Bøger udgivet af Leuven University Press

The Library reflects not only six centuries of University history, but also many chapters of European history and even world history in the last century. A president of the United States played a leading role, and a Japanese emperor also figures in it. The Library, built with American funds, was conceived as an American memorial to the Great War of 1914-1918. All this means the Library is not merely another university building. The past has imbued it with the higher values that survive human conflict.The University Library has been in full development since 1970. With its historic collection, the Maurits Sabbe Library is a living research centre for matters of religion and theology. The Arenberg Campus Library, a science library housed in a sixteenth-century monastery, combines technology and heritage. The various branch libraries range from law and philosophy to medicine, from ancient colleges in the heart of Leuven to the university hospital on the edge of the town.

The following chapters represent a cross-section of current thinking and action in the related fields of Ergonomics, Health and Safety. Inevitably, there is extensive overlap between these three topics. Ergonomics by definition is concerned with the world of work in its broadest sense, that is purposeful activity, there is often an associated monetary gain but this is not an essential aspect; domestic activity and road transport are amongst the obvious exceptions. Health in this context means largely occupational health. Safety is occupational safety with a related excursion into road safety. All this is very much in line with the career of Professor Paul Verhaegen, the inspirer of this volume. Originally trained in medicine, his interests were and are in health, safety and working efficiency within occupational settings, including the effects of cultural differences, a more specialized interest engendered by his long residence in what used to be the Belgian Congo.

Bauforschung is a fundamental part of every methodology specifically designed to evaluate and maintain historical buildings. The first step towards censervation and restoration involves being well informed about a building's cultural and historical importance: thus it is necessary to survey it in all its different aspects and at every possible level of significance.This requires a thorough investigation by a specialist--or Bauforscher--who is trained as an architectural historian, in the most fundamental sense of the term. Bauforschung involves the first investigative phase of archtectural historical research, combining the analysis of archaeological, historical and iconographical source material with the complete recording of a building's appearance and pathology. The German word Bauforscher can in fact be translated literally as "building researcher", implying not only a mastery of the skills of the historian, archaeologist and architect, but also of the materials specialist and the surveyor. This book contains the report on the experiences of building researchers from many different European countries, who met at the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation in 1996.

Fourmont was the first scholar in France to deal with Chinese matters. He started his career in the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres as an Hebraist, but he left this discipline and turned to Chinese in 1711. At that time he met Arcadio Huang, a young French-speaking Chinese man in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Fourmont seized the opportunity to be introduced to Chinese. Huang taught him the pronunciation of Chinese syllables, and quite particularly, he introduced him to the 214 radicals. Fourmont's first book on the Chinese language, the Meditationes Sinicae, was published in 1737. His second work, Linguae Sinarum Mandarinicae Hieroglyphae, in 1742.Both these works are analyzed in detail in the present monograph. The presentation of the Chinese language in these publications was based on the Latin Grammar. One of the most fascinating points of Fourmont's studies was the way he dealt with the Chinese radicals. In the dictionaries, the Chinese characters are arranged according to a number of simple characters that enter obligatorily into more complex characters. In the course of the centuries the number of radicals varied from 60 to 600, but since 1615 it was settled at 214. This system of 214 radicals, which Fourmont saw in the dictionaries of the Bibliothèque Nationale, and which Huang taught him, was known to very few scholars in Europe. Fourmont's greatest feat was having 80,000 fine Chinese characters engraved in Paris for his many proposed dictionaries. He must have visited his engravers each day for many years to inspect and correct their work. The petits chinois, as these engravings were called, are still on display today at the Imprimerie Nationale in Paris.

This book offers a series of attempts at analyzing the place of Christianity in traditional Chinese society from the different sociological, historical, theological and philological approaches. It is based on papers and discussions from the sixth international conference on Church activities in Qing and early Republican China (Verbiest Foundation, Leuven, 1998).Scholars like von Collani, Criveller, Walravens and Wiest established already a well-deserved reputation with a series of previous publications in the field. Their articles in this volume on the position of women in the Chinese Catholic community, the shifting Jesuit methodology, Jesuit apologetics and the direct sources of the Qiqi tushou are fine examples of fundamental research. Equally interesting are the papers of the scholars Heuschert-Laage, Kollmar-Paulenz, Pang and Stary. They throw an interesting light on the Manchu-Mongolian aspect of the history of the Chinese Catholic Church. Special attention must also be given to the studies on Taiwan by Borao, Heylen and Heyns. Taiwan is a region relatively unknown to the Western sinological public. From the Church historian's point of view however it is a highly interesting place because it was the first place in the Chines world where Protestantism and Catholicism coexisted.The historical framework of the studies in this volume is mainly the seventeenth century. Although this volume is not a comprehensive treatment of the Christian mission in Ming and Qing China, it brings together studies that illuminate the manner in which the Christian missionaries--Protestants and Catholics alike--developed different methods to realize their communal ideal of "the Kingdom of God on Earth".

