Renaissance Studies Commons^™

Milton And The Middle Ages: Poetic Analogues And Visual Representations Of The War In Heaven, Expulsion Of The Rebel Angels, And Michael And The Dragon, Steven Hrdlicka

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Milton is not typically connected to the Middle Ages as much as to the later Enlightenment and the Romantic periods. Yet many distinctively medieval ideas can be seen in Paradise Lost, especially in the scenes that are related to the War in Heaven. Milton’s account of the war displays a medieval understanding of history in terms of typology in the drama of salvation. Particular details about the war itself such as St. Michael and Lucifer’s sword fight, Jesus’ eventual ending of the war, and the human characteristics of the fallen angels all have clear parallels in longstanding Christian poetic and …

What Happened To The Grandsons And Great-Grandsons Of The House Of York?, James H. Forse

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Josephine Tey, in her famous murder mystery centering on Richard III, The Daughter of Time, asserts that Richard was not a murderous tyrant determined to eliminate any challengers to his throne; rather it was the aim of Henry VII and Henry VIII to eliminate most of the male descendants of Richard Duke of York. Do the fates of those male descendants actually demonstrate that such was the policy of the first two Tudor monarchs?

Le Morte Darthur And The Extratextual Significance Of Prophecy Across The Centuries, Stephanie Victoria Violette

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Prophecy is the driving force of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. The Morte emerged from a tradition of prophecy that existed long before its creation, and which continued into the early modern period. Prophecy influenced both political and religious spheres, as well as medieval cultural perceptions of time. English culture absorbed the Morte’s prophetic elements and used them to either bolster later uses of prophecy or to defame them. Using the Morte as a starting point, this examination draws on elements from various sources: Greek, Christian, and Welsh folklore, Geoffrey of Monmouth and contemporaries of Thomas Malory. Also part …

The Reception Of Tacitus’ Germania By The German Humanists: From Provence To Empire, Thomas Renna

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It is well known he German Humanists (1490-1540) used Tacitus’ Germania to advance their notion of the German nation in response to Italian criticism. But less attention has been given to the German nature of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (1509). I argue that Humanists after Conrad Celtis (Bebel, Wimpheling, Cochlaeus, Brant, Irenicus, Franck, Hutten) emphasized the Germanness of the empire by reinterpreting the traditional Translation of Empire, the Germanic migrations out of Germania after Constantine, and the designation of a new national purpose (the protection and expansion of the Church and the faith). They grafted the …

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Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2016)

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

This year’s recipient is Samantha Dressel, doctoral candidate in English at the University of Rochester.

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No abstract provided.

Small Mid-Tudor Chronicles And Popular History: 1540-1560, Barrett L. Beer

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This essay examines twenty-two editions of little-studied small Mid-Tudor chronicles that were published by printers at Canterbury and London. They demonstrate the important role of printers in historical scholarship and offer a significantly different perspective on English history than the better-known, larger contemporary works of Robert Fabyan, Edward Hall, and Thomas Cooper. The chronicles also shed light on the readership of historical works by non-elite readers who presumably could not afford larger and more expensive chronicles. The short chronicles present a simplified view of the past, avoid propagating the well-known Tudor myths including the tyranny of Richard III, and demonstrate …

Master William’S Hamnet: A New Theory On Shakespeare’S Sonnets, Juan Daniel Millán

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This essay suggests the Fair Youth in Shakespeare’s Sonnets is Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, to whom he later dedicated the cycle. Nevertheless, the larger claims of the essay are independent of the biographical details of Shakespeare’s life, and even independent of the particular ordering of the Sonnets as they have come down to us.

“The Man In The Shyppe That Showeth The Unstableness Of The World”: Social Memory And The Early Modern English Sailor, 1475-1650, Vincent V. Patarino Jr., Ph.D.

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Both medieval and early modern English writers described the tumultuous, raging sea as the epitome of chaos and evil. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both manuscript and print documents connected seething storms with the power and influence of evil, especially the devil. As the Reformation advanced, this link included Satan’s supposed minions, witches. In addition to these texts, woodcut illustrations confirmed in very stark terms, a direct association between the devil, the sea, and sailors’ supposedly anti-religious behavior and beliefs. One powerful image revealed “the man in the shyppe” tormented by the devil; others depicted the devil steering a …

Delno C. West Award Winner (2016)

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

This year’s recipient is Ruth Frost, Associate Professor of History, the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, BC.

