Philosophy Commons^™

Constantinian Coin Motifs In Ancient Literary Sources, Charles Odahl

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Classical numismatists have long assumed that Roman emperors used the imperial coinage as a medium of propaganda. The obverses advertised the emperor's visages and titles, while the frequently changed reverses announced military victories, peace and prosperity, imperial beneficence and building programs, or religious beliefs, etc. Often beautifully designed, stamped with a much higher and more vivid relief than modern coins, and spread throughout the empire, Roman coins and medallions certainly seem to have been minted and disseminated with the intention that the imperial populace would note the figures and read the inscriptions thereon – not merely exchange them in economic …

Gastronomy And Sexuality: "Table Language" In The Heptaméron, Colette H. Winn

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In his penetrating study on Marguerite de Navarre, Themes, Language and Structure, Marcel Tetel calls attention to the metaphoric usage of food in the Heptaméron. Critics, to date, have failed to pursue this line of inquiry. Readers accustomed to Rabelais's elaborate gastronomic depictions may be disappointed by the extreme sobriety of corresponding scenes in the Hemptaméron. Marguerite eschews the picturesque description of a generously laden table, the exuberance associated with this traditionally jovial event and the gigantism required by the Gargantuan legend in favor of briefer and often less colorful table encounters. Yet relegating these scenes to …

The Anglo-Norman Courtly Lyric, Carol J. Harvey

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Whereas many works of a religious or moral nature survive from the Anglo-Norman era, secular lyric poetry was until quite recently virtually unknown. Isabel S. T. Aspin's Anglo-Norman Political Songs provided the first, and to date the only, readily-accessible modern edition of secular lyrics. This collection of political poems and satires shows that the author of occasional verse is not only interested in singing the praises of the Blessed Virgin Mary or adapting parts of the liturgy into the vernacular; he is moved also to sing of the corruption of state or church, to lament the death of the noble …

Barnabe Googe's Zodiake Of Life: A Translation Reconsidered, Marc Beckwith

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Marcellus Palingenius' Zodiacus Vitae in twelve books (Venice [1535?]) was exceedingly popular in Reformation Europe. In nearly 10,000 lines of Latin hexameters

are conteined twelue seuerall labours, painting out moste liuely, the whole compasse of the world, the reformation of manners, the miseries of mankinde, the pathway to vertue and vice, the eternitie of the Soule, the course of the Heavens, the mysteries of nature, and diuers other circumstances of great learning, and no lesse judgement,

as Barnabe Googe summarized it on the title page of his translation in 1576. The ZV saw over sixty editions as well as translations …

Review Essay: David Nicholas, The Domestic Life Of A Medieval City, Francis X. Hartigan

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David Nicholas, The Domestic Life of a Medieval City, University of Nebraska Press, 1985. $26.50

A Moral Voice For The Restoration Lady: A Comparative View Of Allestree And Vives, John A. Thomas

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Following the civil strife of the 1640s and the Interregnum of the 1650s, Anglican England felt the necessity of spiritual housecleaning to tighten its hold on the godly and to ferret out dissenting influences. Evidence of renewed authoritarianism is seen in Richard Allestree's early appointment in the 1660s as a lecturer for the city of Oxford, where his task was to establish the faith and to root out schismatical opinions propagated by "false" teachers of the Interregnum. In 1662 Charles was to pass measures, albeit reluctantly, requiring strict conformity concerning practices in the church not unlike those enforced by Laud. …

On Ferrera And Chivalric/Epic Poetry In Italian Criticism Today, Maristella De P. Lorch

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Gennaro Savarse, Il "Furioso" e la cultura del Rinascimento. Letteratura italiana: Studi e testi 10. Roma: Bulzoni, 1984. 94 p. Lire 7,000.

Riccardo Bruscagli, Stagioni della civiltà estense. Saggi di varia umanità, 25. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1982. 236 p. Lire 15,000.

Rosanna Alhaique Pettinelli, L'immaginario cavalleresco nel Rinascimento ferrarese. L'Ippogrifo, 29. Roma: Bonacci, 1983. 301 p. Lire 16,000.

