Generosity and the Limits of Authority
Generosity and the Limits of Authority

Author: William Flesch

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1501732862

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Generosity is an ambiguous quality, William Flesch observes; while receiving gifts is pleasant, gift-giving both displays the wealth and strength of the giver and places the receiver under an obligation. In provocative new readings of Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton, Flesch illuminates the personal authority that is bound inextricably with acts of generosity. Drawing on the work of such theorists as Mauss, Blanchot, Bourdieu, Wittgenstein, Bloom, Cavell, and Greenblatt, Flesch maintains that the literary power of Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton is at its most intense when they are exploring the limits of generosity. He considers how in Herbert's Temple divine assurance of the possibility of redemption is put into question and how the poet approaches such a gift with the ambivalence of a beneficiary. In his readings of Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and the sonnets, Flesch examines the perspective of the benefactor—including Shakespeare himself—who confronts the decline of his capacity to give. Turning to Milton's Paradise Lost, Flesch identifies two opposing ways of understanding generosity—Satan's, on the one hand, and Adam and Eve's, on the other - and elaborates the different conceptions of poetry to which these understandings give rise. Scholars of Shakespeare and of Renaissance culture, Miltonists, literary theorists, and others interested in the relationship between philosophy and literature will want to read this insightful and challenging book.

The Politics of Giving in the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata
The Politics of Giving in the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata

Author: Viviana L. Grieco

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2014-03-15

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0826354475

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During the eighteenth century, a time of almost constant international warfare, European states had to borrow money to finance their military operations. Servicing public debt demanded the collection of more taxes in a newly efficient manner, resulting in the emergence of what scholars call European “tax states.” This book examines a different kind of state finance, based on voluntary donations rather than taxes. Relying on Spanish and Argentine archival research, the author analyzes the “gifts” (donativos) that residents of the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, or colonial Argentina, gave to the Spanish Crown and the city council of Buenos Aires. She examines the cultural, political, constitutional, and legal practices associated with loans and donativos in comparison with the practices of other Atlantic states, emphasizing the quid pro quo offered by the crown in the form of appointments to office and other favors. Examining donors, donations, and expectations, she argues that the Spanish system achieved at the imperial level what the British empire and the French monarchy failed to accomplish.