Arts and Humanities Commons^™

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Medieval Studies In America And American Medievalism, Herwig Wolfram

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As far as one can tell, Ernst Robert Curtius appears to have been the first Central European so fascinated by American interest in the Middle Ages that he promised a study on the subject. He called this particular interplay oof academic, amateur, and popular interest "American Medievalism." According to his bibliography, the projected work never appeared, but a lecture he was asked to present to an American audience in 1949 was published in both the North American and Hispano-American editions of his famous book European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages.

England's King Henry I And The Flemish Succession Crisis Of 1127-1128, Sandy B. Hicks

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Historians have long appreciated the political significance of the Flemish Succession Crisis of 1127-28 upon the development of both Flanders and Capetian France. Anglo-Norman specialists, though, have generally overlooked the critical impact this crisis had upon the latter years of the reign of King Henry I and, indeed, upon the future direction of the Anglo-Norman state. This paper will examine why Henry judged the crisis as a threat to the very survival of his own realm, how he responded to it, and why is was of such importance to England and Normandy.

The Christian Context Of Rebirth In La Naissance Du Chevalier Au Cygne, George L. Evans Jr.

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The technique of composition through analogy, a distinctive trait of the Old French romance as affirmed by Eugene Vinaver in the Rise of Romance, is a major feature of La Naissance du Chevalier au Cygne, which is structured by the epic laisse. Written in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century to serve as a preface to the Old French Crusade Cycle, the NChCy recounts the birth of the Swan Knight, the legendary grandfather of Godefroy de Bouillon, hero of the First Crusade. The poem also relates the metamorphosis of the future Swan Knight and his five …

Matrimony And Change In Webster's The Duchess Of Malfi, Margaret L. Mikesell

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Profound changes occurred in the institution of marriage during the Renaissance. Love was gradually replacing fiscal and dynastic considerations as the foundation considered crucial for a binding union. The love marriage was largely a middle-class phenomenon, born of the changing relationship between the family and the state, articulated and refined by Protestant divines, and diffused through aristocratic society. Drama of the period is much concerned with this shift. The bourgeois conjunction of love and marriage triumphs in the aristocratic societies of many a romantic comedy. The weddings at play's end promise a new social order. The disintegration of the old …

Catharsis In Aristotle, The Renaissance, And Elsewhere, Thomas Clayton

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In an essay on "Shakespeare and the Kinds of Drama," Stephen Orgel presents an appealing and sympathetic view of Renaissance dramatic-generic theory and practice as original, capacious, and flexible, concluding that, "like Scaliger, Shakespeare thought of genres not as sets of rules but as sets of expectations and possibilities." In relation to this finding, we should perhaps be content to be "unclear about tragic catharsis," because "at least we know it is there, convincing us that tragedy works—even if we do not know how or on whom" (p.120). As the Renaissance read Aristotle, "tragedy achieved its end by purging …

The Celestial Sign On Constantine's Shields At The Battle Of The Mulvian Bridge, Charles Odahl

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Most scholars now accept the reality and sincerity of Constantine's conversion to Christianity during his military campaign against Maxentius for control of Rome in A.D. 312—provided that "conversion" is understood in terms of the superstitious religious environment of the times. The ancient pagan and Christian sources that described the campaign all agreed that the war was waged in an atmosphere of intense religious fervor, even superstitiosa maleficia as one source described it, and that each commander appealed to divine power for aid against his enemy. Christian accounts of the campaign reported that Constantine turned to the Christian God at this …

The Danish-Language Press In America, Marion Marzolf

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By the time Sophus F. Neble, a journeyman printer from Stubbekobing, Denmark, emigrated in 1883 to seek his fortune in the farmlands of the American Midwest, there was already a rudimentary Danish press tradition in the United States. But at that point in his life, Neble little cared or even knew much about it. He had thrown over his years of apprenticeship in the printing trade for a dream of becoming a successful American dairy farmer in order to win the hand of the young woman he loved.

