Renaissance Studies Commons^™

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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No abstract provided.

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 …

Robert Herrick's "His Grange, Or Private Wealth": A Gentleman Farmer's Ledger, Clara E. Fendley

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In The Arte of English Poesie (1589), George Puttenham describes certain "Geometricall figures," i.e., shaped poems, written in the "Courts of the great Princes of China and Tartarie." Puttenham argues that the concise verse forms

insinuat some secret, wittie, morall and brave purpose presented to the beholder, either to recreate his eye, or please his phantasie, or examine his iudgement, or occupie his braine or to manage his will either by hope or by dread, every of which respects be of no little moment to the interest and ornament of the civill life: and therefore give them no litle commendation. …

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Resurrection And Celestial Jerusalem: The Influence Of The Easter Liturgy On The Nave Decoration Of St. Maurice At Vienne, Ricki Weinberger

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The unfinished Romanesque nave of the cathedral of Vienne is a fascinating monument. Begun around 1140, the building campaign appears to have ended abruptly in the 1160's with only the lower story of the seven easternmost bays of the nave completed. The rest of the church was finished during the Gothic period. Despite its unfinished state, the twelfth century structure is richly decorated, with fluted pilasters and pointed arches, ornate mouldings, and over sixty figural and vegetal capitals (Fig. 1). The beauty and complexity of this program are evident; however its subtleties have not been thoroughly explored as yet.

Oral Hygiene In Elizabethan England, Karl H. Dannenfeldt

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The men and women of Elizabethan England were well aware of their living in an age of transition. The old order was changing and empirical maxims were replacing the ideals of classical humanism. The new courtier and the new man of the middle class searched for pragmatic rules that led to success, recognition, and a more gracious way of life that befitted the new wealth.

The Elizabethan Clerk Of The Privy Council, F. J. Platt

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One of the least understood facts of Elizabethan administrative history is the importance of the clerkship of the Privy Council. Considered a position of "no small esteem," this "office was singularly rich in men of distinction." Indeed, with the exception of a select few privy councilors, it was the Council clerks who handled the lion's share of the day-to-day business of English government.

"Bishop Avitus Of Vienne And Teh Burgundian Kingdom, A. D. 494-518", Harry Rosenberg

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Late antiquity provides the matrix for the complex historical development of early medieval church-state relations. Old values and social structures were eroded and replaced by new ones in the Germanic kingdoms established within the fragments of the western Roman Empire.

On The Syntax Of The Provençal Possessives, Frede Jensen

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It is well-known to anyooone involved in the pursuit of foreign language study that possessive adjectives serve to express a variety of relationships which are often far removed from the basic notion of possession. A Frenchman calls "his" not only the things he owns (ma maison, ma voiture, mes livres, mon argent) and the ingredients that constitute the physical, mental or moral make-up of his personality (ma vigueur, ma bonté, mon intelligence, mon calme, etc.), but he also extends his ownership, as it were, to the circle of people he comes into contact with and to a variety of …

The Zodiac Man In Medieval Medical Astrology, Charles Clark

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A naked male figure was a familiar illustration in many medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Standing with his legs and arms slightly spread, the twelve images or names of the zodiac were superimposed on his body, from his head (Aries) to his feet (Pisces). Used as a quick reference by physicians, barber-surgeons, and even laymen, the figure indicated the part of the body which was "ruled" by a specific sign of the zodiac. Once the correct sign was determined for the particular part of the body, the proper time for surgery, bloodletting, administration of medication, or even the cutting of hair …

From Medieval To Renaissance: Paradigm Shifts And Artistic Problems In English Renaissance Drama, John Boni

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In describing the change from Medieval to Renaissance, Theodore Spencer writes;

There finally came a time when realism, at first connected inextricably with religion, was used for its own sake. What we call the Renaissance began at that moment.

For Spencer, "realism" denotes an increased concern with depicting the actual world itself. As an illustration, one may cite the exclamation attributed to Paolo Uccello, "What a wonderful thing is this perspective!", an exclamation over a technique which aided him in more accurate representation of the world as he had begun to perceive it.

Observations On Pulci's Reworking Of The Anonymous Orlando, Madison U. Sowell

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As a preface to the observations which follow on Luigi Pulci's treatment of the anonymous Orlando in the composition of his chief work, Il Morgante, it should be noted that in the past four decades several scholars in Italy have published significant books on Pulci's chivalric poem. Giovanni Getto published the first edition of his renowned Studio sul "Morgante" in 1944; Gaetano Mariani produced his long comparative essay on Il Morgante e i cantari trecenteschi in 1958; in 1967, the year of the second edition of Getto's study, Angelo Gianni gave us his interpretation of the Morgante's two …

"The Wyclyf" — Thrills And Dangers Of Editing A Medieval Text, Allen D. Breck

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In 1983 we shall be observing the six hundredth anniversary of the death of one of England's great contributors, along with William of Ockham and John Duns Scotus, to the thought, learning, and literature of the fourteenth century. John Wyclyf died at the comparatively advanced age oof sixty-four after two years' illness attendant upon a stroke, on St. Sylvester's day, December 31, 1384. He had been stricken a second time while hearing Mass said by his curate in his parish church at Lutterworth, some thirteen miles northeast of Coventry. We know nothing about his burial, save that in accordance with …

"Diuine Resemblaunce": Colin Clout's Vision Of Grace, John C. Ulreich

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Colin Clout's vision of the Graces is the imaginative center of Book VI, and in a sense of the whole Faerie Queene, "the sacred noursery / Of vertue" (VI. Proem 3), wherein both the Knight of Courtesy and the reader are instructed in the "vertuous and gentle disciple" of the imagination ("Letter to Raleigh," II, 495). Spenser's readers have been virtually unanimous in their agreement with C. S. Lewis, that the vision on Mount Acidale is "the key to Spenser's whole conception of Courtesy." But there has been considerably less agreement about the precise significance of Spenser's vision. In …

