Renaissance Studies Commons^™

"Hevest Up The Dore": Overcoming Obstacles To Meaning In Chaucer's Miller's Tale, David Fuller

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The tantalizing obliquity E. M. W. Tillyard observes in the Miller's Tale cannot be avoided if we look beyond the popular humor and artistry of the structured plot. It is difficult to accept the Miller's joke as merely Chaucer's joke, especially when Chaucer includes frequent and indeed ambiguous references to "Goddes pryvetee" and repeated remarks that seriousness and harm have been turned into a joke.

A Document Of Humanist Education: Erasmus's Commentary On The Disticha Catonis, Louis A. Perraud

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The part the Disticha (or Dicta) Catonis played in Erasmus's caareer is only one event in the work's long and honorable history. The Cato was composed by an anonymous author during the later Roman principate. As presented in the oldest manuscripts, the work consists of prose sententiae followed by fouor books of hexameter couplets. The whole is ornamented with a prose preface, and the second, third, and fourth books of hexameters have verse prologues of ten, four, and four lines respectively. The "Cato" to whom the work is attributed is probably either that redoubtable critic of Roman morals, Cato …

Review Essay: E. A. J. Honigmann, John Weever: A Biography Of A Literary Associate Of Shakespeare And Jonson, Together With A Photographic Facsimile Of Weever's "Epigrammes" (1599), Nancy Gutierrez

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E. A. J. Honigmann, John Weever: A Biography of a Literary Associate of Shakespeare and Jonson, Together with a Photographic Facsimile of Weever's "Epigrammes" (1599), St. Martin's Press, 1987.

Review Essay: Jane P. Davidson, The Witch In Northern European Art, 1470-1750, John Moffitt

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Jane P. Davidson, The Witch in Northern European Art, 1470-1750, Luca Verlag Freren, 1987.

Review Essay: Margaret J. M. Ezell, A Patriarch's Wife: Literary Evidence And The History Of The Family, Retha Warnicke

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Margaret J. M. Ezell, A Patriarch's Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family. University of North Carolina Press, 1987.

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

Review Essay: Gillian R. Evans, Alister E. Mcgrath, And Allan D. Galloway, The History Of Christian Theology, Vol. I: The Science Of Theology, Harry Rosenberg

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Gillian R. Evans, Alister E. McGrath, and Allan D. Galloway, The History of Christian Theology, Vol. I: The Science of Theology, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986.

Review Essay: Wendy Griswold, Renaissance Revivals: City Comedy And Revenge Tragedy In The London Theatre 1576-1980, Charles L. Squier

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Wendy Griswold, Renaissance Rivals: City Comedy and Revenge Tragedy in the London Theatre 1576-1980, University of Chicago Press, 1986.

The Harrowing Of Peter: An Extrabiblical Encounter Between Christ And Peter, Gary D. Schmidt

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Of all the events surrounding the life of Christ, none sees more elaboration and embellishment during the Middle Ages than the Passion. Many of these familiar stories take their place in prayer book miniatures, preacher's manuals, and on the stage. The image on Veronica's veil, the dream of Pilate's wife, the healing of the blind Longinus, the ominous events preceding the harrowing–all show a tendency to surround the simple yet dramatic story of Christ's Passion with corresponding incidents that reflect aspects of the meaning of the Passion and at the same tme aare themselves informed by that Passion.

Gulled Into An "I"-Word, Or Much Ado About A Pronoun, D'Orsay W. Pearson

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Despite the warning of the editors of the 1975 New Arden Twelfth Night the M.O.A.I. sequence of Maria's riddle for Malvolio is "a sequence of letters expressly designed to make Malvolio interpret them as he does, thus prolonging the comic scene," and that "attempts to wring further meaning from them are misplaced" (Lothiam and Craik 68), there is a strong probability that the letters, rather than being a meaningless sequence, were intended by Shakespeare as a fairly simple orthographic joke—one which expands Malvolio's characterization as a socially ambitious closet sybarite, deficient in a social accomplishment expected of those who would …

Review Essay: Huston Diehl, An Index Of Icons In English Emblem Books, 1500-1700, Patricia Demers

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Houston Diehl, An Index of Icons in English Emblem Books, 1500-1700, University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.

Review Essay: Marta Sordi, The Christians And The Roman Empire, Janine Marie Idziak

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Marta Sordi, The Christians and the Roman Empire, University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.

Carmelite Propaganda In A Fifteenth-Century French Gradual Fragment, John B. Friedman

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The late Middle Ages was a difficult period for the mendicant orders. Many of their claims to be the "New Apostles," with special efficacy in the confessional, the pulpit, and the classroom—as Penn Szittya has recently shown—were under sharp attack. Though less visible as teachers and preachers than the Dominicans and Franciscans, the Carmelites were also the victims of anti-mendicant hostility from an early period. Furthermore, they were disliked by the other orders because they claimed superiority be reason of alleged great antiquity and the special patronage of the Virgin, for Carmelite legend holds that the Old Testament prophets Elijah …

Review Essay: Eric Sams, Ed, Shakespeare's Lost Play "Edmund Ironside", Charles L. Squier

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Eric Sams, ed., Shakespeare's Lost Play "Edmund Ironside," St. Martin's Press, 1985.

