Prologue

The verse 22 of the prologue of Captivi contains a consideration about the destiny of the mankind: enim vero di nos quasi pilas homines habent. The image of the gods playing with a ball was used both by the Greek and by the Latin world in a wide and varied way; especially the image of the comparison between man and ball was used by Jerome, who in Isaia of Vulgata has adopted the expression quasi pilam, a reminiscence not of Plautus, but of the Old Testament.

This article aims at revealing the social, cultural, and political lives of the English people in the Medieval England in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Prologue to Canterbury Tales". Chaucer who is also known as the father of English poetry describes in detail various aspects of social, cultural and political lives of his time. The description of people's lives at that time was well mixed by Chaucer through the presentation of the characters featured in his work so that by reading this article the reader will get a good and clear picture of life and the actual situation at that time. It becomes the very cause why "Prologue to Canterbury Tales" is well known as the mirror of the society of the contemporary lives of English people in the Medieval Age.

El Renacimiento español concibe la retórica como un lazo abarcador de todas las artes y las ciencias, una verdadera regina artium. De acuerdo con esta idea, los autores científicos de aquel entonces usan conscientemente la retórica para enlazar los saberes específicos de su disciplina con las categorías generales de la cultura y del discurso público. El presente libro analiza este proceso de mediación a través de un corpus de 24 prólogos de tratados matemáticos en lengua española, textos que se incluyen editados en la segunda parte del libro.

RESUMEN Este artículo analiza el Prólogo del Evangelio de Juan en relación con los estudios más recientes, como base para la interpretación de todo el Evangelio. ABSTRACT «The Christology of the Prologue to the Gospel of John according the newest joanic researching». This paper analyzes the Prologue to the Gospel of John and some others studies, as a basis of a comprehensive interpretation of the whole Gospel.

This article examines the temporal structure of L’Orfeo’s prologue. An analysis of the distribution of semibreves per line of text reveals a palindrome, which reinforces long-held perceptions of symmetry in the opera. Adopting the form of strophic variations, Monteverdi carefully shapes musical time for expressive and structural purposes. He is thus able both to enact and to check music’s affective power within the context of seconda prattica. More than a conventional prologue, La Musica’s exordium stands as an emblem of both L’Orfeo and the anxiety surrounding the nascent dramma per musica.

What happens external to what is written in Macbeth and how do the events of the past effect the characters? Much is left unanswered in Macbeth's plot as the play starts with characters who already poses evil characteristics but there are an amount of hints as to what happened to characters before the play starts which can be analysed to produce the play's preface. The modern audience may find that, in particular, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are in need of character development due to the 'blank slate' views that are now widely believed. The audience craves the reasons behind the Macbeths vindictive actions which exist but just have to be understood and examined. Lady Macbeth's frequent references to " milk " hold immense significance when regarding her backstory. Milk is a symbol of purity and religious devotion most apparent in the fable of Saint Martina of Rome in which she, the patron of nursing mothers, bled milk for refusing to accept paganism. Shakespeare chooses to associate Lady Macbeth with milk but in a derogatory and careless manner which shows on the surface a lack of nurturing values but more importantly a lack of Christianity. The audience will understand that she is a cruel woman but may overlook one crucial fact: Lady Macbeth has " given suck. " Milks connotations and the past tense are incredibly important when regarding this case of character development and in this the audience is provided with the information that, prior to the plays start, Lady Macbeth was a pure, devoted, Christian woman. The driving force behind the drastic change between a pure Christian to an evil " spirit " worshiper is also linked with the concept of milk. Lady Macbeth " know(s) how tender 'tis to love the babe that milks (her) " which implies that she was once a mother. The character Lady Macbeth is easily one of the most odious characters in the whole play considering her lust for power and acceptance of murder but when regarding her presumably deceased baby she expresses her love-a word only mentioned twice in the entire play by Lady Macbeth. The other instance in which Lady Macbeth " account(s) thy love. " She is simply manipulating her husband expressing that she will be unable to love a man that is " afeard. " The baby is the only being that Lady Macbeth is proven to have loved and its absence serves as a reason for her hatred towards life itself. Lady Macbeth's preface fits with the Jacobean era as the public was still subject to a high child mortality rate. The audience and particularly women may have experienced an unexpected surge of sympathy which would have challenged the belief at the time that some people were good and others were evil instead replacing that concept with the more complex idea that people are effected by the events that occur to them. Lady Macbeth's character serves as a warning to the numerous women suffering from the loss of a child the moral being that one should not lose faith or they will face the consequences which escalate to suicide. Macbeth also lacks a story behind his feeble character best depicted by his lack of authority in the second scene of act two. There is evidence to suggest that, whilst Macbeth is respected with the title of thane, he is estranged by almost anyone he knows. The upper classes of Britain have typically refrained from socialising with those of another social level so the audience can establish that Macbeth would have depended on the upper class to satisfy his need for company. However, his wife Lady Macbeth is at best unsympathetic towards his " foolish " and " brain sickly " actions and, in her previously mentioned hateful state, it is immensely unlikely that she proves to be a good partner in his secluded lifestyle. Other people of higher class mentioned in the play do not associate with him very often either shown by his absence from the second scene of act one. In addition to this Lady Macbeth expresses shock at the concept of " the king (coming) " to their castle insisting that her attendant is " mad to say it " informing the audience that the king, despite being a cousin, has never come to Macbeth's castle before. Macbeth's desolation is key in observing both his lack of sanity and his being a tragic hero.

