[1] Contributi -- [2] Rassegne bibliografiche.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.2 (2000) 88-112 [Access article in PDF] Milton's Aesthetics Of Eating Denise Gigante It is not a little curious that, with the exception of Ben Jonson (and he did not speak gravely about it so often), the poet in our own country who has written with the greatest gusto on the subject of eating is Milton. He omits none of the pleasures of the palate, great or (...) small. In his Latin poems, when young, he speaks of the pears and chestnuts which he used to roast at the fire with his friend Diodati. Junkets and other "country-messes" are not forgotten in his "Allegro." The simple Temptation in the Wilderness, "Command that these stones be made bread" (which was quite sufficient for a hunger that had fasted "forty days"), is turned, in Paradise Regained, with more poetry than propriety, into the set out of a great feast, containing every delicacy in and out of season. The very "names" of the viands, he says, were "exquisite." And in Paradise Lost, Eve is not only described as being skilful in paradisaical cookery ("tempering dulcet creams"), but the angel Raphael is invited to dinner, and helped by his entertainers to a series of tid-bits and contrasted relishes--Taste after taste, upheld with kindliest change. --Leigh Hunt, "Eating Songs" The title of an old play gives us a direct taste and surmise of its inwards, as the first lines of the Paradise Lost smack of the great Poem. --John Keats, "On 'Retribution, or the Chieftain's Daughter'" That Milton's Romantic readers should invoke the "taste" of his epic poetry suggests an awareness beyond the anecdotal. For as this essay will show, Milton complicates the category of physiological taste in such a manner as to form the ground for the possibility of aesthetic taste, which emerges as a distinct discourse in the early years of the eighteenth century. This is not to say that Milton is the only source for this dubious meaning-in-transition. But precisely how, prior to the interventions of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and the entire tradition of post-Miltonic theorists of taste, is one to read Adam's darkly sardonic postlapsarian remark: "Eve, now I see thou art exact of taste... And Palate call judicious" [PL IX.1017-20]? Critics have observed Milton's "ruthless and relentless pressure on 'taste,'" the fact that the word and its variants appear thirty times in Book IX of Paradise Lost alone [Ricks 69]. What I would like to suggest is that just as Milton is a seminal figure for the eighteenth-century aesthetic preoccupation with the sublime, 1 he is theoretically situated at the origins of the more generic thing called taste as well. [End Page 88]Of course Milton himself was aware of the epistemological implications of taste, whereby the Latin sapere can mean both "to taste" and "to know." 2 The fruit whose "mortal taste" was the source of all our woe did, after all, grow on the tree of knowledge, knowingly described by Satan as "precious of all Trees / In Paradise, of operation blest / To Sapience" [PL I.2, IX.795-97]. So too, when Adam calls Eve "exact of taste," he adds "of Sapience no small part" [PL IX.1018]. Throughout Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, Milton plays with the epistemological connotation of taste, incorporating it even into the 1671 companion piece of the latter, Samson Agonistes, whose blind hero declares, "The way to know were not to see but taste" [1091]. At the time Milton was writing, however, taste was philosophically connected not only to knowledge and pleasure, but to morality as well. At the origins of the British empirical discourse of taste, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, inheriting this link between epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics, inquires: "Will it not be found... that what is beautiful is... true; and what is at once both beautiful and true is, of consequence, agreeable and good?" [2: 268-69]. For Milton as for Shaftesbury, the beautiful was the true was the good, and access to these ideals was bound up with the philosophic complexity... (shrink)

This article presents some previously unpublished evidence of Isaac Casaubon’s studies of Islamic coins preserved in his notebooks. The notes show Casaubon’s attempts to decipher the coins, as well as the European-wide efforts of a group of scholars, including Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc in France, Thomas Erpenius in the Netherlands and John Selden in England, to make sense of Arabic epigraphic inscriptions, attributions and titles on coinage; and it reveals the contribution to these efforts of a former enslaved person and (...) dragoman of the Republic of Venice, two Lebanese Maronites, a Turkish diplomat and an enslaved Moroccan at the port of Marseille. In particular, this study analyses Casaubon’s attempts to read, translate and decipher a group of Islamic coins, including a Norman coin, an Abbasid coin, an Ottoman coin, a stone seal amulet, an Artuqid coin and a contemporary Moroccan coin. It provides annotated Latin texts and modern English translations of Casaubon’s notes, along with Archbishop James Ussher’s comments on them; and it offers a potential identification of the coins. The article demonstrates that the coins were treated more as vehicles for the inscriptions they bore than as artefacts in their own right and confirms that the earliest approaches to understanding Islamic material culture in Europe were mediated through the Arabic language. Casaubon’s notes on Arabic and Turkish coins are among the first and most comprehensive studies of Islamic material culture of the early modern period. (shrink)

