Philosophy Commons^™

In Memoriam: James H. Forse, Ginger Smoak, Steven Hrdlicka, Jennifer Mcnabb, Charles Smith, Margaret Harp

Quidditas

This volume is dedicated to Professor James H. Forse who died at the age of 83 on April 24, 2023. He was a longtime member of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, and editor of Quidditas from 2003 to 2023.

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

Quidditas

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

Quidditas

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

Quidditas

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 …

Delno C. West Award Winner

Quidditas

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

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

Quidditas

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 …

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

Quidditas

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. …

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

History And Directing Shakespeare, James H. Forse

Quidditas

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 …

To The Lighthouse Or To Mrs. Ramsay? A Study Of Materialization Through The Symbolism Of The Lighthouse In Virginia Woolf’S To The Lighthouse, Virginia Moscetti

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In this paper, I argue that the “lighthouse” in Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse operates as a symbol for Mrs. Ramsay’s “self-hood” and for Mr. Ramsay’s obscure desire for sanctuary and domesticity in Mrs. Ramsay. Through this symbolism I further contend that Woolf renders the ambiguous processes associated with self-hood and desire materially legible and, in doing so, demonstrates how metaphor and symbolism reconstitute our material world into representation. Moreover, I argue that we can conceptualize the lighthouse symbolism revolving around and centered in Mrs. Ramsay in terms of T.J. Clark’s “dual figure”; a figure with two symbolic connotations …

Full Issue

Quidditas

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Front Matter

Quidditas

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Allen D. Breck Award Winner

Quidditas

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

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

Quidditas

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 …

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

Quidditas

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. …

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

Quidditas

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 …

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

Quidditas

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.

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

Quidditas

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.

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

Quidditas

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 …

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

Quidditas

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.

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

Quidditas

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 …

Empathy And Fairness In Nonhuman Primates: Evolutionary Bases Of Human Morality, Colt Halter

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

Darwin offered an evolutionary perspective on the origins of human morality, suggesting that humans share a biological foundation with nonhuman primates. This paper reviews the current literature on moral and prosocial behaviors of nonhuman primates, specifically examining whether nonhuman primates exhibit behaviors that are typical of empathy and fairness. The literature documents that nonhuman primates exhibit empathetic behaviors regarding emotional contagion and sympathetic concern. There is also evidence that nonhuman primates have a sense of fairness, seen in their reciprocal behaviors and aversion to inequity. Taken together, this suggests that there are evolutionary roots of morality, lending empirical support to …

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

The Good, The Bad, And The Violent: Analyzing Beowulf’S Heroic Displacement And Transgressive Violence During The Grendel Quest, Jessie Bonafede

Quidditas

Heroic actions are often associated with altruistic feats of humanitarianism, but in Beowulf, the connection between heroism and performative acts of violence reveal significant complications concerning how the poem codifies violence for social honor. A central conflict arises with the poem’s contrasting presentation of Beowulf’s dominance and physical power before and during the Grendel quest with the relatively low social status he incurs amongst his maternal kin group, the Geats. In this paper, I use anthropological and sociological theories of collective violence and dominance versus prestige hierarchies to rethink how violence interplays with the poem’s treatment of lineage and other …

Codex Exoniensis, Fols. 123b-124b: An Old English Poetic Romano-British Arts Encomium, Liam O. Purdon

Quidditas

Codex Exoniensis, fols. 123b-124b, commonly called The Ruin, is an Old English poem that has suffered both from physical damage, and from a kind of interpretive “damage,” the result of critical resignation in response to the work’s physical condition, revealing itself as much in continued critical acceptance of the work’s title as in continued acceptance of the critical assumption that the work’s total effect is forever lost to us. Enough of the poem’s whole and fragmentary lines exist, however, to confirm the purpose of two distinct emphases that draw attention to a yearning for restoration of the cultural traditions once …

Contemporary History In Early Tudor English Chronicles: 1485-1553, Barrett L. Beer

Quidditas

English chronicles published between 1485 and 1547 are studied here to determine how they dealt with contemporary history. These chronicles obviously covered the distant past, but many end well before the date of publication. Today contemporary history is of great importance to the public as evidenced by a variety of published works, periodicals, and most recently the internet. An analysis of early Tudor chronicles reveals that while many were indifferent to the recent past, others clearly laid the foundation for a focus on the contemporary era. The recognized authors of the chronicles included in this study are Richard Arnold, John …

Sir John Cheke, Chamberlain Of The Exchequer, 1552-53, James D. Alsop

Quidditas

The most obscure aspect of Sir John Cheke’s public career is his tenure as a Chamberlain of the English Exchequer. This study confirms that Cheke’s chamberlainship was a sinecure, albeit one of prestige and profit. Attention is also paid to the three rising gentlemen who held office under Cheke: Robert Creswell, Roger Higham, and William Hunwyke.

Teaching Premodern Women And Gender, Lucy C. Barnhouse

Quidditas

In her influential History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism, Judith Bennett asked “Who’s afraid of the distant past?” Fifteen years after this book’s publication, the question remains relevant. Teaching the history of women and gender in the premodern world presents linked pedagogical challenges. Most students enter college with little to no background in premodern history. Many find premodern primary sources, when taught with the same pedagogical scaffolding as modern sources, inaccessible due to real or perceived strangeness. These challenges can be compounded by the challenges of teaching women’s and/or gender history. This roundtable addresses strategies for productive …

Visualizing Women: Teaching Modern Images And Medieval Texts About Pre-Modern Women, Esther Liberman Cuenca

Quidditas

This paper examines two visual texts for teaching a course called “Saints, Wives and Witches” at the University of Houston-Victoria: Jennifer A. Rea’s graphic novel Perpetua’s Journey (Oxford, 2018), which illustrates the eponymous North African martyr’s third-century prison diary, and the film Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen (2009), directed by Margarethe von Trotta, who drew on feminist readings of Hildegard of Bingen’s writings for the purposes of dramatization. The course itself followed a chronology that took students from antiquity to the early modern period and was divided into thematic units that highlighted women’s intersecting identities with regards …