Laughter, often defined as humankind's exclusive characteristics, remains in itself an ambiguity. All the more so when one attempts to understand it in a culture from the past. Can humour be considered as a universal and ahistorical phenomenon? Or do we actually project our own tastes on our forebears? It may well be that one has not always laughed for the same reasons and at the same objects; indeed, some forms like parody and satire seem to thrive upon a variety of now outdated and even half forgotten codes and discourses.In the face of these questions, the Leuven Institute of Medieval Studies has attempted to address some of the multiple aspects of medieval laughter, its possible devices, functions and intentions by inviting a number of colleagues to give or write a paper with their own views on the subject. Surprisingly, although they are discussing a great many texts and genres, quite a few contributors appear to agree that the risus mediaevalis already often proceeds from a contrast, a shifting which in its turn produces an effect of surprise. Medieval humour, however, is not a simple thing and takes many forms: e.g. a comedy of corpses where in last resort, the joke is on death itself, a wit of wordplay on the borderline of form and content, a ludic or perhaps carnivalesque happening, a burlesque confrontation between registers, a weapon aimed at a certain group, an ironic use or even a satire of conventions, a playful doodle referring to what happens not on the manuscript page but to the world outside.Questions are also being asked about who exactly was supposed to be amused by some of these jokes and to what effect. And what could have been the audience's response? Did its mirth create a common bond against the other, a release, a confirmation of norm? Or was it sometimes merely a way of enjoying one of the joys of life?

The editon of Henry of Ghent's Quodlibet VII makes available the critical text of an influential work. Written near the end of 1282, this Quodlibet is perhaps best known because it contains Henry's initial discussion of the papal bull Ad fructus uberes, which had granted certain exaggerated privileges to the mendicants. Henry's text puts forward arguments which limit wide interpretations of the bull and sets forth a position which favors the secular clergy. These arguments set the stage for discussions of the privileges granted by the papal bull. Indeed, Richard of Mediavilla in his Quaestio Privilegii Papae Martini makes a case for the mendicants by addressing the arguments of Quodlibet VII point by point. Henry himself reiterates and elaborates his arguments in subsequent Quodlibeta and in the Tractatus super facto praelatorum et fratrum. His analyses of Ad fructus uberes leads to discussions of poverty in the religious life, which Henry argues is not a perfection but a means to perfection. Quodlibet VII also treats more philosophical matters, e.g. transcendentals, God's essence and knowledge, knowledge of the divine essence, genus, difference, matter, relation, quantity, human knowledge, and the human body. In addition, the text contains a response to some claims in Berthaud of Saint Denis' Quodlibet I, q17. This fellow secular master has not been studied or edited, but he emerges here and in the Tractatus as a secular master with whom Henry disagreed.

The present volume offers a collection of studies intended to give an overall picture of the International Colloquium on Medieval Theatre organized by the Instituut voor Middeleeuwse Studies of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The reader will probably remark upon the fact that studies on medieval drama are as flourishing and diversified as their object itself once was. From liturgical drama to pageant, from nativity play to mystery, from latin comedy to 'sottie', morality and farce, one discovers here the various aspects of an output that covers more than five centuries. This selection hopefully represents a cross-section of contemporary work in the field. As methods evolve and ways of reading change, the subject reveals itself as something for ever old and new. Thus a number of contributors emphasize a formal approach. Both the analysis of a dramatic production as a structured entity--from the larger viewpoint of scenic organization right down to the level of verse or even rime--and as an actual performance, continue to shed valuable light on the theatrical event in its generic and historical context.

