In the only surviving fragment of Bruttedius Niger’s historical work the Romans deplore Cicero’s death; collectively they pronounce the funeral speech of the pater patriae and tell each other that “there is no part of the Forum which is not sealed by some traces of one of his famous speeches”. This article contextualizes the fragment and offers a new interpretation of it. First it gives an overview of Cicero’s visual presence in early imperial Rome, especially focussing on his house as (...) a symbolic place. In a second step, it argues that Bruttedius creates a lieu de mémoire of Cicero on the Forum, which Augustus had just transformed into a symbolic space for his dynasty. Against recent interpretations, which stress the subversive potential of Bruttedius’ description, this article argues that the Tiberian historian follows Augustus’ attempt to turn the Forum into a symbolic space for synchronous and diachronous consensus. Cicero’s presence on the forum fits this strategy: he is turned into a kind of predecessor of Augustus and thus into political symbol for the republic’s alleged sublimation in the new imperial era. (shrink)

A distinguished group of authors reflects on problems currently enlivening the space shared by philosophy and literary theory in a series of chapters that range in scope from Plato to postmodernism.

In Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation, Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on nineteenth-century American writers—originally written for such landmark projects as The Columbia Literary History of the United States and The Cambridge History of American Literature—are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and invites us to (...) reconsider the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory listings (...) to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system ([email protected]).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Objective Apeiron was founded in 1966 and has developed into one of the oldest and most distinguished journals dedicated to the study of ancient philosophy, ancient science, and, in particular, of problems that concern both fields. Apeiron is committed to publishing high-quality research papers in these areas of ancient Greco-Roman intellectual history; it also welcomes submission of articles dealing with the reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition. The journal appears quarterly. Articles are peer-reviewed on (...) a double-blind basis. Topics ancient philosophy ancient science reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition Article formats Original Articles. (shrink)

Altered Reading will interest philosophers, literary critics, scholars of religion, and others drawn to Levinas's work.

The article at hand presents the results of a literature review on the ethical issues related to scientific authorship. These issues are understood as questions and/or concerns about obligations, values or virtues in relation to reporting, authorship and publication of research results. For this purpose, the Web of Science core collection was searched for English resources published between 1945 and 2018, and a total of 324 items were analyzed. Based on the review of the documents, ten ethical themes have (...) been identified, some of which entail several ethical issues. Ranked on the basis of their frequency of occurrence these themes are: 1) attribution, 2) violations of the norms of authorship, 3) bias, 4) responsibility and accountability, 5) authorship order, 6) citations and referencing, 7) definition of authorship, 8) publication strategy, 9) originality, and 10) sanctions. In mapping these themes, the current article explores major ethical issue and provides a critical discussion about the application of codes of conduct, various understandings of culture, and contributing factors to unethical behavior. (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

This book seeks to develop a novel approach to literature beyond the conventional divide between realism/formalism and history/aestheticism.

The notion of aesthetic illusion relates to a number of art forms and media. Defined as a pleasurable mental state that emerges during the reception of texts and artefacts, it amounts to the reader's or viewer's sense of having entered the represented world while at the same time keeping a distance from it. Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and the Arts is an in-depth study of the main questions surrounding this experience of art as reality. Beginning with an introduction providing (...) historical background to modern discussions of illusion, it deals with a wide range of theoretical issues. The collection explores the nature and function of the aesthetic illusion as well as the role of affect and emotion, the implications of aesthetic illusion for the theory of fiction, the variable forms of aesthetic illusion and its relationship to other components of aesthetic response. Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and the Arts brings together a team of scholars from philosophy, literature and art and presents an interdisciplinary examination of a concept lying at the heart of contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

A brief essay on taste -- The dreadful legacy of modernism -- Is Shakespeare any good? -- Mad theories -- Defining literature: the bete noir of academia -- Evaluation -- Popular literature -- Is literature any good for us?.

In _Roman Ingarden’s Philosophy of Literature_ Wojciech Chojna makes Ingarden’s philosophy of literature more consistent with Husserl’s phenomenology and more immune to both absolutism and relativism. The latter is overcome not through falling back on essentialism but from within itself.

