Malcolm Smith

Bio: Malcolm Smith is an academic researcher. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 10 publications receiving 52 citations.

National Myths in Renaissance France: Francus, Samothes and the Druids

Abstract: Part 1 The treatment by historians of the subject of early French history: the idea of a Trojan origin "Berosus" - the text of the "Antiquities" of Annius of Viterbo "Berosus" - the "Antiquities" as seen by French writers dealing with the subject of early French history other sources providing material on the subject of early French history. Part 2 The treatment by poets of themes concerning the origin and early history of the French: Francus - prelude - Guillame Cretin Francus - Ronsard's epic "La Franciade" Francus - epics and epic fragments on the same themes as Ronsard's "Franciade" (Claude Garnier, Guillot, Geuffrin, Malvyn, Josset) Francus - Pierre de Laudun - "La Franciade" Francus - Jean Godard - "La Franciade, tragoedie" gauls and gallic kings - le Fevre de la Boderies - "La Galliade" gauls and gallic kings - Jean le Fevre de Dreux Jean Le Masle - Robert Le Roquez Jean Le Masle - Jean Heudon. Appendices: text and translation of Annius fragments attributed to Berosus and Manetho Viennet - La Franciade.

De la servitude volontaire, ou, Contr'un

Abstract: De la servitude volontaire ou Contr’un, chef-d’œuvre d’Etienne de La Boetie, est un impitoyable proces de la tyrannie, un proces connu certes, mais qui, sans Malcolm Smith, n’aurait jamais ete servi par l’etablissement rigoureux d’une ©dition d’apres le manuscrit de Mesmes (BnF, fonds francais 839). Son edition epuisee, il s’agissait de la reimprimer cependant que, dans l’entre-temps, les recherches sur La Boetie en general et sur le Contr’un en particulier avaient lagement evolue et que plusieurs manuscrits avaient emerge. Malcolm Smith disparu, c’est Michel Magnien qui a accepte de completer cette edition et de nous faire profiter de sa parfaite connaissance du dossier.

Early French advocates of religious freedom

Abstract: Cet article presente huit hommes politiques francais du XVI e siecle unis par une meme conception: celle qui consiste a autoriser la pratique d'un culte religieux dissident, au moins dans certaines circonstances. Ce sont Pierre Du Chastel, Michel de l'Hopital, l'auteur anonyme de l'Exhortation aux Princes, Etienne de la Boetie, Arnaud Du Ferrier, Paul de Foix, Jean de Montluc et Antoine Loisel. Ils sont arrives a cette idee par des voies differentes. Certains etaient des avocats de la liberte religieuse, d'autres etaient seulement attaches a la tolerance

Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Membership

Abstract: Introduction: on studying stories of peoplehood Part I. Explaining the Political Role of Stories of Peoplehood: 1. Elements of a theory of people-making 2. The role of ethically constitutive stories Part II. Constructing Political Peoplehood in Morally Defensible Ways: 3. Ethically constitutive stories and norms of allegiance 4. A pioneering people.

The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition

Abstract: Introduction John Sellars Part 1: Antiquity and the Middle Ages 1. Stoicism in Rome Gretchen Reydams-Schils 2. Stoicism in Early Christianity Troels Engberg-Pedersen 3. Plotinus and the Platonic Response to Stoicism Lloyd Gerson 4. Augustine's Debt to Stoicism in the Confessions Sarah Byers 5. Boethius and Stoicism Matthew Walz 6. Stoic Themes in Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury Kevin Guilfoy 7. Stoic Influences in the Later Middle Ages Mary Beth Ingham Part 2: Renaissance and Reformation 8. The Recovery of Stoicism in the Renaissance Ada Palmer 9. Stoicism in the Philosophy of the Italian Renaissance Jill Kraye 10. Erasmus, Calvin, and the Faces of Stoicism in Renaissance and Reformation Thought Barbara Pitkin 11. Justus Lipsius and Neostoicism Jacqueline Lagree 12. Shakespeare and Early Modern English Literature Andrew Shifflett Part 3: Early Modern Europe 13. Medicine of the Mind in Early Modern Philosophy Guido Giglioni 14. Stoic Themes in Early Modern French Thought Michael Moriarty 15. Spinoza and Stoicism Jon Miller 16. Leibniz and the Stoics: Fate, Freedom, and Providence David Forman 17. The Epicurean Stoicism of the French Enlightenment Edward Andrew 18. Stoicism and the Scottish Enlightenment Christian Maurer 19. Kant and Stoic Ethics Jose Torralba and Daniel Doyle Part 4: The Modern World 20. Stoicism in Nineteenth Century German Philosophy Michael Ure 21. Stoicism and Romantic Literature Simon Swift 22. Stoicism in Victorian Culture Heather Ellis 23. Stoicism in America Kenneth Sacks 24. Stoic Themes in Contemporary Anglo-American Ethics Christopher Gill 25. Stoicism and Twentieth Century French Philosophy Thomas Benatouil 26. The Stoic Influence on Modern Psychotherapy Donald Robertson. Index

