History Commons^™

A Miracle Through An Ymage: Gautier De Coinci’S Retouched Legend Of Theophile, Isabella Williams

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This article examines the use of the Old French word “ymage” in Gautier de Coinci’s early thirteenth-century Legend of Theophile. Gautier is the first author to write a version of the legend that includes an ymage, designating a material representation of the Virgin. Far from a subtle insertion, he mentions the term ten times, during every pivotal moment of the story, when terrestrial and celestial spheres collide. Critics acknowledge the centrality of Gautier in representing this revolutionary French period, during which time attitudes concerning ritualistic images were in a state of flux; yet, Gautier’s repetitive and groundbreaking use of …

Delno C. West Award Winner

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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 2023

Jane Foster Woodruff

William Jewell College, Emerita

The Imperative Of Student Integration In Faculty Research Projects: A Pedagogical Case Study In Digital History, Roger L. Martinez-Davila, Fernando Feliu-Moggi, Sean Wybrant, Ian Torres, Spencer Miles

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Traditional pedagogical models, at times, are inadequate for equipping students with real-world skills. A shift towards integrating students into faculty-led research is essential, as demonstrated by the Coronado Muster Roll project. In this project, students use virtual reality technologies to create immersive experiences that explore the complex relationships between Spanish and Indigenous communities during Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s 1540 expedition. A specific assignment within the course tasks students with developing digital narratives. The muster roll itself is revealed to be more than just a list; it serves as a snapshot capturing the depth and complexities often lost in grand narratives. …

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History And Directing Shakespeare, James H. Forse

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In years past I have been asked, “where did you get that idea?”—from those who perused something I wrote concerning the history of Shakespearean theatre, and from those who saw Shakespearean plays I directed for my local community theatre. Sometimes the question was a compliment. Yet the question, I think, points to a sort of symbiosis that academic research and the practical dictates of directing a play can offer to anyone. For it’s truly hard for me to tell whether my research into theatre history has come to affect how I directed Shakespeare, or whether directing Shakespeare’s plays in a …

From Heldris De Cornwall’S Le Roman De Silence To Gian Francesco Straparola’S Le Piacevoli Notti. New Insights Into A Significant Reception Process Across Centuries, Languages, And Genres, Albrecht Classen

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Although we assume that the thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman romance Roman de Silence by Heldris de Cornwall experienced no reception at all apart from one manuscript containing the text, there is a considerable likelihood that the sixteenth-century Venetian author Gian Francesco Straparola somehow gained access to the medieval text and adapted it for one of the stories contained in his famous collection, Le Piacevoli Notti (1550 and 1553). Even though we cannot yet determine the exact process of reception, the strong similarities between both works go far beyond global archetypal themes. Straparola’s work hence demonstrates that Heldris’s work was known even long …

Langland, Father Of American Literatures, John M. Bowers

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Geoffrey Chaucer’s position as “father of English literature” has been steadily challenged in recent years. This paper both proposes and interrogates the other fourteenth-century English poet William Langland’s possible claims as the origin for the Puritan tradition of New England and, hence, the later traditions of American literatures—in the plural. We know that the first copy of his satirical, theological dream-vision Piers Plowman arrived in New England in 1630 with the father of Anne Bradstreet, and as a result any patriarchal genealogy is already problematic because the first author in the American family-tree was a woman. Rather than the linearity …

Hamlet In Cinema: Oedipus Lives On, Keolanani Kinghorn

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I have often questioned why Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a play more than 400 years old, remains tied to a century-old Freudian concept. Since Freud’s Oedipus Complex has been disproven, what purpose does it still serve and why are directors still intrigued by this interpretation of Hamlet? In 1949, Dr. Ernest Jones published his book, Hamlet and Oedipus (1949),1 but at the time he was also collaborating with Laurence Olivier to create the first movie adaptation of Hamlet to embrace the Oedipus Complex. I believe that because of Jones and Olivier Shakespeare’s Hamlet will always be connected to psychoanalysis. While …

