Isabella I of Castile
Isabella I reigned as Queen of Castile from 1474 until her death. Her marriage to Ferdinand II of Aragon became the basis for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V. After a struggle to claim her right to the throne, she reorganized the governmental system, brought the crime rate to the lowest it had been in years, unburdened the kingdom of the enormous debt her brother had left behind, her reforms and those she made with her husband had an influence that extended well beyond the borders of their united kingdoms. Isabella and Ferdinand are known for completing the Reconquista, ordering conversion or exile of their Muslim and Jewish subjects, for supporting and financing Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage that led to the opening of the New World and to the establishment of Spain as the first global power which dominated Europe and much of the world for more than a century. Isabella, granted together with her husband the title "the Catholic" by Pope Alexander VI, was recognized as a Servant of God by the Catholic Church in 1974.
Isabella was born in Madrigal de las Altas Torres, Ávila, to John II of Castile and his second wife, Isabella of Portugal on 22 April 1451. At the time of her birth, she was second in line to the throne after her older half-brother Henry IV of Castile. Henry childless, her younger brother Alfonso of Castile was born two years on 17 November 1453, lowering her position to third in line. When her father died in 1454, her half-brother ascended to the throne as King Henry IV of Castile. Isabella and her brother Alfonso were left in King Henry's care. She, her mother, Alfonso moved to Arévalo; these were times of turmoil for Isabella. The living conditions at their castle in Arévalo were poor, they suffered from a shortage of money. Although her father arranged in his will for his children to be financially well taken care of, King Henry did not comply with their father's wishes, either from a desire to keep his half-siblings restricted, or from ineptitude. Though living conditions were difficult, under the careful eye of her mother, Isabella was instructed in lessons of practical piety and in a deep reverence for religion.
When the King's wife, Joan of Portugal, was about to give birth to their daughter Joanna and her brother Alfonso were summoned to court in Segovia to come under the direct supervision of the King and to finish their education. Alfonso was placed in the care of a tutor; some of Isabella's living conditions improved in Segovia. She always had food and clothing and lived in a castle, adorned with gold and silver. Isabella's basic education consisted of reading, writing, mathematics, chess, embroidery and religious instruction, she and her ladies-in-waiting entertained themselves with art and music. She lived a relaxed lifestyle, but she left Segovia since King Henry forbade this, her half-brother was keeping her from the political turmoils going on in the kingdom, though Isabella had full knowledge of what was going on and of her role in the feuds. The noblemen, anxious for power, confronted King Henry, demanding that his younger half-brother Infante Alfonso be named his successor, they went so far as to ask Alfonso to seize the throne.
The nobles, now in control of Alfonso and claiming that he was the true heir, clashed with King Henry's forces at the Second Battle of Olmedo in 1467. The battle was a draw. King Henry agreed to recognize Alfonso as his heir presumptive, provided that he would marry his daughter, Princess Joanna la Beltraneja. Soon after he was named Prince of Asturias, Isabella's younger brother Alfonso died in July 1468 of the plague; the nobles who had supported him suspected poisoning. As she had been named in her brother's will as his successor, the nobles asked Isabella to take his place as champion of the rebellion. However, support for the rebels had begun to wane, Isabella preferred a negotiated settlement to continuing the war, she met with her elder brother Henry at Toros de Guisando and they reached a compromise: the war would stop, King Henry would name Isabella his heir-presumptive instead of his daughter Joanna, Isabella would not marry without her brother's consent, but he would not be able to force her to marry against her will.
Isabella's side came out with most of what the nobles desired, though they did not go so far as to depose King Henry. The question of Isabella's marriage was not a new one, she had made her debut in the matrimonial market at the age of six with a betrothal to Ferdinand, the younger son of John II of Navarre. At that time, the two kings and John, were eager to show their mutual love and confidence and they believed that this double alliance would make their eternal friendship obvious to the world; this arrangement, did not last long. Ferdinand's uncle Alfonso V of Aragon died in 1458. All of Alfonso's Spanish territories, as well as the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, were left to his brother John II. John now had a stronger position than before and no longer needed the security of Henry's friendship. Henry was now in need of a new alliance, he saw the chance for this much needed new friendship in Charles of John's elder son. Charles was at odds with his father, because of this, he secretly entered into an alliance with Henry IV of Castile.
