Comparative Literature Commons^™

Maria Fairfax And The “Easy Philosopher”: Action And Indolence In Andrew Marvell’S “Upon Appleton House”, Byron Nelson

Quidditas

Andrew Marvell dramatizes the difficult choice between action and indolence in his long pastoral poem, “Upon Appleton House.” The nameless nun’s rhetorical temptation of Isabel Thwaites, as narrated in an apparent digression from the past history of the house, anticipates the poet’s own self-seduction in the woods later in the poem. Both Isabel and the poet need to be rescued from their fallen state. The tension between action and passivity is resolved by the redemptive appearance of “Maria.” The model for her providential intervention is the Shakespearean romance, in which an innocent daughter, who is rescued from danger and degradation, …

Alphabetical Lives: Early Modern German Biographical Lexicons And Encyclopedias, Richard G. Cole

Quidditas

Those who appear obvious to us as “major players” in past eras may in part result from an unintended consequence of the work of early modern biographical lexicographers. By the eighteenth century, there were enough printed sources and available archival materials to deluge or even overwhelm historians and biographers with information about past actors of sixteenth century history. Those biographical lexicographers made choices about whom to give prominence and whom to minimize or ignore in their works.

Review Essay: Bringing The Middle Ages Into The World History Survey Course: Some Suggestions, Tiffany A. Trimmer

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Too often World Historians neglect coverage of the European Middle Ages, and medieval history courses tend to lose sight of the ways in which medieval Europe played a part in the wider world to which it belonged. Part of this results from the artificial pre/post 1500 CE split that dominates the organization of the typical world history survey, and part from the reluctance of World Historians to realize the potential of a global history approach to the era before the age of exploration and colonization. The works included in this essay attempt to rectify the absence of earlier European historical …

Books Recommended For Courses: Denis De Rougement. Love In The Western World, J. M. Anderson

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Denis de Rougemont’s Love in the Western World has become something of a classic since it first appeared in 1939. Rougemont traces the development of romantic love from its origins in the twelfth century to its mutated condition in the twentieth. His thesis is that romantic love and marriage are fundamentally opposed. “My central purpose,” he wrote in his Preface to the 1956 revised edition, “was to describe the inescapable conflict in the West between passion and marriage; and in my view that remains the true subject, the real contention of the book as it has worked out.” Whereas romantic …

Books Recommended For Courses: Elena Levy-Navarro. The Culture Of Obesity In Early And Late Modernity: Body Image In Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, And Skelton, Holly Overturf

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If next semester’s reading list is feeling a bit thin, consider fattening it up with The Culture of Obesity in Early and Late Modernity: Body Image in Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and Skelton, an important new book by Elena Levy-Navarro. The book consists of six chapters, followed by extensive endnotes and a useful index. The first two chapters introduce the next four, and seek to build a history from which a fat culture can be formed. In the last four chapters, Levy- Navarro flexes her (fat-blanketed) literary anthropologist muscles by looking for symbolic meanings of fat in selected works of …

The Appropriation Of St Cuthbert: Architecture, History-Writing, And Ecclesiastical Politics In Durham, 1083-1250, John D. Young

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This paper describes the use of the cult of Saint Cuthbert in the High Middle Ages by both the bishops of Durham and the Benedictine community that was tied to the Episcopal see. Its central contention is that the churchmen of Durham adapted this popular cult to the political expediencies of the time. In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, when Bishop William de St. Calais ousted the entrenched remnants of the Lindisfarne community and replaced them with Benedictines, Cuthbert was primarily a monastic saint and not, as he would become, a popular pilgrimage saint. However, once the Benedictine …

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

Peter Severinus: From Humours To Chemistry In The Sixteenth Century, Michael T. Walton, Robert M. Fineman

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The re-discovery of the works of Mendel and others has added greatly to our understanding of genetics. Such is now the case of Peter Severinus, with the recent recovery (or re-discovery) of his seminal work, Idea Medicinae Philosophicae (1571). Severinus concurred with Paracelsus’s (1493-1541) concept of seeds (little chemical factories) that worked on matter to form living things; but he was also aware of transplantation (grafting and cross-pollination) that changed phenotypes and genotypes in plants. Severinus applied this understanding to hereditary diseases in humans and extended Paracelsian theory. He believed that certain diseases in one’s offspring were caused by a …

Tracing Shakespeare’S Sea-Change: From The Tempest To The New York Times, Joshua L. Comer

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An historical approach to the changing use of a Shakespearean phase, like “sea- change,” offers a case study in the long-standing power and evolving meaning of Shakespeare’s language. While all sea-changes today are not so major as those of which Ariel sang in The Tempest, the rich language of Ariel’s song has acquired a significant place in the history of American journalism.

