Philosophy Commons^™

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 …

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No abstract provided.

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, …

A Case Of Double Inscription: Carlos De Sigüenza Y Góngora's Infortunios De Alonso Ramírez, Lee H. Dowling

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Among the early works of Latin American prose literature, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora's Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez has attracted a relatively large share of critical attention. Much of this has stemmed from an interest in tracing the antecedents of the Latin American novel – the novel believed to represent a prestigious literary genre whose comparatively late appearance in Latin America has been the theme of much discussion. While such interest led a number of critics to reread Infortunios and other comparable early works with renewed interest, evaluations stemming from the search for a nucleus of characteristics derived from the …

An Unpublished German Manuscript Of The Sixteenth Century, Heinz Bluhm

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The Newberry Library has an unpublished German manuscript of 1562 that will be of interest to students of the sixteenth century. Since to my knowledge no one has called attention to the existence of this manuscript, I am providing a transcription of the text together with a reproduction of the first and last pages.

Poetic Discourse And Performance Text: Toward A Semiotics Of The Comedia, Edward H. Friedman

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"... to read the sign is not only to understand its function in the aesthetic or fictional ensemble to the exclusion of the outside world, it is to seek the link between the sign and the referer, the aesthetic and the political, delirium and deliverance."

Patrice Pavis, Languages of the Stage

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The Grand Peur Of 1348-49: The Shock Wave Of The Black Death In The German Southwest, Steven Rowan

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The massacre of most fo the Jewish communities in Western Germany and what is now Switzerland between late 1348 and the middle of 1349 permanently altered the position of Jews in Central Europe, both by shifting the Jewish population eastward and by moving those Jews who remained behind to the periphery of economic society. A close examination of the chronology of the massacres on the local level rapidly disproves the traditional interpretation that the massacres were attacks of the classic 'scapegoat' type made in response to the onset of the first great modern European plague. Although the first massacres outside …

Chaucer's Physicians: Their Texts, Contexts, And The Canterbury Tales, Elizabeth Penley Skerpan

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In the Canterbury Tales, the pilgrim Chaucer lists an impressive series of medical authors whom his fellow pilgrim the Physician is supposed to have read. As we continue past the General Prologue, we discover that these writers do not merely embellish the PHysician's claims to a well-rounded medical education: two are actually mentioned in the course of story-telling, though, oddly, not by the Physician, but by the Pardoner and Parson. These two pilgrims' references appear in tales more concerned with spiritual than physical healing and health, and indeed the Parson preaches on the "cure" of sins as a necessary …

Medieval Materials And Methods For Teaching French In England, Carol J. Harvey

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Following the Conquest of England in 1066, the Norman dialect oof French was in use as both a spoken and a literary language of England. Immigration continued sporadically for over two centuries, facilitated by the fact that the kings of England were also dukes of Normandy. Indeed, when Henry II married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152, the whole of western France form Normandy to the Pyrenees was for a time under the sway of the English kings. Although John Lackland lost many French possessions in 1204, migration may actually have intensified as he encouraged the many Frenchmen whoo disliked conditions …

The Deserted Chamber: An Unnoticed Topos In The "Father's Lament" Of Beowulf, Richard Schrader

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Swa bi∂ geomorlic gomelum ceorle

to gebidanne, þæt his byre ride

giong on galgan; þonne he gyd wrece....

Gesyh∂ sorhcearig on his suna bure

winsele westne, windge reste

reote berofene,– ridend swefa∂,

hæ le∂ in ho man; nis r hearpan sweg,

gomen in geardum, swylce ∂ær iu wæ ron.

Gewite∂ þonne on sealman, sorhleo∂ gæ le∂

an æfter anum; uhte him eall to rum,

wongas ond wicstede. (2444-46, 2455-62)

[So it is sad for an old man to experience his young son's riding on the gallows; let him then recite a song.... Sorrowing, he sees in his son's chamber a …

Violence And The Plague In Aragón, 1348-1351, Melanie V. Shirk

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As Philip Ziegler has noted, "Statistics alone cannot provide an adequate picture of the Black Death." To say that one-quarter or one-third or one-half of Europe's population perished within a few years gains the reader's attention, but does not convey what such a brutal calamity meant to the average person at the time. The fourteenth century suffered many calamities, but the sudden and mysterious appearance of the Black Death, with no known cause or cure, msut surely have been the most terrifying.