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Some Observations Of The Deposition Of Archbishop Theodulf Of Orleans In 817, Thomas F. X. Noble

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Theodulf of Orleans, called by Ann Freeman "one of the brightest lights of the Carolingian Renaissance," is one of the most fascinating individuals in the history of the eighth and ninth centuries. He was a fine poet, perhaps the best of the Carolingian era, and more than 4,000 of his verses survive. His Paranesis ad iudices and his work on the filioque dispute indicate that he was a skilled controversialist. Finally, his authorship of the Libri Carolini, the massive Carolingian treatise against the positions on icons taken by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, reflects a theological knowledge …

The Virtues Of The Heart: The Beatitudes In Patience, S. L. Clark, Julian N. Wasserman

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The heart as an enclosure, changeable over time, and, like the communal chalice, capable of being emptied only to be filled again, proves to be one of the most complex symbols in Patience. The Pearl-Poet repeatedly focuses on the heart, from his inclusive plural reference to "herttes" in the poem's prologue (I. 2), to his conception of the Beatitudes as virtues of the heart (II. 13, 21, 23, 27), to his subsequent observations over the course of the narrative concerning the various states of the human – and even divine – heart. In fact, in the skillful hands …

The Liberation Of The "Loathly Lady" Of Medieval Romance, Robert Shenk

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In his conclusion of The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, the anonymous poet asks "Jhesu" to

Help him oute of sorrowe that this tale did devine,

And that nowe in alle hast,

For he is beset withe gailours many,

That kepen him fulle sewerly,

With wiles wrong and wraste. (842-846)

Although the poet then repeats his cry for help two additional times, this ending has never been seriously considered as an important part of the romance. One critic puzzles as it by saying, "Oddly, the romance ends on a note of pathos," but it is usually ignored …

Vision And Experience In Machaut's Fonteinne Amoureuse, R. Barton Palmer

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Guillaume de Machaut's narrative verse, much honored and imitated by his peers, has met with a generally indifferent reception from modern critics. There are, it seems to me, two reasons for this. First, Machaut's heavy indebtedness to Guillaume de Lorris has made inevitable a comparison between the two which leaves the imitator, though exploring the form for a different purpose, at a disadvantage. Unlike his model, Machaut does not infuse allegorical narrative with either a sharp reading of psychology or his own quite genuine joy in experience. Allegory is for him a two-dimensional device to serve a didactic end: the …

Who Cast Donne's Tolling Bells?, J. X. Evans

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The following paragraph from a funeral sermon written in 1620 by Charles Fitz-Geffrey (1575-1637), an Anglican clergyman, contains imagery so much like John Donne's celebrated figure in Devotion XVII (1624) that it should come to the attention of readers interested in Donne and the literature oof Jacobean England:

Do they who close the eyes and cover the face f the Dead consider that their eyes must be closed, and their faces covered? Or they who shroud the Coarse remember that they themselves shortly must be shrouded? Or they who ring the Knell consider that shortly the Bels must goe the …

The Dynamics Of Pietas In Ben Jonson's Catiline, Wilson F. Engel Iii

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Ben Johnson's Catiline, the exemplary Renaissance tragedy, has only recently been studied in detail for its menacing statement about Republican politics, and since no thorough reading of the play appeared until the 1950s, no received critical opinion need stand between the reader and the text. The disadvantage of this state of affairs is clear—any reading is liable to partake of the imbalance of contemporary criticism lamented by Richard Levin in New Readings vs. Old Plays. After Ellen M. T. Duffy demonstrated that Jonson made the most of Renaissance scholarship in his use of the classics, a number of …

A Reexamination Of The Development Of Protestantism During The Early English Reformation, John K. Yost

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G.R. Elton's recent investigations of the relation between humanist reform and reformist government during the 1530's leave us with no uncertainty about Cromwell's beliefs regarding Protestantism. Elton concludes from an anonymous letter fo 1538, which he ascribes to the eminent civil and canon lawyer John Oliver, that "as early as 1531 or 1532, therefore, Thomas Cromwell was thinking along reformed lines and lines of evangelical theology...." Moreover, he reports how Cromwell "told the prior of Kingswood: by him 'the Word of God, the gospel of Christ, is not only favoured but also perfected, set forth, maintained, increased and defended'."

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Danish Immigrant Materials: The Archives At Grand View College, Thorvald Hansen

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Will Rogers, who claimed partial Indian ancestry, used to like to point out that his ancestors met the Mayflower at the dock. Be that as it may, it is certain that the dock was not crowded. The fact is, as John F. Kennedy once wrote, that this is a nation of immigrants. The vast majority of us are descendants of immigrants. Therefore, the history of this country, particularly at the grassroots level, is a story enacted by the immigrant.