Liminal Butlers: Discussing A Comic Stereotype And The Progression Of Class Distinctions In America, Katie Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will prove how the male domestic servant shows a conservative evolution of class freedom through early American films. As an individual thrust into a liminal sphere, these characters paradoxically become a character type for both keeping class-consciousness as well as breaking up notions of class, albeit in a slow process. In comedy, domestic male servants have always been on duty to help their masters while also becoming sources of mischief as tricksters. In early American films, these characters embody the anxiety of a classless body of men who become scapegoats, trickster-figures, and mask-wearing sages in order to survive—attracting …

Mythic Symbols Of Batman, John J. Darowski

Theses and Dissertations

Batman has become a fixture in the popular consciousness of America. Since his first publication in Detective Comics #27 in 1939, he has never ceased publication, appearing in multiple titles every month as well as successfully transitioning into other media such as film and television. A focused analysis of the character will reveal that Batman has achieved and maintained this cultural resonance for almost seventy years by virtue of attaining the status of a postmodern American mythology. In both theme and function, Batman has several direct connections to ancient mythology and has adapted that form into a distinctly American archetype. …

Ziya Gökalp On Modernity And Islam: The Origins Of An Uneasy Union In Contemporary Turkey, Üner Daglier

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Erring Knights Of Desire: The Romance In Santa Teresa's Libro De La Vida And Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Emily Marie Stanfill

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores how romance opens the texts of two sixteenth-century authors. The first is the autobiography, Libro de la vida, of Spanish nun, mystic, and reformer, Santa Teresa de Jésus. Amidst the narrative of her life and her instructions on how to better live the mystical life, Teresa uses the mode of romance to construct herself and God in complicated and often conflicting roles: she the wandering (sinning) knight-errant who quests towards the ideal lady, Christ; she the walled garden into which her lover enters for fleeting moments of bliss; she the passive feminine recipient of God's forceful loves; …

The Writing On The Wall: Chinese-American Immigrants' Fight For Equality: 1850-1943, Elizabeth Lyman

Theses and Dissertations

Early in the 1850s, a greater number of Chinese immigrants began to enter the United States, leading to a Sinophobic frenzy that would continue for decades. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, Americans sought to exclude the Chinese literally and figuratively. Americans employed negative imagery to demonstrate the necessity of excluding the Chinese in order to “protect" white America. The negative imagery that became Americans' common view of the “Chinaman," enabled the United States to enact discriminatory laws without compunction. In the face of intense persecution and bitter discrimination, many …

Toward A Dialogue With The West: The Use Of Eliot's Modernism In Al-Sayyab's City Poetry, Saddik M. Gohar

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Alan D. Breck Award Winner (2006)

Quidditas

Kimberly Johnson

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

Heloise And Abelard Today: A Student Response Approach, Carol Breslin, Donald F. Duclow

Quidditas

The story of Heloise and Abelard has aged remarkably well. We teach their “Personal Letters” and Abelard’s Historia calamitatum in two undergraduate courses. This article discusses an informal writing assignment, in which our students adopt the persona of Astralabe, the son of Heloise and Abelard, and write a letter to Heloise concerning his parents’ lives and loves. Often students read the correspondence through the filter of contemporary experience. They consider Abelard’s behavior as patriarchal and boorish, and object to what they see as Heloise’s extreme humility and acceptance of the anti-feminist palaver of her day. However, when students remember and …

Full Issue

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No abstract provided.

History As A Detective Story, James H. Forse

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Josephine Tey (nom de plume of Elizabeth MacKintosh). The Daughter of Time, with Introduction by Robert Barnard (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995; original copyright 1951 by Elizabeth MacKintosh). 206 pages. $14.00.

Temples Of Caesar: The Politics Of Renaissance Georgics Translations, Kimberly Johnson

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Between the last years of Elizabeth I’s reign and the regicide of Charles I, three major English translations of Virgil’s middle poem, the Georgics, were published. Each translation appeared at a moment of religio-political crisis in England, a coincidence made more significant by the ambivalent political stance of Virgil’s text, which simultaneously communicates praise for Octavian and suspicion about an imperial program that disenfranchised the agricultural classes, an oversight which Virgil records in the Georgics as impiety. This paper charts the ways in which seemingly innocent translation decisions manage to perform a critical interrogation of monarchal authority, particularly as it …

William Of Auvergne And Popular Demonology, Thomas De Mayo

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Theologian and bishop of Paris during St. Louis’ early reign, William of Auvergne (d. 1249) aimed in his life and writings to combat the myriad threats he perceived as facing Christianity. The early thirteenth century saw many potential competitors to official doctrines concerning the natural and supernatural worlds—Arabic philosophy imported into the universities, heretical attacks on the institutional church, and persistent folk beliefs and practices. William attributed these challenges to an underlying demonic conspiracy directed against humankind. This paper examines William’s treatment of popular beliefs on the Wild Hunt, a mysterious congregation of spirits, and related beliefs about female spirits …

Rendering Shakespearean Rhetoric Visible In The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, Katherine Kickel

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Traditionally, the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery is considered an important moment in England’s art history narrative. In this essay, I argue that the Boydell collection also reflects a new preference for reading Shakespeare’s plays in the eighteenth century via its editorial illustration of parts of the plays that would not normally be emphasized in theatrical productions.