A major part of the alliance was
Calafia
Calafia or Califia is a fictional character introduced by writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in his popular novel entitled Las sergas de Esplandián, written around 1500. In the novel, Calafia is a pagan warrior queen who ruled over a kingdom of black women living on the Island of California. Calafia is convinced to raise an army of women warriors and sail away from California with a large flock of trained griffins so that she can join a Muslim battle against Christians who are defending Constantinople. In the siege, the griffins harm enemy and friendly forces, so they are withdrawn. Calafia and her ally Radiaro fight in single combat against the Christian leaders, a king and his son the knight Esplandián. Calafia is bested and taken prisoner, she converts to Christianity, she marries returns with her army to California for further adventures. The name of Calafia was formed from the Arabic word khalifa, known as caliph in English and califa in Spanish; the name of Calafia's monarchy, California originated from the same root, fabricated by the author to remind the 16th-century Spanish reader of the reconquista, a centuries-long fight between Christians and Muslims which had concluded in Spain.
The character of Calafia is used by Rodríguez de Montalvo to portray the superiority of chivalry in which the attractive virgin queen is conquered, converted to Christian beliefs and married off. The book was popular for many decades—Hernán Cortés read it—and it was selected by author Miguel de Cervantes as the first of many popular and assumed harmful books to be burnt by characters in his famous novel Don Quixote. Calafia has been depicted as the Spirit of California, has been the subject of modern-day sculpture, paintings and films. In the book The Adventures of Esplandián, after many pages of battles and adventures, the story of Calafia is introduced as a curiosity, an interlude in the narrative. Calafia is introduced as a regal black woman, strong of limb and large of person, full in the bloom of womanhood, the most beautiful of a long line of queens who ruled over the mythical realm of California, she is said to be "desirous of achieving great things". She commanded a fleet of ships with which she demanded tribute from surrounding lands, she kept an aerial defense force of griffins, fabulous animals which were native to California, trained to kill any man they found.
Calafia meets Radiaro, a Moslem warrior who convinces her that she should join him in retaking Constantinople from the Christian armies holding it. Calafia, in turn, convinces her people to take their ships, armor, riding beasts, 500 griffins, sail with her to Constantinople to fight the Christians, though she has no concept of what it means to be Moslem or Christian, her subjects arm themselves with weapons and armor made of gold, as there is no other metal in California. They hasten to sea. Landing near Constantinople, Calafia meets with other Moslem warrior leaders who were unable to remove King Amadis and his Christian allies from the city, she tells them all to hold back and watch her manner of combat—she says they will be amazed; the next morning and her women warriors mount their "fierce beasts" wearing gold armor "adorned with the most precious stones", advancing to invest the city. Calafia orders the griffins forward and they, hungry from the long sea voyage, fly out and maul the city's defenders.
Sating their hunger, the griffins continue to snatch Christian men in their claws and carry them high in air only to drop them to their deaths. The city's defenders hide from the griffins. Seeing this, Calafia passes word to her Moslem allies that they are free to advance and take the city; the griffins, cannot tell Moslem from Christian. The griffins begin snatching Moslem soldiers and carrying them aloft and killing them. Calafia questions her pagan faith, saying, "O ye idols in whom I believe and worship, what is this which has happened as favorably to my enemies as to my friends?" She orders her woman warriors to take the city's battlements and they fight well, taking many injuries from arrows and quarrels piercing the soft gold metal of their armor. Calafia orders her allies forward to assist the Californians in battle, but the griffins pounce again, killing Moslem men, she directs the griffin trainers to call them off, the griffins return to roost in the ships. This inauspicious beginning weighed on Calafia.