Full Issue

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No abstract provided.

The Image Of The Child In The English Mystery Cycles, Marilyn Sutton

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Recent studies in family history have largely reaffirmed the commonplace that, prior to the Renaissance, children were seldom seen and rarely heard. Philippe Ariès and Lawrence Stone, for their parts, have traced the evolution of the concepts of childhood, privacy, and the conjugal family; the point of origin for each, they fix in the Renaissance. But encyclopedic as Ariès and Stone have been in researching their respective theories of "undiscovered childhood" and "conscious limitation of affection", they, nevertheless, have slighted the testimony of the popular literature of the English Middle Ages, an oversight that has led them to establish arbitrary …

John Skelton: Courtly Maker/Popular Poet, Nancy A. Gutierrez

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The eight poems in Latin and English written at the time of the English victory at Flodden Field in 1513 are various combinations of praise, vituperation, satire, and polemic, reflecting the attitudes of their authors. John Skelton, Thomas More, Peter Carmelianus, and Bernard André. These courtly makers, homogeneous in both their humanist background and court employment, see the battle essentially the same way–as an occasion to celebrate their royal employer and to abuse his enemy–thus the differing verse forms and slanted treatments are grounded in a common point of view. However, John Skelton, as author of three of the eight …

Petrarch's Rhetorical Reticentia As Politics, Lucia Re

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A discussion of Petrarch's politics must take into account the historicity of politics itself: political science, as distinct from other disciplines, is generally believed to originate with Machiavelli. It would therefore be anti-historical to attribute to Petrarch a systematic political vision (as it is understood today). The modern claim for the independence of political theory and practice is as alien to Petrarch as the possibility of a theologically integrated political vision: Petrarch could not and would not have written either Il Prinicpe or Dante's De Monarchia. Nevertheless, I will speak of Petrarch's politics not only because, at a very …

Iconoclasm As A Revolutionary Tactic: The Case Of Switzerland 1524-1536, Carlos M. N. Eire

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Iconoclasm, Revolution and the Reformation: Some Observations.

"That Most Erudite Of Tudor Lawyers,' Christopher St. German, R. J. Schoeck

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Christopher St. German: The Man and His Family

William Turner's Use Of The Dialogue Form As A Weapon Of Religious Controversy, R. Pineas

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While the entire subject of Tudor religious polemics has been more often regretted than studied, some of the more prominent controversialists, such as William Tyndale or Thomas More, have received some attention, but such has not been the fate of William Turner (?-1568). No full-length treatment of Turner exists, and what studies there are concern themselves mainly with his activities as a naturalist. This is all the more surprising when one considers that of all the radical Reformers who were dissatisfied with Henry VIII's reformation and transformation of the English Church into the Church of England, William Turner, physician to …

Bacon's Allegory Of Science: The Theater Of The New Atlantis, Patricia Demers

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I conceive that I perform the office of a true priest of the sense (from which all knowledge in nature must be sought, unless men mean to go mad) and a not unskilful interpreter of its oracles. ("The Plan of the Work," The Great Instauration)

Dramatic poesy among the ancients ... has been regarded by learned men and great philosophers as a kind of musician's bow by which men's minds may be played upon. (Translation of the "De Augmentis," The Second Book)

Lufly And Its Variants In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Jacqueline De Weever

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When Gawain enters the great hall of Bercilak's castle, he is welcomed and made to feel at home with a fine meal and fresh garments, and the lords and ladies, learning that he is Sir Gawain of King Arthur's court, say to one another:

'In menyng of manerez mere

þis burne now schal vus bryng,

I hope þaat may hym here

Schal lerne of luf-talking.' (924-927)

"Luf-talking" is Gawain's most famous attribute, and the adjectives and adverbs lufly, luflych, luflyly appear with the second highest frequency among adjectives and adverbs in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, …

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Shirley's The Lady Of Pleasure: The Dialect Of Earth And Sky, Tony J. Stafford

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At the beginning of James Shirley's The Lady of Pleasure, Aretina's Steward tells her that if she will be patient, she will have her pleasure. Aretina, who has just come up from the country, makes it clear that finding pleasure is precisely her reason for coming to London. Thus introduces to her, we assume that she is the lady of pleasure referred to in the play's title. Indeed, Aretina's constant effort throughout the play to indulge in city fun seems to confirm our first impression. But we miss the play's subtlety if we accept the obvious, for Shirley seems …