The Right Stuff: Habitus And Embodied Virtue In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight,
2010
Louisiana State University, Alexandria
The Right Stuff: Habitus And Embodied Virtue In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Alice F. Blackwell
Quidditas
One of the themes weaving in and out of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is that of virtue: Gawain’s shield proclaims his virtue, yet at the end of the Green Chapel scene, he exclaims vice has destroyed his virtue, leaving him “faulty and false.” This scene has troubled critics and students, however, for many consider his reaction excessive for his default on the rules of a courtly game. The present paper contends that the notion of virtue written for Gawain naturalizes embodied virtue. While both religious and lay writers tended to argue that one possessed predisposition to moral or …
Putting On The Garment Of Widowhood: Medieval Widows, Monastic Memory, And Historical Writing,
2010
SUNY The College at Brockport
Putting On The Garment Of Widowhood: Medieval Widows, Monastic Memory, And Historical Writing, Katherine Clark
Quidditas
The idea of the widow in communal memory and historical writing was a resonant and multi-faceted concept for monastic writers of the Middle Ages. This essay focuses on the function and meaning of widowhood in two examples of early medieval historical writing, by one male and one female author, to illustrate how monastic authors engaged significant and enduring aspects of widowhood during the Western European Middle Ages to construct institutional histories. Images of female memory and widowed piety (especially because the widow represented the Church who awaited her spouse, Christ) were useful in describing the experiences of women who held …
“Talk Of Marriage” In Northwest England: Continuity And Change In Matrimonial Litigation, 1560-1640,
2010
Western Illinois University
“Talk Of Marriage” In Northwest England: Continuity And Change In Matrimonial Litigation, 1560-1640, Jennifer Mcnabb
Quidditas
This article suggests that the matrimonial culture of northwest England from 1560 to 1640 was marked by a complex range of strategies, values, and processes that emphasized matrimony as a performative process. While present-tense language of consent created, in the words of sixteenth-century lawyer Henry Swinburne, the “Substance and indissoluble knot of Matrimony,” people in the northwest consistently identified other words, actions, and attitudes that also communicated matrimonial intent. Litigation from the diocese of Chester’s two consistory courts features considerable “talk of marriage” by litigants and deponents and reveals an enduring emphasis in the northwest on public performance of matrimonial …
Full Issue,
2010
Brigham Young University
Satire In Boaistuau’S Théâtre Du Monde,
2010
Ohio Wesleyan University
Satire In Boaistuau’S Théâtre Du Monde, Alison Baird Lovell
Quidditas
Le Théâtre du monde [Theater of the World] (1558) of Pierre Boaistuau was an encyclopedic compilation in three books presenting a litany of vices and miseries in human life; the book proved to be an early modern “bestseller” and was reproduced in many editions and translations across Europe. Boaistuau, the first editor of the tales of Marguerite de Navarre, also edited other story collections, besides investigating religious matters, early modern science and medicine including prodigies and monsters, and other developing forms of knowledge. The Théâtre du monde manifested topoi including the theatrum mundi with its vast spectacle displayed …
Cognition And Recognition In King Lear, Act Iv. Scene Vii,
2010
Northwest Missouri State University
Cognition And Recognition In King Lear, Act Iv. Scene Vii, Jenny Rebecca Rytting
Quidditas
Although King Lear’s half-line “You are a spirit I know” (IV.vii.49) has no internal punctuation in the Folio or Quarto versions of Shakespeare’s play, most modern editors add a comma between the words “spirit” and “I.” This spurious comma forces the line to be interpreted to mean “I know that you are a spirit” rather than “You are a spirit that I know,” whereas, without punctuation, both interpretations are viable. I argue that the latter reading is not only possible, based on Shakespeare’s syntactical practices, but also preferable, based on both the immediate context of the line and the theme …
Banishing Ganymede At Whitehall: Jove’S “Loathsome Staines” And Fictions Of Britain In Thomas Carew’S Coelum Britannicum,
2010
Southern Utah University
Banishing Ganymede At Whitehall: Jove’S “Loathsome Staines” And Fictions Of Britain In Thomas Carew’S Coelum Britannicum, Jessica Tvordi
Quidditas
Thomas Carew’s masque Coelum Britannicum, performed at Whitehall on Shrove Tuesday of 1634, deploys an image of conjugal perfection in order to codify a fiction of national union. Not only are Charles I and Henrietta Maria models of moral and political comportment powerful enough to reform the profligate court of Jove, their harmonious marriage also provides the inspiration for reconciliation between England, Scotland, and Ireland. In order to assert this fiction of unification, the masque invokes images of sexual transgression, symbolically enacts their removal, and equates the strength of Britain with the absence of the deviant monarch, James I. …
Saints And The Social Order: Alexander Barclay’S The Life Of St. George,
2010
Brigham Young University
Saints And The Social Order: Alexander Barclay’S The Life Of St. George, Maggie Gallup Kopp
Quidditas
This paper examines The Life of St. George, Alexander Barclay’s 1515 translation of a humanist Latin prose poem. Barclay, who styled himself a laureate in the tradition of Lydgate, adapts laureate poetic practice in order to address a noble audience in a bid to gain court patronage. Barclay’s emendations and additions transform the hagiography of England’s patron saint into a commentary on traditional English ideals of citizenship and good governance, aimed at an audience comprised of both common citizens and noble elites, including, as this paper argues, the young king Henry VIII.
