Search Results
Abstract
In the ongoing debate concerning the performability of Senecan tragedy, the plays tend to be studied as either literature or drama. One consequence of this artificial distinction is that set passages such as descriptiones loci appear to support the view that Seneca's plays were intended for public reading, as 'recitation drama'. By means of a close examination of the messenger's description of the palace of Atreus (Thyestes 641-82) in the context of the play as whole, this article suggests that the description functions as a structural device that provides unity to the text of the play.
Abstract
Between 1520 and 1530 Desiderius Erasmus published several treatises on education in which he provides practical advice about subjects worthy of study and the ideological assumptions which support it. Drawing special attention to his understanding of the natural capabilities of humanity, this article seeks to illustrate the relation between one of Erasmus's theological premises and his promotion of classical culture. During the same period Martin Luther wrote three influential educational tracts and also engaged Erasmus in a debate over the freedom of the will, which forced both the Christian humanist and the Wittenberg reformer to express clearly their understandings of humanity in its natural state. A comparison of their divergent theological positions reveals a fundamental difference in their views of education and its value. Whereas Erasmus justifies the study of ancient secular authors by means of his positive notion of humanitas, Luther subordinates education to the theological rediscoveries of the Wittenberg reformation. The article concludes that further comparative studies of various theological presuppositions and the educational programs they support will advance the understanding of the connections between the ideals and the realities of schooling in sixteenth-century Europe.
This article seeks to contribute to the current re-evaluation of the relationship between the Protestant Reformation and the first period of Reformed orthodoxy by examining the ways in which the authors of the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae appropriated the literatures of classical antiquity and employed them in the context of their scholastic discourses. The derivative manner in which the many references to ancient Greek and Latin writings are employed is evidenced by the demonstrable influence of three major intermediaries: medieval lexicons and anthologies, the tradition of biblical exegesis, and the writings of John Calvin. With special attention to the classical texts that are quoted in the fundamental introductory theses of several disputations, as well as in the “polemical” ones refuting non-Reformed teaching, it is argued that the Synopsis is constructed on a complexity of intertexts that extends beyond the traditionally identified patristic and medieval sources. Thus a better understanding is gained into the nature of the (dis)continuities from medieval Scholasticism to the Reformation and early Reformed orthodoxy.