Re-Dress As Redress: Shakespeare’S Comedy Of Errors, Jane Foster Woodruff

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DELNO C. WEST AWARD WINNER

Writing near the end of a century-long ‘explosion’ of Tudor theatre, Shakespeare benefitted from a variety of influences, both sacral and secular. Among his literary influences were the works of classical dramatists (Sophocles, Seneca, Plautus, and the like), who had used their plays to editorialize on contemporary societal issues. To this same end, in his early historical play Richard III Shakespeare chose to address a multiplicity of problematic themes, the most obvious being that, although Richard’s ambition and his lethality had been sufficient to win him a crown, they were insufficient to preserve it: power …

In Memoriam: Paul Roger Thomas (1940-2021), Darin Merrill

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The Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association announces with great sadness the passing of Paul Thomas, a long-time member of the RMMRA and president ex officio whose unflagging organizational support, irrepressible good humor, unqualified collegiality, and thoughtful scholarship provided an important part of the RMMRA meetings for over three decades.

Those Who Weep: Tears, Eyes, And Blood In The Boussu Hours, Katharine Davidson Bekker

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Simon Marmion and the Master of Antoine Rolin’s Boussu Hours (ca. 1490-95) is resplendent with imagery of suffering in its unusual marginal decorations. Holy effluvia—blood and tears—flow from golden pages covered in wounds and weeping eyes. These decorations, surrounding the Hours of the Passion, pictorially enact a theological notion of tears as wounding agents, and spiritually prompt the reader’s contrition. Notable wear on the “bloody” page indicates a pattern of tactile interaction between book and reader; this physical engagement with the marginals represents a quasi-liturgical manifestation of guilt and efforts made to abate it. The gestural touching of the page …

The Case For Hildeburg: Beowulf And Ethical Subjectivity, Wendolyn Weber

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This essay argues for a reading of Beowulf, and the female peaceweaver figures therein, in contemporary philosophical terms of Levinasian ethical subjectivity. Such a reading illuminates the peaceweaver, often caught between action and passivity and viewed as a victim of death-driven masculinist heroic culture, as an exemplar rather of the radical destabilization experienced through ethical subjection and an important key to the complexities of the heroic ethos. It illustrates the enduring value of texts such as Beowulf to inform our understanding of often oversimplified concepts like that of the “warrior ethos” in contemporary culture.

Communication And Social Interactions In The Late Middle Ages: The Fables By The Swiss-German Dominican Ulrich Bonerius, Albrecht Classen

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There are many possible and useful approaches to the study of literature. One very effective way proves to be to study literary texts as platforms to explore the meaning, relevance, and workings of human communication, or the very opposite, miscommunication. Such an approach proves to be rather productive both for medieval and modern texts, from the western and the eastern tradition, whether we are reflecting on entertaining, moral, didactic, religious, or political texts. The literary work consists of words exchanged, and thus here we encounter the perfect example of a theoretical platform to discuss human interactions in many different contexts …

Luigi Pulci’S Fifteenth-Century Verse Parody Of Moses: A Denunciation Of Marsilio Ficino’S Neoplatonic Christianity, Michael J. Maher

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In early 1470s Florence, popular poet Luigi Pulci, author of the celebrated epic poem Morgante, wrote a sonnet of religious parody. In Poi ch’io parti’ da voi, Pulci satirizes biblical miracles, immediately earning himself the label of heretic, still attached to his name to this day. A close examination of Pulci’s sonnet, with specific attention given to his treatment of Moses, reveals Pulci’s motivation and the circumstances surrounding composition. Pulci’s scandalous sonnet was in fact an attempt at underscoring the maltreatment of biblical miracles in a first-century Greek text by the Romano-Jewish historian Jospehus. Renowned philosopher Marsilio Ficino, with …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner

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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 2022

Katharine Davidson Bekker

Elizabethan Technology: Thomas Watson’S Steam Bath For The Relief Of Gout, James Alsop

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Thomas Watson (1513-84), Doctor of Divinity and deprived Marian bishop of Lincoln, developed an expertise in the treatment of gout. In his practice of experiential medicine in East Anglia, he used an innovative steam chest: the patient sat in a cut-open empty wine pipe, surrounded by heated bricks, and covered with a sheet. This device, with its method of enclosed steam heat, contrasts sharply with prevailing renaissance therapeutic philosophy.