To restore their honor she directed her forces to fight alongside those of her allies, with the griffins kept in the ships. Terrific battles raged along the city's walls but the attackers were repulsed. Calafia led a picked group of women warriors to attack a city gate, one held by Norandel, the half-brother of King Amadis. Norandel charged out of the gate against Calafia, they struck at each other with sword and knife, a general melee ensued, Calafia throwing knights from their horses and taking great blows on her shield. Two more knights charge forward from the city, nobles named Talanque and Maneli, a prince of Ireland; these men nearly swamp Calafia in blows, she can only be pulled back to friendly forces by her sister Liota who attacks the two knights "like a mad lioness". The day's battle left many dead including 200 of Calafia's women; the story continues w
Herbert Eugene Bolton
Herbert Eugene Bolton was an American historian who pioneered the study of the Spanish-American borderlands and was a prominent authority on Spanish American history. He originated what became known as the Bolton Theory of the history of the Americas which holds that it is impossible to study the history of the United States in isolation from the histories of other American nations, wrote or co-authored 94 works. A student of Frederick Jackson Turner, Bolton disagreed with his mentor's Frontier theory and argued that the history of the Americas is best understood by taking a holistic view and trying to understand the ways in which the different colonial and precolonial contexts have interacted to produce the modern United States; the height of his career was spent at the University of California, Berkeley where he served as chair of the history department for 22 years and is credited with making the renowned Bancroft Library the preeminent research center it is today. Bolton was born on a farm between Wilton and Tomah, Wisconsin in 1870 to Edwin Latham and Rosaline Bolton.
He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a brother of Theta Delta Chi, graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1895. That same year he married Gertrude Janes, with whom he had seven children. Bolton studied under Frederick Jackson Turner from 1896 to 1897. Starting in 1897, Bolton was a Harrison Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and studied American history under John Bach McMaster. In 1899, he received his Ph. D. from the University of Pennsylvania and taught at Milwaukee State Normal School until 1900. From 1901 to 1909, Bolton was a history professor at the University of Texas, where he taught medieval and European history, he became interested in the Spanish colonization of the Americas and in summer 1902 began traveling to Mexico in search of historical documents. The Carnegie Institution asked Bolton to write a report of information found about United States history in Mexican archives, the report was published in 1913. Soon afterward, Bolton became an associate editor of the Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association.
In 1904, Bolton and Eugene C. Barker published With the Makers of Texas: A Source Reader in Texas History, a textbook. In 1906, Bolton began studying Native Americans in Texas for the Bureau of Ethnology, writing more than 100 articles for the Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. In 1911, Bolton became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. There he served as the chair of the history department for 22 years and became the founding director of the renowned Bancroft Library. In his book The Americas, George P. Hammond noted, “the next twenty years might well be called the Bolton era in historical studies at the University of California.” In his dual capacity as founding director and chairperson, he made Bancroft Library a great research center for American history and elevated his department into a top-ranking position in the historical world. Bolton was involved with the 1918 founding of The Hispanic American Historical Review, the first specialized journal of Latin American history, serving as an advisory editor.
He taught the "History of the Americas" course. His round-table seminar became famous, the historians trained in that group have long been known as the “Bolton School.” At Berkeley he supervised more than 300 Masters Thesis and 104 doctoral dissertations, an all-time record. In 1914, Bolton published Athanase de Mézières and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1768-1780. A year Bolton published Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century: Studies in Spanish Colonial History and Administration, he declined the presidency of the University of Texas. Over the next 29 years, Bolton published many works, including Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, The Spanish Borderlands, Outpost of Empire, Rim of Christendom and Coronado, for which he received a Bancroft Prize from Columbia University. Bolton received numerous honors by the end of his career; the University of California conferred upon him the Sather Professorship in History. Ten colleges and universities of the United States and Canada granted him their highest honorary degrees.
Universities in Latin America gave him honorary membership in their faculties. He was made Commander of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic in 1925 by the King of Spain; the government of Italy decorated him for his historical work on Father Eusebio Kino. Although Bolton was not a Catholic, Pope Pius XII in 1949 named him Knight of St. Sylvester as recognition for his contribution to the history of the Catholic Church in New Spain. In 1932, Bolton served as president of the American Historical Association, his presidential address, "The Epic of Greater America," he laid out his vision of hemispheric history. In 1944 retired as a professor at Berkeley, he taught at San Francisco State College in retirement. He died of a stroke in Berkeley, California, in 1953. Bolton is best known for his research on Spanish colonial history in the Spanish-American borderlands and his vision of an integrated history of the Americas. Biographer Kathleen Egan Chamberlain argues: His writings The Spanish Borderlands, still challenge traditional views of colonial and frontier history.
