slave, and Jesuit missionaries.




The Artful Recluse


Book Description

This catalogue accompanies the exhibition The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century China, organized by Susan S. Tai in collaboration with Peter C. Sturman and presented at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California, October 20, 2012-January 20, 2013, and the Asia Society, New York, March 5-June 2, 2013.




The Early Stages of Creolization


Book Description

For review see: John H. McWhorter, in New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, vol. 71, no. 1 & 2 (1997); p. 174-178.




Creole Studies – Phylogenetic Approaches


Book Description

This book launches a new approach to creole studies founded on phylogenetic network analysis. Phylogenetic approaches offer new visualisation techniques and insights into the relationships between creoles and non-creoles, creoles and other contact varieties, and between creoles and lexifier languages. With evidence from creole languages in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific, the book provides new perspectives on creole typology, cross-creole comparisons, and creole semantics. The book offers an introduction for newcomers to the fields of creole studies and phylogenetic analysis. Using these methods to analyse a variety of linguistic features, both structural and semantic, the book then turns to explore old and new questions and problems in creole studies. Original case studies explore the differences and similarities between creoles, and propose solutions to the problems of how to classify creoles and how they formed and developed. The book provides a fascinating glimpse into the unity and heterogeneity of creoles and the areal influences on their development. It also provides metalinguistic discussions of the “creole” concept from different perspectives. Finally, the book reflects critically on the findings and methods, and sets new agendas for future studies. Creole Studies has been written for a broad readership of scholars and students in the fields of contact linguistics, biolinguistics, sociolinguistics, language typology, and semantics.




Reading Newton in Early Modern Europe


Book Description

Reading Newton in Early Modern Europe investigates how Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia was read, interpreted and remodelled for a variety of readerships in eighteenth-century Europe. The editors, Mordechai Feingold and Elizabethanne Boran, have brought together papers which explore how, when, where and why the Principia was appropriated by readers in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, England and Ireland. Particular focus is laid on the methods of transmission of Newtonian ideas via university textbooks and popular works written for educated laymen and women. At the same time, challenges to the Newtonian consensus are explored by writers such as Marius Stan and Catherine Abou-Nemeh who examine Cartesian and Leibnizian responses to the Principia. Eighteenth-century attempts to remodel Newton as a heretic are explored by Feingold, while William R. Newman draws attention to vital new sources highlighting the importance of alchemy to Newton. Contributors are: Catherine Abou-Nemeh, Claudia Addabbo, Elizabethanne Boran, Steffen Ducheyne, Moredechai Feingold, Sarah Hutton, Juan Navarro-Loidi, William R. Newman, Luc Peterschmitt, Anna Marie Roos, Marius Stan, and Gerhard Wiesenfeldt.




Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions


Book Description

Seventeenth-century Korea was a country in crisis—successive invasions by Hideyoshi and the Manchus had rocked the Choson dynasty (1392-1910), which already was weakened by maladministration, internecine bureaucratic factionalism, unfair taxation, concentration of wealth, military problems, and other ills. Yu Hyongwon (1622–1673, pen name, Pan’gye), a recluse scholar, responded to this time of chaos and uncertainty by writing his modestly titled Pan’gye surok (The Jottings of Pan’gye), a virtual encyclopedia of Confucian statecraft, designed to support his plan for a revived and reformed Korean system of government. Although Yu was ignored in his own time by all but a few admirers and disciples, his ideas became prominent by the mid-eighteenth century as discussions were underway to solve problems in taxation, military service, and commercial activity. Yu has been viewed by Korean and Japanese scholars as a forerunner of modernization, but in Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions James B. Palais challenges this view, demonstrating that Yu was instead an outstanding example of the premodern tradition. Palais uses Yu Hyongwon’s mammoth, pivotal text to examine the development and shape of the major institutions of Choson dynasty Korea. He has included a thorough treatment of the many Chinese classical and historical texts that Yu used as well as the available Korean primary sources and Korean and Japanese secondary scholarship. Palais traces the history of each of Yu’s subjects from the beginning of the dynasty and pursues developments through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He stresses both the classical and historical roots of Yu’s reform ideas and analyzes the nature and degree of proto-capitalistic changes, such as the use of metallic currency, the introduction of wage labor into the agrarian economy, the development of unregulated commercial activity, and the appearance of industries with more differentiation of labor. Because it contains much comparative material, Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions will be of interest to scholars of China and Japan, as well as to Korea specialists. It also has much to say to scholars of agrarian society, slavery, landholding systems, bureaucracy, and developing economies. Winner of the John Whitney Hall Book Prize, sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies