History Commons^™

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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The Meaning Of Symmetry, S. K. Heninger

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(An Address Delivered to the 1979 Meeting of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association)

The Use Of Thierry Of Chartres' Hexameron By Anonymi De Elementis And Robert Grosseteste, Richard C. Dales

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The twelfth century in the intellectual history of western Europe was a time of great creativity and freedom and a time during which the rate of acquisition of exotic material was at a maximum. In spite of this, however, the sources of much twelfth-century scientific writing and the use of twelfth-century authors by later writers is little known. Although the editor of a twelfth-century text can sometimes point to the specific source of his author, more often he must simply indicate similar passages in other works or indicate the ultimate source (e.g., Aristotle or Plotinus), which could not possibly have …

A Medieval Spanish Collectanea Of Astronomical Instruments: An Integrated Compilation, Anthony J. Cardenas

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The fame of Alfonso X, il Sabio, 1221-1284, rests principally upon the voluminous literary production of his Royal Scriptorium. Many of the original Alfonsine codices survive today and can be found in the libraries of England, France, Italy, and, of course, Spain.

Fools And Fool-Makers: Types Of Comic Characters In Renaissance Literature, Russell J. Meyer

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A common impulse in studies of the comic figure, in the Renaissance as well as more recently, has been to seek a single feature which marks all such characters. Most sixteenth-century theorists agreed that both ugliness and surprise play major roles in the success of a comic figure, but their concern on the one hand with the rhetorical powers of laughter and on the other with the moral effects of comedy led them to accept principles which do not actually reflect the experience of comic literature. In their search for a single consolidating feature of all comic figures, the Renaissance …

Machiavelli's The Prince: A Lexical Enigma, Jeane Luere

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Italians today, especially Florentines, unreservedly venerate their native son, Niccolo Machiavelli, 16th century Italian political figure, along with Francesca Petrarcha, Dante Alighieri, and Michelangelo Buonarroti; they attach no stigma, no unfavorable connotation, to the adjective "Machiavellian," coined from the name so famous in literature and legend. An American abroad encounters this total veneration of Machiavelli with some bewilderment, for we are prone to attitudes like that of Thomas Babington Macaulay, who wrote, "We doubt whether any names in literary history be so generally odious as that of Machiavelli."

The Book Index: Plutarch's Moralia And John Donne, John Shawcross

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Thomas Carew's elegy on John Donne points up an important fact (and distinction); Donne little employed allusions to classical literature and learning such as authors like Edmund Spenser and John Milton did, much to the glee of teachers and the bane of students. But glosses on Donne's works also turn up relatively few contemporary or near-contemporary references to informational volumes, whether in English or in Latin. He knew Galileo's Siderus Nuncius, 1610, and he owned and used such works as Nicholas Harpsfield's Dialogi Sex contra Summi Pontificatus, Monasticae Vitae, Sanctorum, Sacrarum, Imaginum Oppugnatores, et pseudo-martyres, 1566, and …

Medieval And Renaissance Studies In The Rockies: The Evolution Of An Idea, Allen D. Breck

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For many years the most persistent lament in this part of the country was the absence of a proper forum for the sharing of scholarly study of one of the most significant periods of human history, that of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Annual meetings were generally at too great a distance for many of the members and failed to collect a sufficient number of Rocky Mountain people for conviviality and the sharing of knowledge and experiences. Some sort of organization was imperative.

Report On The 1979 Meeting Of The Association, Harry Rosenberg

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The range of topics covered in the papers presented at Flagstaff in April amply testify to the extraordinary variety of life and thought in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The papers are a tribute, too, to the vigor of contemporary scholarly interest in these two great historical-cultural epochs. (This review, it should be noted, is based upon the full paper in some instances and in others on both the paper and the pleasure of having been present at the time it was delivered, yet there are also several papers reported here of which I have seen only an abstract.)

A Note On The Date Of The Expositio Super Regulam Of Hugh Of Digne, Delno C. West

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A challenging issue for medieval Franciscan history is how and why the Rule of St. Francis was modified so shortly after the founder's death in 1126. One of the earliest and most important expositions of the Rule was written sometime in the middle of the thirteenth century by the southern French Joachite-Franciscan and scholar, Hugh of Digne. It is remarkable that Hugh's writings have been little studied, since the friar was a central figure in the development of Franciscan Joachimism and served as an inspirator of the Spiritual movement. The Spirituals read his treatises with great respect and admiration. To …

The "Resurrection" Of Frederick Ii Of Hohenstaufen, James K. Otte

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Those who visit Goslar, jewel of the Salian and Hohenstaufen emperors, will be introduced to one of the most beautiful and best preserved romanesque Pfalzen, which served the medieval emperors as regional residences. The stately throne hall received its present decor in the years 1879-97, when Herman Wislicenus created a series of huge murals depicting great events in the history of the Holy Roman Empire. The most romantic and prophetic of these paintings portrays Frederick Barbarossa. It is a visual expression of a popular medieval legend that envisioned the return of Kaiser Rotbart.

The Problem Of Distinguishing Religious Guilt From Religious Melancholy In The English Renaissance, Noel L. Brann

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What is the essential difference between natural melancholy and the guilt-stricken conscience of the sinner? This is the question posed by Ben Jonson (1573-1637) in his poetic plain To Heaven:

Good, and great God, can I not thinke of thee,

But it must, straight, my melancholy bee?

It is interpreted in me disease,

Thaat, laden with my sinnes, I seeke for ease?

Here Jonson points up the perennial quandary of homo religioso. At stake in its solution is not only the health of the body, but also the salvation of the soul. For if spiritual guilt cannot be …

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Closure In The Early Spanish Ballad, David William Foster

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One of the hoariest cliches in traditional literary histories apropos the early Spanish ballad (i.e., the Romancero viejo of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) concerns poetic ending or closure: "[The early ballads] frequently end as abruptly as they begin, oftentimes seemingly unconcluded, a characteristic which gives them an air of mystery and special charm." The feature is often attributable to the general and specific origins of the texts in the fragmentation of longer epic poems and chronicles, or in the truncation of longer ballads. The most representative example is "Conde Arnaldos," one of the best of the early Spanish ballads …

Papers In Language And Literature Delivered At The 1979 Meeting Of The Association, John Boni

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The papers in language and literature covered, as might be expected, a broad range of interests: from Beowulf to Paradise Lost, from paleography to cultural change. The following is an attempt too summarize the content of each paper, staying as close as possible to the author's pattern of argument, and following the author's own words, directly or by paraphrase; the order here follows that of the program. Where only an abstract was available as a source of summary, this has been noted.

"A Growing Or Full Constant Light": A Reading Of Donne's "A Lecture Upon The Shadow", Diane Elizabeth Dreher

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John Donne's "A Lecture Upon the Shadow" has given rise to extensive critical commentary, most of it devoted to the shadow imagery in the poem. However, no one, to date, has proposed a satisfactory explanation for the shadow's shift in meaning from the realm of natural phenomena to that of conjecture and imagination. Pierre Legouis has concluded that "the similitude does not hold good ... it is imperfect." Yet an acceptable explanation is possible and the similitude does hold good when the poem is considered in terms of its dominant structural pattern, the Bonaventuran meditation. In keeping with meditative practice, …