Richard Iii: Beyond The Mystery, Daniel Hobbins

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He is not the likeliest theme for an American undergraduate classroom: his reign lasted barely two years; he contributed nothing of lasting significance to history; he is more memorable for his spectacular final defeat than for any victory; he was accused of murdering children; and he was after all an English king, as far removed as possible from the typical experience of an American undergraduate. Even the times he lived in are against him. In the immortal words of Mark Twain, his century was “the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages.”1 Yet he continues to …

“Like To My Soft Sex”: Female Revenge And Violence In The Fatal Contract, Samantha Dressel

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The Fatal Contract by William Heminge is not a good play. Its critical afterlife is essentially non-existent, with Fredson Thayer Bowers being one of the only critics to discuss it, criticizing its lack of “inspiration” and “ethical spirit.”1 I argue however, that the play is both inventive and moral, despite its many derivative aspects and narrative foibles. I suggest a new reading of the play as deeply innovative in terms of gender and revenge. Bowers criticizes the play’s morality because of the ultimate exoneration of Chrotilda, the central revengeress. The play can be reinterpreted and partially redeemed by understanding Chrotilda’s …

Delno C. West Award Winner (2015)

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Elizabeth Dolly Weber

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

De Syon Exierit Lex Et Verbum Domini De Iherusalem’: An Exegetical Discourse (C. 400-C. 1200) That Informed Crusaders’ Views Of Jews, Todd P. Upton

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This paper assesses how medieval Christian writers transformed encounters with Middle Eastern peoples such as the Jews into a complex theological discourse via the medium used by Pope Urban II in 1095 to launch the First Crusade, the Latin sermon. It argues that a hitherto unnoted homiletic tradition about Jews originated in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages based (1) on exegetical polemics that stretched back centuries in Christian theology, and (2) on a discernible chronicle and sermon tradition that depicted Jews in varying degrees of apologia based on a prophesied role as “witnesses” to the eschatological expectations of …

The Role Of Rumor And The Prodigal Son: Shakespeare’S Sources And Fathers And Sons In The Second Henriad, Steven Hrdlicka

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This article challenges traditional, critical interpretations of Shakespeare’s character Prince Hal by examining changes Shakespeare makes to sources he used, in particular the anonymous play Famous Victories of Henry V. Shakespeare does not portray a “prodigal” Prince Hal character as has often been argued by critics, but instead carefully follows Holinshed’s observations that the prince was virtuous in youth and that rumors about the prince’s supposed prodigal behavior were spread by those who were in the service of Henry IV. These rumors were aimed to cause conflict between father and son. Shakespeare’s inclusion of these two important details found in …

The Sin Eater: Confession And Ingestion In The Romance Of Renard, Elizabeth Dolly Weber

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The “Confession of Renard,” Branch XIV of the twelfth-century animal epic Roman de Renart (Romance of Reynard the Fox) explores the potential risks of the rite of confession, including the danger of whetting the appetite of the sinner by having him recount and re-live his delicious past sins. The fact that Renard, the “repentant” sinner, actually eats his confessor, suggests not only that merely talking about sin, particularly sexual sin, is a perilous business, but also that confession, like digestion, is a transformational process for both the penitent and the confessor.