Review Essay: P. J. Casey, Understanding Ancient Coins, Charles Odahl

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P. J. Casey, Understanding Ancient Coins, University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

Review Essay: Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, And Nancy J. Vickers, Eds., Rewriting The Renaissance: The Discourses Of Sexual Difference In Early Modern Europe, Retha Warnicke

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Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers, eds., Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Review Essay: William Tydeman, English Medieval Theatre, 1400-1500, Ronald J. Heckelman

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William Tydeman, English Medieval Theatre, 1400-1500, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.

Women And Marriage In The Medieval Spanish Epic, Marjorie Ratcliffe

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Medieval Spanish literature offers only three extant epic texts, Roncesvalles, the Cantar de Mio Cid and the Mocedades de Rodrigo. Knowledge of the Spanish heroic genre has been further extended by considering the thirteenth-century Poema de Fernán González, a reworking of a much earlier poem, as well as the similarly re-elaborated fragments of the stories of Rodrigo, the last Visigothic monarch; of Bernardo del Carpio; of the seven sons of Salas; of the traitorous countess; of prince García and the Cantar de Sancho Il y el cerco de Zamora. These texts will all be considered in …

The Seven Ages Of Pericles, Cynthia Marshall

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Pericles, swept along by the wave of interest in Shakespeare's romances, has lately received its due share of critical and theatrical attention, but it remains something of a bastard child. Pericles was originally labelled a "problem" because oof the textual controversy—exclusion from the 1623 folio, evidence of joint authorship—and the label sticks because of the common complaint that the play somehow feels different from the other plays in the canon. Uneven in style and random in structure, it seems almost to provoke disengagement. It actively resists expectations of casual plot and frustrates the urge to identify with characters on …

Review Essay: Bernard Mcginn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim Of Fiore In The History Of Western Thought, E. Randolph Daniel

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Bernard McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985.

Review Essay: Joseph L. Baird (With G. Baglini And J. Kane), The Chronicle Of Salimbene De Adam, Delno C. West

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Joseph L. Baird (with G. Baglini and J. Kane), The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, Binghamton, 1986.

Review Essay: Lynette R. Muir, Literature And Society In Medieval France: The Mirror And The Image, 1100-1500, Frede Jensen

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Lynette R. Muir, Literature and Society in Medieval France: The Mirror and the Image, 1100-1500, St. Martin's Press, 1985.

Review Essay: A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem In England, 1560-1640, James B. Fitzmaurice

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A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560-1640, Methuen, 1985.

Review Essay: Mary Beth Rose, Ed., Women In The Middle Ages And The Renaissance, Joan M. West

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Mary Beth Rose, ed., Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Syracuse University, 1986.

Review Essay: Lauro Martines, Society And History In English Renaissance Verse, Thomas S. Willard

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Lauro Martines, Society and History in English Renaissance Verse, Basil Blackwell, 1985.

Review Essay: David R. Shore, Spenser And The Poetics Of Pastoral: A Study Of The World Of Colin Clout, Sandy Feinstein

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David R. Shore, Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral: A Study of the World of Colin Clout, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1985.

Review Essay: Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket, Kay S. Rogers

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Frank Barlow, Thomas Beckett, University of California Press, 1986.

Godfrey Goodman And The Language Of Adam, Thomas S. Willard

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Reformers in seventeenth-century England often spoke of a language of nature, sometimes referred to as the language of Adam. By this, they did not refer to what we would call a natural language, like English or French, but to a univocal language where words and things corresponded perfectly. They insisted that it need not be a dream; it could be made a reality if students would only turn form syllogisms to nature itself. With this insistence, Francis Bacon and others created the false impression that language theory in their time was essentially Adamic, committed to the view that all languages …

Petrarch's "Trionfo Dell'eternità": Aesthetics Of Conversion, John S. Smurthwaite

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As the first of Petrarch's six Triumphs, the "Trionfo del Tempo," comes to an end, the poet affirms time's apparent victory over all things in the sublunar world. Not even fame is able to endure time's unrelenting and ultimately disintegrating onslought:

che è questo però che sì s'apprezza?

Tutto vince e ritoglie il Tempo avaro;

chiamasi Fama, ed è morir secondo,

ne più che contra 'l primo è alcun riparo;

così il Tempo trionfa i nomi e 'l mondo!

("Trionfo del Tempo," vvs. 141-45_

What is this that is so highly valued? Greedy Time overcomes and steals all away. …