A Question Of Influence: Two Sixteenth-Century Lutheran Music Sources, Laura Youens

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In 1956, the eminent German musicologist Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht published a catalogue of the manuscript Rostock, University Library, MS Mus. Saec. XVI-29 (henceforth Rostock 49). This large musical source was compiled and copied in 1566 by Jacob Praetorius (c. 1530-1586), principal organist at St. Jakobi in Hamburg from 1558 to his death. According to the lengthy Latin preface to his Opus musicum excellens et novum, Rostock 49 originally comprised eight groups of compositions organized by genre. Only four of these groups are extant, and, from an inscription on the binding, it is clear that the other four sections were bound …

Vegetable Love: Metamorphosis And Morality In Hesperides, Frances M. Malpezzi

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Recent critics of Hesperides, less content than their predecessors with the plucking of but one of Herrick's golden apples, the examination of its beauty, and the savoring of its sweetness, have attempted the task of surveying the landscape of the entire garden, elucidating the pattern of its design, and identifying the various species of plants growing therein. The emphasis now is on seeing Hesperides as an integrated and thematically unified construct. The studies by Whitaker, Chambers, Deming, Rollin, and DeNeef are concerned with the ceremonial mode that pervades the poems in Hesperides. The consensus of these writers is …

Shakespeare's And Plutarch's Brutus: Shakespeare's Dramatic Strategy To Undercut The Noble Image, Shirley Rish

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Modern critics of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar frequently challenge the view that Brutus was in fact "the noblest Roman of them all,' but only rarely do they completely repudiate Brutus' characterization as a patriotic idealist. They are of course aware of ironic and ambiguous elements in the tragedy, but they fail to take the step that would seem obvious: to note how Shakespeare undercut Brutus' noble image by carefully manipulating materials from the principal source for the play, Sir Thomas North's English translation of Plutarch's Lives.

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Antonio Possevino, S.J. As A Counter-Reformation Critic Of The Arts, John Patrick Donnelly S.J.

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The Protestant Reformation called into question many traditions and practices of the Church, including the traditional relation of art to religion. Many Protestant theologians, for instance Calvin and especially Zwingli, condemned religious statues and art as idolatrous or superstitious, partly on the basis of Old Testament prohibitions. Luther and Lutherans approved of religious paintings but rejected the cult of the saints that had figured so largely in medieval and Renaissance religious art. In the Lutheran tradition religious art was more closely tied to the Bible, another manifestation fo the sola scriptura principle. In Catholic circles as well there arose lively …

Demonic Patterns In Tasso And Spenser, John Mulryan

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The term "demon" has embraced a variety of meanings over the centuries, and, while it can include the notion of one's own inner genius, or of a sprite midway between the gods and men, it is usually construed as an evil spirit, as Augustine said long ago:

... there is scarcely a man, no matter how well read and learned, whoo would dare say by way of praise to his slave, You have a demon, or who could doubt that the man to whom he said this would consider it a curse? Why, then, are we to subject ourselves to …

The Historical Evolution Of The Death Of King John In Three Renaissance Plays, Carole Levin

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Although King John died of dysentery in 1216, three Renaissance dramas, John Bale's King Johan, The Troublesome Reign of King John, and Shakespeare's King John, reflect the influence of late medieval legends that John was dramatically poisoned. Bale and the anonymous author of The Troublesome Reign emphasize the horror of the king's death, dwelling upon his role as a religious leader; Shakespeare, however, separates John from the kingship, focusing our attention upon a frightened man. This separation echoes the medieval political theory that the kingship is composed of two bodies. By deliberately stripping away the Christian images that …

Distortion As A Means Of Reassessment: Marguerite De Navarre's Heptameron And The "Querelle Des Femmes", Deborah N. Losse

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The crisis of sexual assault, with its many psychological implications, occupies a significant place in the narrative of Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron, composed in the first half of the sixteenth century at the height of the "Querelle des Femmes." If the storytellers conclude that parfaite amitié is with few exceptions inaccessible, it is in the scenes of sexual aggression that one witnesses the ascendancy of human passion over the formalized code of courtly love.

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The Celestial Sign On Constantine's Shields At The Battle Of The Mulvian Bridge, Charles Odahl

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Most scholars now accept the reality and sincerity of Constantine's conversion to Christianity during his military campaign against Maxentius for control of Rome in A.D. 312—provided that "conversion" is understood in terms of the superstitious religious environment of the times. The ancient pagan and Christian sources that described the campaign all agreed that the war was waged in an atmosphere of intense religious fervor, even superstitiosa maleficia as one source described it, and that each commander appealed to divine power for aid against his enemy. Christian accounts of the campaign reported that Constantine turned to the Christian God at this …

Some Observations Of The Deposition Of Archbishop Theodulf Of Orleans In 817, Thomas F. X. Noble

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Theodulf of Orleans, called by Ann Freeman "one of the brightest lights of the Carolingian Renaissance," is one of the most fascinating individuals in the history of the eighth and ninth centuries. He was a fine poet, perhaps the best of the Carolingian era, and more than 4,000 of his verses survive. His Paranesis ad iudices and his work on the filioque dispute indicate that he was a skilled controversialist. Finally, his authorship of the Libri Carolini, the massive Carolingian treatise against the positions on icons taken by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, reflects a theological knowledge …