They raise significant questions, such as the role of frontier on Spanish institutions and Spanish-Indian versus Anglo-Indian relations. The search for common historical elements between North and South America remains an open subject, the call for greater hemispheric history has yet to be answered. Bolton taught enthusiastically until 1953 when he died at the age of 82
Catholic Monarchs
The Catholic Monarchs is the joint title used in history for Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. They were both from the House of Trastámara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile, they married on October 1469, in the city of Valladolid. It is accepted by most scholars that the unification of Spain can be traced back to the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella; some newer historical opinions propose that under their rule, what became Spain was still a union of two crowns rather than a unitary state, as to a large degree Castile and Aragon remained separate kingdoms, with most of their own separate institutions, for decades to come. The court of Ferdinand and Isabella was on the move, in order to bolster local support for the crown from local feudal lords; the title of "Catholic King and Queen" was bestowed on Ferdinand and Isabella by Pope Alexander VI in 1494, in recognition of their defense of the Catholic faith within their realms. "Catholic monarchs" or "kings" can be used in a generic sense.
At the time of their marriage on October 19, 1469, Isabella was eighteen years old and the heiress presumptive to the Crown of Castile, while Ferdinand was seventeen and heir apparent to the Crown of Aragon. They married within a week. From the start, they worked well together. Both knew that the crown of Castile was "the prize, that they were both jointly gambling for it." However, it was a step toward the unification of the lands on the Iberian peninsula, which would become Spain. They were second cousins, so in order to marry they needed a papal dispensation that Pope Paul II, an Italian pope opposed to Aragon's influence on the Mediterranean and to the rise of monarchies strong enough to challenge the Pope, refused to grant, so they falsified a papal bull of their own. Though the bull is known to be false it isn't certain, the material author of the falsification; some experts point at Carrillo de Acuña, Archbishop of Toledo, others point at Antonio Veneris. Pope Paul II would remain a bitter enemy of Spain and the monarch for all his life, is attributed the quote, "May all Spaniards be cursed by God and heretics, the seed of Jews and Moors."Isabella's claims to it were not secure, since her marriage to Ferdinand enraged her half-brother Henry IV of Castile and he withdrew his support for her being his heiress presumptive, codified in the Treaty of the Bulls of Guisando.
Henry instead recognized Joanna of Castile, born during his marriage to Joanna of Portugal, but whose paternity was in doubt, since Henry was rumored to be impotent. When Henry died in 1474, Isabella asserted her claim to the throne, contested by thirteen-year-old Joanna. Joanna sought aid of Afonso V of Portugal, to claim the throne; this dispute between rival claimants led to the War of 1475–1479. Isabella called on the aid of Aragon, with her husband, the heir apparent, his father, Juan II of Aragon providing it. Although Aragon provided support for Isabella's cause, Isabella's supporters had extracted concessions, Isabella was acknowledged as the sole heir to the crown of Castile. Juan II died in 1479, Ferdinand succeeded to the throne in January 1479. In September 1479, Portugal and the Catholic Monarchs of Aragon and Castile resolved major issues between them through the Treaty of Alcáçovas, including the issue of Isabella's rights to the crown of Castile. Through close cooperation, the royal couple were successful in securing political power in the Iberian peninsula.
Ferdinand's father had advised the couple that "neither was powerful without the other." Though their marriage united the two kingdoms, leading to the beginnings of modern Spain, they ruled independently and their kingdoms retained part of their own regional laws and governments for the next centuries. The coat of arms of the Catholic Monarchs is designed with elements to show their cooperation and working in tandem, their joint motto was "Tanto monta, monta tanto". The motto was created by Antonio de Nebrija and was either an allusion to the Gordian knot: Tanto monta, monta tanto, cortar como desatar, or an explanation of the equality of the monarchs: Tanto monta, monta tanto, Isabel como Fernando. "The royal motto they shared'tanto monta', "as much one as the other," came to signify their cooperation."Their emblems or heraldic devices, seen at the bottom of the coat of arms, were el yugo y las flechas, a yoke, a sheaf of arrows. Y and F are the initials of Fernando. A double yoke is worn by a team of oxen.