In this article the author insists on the importance of the prologues in Spanish literature, specially in some picaresque novels. La pícara Justina is a good example of this. The article analyses the differences between La pícara Justina´s prologues and other picaresque prologues, firstly. Later, the author studies the relationship among a lot of narrative levels that La pícara Justina (in the Prólogo al lector, in the Prólogo sumario and in the Introducción general) shows. A Dario Villanueva´s article, with additions, is the theoretical foundation of this study. Also, the author includes some questions about the identity of La pícara Justina´s writer and the importance of the parody and the rhetoric in this text, for example.

The turning point of the fourteenth to the fifteenth century saw the emergence of auctorial voices that were more and more involved, subjective and conscious of their talent. This paper attempts to demonstrate how the notion of ethos, coming from discourse analysis, allows to characterize the voice of a translator the fifteenth century, Laurent de Premierfait, in close relation with tradition. The analysis of the prefaces to his translations shows the large influence of the communication situation and enunciation scene, which is determined by patronage and the poetical tradition inherited from fourteenth-century translations. It appears that this particular situation forces the translator to negotiate his own representation in the text. In this sense, the author of this paper intends to characterize the two êthê emanating from these prefaces through rhetorical, poetical, discursive, as well as extra-discursive signs: the ethos of a moralist, in accordance with the expectations of the audience, and the ethos of a humanist, which reveals a singular and individual positioning from the translator in the writers’ community.

Taking Iphigenia Taurica as a case in point, this article will investigate the narrative artificiality of Euripides' prologues. By creating prologic pieces which defied the dramatic festivals' conventions, the Greek playwright distanced his tragedies from that kind of theatrical rituality, transforming them into a vessel for newly established and independent principles and values. Hence Euripides' prologues set and defined the preconditions of his dramas, which may be perceived as a new intellectual construction. This article will explore the relationship between the prologue and the rest of the play, epilogue included and will, therefore, consider the play as a tripartite integrated structure which tests the possibility of conciliating myth, and its divine protagonists, with men's new intellectual and ethical values.

The concept of ‘genre’ is an integral part of the everyday life of most scholars. It is present in reading, writing and conversation, or any other mode of communication and exchange. In the humanities, we study genre in different media and in a multitude of manners. Still, we experience few explorations of the ‘genre’ concept and its complexity between or beyond disciplinary divides or across media, including in the context of innovation. It is our conviction that multimedia and multimodal advances towards increased genre understanding – theoretical and practical, critical and constructive, and across disciplines – have significant unrealised potential. This is the focus of this special issue of the Journal of Media Innovations.

