Manual Work and Mental Work: Humanist Knowledge for Professions in the Siglo de Oro

ISBN-13: 9783662663653 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023 / 260 str.

Christoph Strosetzki

Opis

Information Text: In the early modern period, numerous texts deal with professions by presenting the knowledge required in each case, individual fields of activity, purpose, origin and prestige. The course of argumentation is humanistic, insofar as it mostly starts from the human being. The ancient idea of the primacy of mental work over manual work is formative here. The importance of Spain results from the fact that the Spanish king Charles V was both emperor and ruler of the colonies in America, i.e. he ruled a world empire by the standards of the time. After discussing some central categories, overall representations of knowledge, professions, and prominent professional representatives are presented. Here, the hierarchization and its relativization by satire is revealing. The mechanical arts and the artes liberales are then presented on the basis of individual professions selected as characteristic examples, each with its own specific knowledge. The higher faculties of medicine, theology and jurisprudence with their representatives form the conclusion.

Spis treści

1 Conceptions of work.- 2 Alternatives to work.- 3 Collections.- 4 Mechanical arts.- 5 Artes liberales.- 6 Higher faculties.- 7 Crafts and hierarchy.

O autorze

Christoph Strosetzki is Professor of Romance Philology (with a special focus on Ibero-Romance and Latin American literatures) at the University of Münster.

Blurb

In the early modern period, numerous texts deal with professions by presenting

the knowledge required in each case, detailing individual fields of activity, purpose, origin and prestige. The course of argumentation was humanistic, insofar as it mostly started from the human being. The ancient idea of the primacy of mental work over manual work was influential. This work illuminates how Spanish representations of knowledge, professions and outstanding professional representatives are shown. Mechanical arts and artes liberales are presented on the basis of individual professions and the higher faculties of medicine, theology and jurisprudence with their representatives follow.

 

This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. The author (with the support of colleagues) has subsequently revised the text further in an endeavour to refine the work stylistically.