Europe is a word that is almost daily on our lips. But how far do we have to go back in order to find the origins of its name? The first part of this beautifully illustrated book traces the geographical and mythological basis of Europe's name. Who came up with the idea to distinguish the world in continents with proper names? The search will bring the reader back to the early history of mankind. How did the ancient Egyptians see the world and populations around them? Where did the Hebrews get the idea to split the world in three? And what was the world-picture in ancient Greece, laid down in geographic treatises and fragments?Where did the name 'Europe' originate from? Could it be from a person, either mortal or divine? In ancient Greek literature the name 'Europa' appears quite frequently for Greek goddesses and Greek women. Strangely enough, the best known Europa myth concerns a Phoenician princess, loved by the Greek god Zeus. Many mythographs doubt the Asian descent of the Phoenician Europa. Is her real origin to be located on mainland Greece? How can the contradicting Greek myths be interpreted, and was the name universally accepted as the name for the continent?In the second part of this book, the author tells the amazing story of how the Arts have treated the Europa myths for almost three millennia. He shows the extraordinary influence of the personification of the geographic continent Europe on literature, music, sculpture, painting, tapestry and other applied arts. All this clearly demonstrates the vivid interest in Europe for the subject throughout the ages and illustrates, according to Karel van Miert in his Foreword, our common European culture.

The life of John Armonio Marso, born around 1477 in Abruzzi and died in Venice after 1552, is quite unknown: the main events were collected by M. Quattrucci and more fully developed by Walther Ludwig in the introduction to his critical edition of the Comedy Stephanium.

The essays collected in this volume were first presented at the international and interdisciplinary conference on the Graphic Novel hosted by the Institute for Cultural Studies (University of Leuven) in 2000.The issues discusses by the conference are twofold. Firstly, that of trauma representation, an issue escaping by definition from any imaginable specific field. Secondly, that of a wide range of topics concerning the concept of "visual narrative," an issue which can only be studied by comparing as many media and practices as possible.The essays of this volume are grouped here in two major parts, their focus depending on either a more general topic or on a very specific graphic author. The first part of the book, "Violence and trauma in the Graphic Novel", opens with a certain number of reflections on the representation of violence in literary and visual graphic novels, and continues with a whole set of close readings of graphic novels by Art Spiegelman (Maus I and II) and Jacques Tardi (whose masterwork "C'?tait la guerre des tranch?es" is still waiting for its complete English translation). The second part of the book presents in the first place a survey of the current graphic novel production, and insists sharply on the great diversity of the range in the various 'continental' traditions (for instance underground 'comix', and feminist comics, high-art graphic novels, critical superheroes-fiction) whose separation is nowadays increasingly difficult to maintain. It continues and ends with a set of theoretical interventions where not only the reciprocal influences of national and international traditions, but also those between genres and media are strongly forwarded, the emphasis being here mainly on problems concerning ways of looking and positions of spectatorship.

Prosopography remains, for the period of the Roman Principate, a basic research instrument. The exhaustive collection of biographical notes on a specific social group, in this case the equestrian officers, transcends the individual, the anecdotal, and makes it possible to trace variables and constants within the evolution and to reveal structures. This is Part VI of six parts.

This book is an edited publication of several excavation campaigns in Egypt, oriented towards the understanding of the chert extraction techniques employed by Middle and early Upper Palaeolithic humans in the lower desert of the Egyptian Nile Valley between Tahta and Qena.

The presence of so many fabliaux in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is intriguing in its own right, given the fact that there are no real fabliaux in Middle English befor Chaucer. But these stories are also interesting as instances of a concept and practice thas has received little critical attention so far, namely 'analogy', the writing and, above all, recognition of 'similar' stories. How to account for the literary practice that enables us to perceive stories as similar, c.q. analogous? This original study sets out to explore this phenomenon, first tentatively vis-?)vis other terms and practices (Translation, Borrowing, Adaptation, Version) and then, in the major part of the book, in a pragmatic-structuralist analysis of four salient components of narrative--Plot, Character, Thematics, and Genre--each illustrated with examples taken from Chaucer's fabliaux and their analogues in various European languages.In each of the four chapters the key-issue is Categorisation and Hertog traces its evolution and usefulness a a concept from Wittgenstein's family resemblances' and Zadeh's 'fuzzy set theory' to E. Rosch's Prototype theory. The conclusion draws attention to two aspects which set Chaucer's fabliaux very much apart from the other analogues: their contextuality within the polylogue of the Canterbury Tales, and secondly, their explicit intertextuality which invites us to look anew at the assumptions of traditional source-criticism. The study ends with some theoretical reflections on analogy and an attempt at definition.The book will interest not only Chaucerians and other medievalists but also scholars in literarry theory and interpretation.