RESUMEN Las relaciones de Alfonso de Cartagena con la cultura portuguesa de comienzos del siglo XV no muestran una sola dirección, la que parte de éste y llega a los miembros de la casa real y a los intelectuales portugueses, sino también la recíproca, que sale de éstos últimos y alcanza al eminente letrado y jurista castellano. En este trabajo pretendemos incidir en el primer aspec-to, poniendo de manifiesto cómo las ideas sobre la filosofía moral y la traducción del Infante D. Duarte (1391-1438), más tarde rey de Portugal, debieron de tener una de sus fuentes de inspiración en los escritos y charlas de Alfonso de Cartagena.

[English abstract below]

La critique littéraire reconnaît que le texte est un support imparfait pour le théâtre. Il est d’autant plus imparfait pour le théâtre de l’Ancien Régime, dont la pratique est largement oubliée. Nous sommes obligés de la reconstituer à partir de textes (pièces, témoignages écrits et ouvrages théoriques) tout en gardant à l’esprit que l’image qu’ils peignent n’est pas fidèle à la réalité pratique de l’époque. Cette dichotomie entre présentation textuelle et pratique performative est particulièrement claire quand on examine la question du rôle et de la pratique du parathéâtre (prologues, épilogues, chœurs et intermèdes), puisque le parathéâtre est employé systématiquement sur scène mais n’est presque jamais inclus dans les textes imprimés. Cette suppression du parathéâtre à l’impression tient surtout au fait que ces ornements étaient composés par les comédiens et non par l’auteur de la pièce. Nous avons donc tendance à considérer la pièce de théâtre comme la totalité de la représentation, alors qu’elle n’en compose en fait qu’une partie, encadrée par plusieurs ornements parathéâtraux qui forment le reste de la représentation. Comment comprendre l’art du praticien du théâtre du XVIIe siècle alors que le texte dramatique imprimé privilégie le point de vue de l’auteur ? Comment reconstituer la structure d’une représentation théâtrale du Grand Siècle alors que l’image que nous renvoie le texte imprimé est visiblement incomplète ? Sur quels textes pouvons-nous nous appuyer pour la reconstituer? Ce sont les questions auxquelles nous tenterons de répondre.

Pitfalls and Advantages to the Publication of Plays in the Seventeenth Century: The Example of the Prologue

The idea that the text is an incomplete and imperfect rendering of a play is elementary in the literary study of theatre. But the inadequacies of the dramatic text are particularly evident in early theatre, whose dramatic practices are largely forgotten or unknown. It is necessary to reconstitute our idea of the performance through texts (plays, accounts of performances, and theoretical works) while keeping in mind that none of these can paint a fully faithful portrait of what a performance was in this period. This dichotomy between text and performance becomes particularly apparent when studying ornaments such as prologues, epilogues, choruses and “intermèdes”, since these ornaments were used almost systematically in performance, but almost never included in published plays. This absence makes sense when we consider that the ornaments were (in many cases) composed by actors, and not by the authors of the plays. We therefore call into question the all-too-common tendency to consider the play as the whole of the performance, when in fact it is simply a part of it, framed by various ornaments that, together with the play, make up the totality of the representation. How can we understand the practice of theatrical performance in the 17th century when the printed play privileges the perspective of the poet over that of the actor? How can we reconstitute the structure of the performance in the “Grand Siècle” when the image that the plays of this period give us is incomplete? Given that we must use texts, what texts are most useful in reconstructing a faithful image of the performance in this period? These are the questions this paper seeks to address.

The concept of ‘genre’ is an integral part of the everyday life of most scholars. It is present in reading, writing and conversation, or any other mode of communication and exchange. In the humanities, we study genre in different media and in a multitude of manners. Still, we experience few explorations of the ‘genre’ concept and its complexity between or beyond disciplinary divides or across media, including in the context of innovation. It is our conviction that multimedia and multimodal advances towards increased genre understanding – theoretical and practical, critical and constructive, and across disciplines – have significant unrealised potential. This is the focus of this special issue of the Journal of Media Innovations.

Couldn’t you say I come from the Moon & wish to remain a mystery? —Letter to Lance Bowling, November 3, 1976 Sometimes serendipity leads us to our life’s work. In the case of our study of Madeleine Dring (1923–77), it was an innocent request for a CD for the ride home, made on an afternoon in July 2000, when one of us (Wanda) was in Glendower Jones’s sheet music shop in Upper Manhattan. That request led to the loan of ...

