Comparative Literature Commons^™

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

Quidditas

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

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

Quidditas

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 …

In Memoriam

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Back Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Notes

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Svealand, Götaland And The Rise Of The East-Slavic Kingdom — Response To Piotr Murzionak (Comparative Civilizations Review, No. 73 Fall 2015), Bertil Haggman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Comparative Civilizations Review

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Uncanny Bodies In Sacred Settings: Creating The Divine In Rodney Smith's Photography, Rebecca Leigh Langham

Theses and Dissertations

The photographer Rodney Smith shows us images of real things and people, but real things and people that aren’t positioned in real ways and places people would actually be. Instead, he uses something very familiar to each of us–the human body–and consistently puts it in very unfamiliar situations. By using something so intimately familiar to each of us as the body in weird ways, he automatically jars our own experienced sensations. And this jarring of familiar sensations, this defamiliarization of something so familiar to us, is what typically results in what literary critics term the feeling of the uncanny. What …

George Friedman, Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis In Europe, Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Philanthropic Aspects Of Islam: The Case Of The Fundamentalist Movement In Indonesia, Hisanori Kato

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Dario Fernandez-Morera, The Myth Of The Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, And Jews Under Islamic Rule In Medieval Spain, Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Erik Larson, In The Garden Of Beasts: Love, Terror, And An American Family In Hitler's Berlin, Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Faithful To The Fans: Audience Influence On The Lizzie Bennet Diaries And Transmedia Adaptation Fidelity, Shaina Gwynn Robbins

Theses and Dissertations

New forms of digital storytelling directly challenge conventional notions about adaptation by allowing for increased audience participation. Fans today exercise unprecedented levels of influence over how beloved stories are adapted. According to Thomas Leitch, fans have historically influenced certain adaptations by calling for increased fidelity. He refers to these adaptations, which resist the inevitability of infidelity to an unusual degree, as “exceptionally faithful.” Though rare, these efforts at fidelity are typically the result of fan demands. Ultimately, these seemingly faithful adaptations are more faithful to fan expectations than to their original texts. Scholarship is needed on the extensive influence of …

Art From The Macchiaioli To The Futurists: Idealized Masculinity In The Art Of Signorini And Balla, Melissa Ann Bush

Theses and Dissertations

Beginning around 1850, Italians found themselves in the midst of an identity crisis. Europeans in France and England had surpassed Italians in terms of political, economic, and social progress. Italians seemed trapped in the past, clinging to their magnificent artistic heritage. However, new cultural and social movements were on the rise in Italy that attempted to throw off the domination of other European entities and forge a promising future for Italy. The Macchiaioli, a group of Italian modern artists who painted from 1853 to 1908, were the first group to address contemporary social issues such as class struggle and national …

Refiguring The Wild West: Minerva Teichert And Her Feminine Communities, Deirdre Mason Scharffs

Theses and Dissertations

Minerva Teichert (1888-1976) was a twentieth-century American artist, who spent most of her life residing in remote towns in the West, earnestly balancing the demands of family and ranching, and painting scenes of her beloved Western frontier. Her steady and significant production of art is remarkable for any artist, and particularly compelling when one considers her time constraints, inaccessibility of art supplies, distance from other artists and art centers, and lack of public attention. The success of women artists during the first half of the twentieth-century was dependent not only upon their artistic aptitude, but also upon external forces, such …

The Prince And The Priestess: Artistically Elevating Charles De Valois' Authority In Fifteenth-Century France, Sarah James Dyer

Theses and Dissertations

Charles de Valois (1446-1472) was a prince in fifteenth-century France. During his short lifetime, Charles endeavored to gain more authority while in conflict with his brother Louis XI, who was king. Although a minor political character in French history, Charles did demonstrate his power in several artistic ways. One commission by the young royal was a manuscript now known as the Hours of Charles of France. Two pages of this text, the Annunciation to the Virgin, are decorated with rich imagery and iconography used to exhibit Charles' desire for greater authority. The manuscript has only been discussed stylistically, and therefore …

Selma Lagerlöf And Early Ecological Thought, Chelsea Francis, Christopher Oscarson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

While it is not difficult to isolate the first uses of the word “ecology,” it is far more elusive to trace the origins of the idea before the term became commonplace. In this project, Dr. Oscarson and I attempted to map the changing concept of nature in turn-of-the-century Sweden in literary and scientific sources to clarify and define this important paradigm shift, particularly through the works of Nobel prizing winning Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940). Lagerlöf is a popular figure in Swedish literary history, and this project proposes to study her in a new light. Although she has not historically …

What Happened To The Grandsons And Great-Grandsons Of The House Of York?, James H. Forse

Quidditas

Josephine Tey, in her famous murder mystery centering on Richard III, The Daughter of Time, asserts that Richard was not a murderous tyrant determined to eliminate any challengers to his throne; rather it was the aim of Henry VII and Henry VIII to eliminate most of the male descendants of Richard Duke of York. Do the fates of those male descendants actually demonstrate that such was the policy of the first two Tudor monarchs?