Isabella's emblem of arrows showed the armed power of the crown, "a warning to Castilians not acknowledging the reach of royal authority or that greatest of royal functions, the right to mete out justice" by force of violence. The iconography is found on various works of art; these badges were used gathered by the fascist, from fasces, Spanish political party Falange, which claimed to represent the inherited glory and the ideals of the Catholic Monarchs. The establishment of System of Royal Councils to oversee discrete regions or areas was Isabella succeeded to the throne of Castile in 1474 when Ferdinand was still heir-apparent to Aragon, with Aragon
Seville
Seville is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville, Spain. It is situated on the plain of the river Guadalquivir; the inhabitants of the city are known as sevillanos or hispalenses, after the Roman name of the city, Hispalis. Seville has a municipal population of about 690,000 as of 2016, a metropolitan population of about 1.5 million, making it the fourth-largest city in Spain and the 30th most populous municipality in the European Union. Its Old Town, with an area of 4 square kilometres, contains three UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Alcázar palace complex, the Cathedral and the General Archive of the Indies; the Seville harbour, located about 80 kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean, is the only river port in Spain. Seville is the hottest major metropolitan area in the geographical Southwestern Europe, with summer average high temperatures of above 35 °C. Seville was founded as the Roman city of Hispalis, it became known as Ishbiliyya after the Muslim conquest in 712.
During the Muslim rule in Spain, Seville came under the jurisdiction of the Caliphate of Córdoba before becoming the independent Taifa of Seville. After the discovery of the Americas, Seville became one of the economic centres of the Spanish Empire as its port monopolised the trans-oceanic trade and the Casa de Contratación wielded its power, opening a Golden Age of arts and literature. In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan departed from Seville for the first circumnavigation of the Earth. Coinciding with the Baroque period of European history, the 17th century in Seville represented the most brilliant flowering of the city's culture; the 20th century in Seville saw the tribulations of the Spanish Civil War, decisive cultural milestones such as the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 and Expo'92, the city's election as the capital of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia. Hisbaal is the oldest name for Seville, it appears to have originated during the Phoenician colonisation of the Tartessian culture in south-western Iberia and it refers to the God Baal.
According to Manuel Pellicer Catalán, the ancient name was Spal, it meant "lowland" in the Phoenician language. During Roman rule, the name was Latinised as Hispal and as Hispalis. After the Umayyad invasion, this name was adapted into Arabic as Ishbiliyya: since p does not exist in Arabic, it was replaced by b. NO8DO is the official motto of Seville, popularly believed to be a rebus signifying the Spanish No me ha dejado, meaning "She has not abandoned me"; the phrase, pronounced with synalepha as, is spelled with an eight in the middle representing the word madeja "skein ". Legend states that the title was given by King Alfonso X, resident in the city's Alcázar and supported by the citizens when his son Sancho IV of Castile, tried to usurp the throne from him; the emblem is present on Seville's municipal flag, features on city property such as manhole covers, Christopher Columbus's tomb in the Cathedral. Seville is 2,200 years old; the passage of the various civilizations instrumental in its growth has left the city with a distinct personality, a large and well-preserved historical centre.
The mythological founder of the city is Hercules identified with the Phoenician god Melqart, who the myth says sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar to the Atlantic, founded trading posts at the current sites of Cádiz and of Seville. The original core of the city, in the neighbourhood of the present-day street, Cuesta del Rosario, dates to the 8th century BC, when Seville was on an island in the Guadalquivir. Archaeological excavations in 1999 found anthropic remains under the north wall of the Real Alcázar dating to the 8th–7th century BC; the town was called Hisbaal by the Phoenicians and by the Tartessians, the indigenous pre-Roman Iberian people of Tartessos, who controlled the Guadalquivir Valley at the time. The city was known from Roman times as Hispal and as Hispalis. Hispalis developed into one of the great market and industrial centres of Hispania, while the nearby Roman city of Italica remained a Roman residential city. Large-scale Roman archaeological remains can be seen there and at the nearby town of Carmona as well.