This book argues that the negotiation of agency is central not only to the experience of war but also to its representation in cultural expressions, ranging from a notion of disablement, expressed in victimization, immobilization, traumatization, and death, to enablement, expressed in the perpetration of heroic, courageous, skillful, and powerful actions of assertion and dominance. In order to illustrate this thesis, it provides a comprehensive analysis of literary representations of the American War of Independence from 1775, the beginning of the (...) war, up until roughly 1860, when the Civil War marked a decisive historical turning point. As the first national war, it has an unquestionably exemplary status for the development of American conceptions of war. The in-depth study of exemplary texts from a variety of genres and by authors like Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper, Catharine Sedgwick, William Gilmore Simms, and Herman Melville, demonstrates that the overall character of Revolutionary War literature presents the war as a forum in which collective and individual agency is expressed, defended, and cultivated. It uses the military environment in order to teach the values of discipline and self-subordination to a communal good, which are perceived as basic principles of a Republican virtue to guide the actions of the autonomous individual in a popular democracy. (shrink)

To take into account the growing importance of this extraterritoriality paradigm reassessing the idea of territory in literature, culture and languages, this book offers an interdisciplinary and plurilingual journey through four centuries, four continents and a dozen languages.

This innovative critical study reinterprets Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy for the study of modernist and contemporary literature and brings Wittgenstein into literary conversations around problems of difficulty, ethical instruction, and the yearning for transformation. Central to Karen Zumhagen-Yekple͹'s book are her critical readings of key modernist texts by Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce. Throughout, Zumhagen-Yekplé brings to bear an interpretive framework that she derives from Wittgenstein's gnomic "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" (first published in English in 1922, the "annus mirabilis" of (...) modernism), which she treats not as a theory of logic or metaphysics but as a complex mock-theoretical puzzle. The book's final chapter turns to recent fiction by J. M. Coetzee, a living author conscious of his debts both to Wittgenstein and his modernist literary precursors. This book will interest students of literary modernism, Wittgenstein, and the interconnections between fiction and ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

This book uses literary examples makes the case for understanding law and the legal system through the lens of philosophical pragmatism. For pragmatists, experience is everything; and they argue against understanding the world through any abstraction, maintaining that it is simply too complicated to fit into categories or theories. Legal pragmatism is the application of this philosophy to the making of law, the practice of law, and the practice of judging. This book maintains that the best way to understand legal (...) pragmatism is not through bare theoretical exegesis but through literature; that is, through stories that cast light on various pragmatic aspects of law. Engaging a range of literary sources, including works by Seamus Heaney, Hilary Mantel, Harper Lee and Ian McEwan, the book makes a compelling case for the contemporary relevance of pragmatism. This book will appeal to legal theorists, law and literature/humanities scholars; readers of literary criticism; and those with interests in pragmatist philosophy. (shrink)

Ideal for introductory ethics courses, The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature, Fifth Edition, brings together an extensive and varied collection of ninety-one classical and contemporary readings on ethical theory and practice. Integrating literature with philosophy in an innovative way, this unique anthology uses literary works to enliven and make concrete the ethical theory or applied issues addressed. It also emphasizes the personal dimension of ethics, which is often ignored or minimized in ethics anthologies. The (...) readings are enhanced by chapter introductions, study questions, suggestions for further reading, and biographical sketches. The fifth edition adds ten new readings, eight of which appear in two new chapters: Feminist Ethics and the Ethics of Care and Global Economic Justice. An updated Companion Website at www.oup.com/us/pojman provides self-quizzes, essay questions, and helpful links for students and reading summaries, a test bank, and PowerPoint-based lecture slides for instructors. (shrink)

While there are interesting connections between literature and evil, there is as of yet no systematic collection of models of evil to study literature. This is problematic, since literature is among other things an evaluative discourse and the most basic evaluative category is the polarity of good versus evil. In addition, evil shows important affinities with basic narratological principles. To initiate a discussion of models of evil for the analysis of literature, this article organizes a dozen (...) models of evil into four groups. The first consists of a core model which coincides with basic narratological elements in character analysis and narrative tension. The second group contains two pre-modern models of evil, defilement and moral-natural evil. The third group takes its cue from personality theory and proposes the five-factor model of personality and an enriched “dark triad,” and, to balance description against narration, a model which categorizes kinds of murder. The last group organizes six models around the thematic opposition between nature and society, an opposition which forms the backbone of Western philosophy and narrative. To test their validity, the models are applied to a series of literary examples/characters, above all Grendel, Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” and Carol Oates’ short story “Heat.”. (shrink)

