Login

Publications  •  Project Statistics

Glossary  •  Schools  •  Disciplines
People Search: 
   
Title/Abstract Search: 

Dissertation Information for Bryan Alan Givens

NAME:
- Bryan Alan Givens

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (2003)

ADVISORS:
- Geoffrey W. Symcox
- Teofilo F. Ruiz

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- John Dagenais
- Carlo Ginzburg

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: The reluctant visionary: Maria de Macedo and the millenarian culture of Portugal

Abstract: Though widely understood as a popular phenomenon, the variant of Portuguese messianism known as Sebastianism has not been the subject of a systematic social history, and very little is known regarding who believed in it or what the specific content of their beliefs was. In 1665, Maria de Macedo was tried before the Inquisition for claiming to travel to a "Hidden Isle" where she spoke to the long-lost King Sebastian. The resulting trial record provides us with an excellent opportunity to understand popular beliefs about Sebastian for two reasons. First, her testimony on the subject of Sebastian during the trial was both extensive and detailed, allowing for intensive analyses of many aspects of the sebastianista legend. More importantly, her trial record contains copies of a pamphlet she dictated to her husband fifteen years before she was arrested by the Inquisition. This pamphlet was, therefore, not mediated by the Inquisition in any way, which means that it provides us an almost unique opportunity to hear a popular voice speaking about a popular belief, unmodified by the biases of an elite transcriber.

Microhistory was deemed the most appropriate approach by which understand Maria de Macedo's narrative, and an intensive analysis of the origins and the functions of the specific details of her vision revealed that it was made up of elements not only from the sebastianista legend, but also from a variety of other popular traditions including those of King Arthur, the Land of Cockaigne, and the enchanted Moors. Her millenarian vision was not only popular in origin, though, and showed the marked influence of Tridentine moral and devotional norms. Her vision was thus a composite of many cultural trends and its study is a study of the interaction of those trends.The elite cultural imperatives of the Inquisition's rejection of Maria de Macedo's claims were also examined on the basis of her trial record. The study as a whole is thus a microhistorical analysis of the mentalities of seventeenth-century Portugal.

MPACT Scores for Bryan Alan Givens

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-08-13 11:07:49

Advisors and Advisees Graph

generating graph, please reload

Students under Bryan Alan Givens

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None