Esse texto é um resultado parcial e provisório de uma pesquisa de Pós-doutorado em andamento na Scuola Normale Superiore de Pisa/Italia sobre a supervisão do filósofo Roberto Esposito. Observa-se que nessas primeiras décadas do século XXI o pensamento filosófico Italiano, por algumas das razões que tentaremos expor abaixo, tem sido objeto de um grande interesse mundial, tornando-se objeto de inúmeros seminários, livros e artigos. O texto tenta avaliar se existiria algo como uma “filosofia Italiana” para além da pertença nacional daqueles (...) que contribuíram para a sua construção. Pode-se falar em uma Italian Theory? Se a resposta a essa questão for afirmativa, quais seriam as suas especificidades? (shrink)

Na atualidade, parece não haver nenhuma outra categoria que goze de unanimidade tão generalizada e transversal, quanto o de pessoa. Nenhum discurso que pretenda estar em público de forma teórico, jurídico e politicamente correta coloca em questão sua nobreza, principalmente em seu nexo com o direito. Os direitos da pessoa são justamente sobre o quê não se deve tergiversar. No entanto, há um paradoxo incontornável do nosso tempo: nunca como agora, a nobreza da categoria de pessoa foi tão incensada, mas (...) também nunca como agora, tantas vidas humanas foram tão humilhadas pela fome, miséria, epidemias, exílios, etc. O objetivo desse texto é seguir uma trilha já aberta por alguns pensadores de matriz franco-italiana de crítica a essa unanimidade. (shrink)

The concept of “critical science literacy” advanced by Susanna Priest is significant to how citizens approach scientific knowledge, but the concept is also relevant to undergraduate students majoring in the sciences, who are not necessarily becoming “critically literate” in their own disciplines. That is, future scientists are not learning how arguments are structured, meaning is made, and facts are agreed upon—specifically through communicative practices—both within and outside of the scientific community. This gap in the curriculum can be addressed through collaborative (...) efforts between rhetoricians and sociologists of science. Drawing from three major disciplinary traditions—writing studies, the rhetoric of science, and science communication—this article posits that a pedagogical intervention is necessary to improve science communication with nonexpert publics. A science writing and communication course that is grounded in the rhetoric of science and that also has sociological, philosophical, and historical components can provide science students with a critical awareness of how their discipline operates in society and teach them how to become more responsible and effective communicators. (shrink)

O texto tem como objetivo apresentar a categoria de “biopolítica afirmativa” de Roberto Esposito. Para tanto, na primeira parte discute-se rapidamente o que se convencionou chamar de “a diferença italiana”. O segundo tópico do texto discute o significado de comunidade a partir do seu étimo originário munus. Na seção seguinte aborda-se o “dispositivo imunitário” onipresente em nossas sociedades. A partir dessas considerações pode-se, na última parte, discutir o problema central proposto, isto é, a biopolítica afirmativa.

O texto faz uma reflexão teórica a partir de Benjamin, Arendt, Foucault e Agamben. Em um primeiro momento faz-se uma análise da assertiva benjamineana de que “tornamo-nos muito pobres de experiências liminares”. Em seguida associamos essa idéia de “aniquilamento das transições” à idéia de homogeneidade e efemeridade da experiência urbana contemporânea. A partir desse ponto o texto articula essa homogeneidade com uma idéia de empobrecimento da esfera do comum, ou seja, do político, em prol de uma “gestão de necessidades”: a (...) gestão como sucedânea do político, que se refletiria na produção contemporânea do espaço e na “construção do comum”. (shrink)

Gigant v t︠s︡epi︠a︡kh -- Chelovek protiv mifov -- Mysliteli i kaznachei.

We tend to think of conflict as bad and compromise as good. But how should we view conflict that exposes potential threats to the environment and health? And what about a compromise between litigants that may adversely affect the interests of third parties or undermine public health? There can be few places in the country where this issue has become more pressing than in my home state, Pennsylvania. The hydraulic fracturing of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale has transformed (...) lives and landscapes here, mainly in rural communities with low‐income populations. The Hallowich family is a case in point. (shrink)

At the end of Punica 14, M. Claudius Marcellus transforms from a general famous for his military valor into a founder renowned for his clemency. This paper interprets his transformation in relation to the threat of civil war, which lurks throughout the Sicilian campaign. Earning glory through his commitment to external conquest and internal unity, Marcellus offers a resonant exemplum for a political community beset by fears of provincial unrest. When Silius invites his fellow governors to learn the (...) lessons of the epyllion, he reveals his own awareness that the stability of the empire depends upon the conduct of those who conquer in its name. (shrink)