History Commons^™

Women And Marriage In The Medieval Spanish Epic, Marjorie Ratcliffe

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Medieval Spanish literature offers only three extant epic texts, Roncesvalles, the Cantar de Mio Cid and the Mocedades de Rodrigo. Knowledge of the Spanish heroic genre has been further extended by considering the thirteenth-century Poema de Fernán González, a reworking of a much earlier poem, as well as the similarly re-elaborated fragments of the stories of Rodrigo, the last Visigothic monarch; of Bernardo del Carpio; of the seven sons of Salas; of the traitorous countess; of prince García and the Cantar de Sancho Il y el cerco de Zamora. These texts will all be considered in …

Petrarch's "Trionfo Dell'eternità": Aesthetics Of Conversion, John S. Smurthwaite

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As the first of Petrarch's six Triumphs, the "Trionfo del Tempo," comes to an end, the poet affirms time's apparent victory over all things in the sublunar world. Not even fame is able to endure time's unrelenting and ultimately disintegrating onslought:

che è questo però che sì s'apprezza?

Tutto vince e ritoglie il Tempo avaro;

chiamasi Fama, ed è morir secondo,

ne più che contra 'l primo è alcun riparo;

così il Tempo trionfa i nomi e 'l mondo!

("Trionfo del Tempo," vvs. 141-45_

What is this that is so highly valued? Greedy Time overcomes and steals all away. …

Carmelite Propaganda In A Fifteenth-Century French Gradual Fragment, John B. Friedman

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The late Middle Ages was a difficult period for the mendicant orders. Many of their claims to be the "New Apostles," with special efficacy in the confessional, the pulpit, and the classroom—as Penn Szittya has recently shown—were under sharp attack. Though less visible as teachers and preachers than the Dominicans and Franciscans, the Carmelites were also the victims of anti-mendicant hostility from an early period. Furthermore, they were disliked by the other orders because they claimed superiority be reason of alleged great antiquity and the special patronage of the Virgin, for Carmelite legend holds that the Old Testament prophets Elijah …

Catherine Des Roches (1542-1587): Humanism And The Learned Woman, Anne R. Larsen

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Catherine des Roches has long been familiar to Renaissance social historians for the incongruous flea that alighted one day on her bosom as she was conversing with the humanist lawyer Estienne Pasquier. Pasquier, who was beginning to run out of propos, as he tells his correspondent Pierre Pithou, nimbly seized upon this unexpected diversion, suggesting that he and des Roches immortalize the event in a contest of versified wit. The habitués of the salon of the Dames des Roches soon joined the gallant exchange and produced a collection of ninety-three folios entitles La Puce de Madame des Roches (1582).

Gulled Into An "I"-Word, Or Much Ado About A Pronoun, D'Orsay W. Pearson

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Despite the warning of the editors of the 1975 New Arden Twelfth Night the M.O.A.I. sequence of Maria's riddle for Malvolio is "a sequence of letters expressly designed to make Malvolio interpret them as he does, thus prolonging the comic scene," and that "attempts to wring further meaning from them are misplaced" (Lothiam and Craik 68), there is a strong probability that the letters, rather than being a meaningless sequence, were intended by Shakespeare as a fairly simple orthographic joke—one which expands Malvolio's characterization as a socially ambitious closet sybarite, deficient in a social accomplishment expected of those who would …

The Syllables Of Time: An Augustinian Context For Macbeth 5.5, John S. Tanner

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Among the most familiar lines in all Shakespeare are these Macbeth utters upon hearing the Lady Macbeth's death:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

(5.5.19-28)

So familiar, indeed, is this speech …

The Seven Ages Of Pericles, Cynthia Marshall

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Pericles, swept along by the wave of interest in Shakespeare's romances, has lately received its due share of critical and theatrical attention, but it remains something of a bastard child. Pericles was originally labelled a "problem" because oof the textual controversy—exclusion from the 1623 folio, evidence of joint authorship—and the label sticks because of the common complaint that the play somehow feels different from the other plays in the canon. Uneven in style and random in structure, it seems almost to provoke disengagement. It actively resists expectations of casual plot and frustrates the urge to identify with characters on …

Redemption Typology In John Donne's "Batter My Heart", Raymond-Jean Frontain

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In the seventeenth century, notes Barbara K. Lewalski, typological symbolism came to be considered a way for the individual to explore one's own spiritual state and to discover "the workings of Divine Providence in one's own life."