BackgroundKnowledge development depends on an unbiased representation of the available evidence. Selective citation may distort this representation. Recently, some controversy emerged regarding the possible impact of swimming on childhood asthma, raising the question about the role of selective citation in this field. Our objective was to assess the occurrence and determinants of selective citation in scientific publications on the relationship between swimming in chlorinated pools and childhood asthma.MethodsWe identified scientific journal articles on this relationship via a systematic literature search. (...) The following factors were taken into account: study outcome (authors’ conclusion, data-based conclusion), other content-related article characteristics (article type, sample size, research quality, specificity), content-unrelated article characteristics (language, publication title, funding source, number of authors, number of affiliations, number of references, journal impact factor), author characteristics (gender, country, affiliation), and citation characteristics (time to citation, authority, self-citation). To assess the impact of these factors on citation, we performed a series of univariate and adjusted random-effects logistic regressions, with potential citation path as unit of analysis.ResultsThirty-six articles were identified in this network, consisting of 570 potential citation paths of which 191 (34%) were realized. There was strong evidence that articles with at least one author in common, cited each other more often than articles that had no common authors (odds ratio (OR) 5.2, 95% confidence interval (CI) 3.1–8.8). Similarly, the chance of being cited was higher for articles that were empirical rather than narrative (OR 4.2, CI 2.6–6.7), that reported a large sample size (OR 5.8, CI 2.9–11.6), and that were written by authors with a high authority within the network (OR 4.1, CI 2.1–8.0). Further, there was some evidence for citation bias: articles that confirmed the relation between swimming and asthma were cited more often (OR 1.8, CI 1.1–2.9), but this finding was not robust.ConclusionsThere is clear evidence of selective citation in this research field, but the evidence for citation bias is not very strong. (shrink)

Examines the connections between American philosophy and literature. This title includes discussion of subjects ranging from Stephen Crane's metaphysics to business ethics in William Dean Howells, pragmatic religion in Willa Cather and Harold Frederic, John Steinbeck's philosophy of work, and Norman Maclean's philosophy of community.

The promise of language in the depths of hell: Primo Levi's Canto of Ulysses and Inferno -- The difference between difference and otherness: Il milione of Marco Polo and Calvino's Le città invisibili -- Traces of the Confucian/Mencian other: ethical moments in Sima Qian's Records of the historian -- War and the Hellenic splendor of knowing: Euripides, Hölderlin, Celan -- The saying, the said, and the betrayal of mercy in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice -- Nom de dieu, quelle race: the (...) saying, the said, and the betrayal of charity in Mongo Beti's Le pauvre Christ de Bomba -- Transcendent divinity and human responsibility in Mahfouz: "zaabalawi" and children of our alley -- That you might have my witness in your poem: Valéry, the symbolist tradition, and Edgar Bowers' later blank verse. (shrink)

During the late eighteenth century the Bible underwent a shift in interpretation so radical as to make it virtually a different book from what it had been a hundred years earlier. Even as its text was being revealed as neither stable nor original, the new notion of the Bible as a cultural artefact became a paradigm for all literature. In Origins of Narrative one of the world's leading scholars in biblical interpretation, criticism and theory describes how, while formal religion (...) declined, the prestige of the Bible as a literary and aesthetic model rose to new heights: not merely was English, German and French Romanticism steeped in biblical references of a new kind, but hermeneutics and, increasingly, theories of literature and criticism were biblically derived. Professor Prickett reveals how the Romantic Bible became simultaneously a novel-like narrative work, an on-going site of re-interpretation, and an all-embracing literary form giving meaning to all other writing. (shrink)