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Literary Docudrama In The Classroom: Teaching With John Hatcher’S The Black Death: A Personal History, Ginger Smoak, Jennifer Mcnabb

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John Hatcher’s The Black Death: A Personal History is an unconventional text. It recounts the experience of plague by a single, extraordinarily well-documented village in Suffolk, England: Walsham le Willows. While such a focus perhaps seems fairly standard of case studies or microhistory, Hatcher’s book is more than a narrow treatment of a corner of England. In a preface entitled “The Nature of This Book,” he opens with a discussion of both his journey toward the realization that he wanted to write a markedly different sort of treatment of the Black Death than present in extant scholarship and a rather …

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Symbiotic Werewolves And Cybernetic Anchoresses: Premodern Posthumans In Medieval Literature, Jennifer K. Cox

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This paper examines how individual agency in medieval society might be expanded through posthuman configurations; in so doing, it pushes the boundaries of traditional practices in medieval research to include more contemporary ideas. Although as scholars, we must avoid anachronistic readings of these texts, ignoring modern thinkers like N. Katherine Hayles (How We Became Posthuman) and Donna Haraway (“A Cyborg Manifesto”) too easily disregards their valuable – and timeless – insights. While the term “posthuman” can evoke images of cyborgs or superhuman mutants using wormholes to traverse space and time, this pop culture perspective often overlooks less technoscientific examples of …

Domestic Cruelty: Saevitia And Separation In Medieval France, Kristi Diclemente

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This article examines the role cruelty played in marriage separation cases in fourteenth-century Paris. Cruelty was an effective and relatively successful means for women to initiate separation litigation. The archdeacon’s court regularly cited saevitia as a reason for its decision to legally separate marriages. Marital cruelty, however was a complicated issue and what constituted cruelty was not defined within the text. Through an examination of the use of saevitia in the legal cases,in conjunction with contemporary exempla of abusive marriages, such as the vita of Godelieve of Gistel, the author finds that it was a complicated term representing a variety …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2015)

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Alaina L. Bupp

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

“I Am I”: The Allegorical Bastard In Shakespeare’S King John, Alaina Bupp

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Shakespeare’s King John provides readers with a particularly interesting, though relatively unexamined character: Philip Falconbridge, the bastard. This character exists somewhere between the allegorical forbears of medieval morality plays and the intensely interior specificity of the likes of Hamlet. Philip begins the play with a specific, though fictional, identity, but consciously decides to become allegorical. We can see this transformation at the intersection of text and context, of the words spoken by Philip as he becomes Bastard (the allegorical figure) and the First Folio’s construction of that transformation. Bastard employs particular rhetoric to firstly shed his old, specific identity and …

Is Geoffrey Chaucer’S Tale Of Sir Thopas A Rape Narrative? Reading Thopas In Light Of The 1382 Statute Of Rapes, Kristin Bovaird-Abbo

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Considering the tale’s placement between two narratives of violence—the Prioress’s Tale and the Tale of Melibee—it is surprising that the Tale of Sir Thopas has not merited more discussion of the potential for violence against feminine bodies. I argue that Chaucer the author introduces significant changes to the typical medieval romance, with the result that Thopas’s actions in the name of “love” conceal a rape narrative that engages late fourteenth-century debates as to what exactly constituted rape. As the transfer of property was a significant portion of such discussions, the 1382 Statute of Rapes prompted concerns about the ability …

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No abstract provided.

Allen D. Breck Award (2014)

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Kristin Bovaird-Abbo

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

Causality In La Mort Le Roi Artu: Free Will, Accident, And Moral Failure, David S. King

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The thirteenth-century French La Mort le Roi Artu indicates forthrightly how the Arthurian world comes to an end, but the text leaves less clear what motivates the disaster. Many critics attribute the cause to an external force, God or the goddess Fortune, that obliges Arthur and others to pursue their own destruction. A few offer greater insight into the nature of causality in the romance. They see the characters as exercising some degree of free will or even complete liberty. But these critics err in alienating the notion of free choice from moral concerns. In their reading, the heroes suffer …

The Intersection Of Music Philosophy, Performance And Genre In The Middle English Breton Lay Sir Orfeo, Lisa Myers

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The Middle English romance Sir Orfeo is a dynamic and creative retelling of the classical Orpheus myth in which the wife of the English king, Orfeo, is abducted by fairies but eventually restored to her position and husband through Orfeo’s musical prowess. While any retelling of the Orpheus myth would necessarily contain references to music and would, therefore, likely use music as an important cue within the text, the poet of Sir Orfeo displays a sophisticated understanding of musical philosophy, composition and performance, as well as the Breton lay genre. The intersection of these elements all work together not only …

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No abstract provided.