Resumen: En este artículo se insiste en la importancia que los prólogos han tenido en la historia de la literatura española, especialmente en ciertas obras del género picaresco, y en concreto en La pícara Justina. Una vez analizadas las diferencias más significativas entre las páginas introductorias de esta obra y las de otros textos picarescos, se pasa a estudiar en profundidad los distintos planos narrativos que aparecen interrelacionados, tanto en los prólogos propiamente dichos (Prólogo al lector y Prólogo sumario) como en la Introducción general de esta obra de López de Úbeda, empleando como base teórica un artículo de Darío Villanueva, al que se incorpora terminología y matices, necesarios para desentrañar todos los niveles narrativos del texto. De forma paralela, y en las notas a pie de página sobre todo, se resumen las principales consideraciones teóricas sobre aspectos tales como la polémica autoría de la obra, su carácter paródico o los procedimientos retóricos de los que ...

This article aims to show the presence of epic elements in Castilian chivalric romans. As an example, it is analysed the prologue to the Fourth Part of Florisel de Niquea (1551) written by Feliciano de Silva. This work proposes Carlos V is the true tribute in the paratext, and not his daughter archduchess Maria, to whom the book is dedicated. The prologue narrates the Muhlberg´s battle with a heroic tone and a noticeable epic detail in order to create the war scene. Silva makes the entire artistic machinery that seeks to enhance the image of Carlos V as the great Renaissance hero through concepts like the heroic virtue or the monarch's topic such as Miles Christi. Silva achieves his prologue contains the basic ideas of the imperial power´s image´s configuration

RESUMEN Las relaciones de Alfonso de Cartagena con la cultura portuguesa de comienzos del siglo XV no muestran una sola dirección, la que parte de éste y llega a los miembros de la casa real y a los intelectuales portugueses, sino también la recíproca, que sale de éstos últimos y alcanza al eminente letrado y jurista castellano. En este trabajo pretendemos incidir en el primer aspec-to, poniendo de manifiesto cómo las ideas sobre la filosofía moral y la traducción del Infante D. Duarte (1391-1438), más tarde rey de Portugal, debieron de tener una de sus fuentes de inspiración en los escritos y charlas de Alfonso de Cartagena.

In Apul. Met. 1, 1, 5 exotici ac forensi<s> sermonis the word forensis means ‘foreign’ and not ‘belonging to the forum’. The former is required by the context: two coordinate adjectives linked with ac should convey a sense of similarity. The arguments raised against it are unfounded: (1) elsewhere in Apuleius the word refers to the forum — but in Met. 4, 13, 6 forensis was convincingly defended in the sense of ‘foreign’ by Armini; (2) the meaning ‘foreign’ is not attested until the end of the 4th century, i.e. 200 years after Apuleius — but a number of lexical units that first occur in the Metamorphoses are attested later only from the 4th century on; (3) its derivation from foris suggests a vulgar colloquialism — but the word was used in the sense of ‘being out of doors’ by Colum. XII praef. 4. Recent attempts to explain the word in both meanings at once are implausible: the idea of ‘the style of the Roman forum’ (from which the narrator deviates) is far-fetched, and it seems impossible to cram this sense into the perfectly clear pair of synonyms ‘coming from abroad and foreign’. Refs 45.

"The Ecbasis cuiusdam captivi per tropologiam is a Latin poem of 1229 mostly leonine hexameters which was composed toward the middle of the eleventh century, probably by a monk attached to the monastery of Saint-Èvre in Toul. It survives in only two twelfth-century manuscripts. The poem is stylistically intricate, replete with quotations from the classics of pagan and Christian Latin poetry. It includes over 250 lines and phrases from Horace; around 100 from Prudentius and 50 from Vergil; over 20 lines apiece from Juvencus, Sedulius, and Venantius Fortunatus; and 8 lines each from Ovid and Arator. The foregoing itemization leaves out quotations from a dozen poems, from which only a few lines were taken, and from prose works, such as the Benedictine Rule and the Bible."