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Deepest Roots - Finest Fruits, Johannes Knudsen

The Bridge

Roots and fruits have an affinity in the natural order of things. It cannot be denied, of course, that the technical skills of our day can create marvels in sterile isolation or hot-house splendor, almost without roots. Nor must it be ignored that quickly growing plants with frail surface contacts to water and nutrients can grow luscious fruits. I would rather eat a strawberry than an acorn. Thus it shall not be contended that finest fruits require deepest roots. But let not the logic of cause and effect stifle a theme. Roots and fruits are valuable and related factors of …

Danish Settlement In Fresno County, California: An Example Of Acculturation To A Foreign Environment. 1880-1920, Marianne T. Stecher

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Danish settlers were first attracted to Fresno County, California, in the late 1870's. By 1920, at the close of the era of Danish immigration, 1,839 Danes, 1 % of the entire Danish population of the United States, lived in Fresno County. The idea of Mediterranean crops thriving on twenty acres of fertile soil was tempting to aspiring farmers. The possibility of confining farm work to such a small land area seemed more preferable than one-hundred and sixty acres of spreading wheat fields in the midwestern prairie. A prospering fruit farm or a vineyard in sunny California was a dream of …

My Brother Is Born, Holger O. Nielsen, Harald R. Jensen, Translator

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The day was February 14, 1889, and dusk had just fallen. As one looked over the western Nebraska prairie, the whole world was a huge blanket of glittering snow. The bright beams from the full moon fell upon the white snow, almost making day out of the night. Even the harsh Nebraska landscape was now white and soft, as gentle as a fairyland.

Scandinavian American Archives, J. R. Christianson

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The problem of locating and preserving Danish American historical materials has been in the spotlight in recent years. It has been discussed frequently in The Bridge and the Newsletter of the Danish American Heritage Society. In cooperation with Grand View College, the society launched a major project, the Danish Immigrant Archival Listing (DIAL), under Thorvald Hansen's leadership in 1979. That project aims to locate all Danish American historical materials presently deposited in archives and elsewhere throughout the United States, Canada and Denmark.

Four Poems On Death By Nis Petersen, Otto M. Sorensen

The Bridge

Very litte of Nis Petersen's poetry has been translated into English, and yet he is regarded as one of Denmark's finest poets in this century. In the following I offer readers of The Bridge translations and interpretations of four poems that deal with death, a subject that concerned Petersen over a considerable period of time. The reader should be cautioned, however, not to deem the poems typical of the poet. Death is one of many themes that run through his work. I have reproduced the originals here from the poet's Samlede Digte. ed. Hans Brix, Gyldendal, 1951 .

The Danish Colonization Society Of 1879, Frederick Hale

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The Danish Colonization Society of 1879 (Den danske Kolonisations-Forening af 1879) is one of several organizations which historians have generally ignored. An analysis of it, however, could illuminate further a number of matters pertinent to the general theme of Scandinavian emigration. Essentially, it was an association that intended to assist economically deprived Danes in securing a collective home overseas as well as passage to it at the least possible expense. The Society was short-lived, apparently disbanding a little more than a year after coming into being. Moreover, the only direct evidence of its activity is its truncated biweekly newspaper, Udvandrings-Tidende …

Reminiscences From A Long Life, Ane Helena Paulsen

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My maiden name was Ane Helene Nielsen and I was born in Yestergaard, Lendum Sogn close to Frederickshavn on January 22, 1866. My father's name was Ole Christian Nielsen, Kirkerod, Skaerum Sogn. He died early of tuberculosis. I can scarcely remember him. My mother's name was Mariane Jensen. She was the daughter of Jens Nielsen, Sondergaard, Lendum Sogn, and his wife Johanne Marie Larsdatter of Vang, S4,ndergaard, Tirslev Sogn.

The Partridge, Martin A. Hansen, Inga Wiehl, Translator

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"Martin A. Hansen is considered one of the best and most influential Danish writers of the century. Despite his premature death in 1955 at the age of forty-six, he left a rich artistic legacy of novels, short stories, and travel descriptions as well as essays and books dealing with historical, cultural and philosophical themes.

'The Partridge' ('Agerhonen') is the title story of a collection of twelve short stories, all of which emphasize artistic expression as self-revelation. It is the means whereby the artist transforms the world and makes it new. The twelve stories are divided into three parts, childhood, adolescence …