Because of the transfer of responsibility from hospitals to community-based settings, providers in home-based care have more responsibilities and a wider range of tasks and responsibilities than before, often with limited resources. The increased responsibilities and the complexity of tasks and patient groups may lead to several ethical challenges. A systematic search in the databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, and SveMed+ was carried out in February 2019 and August 2020. The research question was translated into a modified PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, and (...) Outcome) worksheet. A total of 40 articles were included. The review is conducted according to the Vancouver Protocol. The main findings from the systematic literature review show that ethical challenges experienced by healthcare and social care providers in home-based care are related to autonomy and balancing ethical principles, decisions regarding intensity of care, challenges related to priority settings, truth-telling, and balancing the professional role. Findings regarding ethical challenges within home-based care are in line with findings from institutional healthcare and social care settings. However, some significant differences from the institutional context are also highlighted. (shrink)

IntroductionBisphenol A is highly debated and studied in relation to a variety of health outcomes. This large variation in the literature makes BPA a topic that is prone to selective use of literature, in order to underpin one’s own findings and opinion. Over time, selective use of literature, by means of citations, can lead to a skewed knowledge development and a biased scientific consensus. In this study, we assess which factors drive citation and whether this results in (...) the overrepresentation of harmful health effects of BPA.MethodsA citation network analysis was performed to test various determinants of citation. A systematic search identified all relevant publications on the human health effect of BPA. Data were extracted on potential determinants of selective citation, such as study outcome, study design, sample size, journal impact factor, authority of the author, self-citation, and funding source. We applied random effect logistic regression to assess whether these determinants influence the likelihood of citation.ResultsOne hundred sixty-nine publications on BPA were identified, with 12,432 potential citation pathways of which 808 citations occurred. The network consisted of 63 cross-sectional studies, 34 cohort studies, 29 case-control studies, 35 narrative reviews, and 8 systematic reviews. Positive studies have a 1.5 times greater chance of being cited compared to negative studies. Additionally, the authority of the author and self-citation are consistently found to be positively associated with the likelihood of being cited. Overall, the network seems to be highly influenced by two highly cited publications, whereas 60 out of 169 publications received no citations.ConclusionIn the literature on BPA, citation is mostly driven by positive study outcome and author-related factors, such as high authority within the network. Interpreting the impact of these factors and the big influence of a few highly cited publications, it can be questioned to which extent the knowledge development in human literature on BPA is actually evidence-based. (shrink)

Informed by religion and psychology literature, this study reviews the literature on religiosity, spirituality, and psychology to support existing theory development in the current emergence of “Management, Spirituality, and Religion” field of study, encourage new contextual thinking and develop a framework to guide businesses on the integration of spirituality and religiosity at work given their documented benefits in relation to personal well-being and productivity. Using the Web of Science (WoS) database, the paper reviews and synthesizes recent research in (...) a systematic, transparent, and reproducible manner. In addition, to verify and include the state-of-the-art of high-quality scientific articles, we refer to the Chartered Association of Business Schools list leading to the adoption of the following criteria: (a) journals listed in the ABS ranking as 3- and 4-star class, (b) indexed under the field of ethics (i.e., ETHICS-CSR-MAN), (c) articles published between 2000 and 2021, and (d) topical relevance. The review extends the existing literature by developing a framework for organizations that helps in identifying possible linkages between religiosity, spirituality, and employee well-being. This was done by (1) extending the six indicators of Ryff's well-being framework, (2) highlighting potential spiritual practices for individuals and organizations and their implications, and (3) presenting a framework that is contextualized to the extent possible and that can serve as a useful guide for organizations. Insights from our review yield in turn two key propositions: (1) workplace spirituality and individual spirituality are both important for employees' well-being, and (2) individual religiosity is an important factor for personal well-being. This offers in turn reinvigorated awareness and new insights into the topic under study. The study highlights in closing an array of future possible research directions. (shrink)