Existing Roman features in Seville itself include the remains exposed in situ in the underground Antiquarium of the Metropol Parasol building, the remnants of an aqueduct, three pillars of a temple in Mármoles Street, the columns of La Alameda de Hércules and the remains in the Patio de Banderas square near the Seville Cathedral. The walls surrounding the city were built during the rule of Julius Caesar, but their current course and design were the result of Moorish reconstructions. Following Roman rule, there were successive conquests of the Roman province of Hispania Baetica by the Vandals, the Suebi and the Visigoths during the 5th and 6th centuries. Seville was taken by the Moors, during the conquest of Hispalis in 712, it was the capital for the kings of the Umayyad Caliphate, the Almoravid dynasty first and
H. Morse Stephens
Henry Morse Stephens was born on October 3, 1857 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at Haileybury College, attended Balliol College, Oxford University, where he was granted a B. A. in 1880 and an M. A. in 1892. He was a staff lecturer on the Oxford University Extension System from 1892–1894, lecturer on Indian history at Cambridge, writing for The Academy, The Daily Chronicle, The Speaker, and'acting as London correspondent for The Statesman and the Calcutta Friend of India.'Career as Professor of History, Dean, AHA member and President Stephens immigrated to the United States in 1894 and took the position of Professor at Cornell University in the Department of History, where he taught European History. At Cornell, Stephens took a particular interest in advising undergraduates, starting two traditions which endured at Cornell for the next two decades: Thursday nights for upper classmen, career conferences and advice to seniors as to their future professional careers, he was an avid fundraiser for Cornell's athletic teams.
In 1902, Stephens went to the University of California as Professor of History and Director of University Extension, a position he held from 1902–1909. He served as Dean of the University of California College of Arts and Sciences from the fall of 1918 until his death. During his time at Berkeley, he worked to build the Bancroft Library's collection of historical materials, with special success in the area of Spanish and Mexican History, now known as the Bolton Collection. Stephens was involved with the Bohemian Club and wrote the script for St. Patrick at Tara, the main Grove Play performed in 1909 at the Bohemian Grove; the play depicted Saint Patrick and his interaction with druids and kings of Ireland. Stephens was an active member of the American Historical Association serving as its President in 1915, his most notable contribution in the AHA, was as a member of the Committee of Seven, which in 1899 produced the report The Study of History in Schools for the AHA, which influenced the teaching of history in American schools for the next 40 years.
Stephens Hall on the U. C. Berkeley campus is named for him, as was the Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, chartered by the Grand Lodge of F. & A. Masons of California and Hawaii: Henry Morse Stephens #541, for which membership was open only to UC administrators, alumni and students; the lodge merged with other Berkeley, CA Lodges and is now part of Bay Cities Lodge #337, now in Richmond. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, at the suggestion University of California President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, Morse joined the Committee of 50, in consultation with Governor Pardee, moved to the Earthquake History and Statistics Committee; as a member of this committee, he worked until his death to gather as many accounts and as much historical material as he could, related to the earthquake. Morse collected over 800 individual accounts of the earthquake and fire as well as numerous newspaper articles and other archival material. After his death, the archive was never incorporated into the Bancroft library collection, as he had intended, was lost in the 1920s in a 1923 Berkeley fire.
When World War I broke out, Stephens began soliciting materials from around the world to document and formed a "Great War History Committee," work, cut short by his death on April 16, 1919. A history of the French revolution, by H. Morse Stephens, In three volumes. Vol. I–II. New York, C. Scribner's sons, 1886–91; the principal speeches of the statesmen and orators of the French revolution, 1789–1795. 2 vols. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1892; the story of Portugal. New York, AMS Press 1971Henry Morse Stephens. Albuquerque, Rulers of India series. Clarendon Press at Project Gutenberg Revolutionary Europe, 1789–1815, By H. Morse Stephens. London: Rivingtons, 1900, fifth edition Sir Robert Peel, a memorial biography Stephens, Henry Morse. St. Patrick at Tara, 1909 Grove play Works by H. Morse Stephens at Project Gutenberg Works by or about H. Morse Stephens at Internet Archive AHA Reports: The Study of History in Schools_Committee of Seven: Table of Headings at www.historians.org Online index to The Committee of Seven Report.
