Renaissance Studies Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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

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.

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 …

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.

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, …

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 …

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.