Angus Fletcher is one of our finest theorists of the arts, the heir to I. A. Richards, Erich Auerbach, Northrop Frye. This, his grandest book since the groundbreaking Allegory of 1964, aims to open another field of study: how thought--the act, the experience of thinking--is represented in literature. Recognizing that the field of formal philosophy is only one demonstration of the uses of thought, Fletcher looks for the ways other languages (and their framing forms) serve the purpose of certain (...) thinking activities. What kinds of thinking accompany the writing of history? How does the gnomic sentence manage to represent some point of belief? The fresh insights Fletcher achieves at every turn suggest an anatomy of poetic and fictional strategies for representing thought--the hazards, the complications, the sufferings, the romance of thought. Fletcher's resources are large, and his step is sure. The reader samples his piercing vision of Milton's Satan, the original Thinker, leaving the pain of thinking as his legacy for mankind; Marvell's mysteriously haunting "green thought in a green shade"; Old Testament and Herodotus, Vico and Coleridge; Crane, Calvino, Stevens. Fletcher ranges over the heights of literature, poetry, music, and film, never losing sight of his central line of inquiry. He includes comments on the essential role of unclear, vague, and even irrational thinking to suggest that ideas often come alive as thoughts only in a process of considerable distress. In the end he gives us literature--not the content of thought, but its form, its shape, the fugitive colors taken on by the mind as represented in art. (shrink)

Introduction -- The use and abuse of "use and abuse" -- The pleasures of the canon -- What isn't literature -- What's love got to do with it? -- So you want to read a poem -- Why literature is always contemporary -- On truth and lie in a literary sense -- Go figure -- The impossibility of closure -- Coda: after the humanities.

This publication celebrates the 50th anniversary of the "Journal of Documentation". It reviews the progress of documentation and information provision.

A collection of Articles on Philosophy and Literature in Muslim History. These concentrate on many subjects including Amir Khusraw, Shah Waliyullah, and al-Razi. Also included are essays on the philosopher Spinoza and Zoroastrianism.

Disturbed by these acrimonious arguments, the authors - former colleagues and university-press board members - embarked on an ambitious project to reexamine a number of major literary and philosophical works dealing with the liberal arts and education. With their discussions ranging from Plato to Rousseau, from Cicero to Vico, from Erasmus to Matthew Arnold, Sousa and Weinsheimer offer not a history of education philosophy but an examination of the present.

Pandey, V. Introduction.--Kalelkar, K. S. Jainism, a familyhood of all religions.--David, M. D. From Risabha to Mahavira.--Chalil, J. E. Glimpses of Southern Jainism.--Gopani, A. S. Life and culture in Jaina narrative literature, 8th, 9th and 10th century A.D.--Gopani, A. S. Position of women in Jaina literature.--Ranka, R. Evolution of Jaina thought.--Pandey, V. Jaina philosophy and religion.--Shah, C. C. Jainism and modern life.--Sankalia, H. D. The great renunciation.--Shah, U. P. Jaina contribution to Indian art.--Gorakshkar, S. Early metal images of (...) the Jainas.--Bhagwati, U. Bibliographical aids for the study of Jainism. (shrink)

If we inspect closely the works that ascend to world literature from the peripheral, David Damrosch’s well-recognized argument that “world literature is writing that gains in translation” may need some revision, because apparently translation is not the sole factor that decides the formation of world literature. Translated works do not necessarily represent the best part in one national literature. Damrosch’s overemphasis on translation differences and untranslatability in world literature tends to overlook the syncretism of heterogeneous (...) literatures: The influence of Roman Empire on Indian Buddhism, the influx of elements from Indian, Arabic, and Persian stories into European writers’ creation, the genres of China’s ancient literature influenced by Buddhism, etc. Furthermore, a great deal of Chinese idioms and allusions appearing in Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese literatures provide us a general view of how world literature forms through exchange and syncretism. On this account, Damrosh’s argument may be reformulated as “world literature is writing that gains in variation.” Variation reflects the ability to absorb otherness and then to create something new. Meanwhile, the perspective of literary syncretism will help us reasonably distinguish world literature and national canons. (shrink)

Peter Kivy, world-renowned philosopher of art, completed work on this book shortly before his untimely death in 2017. In it he addresses the novel, making an invaluable contribution to the field of philosophy of literature and raising questions of a philosophical nature about the novel that will be of interest both to the professional philosopher and to the general reader.

The Textual Criticism of Sumerian Literature. By Paul Delnero. The Journal of Cuneiform Studies Supplemental Series, vol. 3. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2012. Pp. viii + 230. $89.95. [Distributed by ISD, Bristol, Conn.].

Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.