Comparative Literature Commons^™

Iconoclasm And Iconophilia In Othello, Catherine E. Winiarski

Quidditas

In his book War Against the Idols, Carlos Eire argues that iconoclastic resistance to the Medieval Catholic Church began with the gentle scolding of Erasmus and ended as the "shibboleth" of radical Calvinism. The use of images in religious instruction and practice was one of the major points of dispute between Protestant reformers and Catholic counter-reformers. Iconoclasm was certainly not confined to radical Calvinism; Anglican reformers, especially those who had spent time in continental Europe as exiles (like John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury), quickly raised the issue in their country, which had its own unique history of religious reform. …

Helena, Heraclius, And The True Cross, Hans A. Pohlsander

Quidditas

More than three hundred years stand between the empress Helena, or St. Helena, and the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. This chronological distance has not been a hindrance to a very close association of the two personalities with each other. The link is not dynastic but thematic; it is provided by the Holy Cross, or the True Cross, i. e. the very cross of Christ's passion. It is the purpose of this article to show the manifestation of this link in the religious literature and ecclesiastical art of the Middle Ages and in the liturgy to this day.

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2003)

Quidditas

Catherine E. Winiarski

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

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Fama And Fortuna: Giorgio Vasari’S Michelangelo, Peter Kanelos

Quidditas

The life of Michelangelo is set indisputably as the capstone to Giorgio Vasari’s monumental, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori (1568). Cathedral-like in its detail and expanse, Vasari’s collection of biographies is itself a carefully designed and constructed work of art. Its separate parts are crafted with concern for the whole; from its series of individual narratives, a single grand narrative emerges. Buonarroti’s position in this is conspicuous, and purposefully so. In the first edition of the Vite (1550)—his biography, the only one granted a living artist—concludes the work decisively. It is the final entry and the …

The Enemy Within Islam, Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

The recent spread of political, radical Islam around the world has captured the attention of the secular world. This movement has launched a spate of violence and unrest, culminating in the al-Qaeda attack on the United States on September 11, 2001. Public interest in Islam has not been so keen since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979—another event that took the world by surprise. Political observers have pinpointed the Saudis as the source of the problem. Not only were the majority of the terrorist bombers Saudi, but also they were thoroughly indoctrinated into the severe Muslim Wahhabi sect that …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner: The Presence Of The Past: Shakespeare In South Africa, Natasha Distiller

Quidditas

In what ways has Shakespeare—as a collection of texts, as cultural capital, as a tool of a colonial education system as powerful as the bible and the gun—manifest in South African culture? Today I will sketch the presence of the past in a way which aims to draw out the South African in Shakespeare as much as the Shakespearean in South Africa. I do this following the post-colonial call to redress the imbalance of knowledges between the West and the Rest, and in order to break a simplistic cultural binary which posits “African,” colonized culture on one side and “European,” …

Review Essay: Alan Bray. The Friend, Garrett P.J. Epp

Quidditas

Alan Bray. The Friend. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003. 380pp. Ill.

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Pain For Pen: Gaspara Stampa's Stile Novo, Amy R. Insalaco

Quidditas

The Italian critic and scholar, Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) dismisses Gaspara Stampa's Rime (1553) thus:

She was a woman; And usually a woman, when she is not given to ape men, uses poetry and submits it to her affections because she loves her lover or her own children more than poetry. The lazy practice of women is revealed in their scanty theoretical and contemplative power.

For him, Stampa’s poetry is somehow inferior to her male counterpart’s poetry because it lacks “theoretical and contemplative power.” This essay will analyze aspects of Stampa’s poetry which disprove this claim.

Delno C. West Award Winner: Using And Abusing Delegated Power In Elizabethan England, James H. Forse

Quidditas

Queen Elizabeth's government, like most early modern European governments, was one that sought to extend its influence and power throughout the realm. But at the same time it possessed minimal financial resources and coercive machinery of power, and therefore, while it issued mandates, it had to depend upon local officials and individuals to whom it delegated power. Nor did Elizabeth’s government have any machinery of oversight to “watch-dog” those delegated powers. Only when issues came to the attention of the Privy Council after-the-fact did the government, occasionally, intervene to redress abuses of those delegated powers. Two areas in which these …

Review Essay: Valeria Finucci. The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, And Castration In The Italian Renaissance, Liz Horodowich

Quidditas

Valeria Finucci. The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8223-3065-2. $24.95 paper.

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

The Unfortunate Traveller And The Ramist Controversy: A Narrative Dilemma, Kurtis B. Haas

Quidditas

The narrative and rhetorical structure of Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller has vexed its critics almost since its initial appearance in 1593. Most modern critics have followed a line something akin to that of G.R. Hibbard, who sees Nashe as a writer unable at times to distinguish his own voice from that of the narrator, Jack Wilton. Stephen Hilliard’s study of Nashe notes the critical tendency to see The Unfortunate Traveller as “a formless work, spun out by a careless author with no fixed purpose” and, though he chides such critics for ignoring its many virtues, grants that they likely …

Review Essay: Michelle P. Brown. The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality And The Scribe, Thomas Klein

Quidditas

Michelle P. Brown. The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. xvi, 479 pp.

God As Androgyne: Jane Lead’S Rewriting Of The Destiny Of Nature, Sylvia Bowerbank

Quidditas

Jane Lead [or Leade] (1624–1704) was one of the few seventeenth-century Englishwomen bold and radical enough to engage in "God-talk"—to used Rosemary Ruether's term. When the power of the English king and church was restored in 1660, radical millenarians were repressed and had to face that the English revolution—“God’s cause”— had failed politically, at least temporarily. In her recuperation of God’s cause, Lead argued that the revolution, properly understood, would be “intrinsical.” In her prophecies, Lead unites a radical hermeneutics of Scripture with Jacob Boehme’s concept of God as androgyne in order to reconfigure both God and divine history. According …

Wîse Maget, Jolyon Timothy Hughes

Quidditas

In Medieval German Literature, the figure of the wise man occurs repeatedly. This can be evidenced in several primary works of literature from the period. In Wolframs von Eschenbach's Parzival Trevrizent is shown to be a very wizened and understanding member of Parzival’s own family. In Gottfried von Straßburg’s Tristan, the title figure is known to be wise before he is physically mature. However, in the critical literature on the period, there is no mention of older female characters exhibiting similar attributes as those qualities exemplified by the male figure of young Tristan, let alone younger women or girls.

Traditions And Civilizations: Another Approach To Understanding Human History, Walter Benesch, Eduardo Wilner

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

What Is Living And What Is Dead In Eurocentrism?, Ricardo Duchesne

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Fernand Braudel. Civilization And Capitalism, 15th-18th Century. V. 2 The Wheels Of Commerce, Gloria Emeagwali

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

John Ruedy (Ed.) Islamism And Secularism In North Africa, Corrine Lathrop Gilb

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Comparative Civilizations Review

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Civilizational Concept, Matthew Melko

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

An Assessment Of Innovative Dating In Recent Studies Of Ancient Civilization, Rosco C. Hinkle

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

David Keys, Catastrophe: A Quest For The Origins Of The Modern World., Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Beatrix Midant-Reynes. The Prehistory Of Egypt: From The First Egyptians To The First Pharoahs, Laurence Grambow Wolf

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Global Vision Of World History In Contemporary China, Ricardo K. S. Mak

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Charles Melville, Ed. Safavid Persia: The History And Politics Of An Islamic Society, Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

From The Editors, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Globalization Vs. Americanization: Is The World Being Americanized By The Dominance Of American Culture, Yoichi Shimemura

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.