Le Morte Darthur And The Extratextual Significance Of Prophecy Across The Centuries, Stephanie Victoria Violette

Quidditas

Prophecy is the driving force of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. The Morte emerged from a tradition of prophecy that existed long before its creation, and which continued into the early modern period. Prophecy influenced both political and religious spheres, as well as medieval cultural perceptions of time. English culture absorbed the Morte’s prophetic elements and used them to either bolster later uses of prophecy or to defame them. Using the Morte as a starting point, this examination draws on elements from various sources: Greek, Christian, and Welsh folklore, Geoffrey of Monmouth and contemporaries of Thomas Malory. Also part …

The Reception Of Tacitus’ Germania By The German Humanists: From Provence To Empire, Thomas Renna

Quidditas

It is well known he German Humanists (1490-1540) used Tacitus’ Germania to advance their notion of the German nation in response to Italian criticism. But less attention has been given to the German nature of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (1509). I argue that Humanists after Conrad Celtis (Bebel, Wimpheling, Cochlaeus, Brant, Irenicus, Franck, Hutten) emphasized the Germanness of the empire by reinterpreting the traditional Translation of Empire, the Germanic migrations out of Germania after Constantine, and the designation of a new national purpose (the protection and expansion of the Church and the faith). They grafted the …

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2016)

Quidditas

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

This year’s recipient is Samantha Dressel, doctoral candidate in English at the University of Rochester.

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Small Mid-Tudor Chronicles And Popular History: 1540-1560, Barrett L. Beer

Quidditas

This essay examines twenty-two editions of little-studied small Mid-Tudor chronicles that were published by printers at Canterbury and London. They demonstrate the important role of printers in historical scholarship and offer a significantly different perspective on English history than the better-known, larger contemporary works of Robert Fabyan, Edward Hall, and Thomas Cooper. The chronicles also shed light on the readership of historical works by non-elite readers who presumably could not afford larger and more expensive chronicles. The short chronicles present a simplified view of the past, avoid propagating the well-known Tudor myths including the tyranny of Richard III, and demonstrate …

Master William’S Hamnet: A New Theory On Shakespeare’S Sonnets, Juan Daniel Millán

Quidditas

This essay suggests the Fair Youth in Shakespeare’s Sonnets is Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, to whom he later dedicated the cycle. Nevertheless, the larger claims of the essay are independent of the biographical details of Shakespeare’s life, and even independent of the particular ordering of the Sonnets as they have come down to us.

“The Man In The Shyppe That Showeth The Unstableness Of The World”: Social Memory And The Early Modern English Sailor, 1475-1650, Vincent V. Patarino Jr., Ph.D.

Quidditas

Both medieval and early modern English writers described the tumultuous, raging sea as the epitome of chaos and evil. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both manuscript and print documents connected seething storms with the power and influence of evil, especially the devil. As the Reformation advanced, this link included Satan’s supposed minions, witches. In addition to these texts, woodcut illustrations confirmed in very stark terms, a direct association between the devil, the sea, and sailors’ supposedly anti-religious behavior and beliefs. One powerful image revealed “the man in the shyppe” tormented by the devil; others depicted the devil steering a …

Delno C. West Award Winner (2016)

Quidditas

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

This year’s recipient is Ruth Frost, Associate Professor of History, the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, BC.

Richard Iii: Beyond The Mystery, Daniel Hobbins

Quidditas

He is not the likeliest theme for an American undergraduate classroom: his reign lasted barely two years; he contributed nothing of lasting significance to history; he is more memorable for his spectacular final defeat than for any victory; he was accused of murdering children; and he was after all an English king, as far removed as possible from the typical experience of an American undergraduate. Even the times he lived in are against him. In the immortal words of Mark Twain, his century was “the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages.”1 Yet he continues to …

“Like To My Soft Sex”: Female Revenge And Violence In The Fatal Contract, Samantha Dressel

Quidditas

The Fatal Contract by William Heminge is not a good play. Its critical afterlife is essentially non-existent, with Fredson Thayer Bowers being one of the only critics to discuss it, criticizing its lack of “inspiration” and “ethical spirit.”1 I argue however, that the play is both inventive and moral, despite its many derivative aspects and narrative foibles. I suggest a new reading of the play as deeply innovative in terms of gender and revenge. Bowers criticizes the play’s morality because of the ultimate exoneration of Chrotilda, the central revengeress. The play can be reinterpreted and partially redeemed by understanding Chrotilda’s …