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Linguistic Failure And The “Trembling Parole” In Alain Chartier’S Belle Dame Sans Mercy, Alani Hicks-Bartlett

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At first blush, Alain Chartier’s late medieval poem, the Belle Dame sans mercy seems to recount a story that is quite similar to narrations of other frustrated affairs in the courtly love tradition, as it tells of a devoted lover who relentlessly, yet unsuccessfully, begs for the euphemistic “mercy” of his lady. Plying the lady with compliments, assailing her with threats, and attempting to verbally manipulate her, the lover endeavors to force the lady to love him through various unsuccessful linguistic strategies. Although he commits to the lady and presents her with countless arguments about why she should cede to …

How To Teach With Shakespeare: James Baldwin, The Liberal Arts, And The Progymnasmata, Steven Hrdlicka

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This review essay addresses pedagogical principles found in Scott Newstok’s recent book How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education (2020). Specifically, the essay discusses the progymnasmata exercises of paraphrase and êthopoeia and provides real-life applications and examples. The essay also suggests how such study aims at “fruitful” effects, as well as providing distinctions between “fruitful” and “useful” study. Other points relevant to the fruitful ends of the study of the liberal arts, such as freedom and empathy, are discussed as they pertain to a student’s ability to think creatively and to express thoughts with clarity and originality. …

Nationalism In The Context Of Globalization, Mariana Tepfenhart, M.A.

Comparative Civilizations Review

To understand the connection and consequences between nationalism and globalism, I will start with a basic definition of nationalism. According to Websters Dictionary, nations that are focused on national, not international goals, are nationalistic. A nation comprises the same language, customs, and traditions.

Some scholars have argued that nationalism has historical roots. People have been bonded by ethnicity and politics from ancient times. Others consider nationalism as a modern phenomenon due to industrialization, democratization, and modern technology. Jonathan Hearn1 from the University of Edinburgh has argued that some states are more homogeneous than others and they have strong senses of …

Small Claims, Shawna V. Tropp

Comparative Civilizations Review

Had Laura Davidov not been a heavy woman in her late fifties, she would have thought that she had made a conquest. A golden young man appeared to have been following her through the Musée Rodin for over an hour; his eyes were turquoise, and he was quite old enough to be her son. There was also something disturbingly familiar about him. She therefore beamed her most maternal smile upon him and took a hesitant step in his direction.

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Comparative Civilizations Review

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Comparative Civilizations Review

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Book Review: Zheng Wang. Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory In Chinese Politics And Foreign Relations, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

“Never Forget National Humiliation!”? Really? Yes. This is Zheng Wang’s very interesting study of the post-Mao Chinese Communist Party’s massive re-education campaign. It was created in the years following the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 when post-Mao CCP hard-liners approved a military response to civilian protesters that would crush China’s emerging pro-democracy movement.

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Editor's Note, John Berteaux, Executive Editor

Comparative Civilizations Review

From July 28 to July 30, 2022, it was my pleasure to serve as the Program Chair of the 51st International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations conference — The Future of Civilization(s). This issue of the Comparative Civilizations Review contains a selection of articles presented at the conference.

Our New Iscsc Social Media Presence, Bibi Pelić

Comparative Civilizations Review

Social media presence is essential, we could say even critical to any organization today. Social media can for itself be a topic for a discussion on civilization, as social media is today shaping mindsets, for better or worse.

Realizing this major development in our ever-more digitalized world, the ISCSC has undergone, in the past year, significant changes in the direction of establishing its social media presence.