(no subject)

[winterbadger]

I was struck the first time I started watching The Tudors on Showtime, and again last night when Neta and I watched the first espisode together, by the use of the terms 'humanist' and 'humanism' by King Henry and by Sir Thomas More. I vaguely recalled something about Erasmus that I had read a long time ago.

Wikipedia has a short article on what it refers to as 'Renaissance humanism' (to distunguish it from secular humanism--I rather imagined the gnashing of teeth among the Catholics in the audience at More's advocating 'humanism' which might have seemed to some like a future saint decrying the existence of God! :-)

I'm reminded that there's an awful lot of interesting stuff out in the world of philosophy, if only I had the time and intellect to read and understand it properly.

Comments

[winterbadger]

Well, actors *are* capable of, well, acting, which can involve a change of accent. Maria Doyle Kennedy does a passable Spanish accent, and at least JRM doesn't wander around saying "boyo". :-)

Queen Claude was, among other things, a hunchback, poor lady. She was very devout, and morally strict (not a popular position in the Valois court). Judith Merkle Riley's "Serpent Garden" has a good portrait of her (and of the French court of the period and its English visitors). I don't recall whether she gets mentioned in Dorothy Dunnett's "Queen's Play", but that book does an *excellent* job of portraying the court of Henri II, her son. Wild livers, those noblemen. There's a scene in QP which involves a chase over the rooftops of Blois in a scavenger-hunt-like pursuit of clues to a riddle, all of which came to mind when I hear an NPR story about parkour the other day.