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

Review Essay: Some Thoughts On The Greater Integration Of Islamic Sources Into The Wider Framework Of Medieval History, John J. Curry

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The study of Islam has been attracting greater interest in recent years, due to high-profile political and economic events. In addition, the rise of world history programs has generated a need for resources by which both students and faculty alike can strengthen their knowledge in this field. Still, general knowledge on the field is limited. This disparity has occurred, in part, because the field of Islamic history, especially in its formative and medieval periods, has been oriented toward specialists rather than a general audience. Often, world history sourcebooks are content to give only short selections from religious sources such as …

Charlemagne’S Denarius, Constantine’S Edicule, And The Vera Crux, John F. Moffitt

Quidditas

In 806 a much-discussed silver denarius bearing the likeness of Charlemagne was issued. This is called the “temple-type” coin due to the (as yet unidentified) architectural structure illustrated on the reverse side, and which is explicitly labeled as representing the epitome of “Christian Religion.” By examining different kinds of archeological and documentary evidence, this building can now be finally identified. It is, in short, the “Edicule” built by Constantine the Great in 326 to cover the Tomb of Christ (or Holy Sepulcher) in Jerusalem.

Old Icelandic Gaglviðr, Aurelijus Vijūnas

Quidditas

This essay discusses a debated word form gaglviðr occurring in stanza 42 of the Old Icelandic poem VÄluspá 'The Prophesy of the Seeress'. The noun gaglviðr is problematic both from the semantic point of view (Old Icelandic gagl 'gosling', viðr 'tree; forest' 'gosling forest'?), and because it possesses a variant spelling galgviðr ('gallows' tree;’gallows' forest') which occurs in another manuscript containing the same poem. In the present paper, the form gaglviðr is considered to be the correct and the original form of this word, whereas the form galgviðr is interpreted as a scribal error. Various existing semantic analyses of the …

Delno C. West Award Winner (2006)

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Margaret Harp

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

Twentieth-Century Illustrators’ Interpretations Of The Works Of Rabelais, Margaret Harp

Quidditas

Gustave Doré's mid-nineteenth-century illustrations of François Rabelais's oeuvre have become as well-known as the text itself: their fanciful details capture the literally larger-than-life personality of the French sixteenth-century humanist's protaganist-giants, Pantagruel and Gargantua. Equally intrigued by the thematic complexity and imaginative narrative of this Renaissance masterpiece, subsequent artists and illustrators of Rabelais continue to create new and unexpected artistic representations. This paper presents the illustrations of a lesser-known twentieth-century French wood engraver, Jean Chièze. His notable contributions to a 1935 commemorative edition of Pantagruel simultaneously highlight the medieval woodcut, emphasize the playful tone of Rabelais's narrative and allude to contemporary …

The Birth Of Sacrifice: Iconographic Metaphors For Spiritual Rebirth In Master Matthias' Isenheim Altarpiece, Katherine Lena Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

While little is known concerning the events surrounding the commission of the Isenheim Altarpiece or of the artist known to us as Master Matthias Grünewald, much can be ascertained about the message of the Altarpiece through careful study of the socio-historical-religious context from which the work was commissioned and iconographic analysis of the images portrayed by Master Matthias. This thesis explores iconographic metaphors for birth and sacrifice, metaphors which work to create a theological dialogue about Christian redemption within the nine painted panels and the underlying sculpture that makes up the Isenheim Altarpiece. First, we will address the panels in …

Once Upon A Time In A Single-Parent Family: Father And Daughter Relationships In Disney's The Little Mermaid And Beauty And The Beast, Ashli A. Sharp

Theses and Dissertations

Fairy tales are adapted to fit the needs of each generation, reflecting the unique challenges of that society. In the 1980s and 1990s of the United States, issues of what constituted a family circulated as divorce increased and fatherhood was debated. At this time, Disney released two animated films featuring a father and daughter: The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Both films are adaptations of fairy tales, and they incorporate changes that specifically reflect concerns of the United States in the late-twentieth century. In the original narrative of "The Little Mermaid" the heroine is primarily raised by her …