In this photo book, Els Vanden Meersch investigates the latent presence of violence and dominance in the everyday reality of the urban fabric. Subtle images contain combinations of banal details, through which emerges a restrained tension that points at the paranoid as it is felt in architecture. Control mechanisms such as surveillance cameras, spy holes and rear-view mirrors are set against one another.They gradually raise the stakes towards displaying an impenetrable control system that is built on the principles of military architecture, sophisticated technology and compelling viewing apparatuses. In this machine of anxiety, both the operator of the system and its target remain invisible. An aimless matrix of meaning appears, in which a mirror reveals as much as a dead-end corridor. In an astutely accurate way, this book offers a representation of what cannot be outspoken or imagined but which inevitably has happened.This book contains an essay by Hilde Van Gelder, and a poem by Alice Evermore.

In English and French.The development of photography from its roots in nineteenth-century science gradually transformed book illustration and the dissemination of images. This reference work presents the first comprehensive overview of Belgian photographic literature of the nineteenth century, encompassing both illustrated books and scientific publications. It makes a major contribution to academic study in the field, with a corpus of 681 entries. Each title is accompanied by information about locations of surviving copies in institutional collections in Belgium and elsewhere. An introductory essay plots the development of photographic publishing in Belgium, making full use of primary and secondary sources, and an album of more than eighty images draws on the rich iconography of early Belgian photographic literature, most reprinted here for the first time.

The twenty-year reign of Trajan, A.D. 98-117, inaugurated the longest period of stability and good government the Roman Empire ever saw, and witnessed the production of one of the most influential literary works of antiquity, Plutarch's Parallel Lives. This collection of essays explores, from several perspectives, Plutarch's relation to the ideas of government in his day. The focus is on Plutarch, because of the importance of his writings, the number and eminence of his Roman friends and the problematic nature of his relation with Trajan. Plutarch's position at Delphi made him a spokesman for the cultural memory of Greece. His friends were among the most important in the empire; some were close associates of Trajan. His Lives and political essays form the largest single body of political writing from the early empire.The nineteen essays in this book, by leading European and American Scholars, address three questions: What was the social and intellectual context in which Plutarch wrote? What did this philosopher-author have to say to contemporary statesmen; whether civic leaders, Roman imperial officials, or the emperor himself? How did his philosophical inquiry address contemporary issues?The overall objective is to establish the context of Plutarch's work in the society and the historical circumstances for which it was written; to see Plutarch not writing in a vacuum but for readers whose ambitions, virtues and weaknesses he recognized and whom he wished to help achieve a more philosophically based life.The first part considers the Greek social and cultural world of Plutarch's day, examining the role of philosophers and literary figures, the influential cultu of Isis described by Plutarch and the effect of the times on Plutarch's choice of heroes. Thereafter a segment on Plutarch's suggestions for the contemporary statesmen is followed by a third on his relation to the emperors. This latter part treats specifically his relation to Trajan and the ways in which his Lives do and do not address the specific issues of Trajan's reign and imperial ideology. A fourth part considers Trajan's Policy in Stone: his presentation of himself on the Column of Trajan and his building program outside Rome in Italy and the Provinces. In the final chapter Plutarch's philosophy is examined in the context of his times, looking at how the philosopher addresses the issues of political exile and the education of the young.Thanks to the inclusiveness of the issues addressed, and the original and provocative ideas of the contributors, this book should be of interest to all those who wish to understand the Plutarch's Parallel Lives and the works of other writers of this period in their fuller social and political context.

As well as presenting articles on Neo-Latin topics, the annual journal Humanistica Lovaniensia is a major source for critical editions of Neo-Latin texts with translations and commentaries. Its systematic bibliography of Neo-Latin studies (Instrumentum bibliographicum Neolatinum), accompanied by critical notes, is the standard annual bibliography of publications in the field. The journal is fully indexed (names, mss., Neo-Latin neologisms). Please visit www.lup.be for the full table of contents.

