Arts and Humanities Commons^™

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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