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Allen D. Breck Award

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The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the Breck Award for 2017

Steven Hrdlicka

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Delno C. West Award

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The West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a senior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the West Award for 2017

Kristin M.S. Bezio

University of Richmond

Milton And The Middle Ages: Poetic Analogues And Visual Representations Of The War In Heaven, Expulsion Of The Rebel Angels, And Michael And The Dragon, Steven Hrdlicka

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Milton is not typically connected to the Middle Ages as much as to the later Enlightenment and the Romantic periods. Yet many distinctively medieval ideas can be seen in Paradise Lost, especially in the scenes that are related to the War in Heaven. Milton’s account of the war displays a medieval understanding of history in terms of typology in the drama of salvation. Particular details about the war itself such as St. Michael and Lucifer’s sword fight, Jesus’ eventual ending of the war, and the human characteristics of the fallen angels all have clear parallels in longstanding Christian poetic and …

“Dwellers In Shadows” & Abbatial Jerusalem: Reformed Monastic Ideas By The Third Crusade In The Sermons Of Garnerius Of Rochefort And Adam The Scot, Todd P. Upton

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In the crusading era of the Twelfth Century, a majority of Latin sermons presented Jerusalem as a visio pacis (“vision of peace”) that maintained an original characterization of the city made by Pope Urban II’s 1095 sermon at Clermont that launched the First Crusade. This essay demonstrates significant ways in which Garnerius of Rochefort and Adam the Scot transformed that visio pacis by the end of the twelfth century. For Garnerius (d. 1215)—a bishop at Langres (in northeastern France) from 1193 who wrote against the Amaurian pantheistic heresy, and died at Clairvaux—the traditional Augustinian visio spiritualis of Jerusalem was reversed, …

A Dialogue On Disaster: Antichrists In Jewish And Christian Apocalypses And Their Medieval Recensions, Natalie E. Latteri

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This paper examines textual and iconographic representations of antichrist personae in medieval Christian and Jewish manuscripts. Through a common language of polemics, Christians and Jews conflated antichrist personae to represent a more generalized category of apocalyptic antagonist that reflected the most significant temptations and threats to each respective religious community. As will be argued here, the greatest temptation and threat for Christians and Jews alike were those posed by members of the other religious group

The Local Costs Of Religious Reform And The Decline Of Parish Performances In Tudor England, James H. Forse

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The volumes of the Records of Early English Drama show that there was a lively tradition of local, religious performances throughout England in the late medieval and early Tudor period. Parishes, large and small, rich and poor, supported plays, processions, ales and other activities like Robin Hood celebrations. Great care, money and time went into creating costumes and staging for these events. Most of these local performances disappeared by the middle of the sixteenth century. A few, notably at York, Chester, Coventry and Norwich, continued into the early 1570s, but focus on these performance “giants” of English theatrical history fails …

“Me Thinks If I Were A Man”: An Analysis Of Dorothy Leigh’S Mother’S Blessing As A Response To Joseph Swetnam, Julia Combs

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As one of the first and most popular female-male authored conduct manuals of the seventeenth century, Dorothy Leigh’s The Mother’s Blessing is usually placed in the company of private, domestic literature. However, it does not sit comfortably there. Leigh claims to forget herself, as she rhetorically navigates her way through the constraining but enabling genre of the conduct manual. In this paper, I position Leigh as one of the initial respondents to Joseph Swetnam’s pamphlet The Arraignment of Lewd, idle, froward and unconstant women . Swetnam also claimed forget himself, as he stirred up the ire of writers in …

Marlowe’S Radical Reformation: Christopher Marlowe And The Radical Christianity Of The Polish Brethren, Kristin M.S. Bezio

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Although scholars of both literature and history have made arguments for Christopher Marlowe’s religious belief in Catholicism, the Church of England, and even atheism (which could have been conflated with both by different parties during his lifetime), few consider the belief system of the Polish Brethren, a precursor to Unitarianism established by one Faustus Socinus. This essay uses historical and social network analyses to suggest a close tie between Marlowe’s acquaintances and believers in Socinianism. Clues in Doctor Faustus and Massacre at Paris suggest Marlowe’s skepticism concerning the doctrines of Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. Furthermore, repeated references to Poland and …

Apocalypse Then, Apocalypse Now: Rethinking Joan Of Arc In The Twenty-First Century, Timothy M. Thibodeau

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Joan of Arc has stood alone among legendary figures of the Middle Ages in her capacity to be appropriated and employed for a host of modern noble causes. However, a fresh examination of Joan’s words and deeds reveals that her aims and objectives were not the universal “greater goods” of modern activists who have used her story to craft their own narratives. I propose that Joan’s continued attractiveness as a cultural icon now faces two major obstacles. First, in the wake of the rapid secularization of modern western society and the evolution of social mores related to gender identity and …

Labouring For The Lost Love, Christine S. Williams

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Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost often is considered a “problem play” because of its emphasis on word-play and its extreme “topicality” to a 16th-century, London audience. Yet imaginative staging reveals that the play actually provides excellent opportunities for connecting with our current millennial students and audience members.