AHA Information: H. Morse Stephens Bibliography at www.historians.org Partial bibliography of H. Morse Stephens American Society for the Extension of University Teaching, Morse Stephens. Counsel Upon the Reading of Books. Houghton, Mifflin. Essay by Stephens on History in "Counsel on the Reading of Books", edited by Henry van Dyke, American Society for the Extension of Teaching, 1900, as digitized by Google Books; the Directors at bancroft.berkeley.edu Online history of the Directors of the Bancroft library which describes Stephens' role in recruiting Herbert Eugene Bolton, the first Director. Selling the University a Library at bancroft.berkeley.edu Photo of Stephens and description of the importance of his role in purchasing the Bancroft Library. Guide to the H. Morse Stephens Papers at The Bancroft Library
Novel
A novel is a long work of narrative fiction written in prose form, and, published as a book. The entire genre has been seen as having "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in classical Greece and Rome, in medieval and early modern romance, in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella. Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji has been described as the world's first novel. Spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of classical Chinese novels by the Ming dynasty. Parallel European developments occurred after the invention of the printing press. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era. Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel, suggested that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century. Walter Scott made a distinction between the novel, in which "events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society" and the romance, which he defined as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse.
However, many such romances, including the historical romances of Scott, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, are frequently called novels, Scott describes romance as a "kindred term". This sort of romance is in turn different from the genre fiction love romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo, en roman." A novel is a fictional narrative which describes intimate human experiences. The novel in the modern era makes use of a literary prose style; the development of the prose novel at this time was encouraged by innovations in printing, the introduction of cheap paper in the 15th century. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the Italian novella for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the Latin novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new". Most European languages use the word "romance" for extended narratives.
A fictional narrativeFictionality is most cited as distinguishing novels from historiography. However this can be a problematic criterion. Throughout the early modern period authors of historical narratives would include inventions rooted in traditional beliefs in order to embellish a passage of text or add credibility to an opinion. Historians would invent and compose speeches for didactic purposes. Novels can, on the other hand, depict the social and personal realities of a place and period with clarity and detail not found in works of history. Literary proseWhile prose rather than verse became the standard of the modern novel, the ancestors of the modern European novel include verse epics in the Romance language of southern France those by Chrétien de Troyes, in Middle English. In the 19th century, fictional narratives in verse, such as Lord Byron's Don Juan, Alexander Pushkin's Yevgeniy Onegin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, competed with prose novels. Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate, composed of 590 Onegin stanzas, is a more recent example of the verse novel.
Content: intimate experienceBoth in 12th-century Japan and 15th-century Europe, prose fiction created intimate reading situations. On the other hand, verse epics, including the Odyssey and Aeneid, had been recited to a select audiences, though this was a more intimate experience than the performance of plays in theaters. A new world of individualistic fashion, personal views, intimate feelings, secret anxieties, "conduct", "gallantry" spread with novels and the associated prose-romance. LengthThe novel is today the longest genre of narrative prose fiction, followed by the novella. However, in the 17th century, critics saw the romance as of epic length and the novel as its short rival. A precise definition of the differences in length between these types of fiction, is, not possible; the requirement of length has been traditionally connected with the notion that a novel should encompass the "totality of life." Although early forms of the novel are to be found in a number of places, including classical Rome, 10th– and 11th-century Japan, Elizabethan England, the European novel is said to have begun with Don Quixote in 1605.
Early works of extended fictional prose, or novels, include works in Latin like the Satyricon by Petronius, The Golden Ass by Apuleius, works in Ancient Greek such as Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, works in Sanskrit such as the 4th or 5th century Vasavadatta by Subandhu, 6th– or 7th-century Daśakumāracarita and Avantisundarīkathā by Daṇḍin, in the 7th-century Kadambari by Banabhatta, Murasaki Shikibu's 11th-century Japanese work The Tale of Genji, the 12th-century Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, who wrote in Arabic, the 13th-century Theologus Autodidactus by Ibn al-Nafis, another Arabic novelist, Blanquerna, written in Catalan by Ramon Llull, the 14th-century Chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Gua