In October 1998 prof. Jan Van der Veken retired as professor of metaphysics and philosophy of God at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, after more than thirty years of teaching. For a long time he was one of the driving forces behind the Institute of Philosophy's flourishing International Program. He is also the president of the European Society for Process Thought and Director of the Process Documentation Center in Leuven. Because of his broad international commitment, colleagues, friends and former Ph.D-students from all over the world are offering him this collection of essays, which reflect his areas of interest, as a tribute to his work and career.Since for Jan Van der Veken our vision of the world, and especially the placing of God and religion in it, has been the basic concern in all his work and thought, this problem is also at the core of this volume. Though religion, philosophy and science speak different languages, it is the task of our vision of the world to bring them into some rational coordination.Many philosophers have guided him in this intellectual search. The first of these has been the later Merleau-Ponty, on whose philosophy he wrote his doctoral dissertation and who has remained present in his thinking. But the discovery of the work of Charles Hartshorne and Alfred North Whitehead opened up for him completely new perspectives and provided him with a new tool to formulate his own insights. It may be said that Jan Van der Veken introduced process-thought in the Low Countries, and that he is still its main proponent.All these aspects of Jan Van der Veken's thought are treated in this volume. All the contributions testify to the breath of interest, so characteristic of Jan Van der Veken's thinking but also of the necessity of an over-all vision of the world. In an Postscript, Jan Van der Veken himself reconstructs his own journey from Being to Becoming.

Enhancing the participation of women in high-level decision-making in several sectors of society has been on the agenda of national and international institutions for several years. These endeavours, however, are not always equally successful. In this book, the authors evaluate the participation of women in the field of educational policy-making in western Europe, both from a quantitative and a qualitative perspective. Over the last decade, many countries have taken legal steps in order to eliminate structural obstacles to women's access to high level positions; nevertheless, women still take up only a small minority of these functions, which suggests that cultural factors are obstructing women's empowerment as much as juridical factors.Increasing the numbers of women as a purely quantitative approach to the problem is inadequate, because it leaves these cultural elements unchallenged. Therefore, in the first, theoretical part of this book, the authors address the question of the relationship between women's participation in politics and the question of social emancipation. Through a deconstruction of the different arguments for increasing women's participation in policy-making, the authors try to indicate in what sense or under what conditions women's participation in politics can address not only the problem of women's equal rights, but also that of engendering a less discriminative, more democratic and emancipatory politics. In the second part, they analyse on an empirical level the participation of women in educational policy-making in the member countries of the E.U. The aim thereby is to explore some general tendencies and to formulate hypotheses concerning interrelationships between some of the data. This part gives rise to a number of interesting questions for further research.

The general aim of this book is to discuss a number of important and interrelated issues in life of modern man in medicine and the law. That discussion is not only on material aspects of those issues but also on the forms of knowledge which enable us to develop the relevant arguments and to cope with related experiences in everyday life. These issues are on the whole understood in terms of the 'law-medicine relationship' or the 'law and medicine interface'. However, a reflexion on the philosophical and cultural basis of those expressions shows the shortcomings of that appraoch and the need for an understanding of that relationship in terms of intertwining discourses.

The collapse of the communist regimes at the end of the 1980s has radically changed European structures and has reshaped the context of European integration and European security. With the enlargement of NATO and EU on the agenda, old division lines are on the verge of being erased. The crucial question, of course is what place Russia will take in this new Europe. Will Russia act and be allowed to act as a full-fledged European partner? Or is there a risk that Russia might be isolated, which would mean that new, not necessarily iron, curtains might descend over Europe? Or is Russia a country which is only half-European as it covers the Eurasian land mass?In this book eminent specialists answer the question "Is Russia a European Power?" in different ways. Their contributions focus on the historical and cultural background of the Russo-European relationship, on the perception and self-perception of Russia. Other authors focus on hot political issues: Russia's position in Asia, the significance of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the enlargement of NATO and EU, and the role of Russia in the Council of Europe. This wide horizon offers a solid context for a good understanding of current developments. For it is now that the foundations of the new, post-Cold War Europe are being laid.

This reader is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Frederic McClintock who was to be a co-editor. Dr. McClintock passed away in May 1994. In part one of this book, acknowledged experts from Finland, Holland, Switzerland, Spain and the U.K. report on the developments in victimology and discuss the discipline's impact on criminal justice policy.Part two takes a broader perspective explaining how restorative justice initiatives could provide a viable and less costly alternative to the current retributive criminal justice system. In this part, three essays contrast the retributive and restorative justice paradigms while the remaining six essays are devoted to the theory and the different practices of restorative justice.Particular attention is given to the role crime victims can play in a new model of criminal justice and to their traditional role in aboriginal and tribal communities. Also emphasis is placed on the practice of mediation, the techniques of dispute settlement and conflict resolution aimed at restitution and harm reparation and their recent developments in different countries.