Michael drayton's 'poly-olbion': a study in perspective

Abstract: This dissertation provides a study of Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion (1612;1622), a loco-descriptive poem divided into two parts consisting of eighteenand twelve Songs, respectively, each one being prefaced by anengraved map. The verse describes the topography of the English and Welsh counties and the historical feats that took place in the locations in question: the ”narrators” are local landscape features, such as woodlands, forests, mountains and valleys, but mainly rivers. In the first part only, each Song closes with a learned prose commentary by the antiquarian John Selden. The study’s purpose is to highlight the position Poly-Olbion held in the network of seventeenth-century and subsequent English literature and culture. It aims to bring together the fragmentary criticism and literary influence of the poem into a coherent view leading to a joint analysis of its contents and the history of its reception. It thus reveals, on the basis of a large amount of information, the interaction of synchronic and diachronic perspectives in order to discuss the poem’s matter in the light of contemporary and later criticism, and vice versa. The reasons for the many ever-shifting opinions on Poly-Olbion are related both to the times and modes of composition and to its content. The work is therefore first contextualised in Drayton’s life and times, as an essential milestone in the poet’s search for patronage and career, which also aims to provide an explanation of the difficulties the work may have encountered in the book market. An analysis of the two main topics dealt with in Poly-Olbion – the topography and the history of Britain – sheds some light on Drayton’s possible authorial intentions and his sources, as well as on the kind of readership he might have had in mind and the reasons for the work’s poor success (according to Drayton himself) in the book market. The use of topography is discussed as an organisational device for antiquarian matter, and is also connected with Drayton’s rhetorical description of the land of Britain, fragmented among dozens of narrative voices belonging to the local landscape, and to the function of engraved maps prefacing each Song. A coherent picture emerges, uniting the map, the topographical content of each Song, and the single landscape features telling their stories, into an entity containing in itself space and time – connecting specific (present) places to specific (past) events, and unifying these two temporal dimensions. So, the single locality is at the same time historically separated from, but physically united with, the rest of Britain, a relationship that connects Drayton’s use of both topography and history. This issue is more likely connected with the almost contemporary debates on the Union of England (and Wales) and Scotland, a country which Drayton would have liked to describe, but never managed to. The role of Britain’s history in Poly-Olbion is first of all analysed in the context of the Drayton-Selden diatribe concerning the sources, methods and contents for the study of British history. Selden’s approach tends to dismantle centuries of Galfridian legends and stories, in order to restore the few reliable sources available for the study of a very fragmented and uncertain British history, while Drayton trusts the Old Welsh/British sources on which the Galfridian legends were based, which he saw as the remains of the knowledge the ancient Druids had orally committed to the song of Bards. A final, crucial point in the discussion, highlighting the issue of the union, or lack of it, of the kingdom is the analysis of the matter relating to the kingdom’s origins, especially with regard to the Saxons (English) and the British (Welsh) peoples. Drayton and Selden devote numerous lines to the ancestry of these peoples, as well as to that of the Danes and the Normans, demonstrating great knowledge of biblical, mythological, and fictional genealogies. What results from these networks of interrelations is a ”unified fragmentation” of the inhabitants of Britain, which also characterises its landscape. This amount of information on the Poly-Olbion matter is filtered through a survey of the large though uneven amount of criticism the poem has been exposed to through the centuries, as well as through an analysis of the work’s literary influence to date. Attention is brought on the ways in which the work was received: by being read in its own right, or subsumed under a specific socio-cultural label determining its meaning a priori – that is to say, the layers of meanings it acquired, or failed to acquire, in the course of time, because of changing literary vogues. Indeed, taking the years of Poly-Olbion’s publication as a starting point, this study is retroactive in its consideration of the sources, matter, and literary background, but also proactive, in its observation of the subsequent criticism on and literary influence of the poem, bearing in mind Drayton’s possible authorial intentions. In turn, the use of contemporary criticism and its approaches cannot but lead to a global retroactive view of Poly-Olbion – of the ways it should have been, would be, and actually was read and studied. The issue of a varied and discordant reception is actually one of the main problems Poly-Olbion has had to face. After a long gestation, the poem was published in two parts in the course of ten momentous years, and was believed to have been ”anachronistic” as early as the publication of the first edition in 1612, even by the poet himself. The ”perspectival” view this dissertation presents has therefore been part of Poly-Olbion’s story all along. Paradoxically, the criticism and literary influence of the poem from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century – what has been written on it, and the ways in which it has been understood – can be extremely helpful in order to study Drayton’s work and pin down its strong relationship with the passing of literary and cultural vogues. The dissertation contends inter alia that the analysis of the Poly-Olbion matter as filtered by its literary influence points at the poem’s importance as the model and apex of a literary genre – the topo-chorographical depiction of the land of Britain, whether in verse or prose – which, though deemed secondary, proves to have survived to date, especially via the contamination with seventeenth-century river and country-house poetry, as well as later loco-descriptive literature. These subgenres, in turn, testify, together with Poly-Olbion criticism, to Drayton’s views of the political and socio-cultural nature of Great Britain, and the ways in which they were read, understood, and elaborated upon by critics and authors in the course of four centuries.