Review Essay: David C. Fowler, The Bible In Middle English Literature, Donald Sullivan

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David C. Fowler, The Bible in Middle English Literature, University of Washington Press, 1984. $25.00

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Review Essay: James Weisheipl, Nature And Motion In The Middle Ages, Richard Harper

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James Weisheipl, Nature and Motion in the Middle Ages, Catholic University of America Press, 1985. $31.95

Sidney's Debt To Machiavelli: A New Look, William R. Drennan

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"I wish not there should be / Graved in mine epitaph a poet's name," asserts Astrophil late in Sidney's sonnet sequence (AS 90.8-9), and on this point at least we may safely assume that Astrophil speaks for Sidney as well. Indeed, recent scholarship emphasizes that Sidney was drawn more to the arena of politics than to the world of letters, a world that he himself called only his "unelected vocation" (Works 3: 3). James M. Osborn, for example, in his Young Philip Sidney 1572-1577, stresses Sidney's patient preparation for and lifelong commitment to the theory and practice of …

Review Essay: Warren Threadgold, Renaissances Before The Renaissance, Gunar Freibergs

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Warren Threadgold, Renaissances Before the Renaissance, Stanford University Press, 1984. $28.50

Review Essay: David Bergeron, Shakespeare's Romances And The Royal Family, Dorothy C. Jones

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David Bergeron, Shakespeare's Romances and the Royal Family, University of Kansas Press, 1985. $25.00

Review Essay: Stephen C. Ferruolo, The Origins Of The University: The Schools Of Paris And Their Critics, 1100-1215, Donald Sullivan

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Stephen C. Ferruolo, The Origins of the University: The Schools of Paris and Their Critics, 1100-1215, Stanford University Press, 1985. $45.00

Deception And Distance In Béroul's Tristan: A Reconsideration, Norris J. Lacy

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Some years ago, I suggested that the irony and the pervasive equivocations that characterize the text of Béroul's Tristan have the effect of precluding, on the narrator's part, an implicit ethical endorsement of the characters. Although that is still my view, I went on, perhaps too incautiously, to question Béroul's narrative reliability. Considering the importance of such matters for our understanding of Béroul's art, it is not inappropriate to reconsider this problem. In fact, I think it reasonable now to begin with the assertion that, although his work is full of ambiguities, ironies, and tricks, Béroul's narrator never deceives his …

The Fiction Of The "Livre" In Robert De Boron's Merlin, Stephen Maddux

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Robert de Baron, thought to have been responsible for changing Chrétien's graal into a Christian relic and his tale of Perceval into a cycle, was also an innovator when it came to the convention of the bookish source for his story. Marie de France and Chrétien both were careful to supply their poems with some kind of external authority, which was often book-like, if not in fact always a written text. Chrétien twice refers to actual books; Marie de France's sources were presumably all oral, but she treats them as though they were written, that is, deserving the same treatment …

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Chaucer And The Three Crowns Of Florence (Dante, Petrarch, And Boccaccio): Recent Comparative Scholarship, Madison U. Sowell

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Chaucer and the Italian Trecento. Ed. Piero Boitani. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 313 p. $49.50.

Howard H. Schless, Chaucer and Dante: A Revaluation. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1984. 268 p. $85.00.

R. A. Shoaf, Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the World: Money, Images, and Reference in Late Medieval Poetry. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1983. 313 p. $39.95.

Great Black Goats And Evil Little Women: The Image Of The Witch In Sixteenth-Century German Aart, Jane P. Davidson

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Witch imagery in German Renaissance art may strike the modern observer as something incongruous in an age noted for interest in humanism, reformation, science, appreciation of beauty and the like. Nonetheless, it existed. Further, we find a number of prominent German artists who depicted witches. The operative point here is probably an interest in realism. Renaissance artists, north and south, were preoccupied with reality. Too this end, their art stressed optical accuracy, factual anatomy, convincing natural details and so on.

Correspondence With Women: The Case Of John Knox, A. Daniel Frankforter

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The Reformation opened an ambiguous era for women. There were risks of losses and opportunities for gain for women who made the transition to Protestant faith. Protestant women gave up some traditional religious supports. The Virgin Mary and the female saints, who provided Catholic women with role models and sisterly patronage, were thrust aside. Priestly intercession ended, the Protestant women, like men, stood alone with their consciences in the presence of God. Women were denied the option of careers as nuns in self-governing female communities, and virginity ceased to be a respected female vocation. All women were expected to marry, …

Gawain's "Anti-Feminism" Reconsidered, S. L. Clark, Julian N. Wasserman

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In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the protagonist survives the return blow for which he had contracted with the Green Knight but finds to his dismay that he has unwittingly failed a more significant test. As the awareness comes to Gawain that the Green Knight and his Yuletide host share one identity, that it was upon Bercilak's instructions that his wife attempted to seduce him, and that Morgan la Fée had, in effect, master-minded the whole plan, Gawain reacts with bursts of anger which, wen analyzed, speak not only to the Pearl-Poet's skill at characterization but also …

Front Matter

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Can We Speak Of An Islamic Middle Ages? A Conceptual Problem Examined Through Literature, Julie Scott Meisami

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In his introduction to The Arabs and Medieval Europe Norman Daniel, after rejecting the "traditional" Gibbonian definition of the Middle Ages as "the age between a fixed classical civilization and the modern world which inherits it" in favor of a view which affirms the unbroken continuity of European history, concludes that "for all non-European peoples ... the concept of a Middle Age has no relevance, at least for their internal history. Any relevance it has must be in relation to Europe" (3). Similarly, in the area oof literature, Robert Rehder in a review article states categorically that "Medieval is …

Adam's Dream: Fortune And The Tragedy Of The Chester 'Drapers Playe', George Ovitt Jr.

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In glossing a passage from his translation of Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae, Chaucer provides a definition of tragedy which would have been familiar to any fourteenth-century reader and which, perhaps, still seems adequate to the twentieth-century reader: "What other thyng bywaylen the cryinges of tragedyes but oonly the dedes of Fortune, that this unwar strook overturneth the realmes of greet nobleye? (Glose. Tragedye is to seyn a dite of a prosperite for a tyme, that endeth in wrecchidnesse.)" The substance of this gloss is repeated in the 'Prologue' to the "Monk's Tale": "Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie, …

Latin And Vernacular In Fourteenth- And Fifteenth-Century Italy, Paul Oskar Kristeller

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The subject of this essay concerns Dante only indirectly and in part. Nevertheless I hope to be able, among other things, to explain Dante's historical position and his influence on the Italian Renaissance. I cannot avoid partially repeating what I wrote in some of my previous studies, especially in my early article on the Italian prose language. Some of my prior observations, which seemed new to me at the time, have since been widely accepted; but some new sources and literature have been added in the meantime, and on some points I have changed my opinion or paid attention to …

Rites And Passage In Leonardo Bruni's Dialogues To Pier Paolo Vergerio, Olga Zorzi Pugliese

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The Dialogues to Pier Paolo Vergerio are a fairly brief, rather unassuming, yet much defamed work by Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370-1444), the Italian humanist from Arezzo who lived most of his life in Florence, the hub of early Renaissance civilization. Composed of two parts, the second of which is, apparently, a retraction of the first, and dating probably from a the years 1401 and 1405-06, respectively, the Dialogues constitute, because of the contradictions contained in them, a puzzling text that has elicited a variety of interpretations from critics in the historical as well as the literary fields. Although much research …

King Alfred And The Latin Manuscripts Of Gregory's Regula Pastoralis, Richard W. Clement

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King Alfred's translation of Pope Gregory the Great's Liber Regulae Pastoralis has long been recognized by students of Anglo-Saxon literature as one of the earliest and greatest monuments of Old English prose. Alfred's first translation, commonly referred to as the Pastoral Care, has been the focus of much scholarly attention by historians, philologists, and literary critics. Historians have seized upon the work more for Alfred's two prefaces and what they tell us in Ninth-century England than for the translation itself, but nonetheless the mode of translation is not without its biographical and historical implications. Philologists on the other hand …

Belief, Justification, And Knowledge – Some Late-Medieval Epistemic Concerns, Ivan Boh

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It has become a commonplace in contemporary analytic philosophy to offer a contextual definition of knowledge in terms of the following statement of necessary and sufficient conditions:

a knows that p if and only if

(i) a believes that p

(ii) p is the case

(iii) a is justified in believing that p

An enormous amount of literature on various aspects of this statement has been produced and the discussion continues.

One Wine In New Bottles: Thomas Blenerhasset's Elizabethan Shepherds' Pageant, Lynn Staley Johnson

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Though it would be impossible to claim for Thomas Blenerhasset's A Revelation of the true Minerva (15820 a place among the major works of Elizabethan literature, the poem deserves more than the cursory references it sometimes receives as an early indication of the influence of The Shepheardes Calender (1579) upon English verse. Not only does Blenerhasset's narrative poem suggest ways in which an alert and cultivated reader might respond to Spenser's first published poem, but A Revelation contains tantalizing clues to that rare metamorphosis accomplished by English writers in the reign of Elizabeth, a process by which Tudor poets, like …

"Use And Abuse" In Romeo And Juliet, Maurice Hunt

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Near the midpoint of Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence formulates an authoritative-sounding concept which seemingly lends itself to interpreting tragedy. Gathering "baleful weeds" and "precious juiced flowers," the Friar states that everything earthly has a virtuous use and a potential abuse:

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies

In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities.

For naught so vile that on the earth doth live

But too the earth some special good doth give;

Nor aught so good but, strain'd from that fair use,

Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.

Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied, …