[T]he shift in emphasis in reformation theology from quid agas to God's activity in us made it possible to assimilate our lives to the typological design, recognizing the biblical stories and events, salvation history, not merely as exemplary too us but as actually recapitulated in our lives. These various impulses led to a new, primary focus upon the individual Christian, whose life is …

Godfrey Goodman And The Language Of Adam, Thomas S. Willard

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Reformers in seventeenth-century England often spoke of a language of nature, sometimes referred to as the language of Adam. By this, they did not refer to what we would call a natural language, like English or French, but to a univocal language where words and things corresponded perfectly. They insisted that it need not be a dream; it could be made a reality if students would only turn form syllogisms to nature itself. With this insistence, Francis Bacon and others created the false impression that language theory in their time was essentially Adamic, committed to the view that all languages …

Review Essay: P. J. Casey, Understanding Ancient Coins, Charles Odahl

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P. J. Casey, Understanding Ancient Coins, University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.

Review Essay: Bernard Mcginn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim Of Fiore In The History Of Western Thought, E. Randolph Daniel

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Bernard McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985.

Review Essay: Joseph L. Baird (With G. Baglini And J. Kane), The Chronicle Of Salimbene De Adam, Delno C. West

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Joseph L. Baird (with G. Baglini and J. Kane), The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, Binghamton, 1986.

Review Essay: Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket, Kay S. Rogers

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Frank Barlow, Thomas Beckett, University of California Press, 1986.

Review Essay: William Tydeman, English Medieval Theatre, 1400-1500, Ronald J. Heckelman

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William Tydeman, English Medieval Theatre, 1400-1500, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.

Review Essay: Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, Medieval Woman's Visionary Literature, Richard J. Panofsky

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Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, Medieval Woman's Visionary Literature, Oxford University Press, 1986.

Review Essay: Alan Macfarlane, Marriage And Love In England, Modes Of Reproduction, 1300-1840, J. B. Owens

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Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England, Modes of Reproduction, 1300-1840, Basil Blackwell, 1986.

Review Essay: Lauro Martines, Society And History In English Renaissance Verse, Thomas S. Willard

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Lauro Martines, Society and History in English Renaissance Verse, Basil Blackwell, 1985.

Review Essay: Emile Mâle, Art And Artists Of The Middle Ages, James Finn Cotter

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Emile Mâle, Art and Artists of the Middle Ages, trans. Sylvia Stallings Lowe, Black Swan Books, 1986.

Review Essay: Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, And Nancy J. Vickers, Eds., Rewriting The Renaissance: The Discourses Of Sexual Difference In Early Modern Europe, Retha Warnicke

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Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers, eds., Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Review Essay: A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem In England, 1560-1640, James B. Fitzmaurice

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A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560-1640, Methuen, 1985.

Review Essay: Huston Diehl, An Index Of Icons In English Emblem Books, 1500-1700, Patricia Demers

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Houston Diehl, An Index of Icons in English Emblem Books, 1500-1700, University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.

Review Essay: Rowland Wymer, Suicide And Despair In The Jacobean Drama, William Mccarron

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Rowland Wymer, Suicide and Despair in the Jacobean Drama, St. Martin's Press, 1986.

Review Essay: Mary Beth Rose, Ed., Women In The Middle Ages And The Renaissance, Joan M. West

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Mary Beth Rose, ed., Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Syracuse University, 1986.

Review Essay: Eric Sams, Ed, Shakespeare's Lost Play "Edmund Ironside", Charles L. Squier

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Eric Sams, ed., Shakespeare's Lost Play "Edmund Ironside," St. Martin's Press, 1985.

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

The Wilton Diptych And The Absolutism Of Richard Ii, Sumner Ferris

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The Wilton Diptych (in The National Gallery, London) may now, after some years of hesitation on the matter, be considered to be very probably the work of an English artist. Consequently, we may take the painting to be not simply a masterpiece of the International Style but a specifically English masterpiece of the age of Richard II, the kind whom it chiefly honors and depicts, and we may expect to find in it a specifically English meaning.

Review Essay: Marta Sordi, The Christians And The Roman Empire, Janine Marie Idziak

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Marta Sordi, The Christians and the Roman Empire, University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.

Review Essay: Bernard Guenée, States And Rulers In Later Medieval Europe, De Lamar Jensen

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Bernard Guenée, States and Rulers in Later Medieval Europe, trans. Juliet Vale, Basil Blackwell, 1985.

Review Essay: Lynette R. Muir, Literature And Society In Medieval France: The Mirror And The Image, 1100-1500, Frede Jensen

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Lynette R. Muir, Literature and Society in Medieval France: The Mirror and the Image, 1100-1500, St. Martin's Press, 1985.

Review Essay: David R. Shore, Spenser And The Poetics Of Pastoral: A Study Of The World Of Colin Clout, Sandy Feinstein

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David R. Shore, Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral: A Study of the World of Colin Clout, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1985.