Renaissance Studies Commons^™

The Fall Of Troy And The Rise Of Elizabethan Drama: Empowering The Audience, Charles Whitney

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The English Reformation, along with urbanization, commercial development, and other major social and cultural changes, both reflect and affect a multifaceted contestation of authority among genres and modes of discourse in the sixteenth century. Robert Weimann finds the Elizabethan period marked by clashes “between diverse authorities engaging in rivalry for the more persuasive image, logic, truth, and form of saying things,” as “the claims on God-given legitimacy of secular and ecclesiastical institutions...were irretrievably undermined.” Rather than accept the authority of a document, according to its type and status, before it was actually read, audiences tended to approach representations as sites …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner

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Marie Kelleher

This article does not appear in the current volume of Quidditas

Review Essay: Lucrezia Tornabuoni De’ Medici. Sacred Narratives, Deanna Shemek

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Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici. Sacred Narratives. Ed. and trans. Jane Tylus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. 286 pages plus notes and index.

Review Essay: Melitta Weiss Adamson, Ed. Regional Cuisines Of Medieval Europe: A Book Of Essays, Debby Banham

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Melitta Weiss Adamson, ed. Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: a Book of Essays. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

Review Essay: Linda Woodbridge. Vagrancy, Homelessness, And English Renaissance Literature, Ken Jackson

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Linda Woodbridge. Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001.

Review Essay: J. A. Burrow. Gestures And Looks In Medieval Narrative, E. Ann Matter

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J. A. Burrow. Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xi + 200 pp.

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No abstract provided.

Glimpsing Medusa: Astoned In The Troilus, Timothy D. O'Brien

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In these pages I would like to consider the role of Medusa in Chaucer's Troilus—a modest enough enterprise except for the fact that there is not a single reference to this puzzling figure in the entire work, or in any of Chaucer’s other works for that matter. Such an absence does not of course mean absence of influence. After all, Chaucer does not mention Boccaccio, even though his Il Filostrato supplies the narrative material for and fundamental shape of the Troilus. Obscuring authorial indebtedness because of some “anxiety of influence” is one thing; alluding to a figure from …

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

“Women Of The Wild Geese”: Irish Women, Exile, And Identity In Spain, 1596–1670, Andrea Knox

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Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was subject to major invasion and settlement. Tudor foreign policy towards Ireland attempted to introduce an English model of government and, during the reign of Elizabeth I, attempts were made to introduce the Protestant religion. During the sixteenth century both England and Ireland were the regular focus of European Catholic plots. This led the Tudor monarchs to invade Ireland with a double agenda: to prevent European invasion, and to subdue a country over which it had always been difficult to exercise any influence. Henry VIII invaded Scotland and France in the 1540s, and …

Review Essay: Richard Utz. Chaucer And The Discourse Of German Philology: A History Of Reception And An Annotated Bibliography Of Studies, Anita Obermeier

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Richard Utz. Chaucer and the Discourse of German Philology: A History of Reception and an Annotated Bibliography of Studies, 1793–1948. Making the Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, 2002. xxi + 446 pp.

Delno C. West Award Winner: Tradition And Originality In El Greco’S Work: His Synthesis Of Byzantine And Renaissance Conceptions Of Art, Richard G. Mann

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Domenicos Theotokopoulos (1541–1614), usually called El Greco, had one of the most unusual "career paths" of any artist of his era. In less than a decade, he transformed himself from a Byzantine icon painter into one of the most innovative artists of the western European Renaissance. His Spanish contemporaries had no difficulty in acknowledging the significance of his origins. Thus, the court poet Paravicino declared “Creta le dió la vida y los pinceles” (Crete gave him life and the painter’s craft). Nevertheless, most North American and western European scholars of the modern era have maintained that his initial experiences as …

The Demonization Of Sidney’S Cecropia: Erasing A Legal Identity, Stephanie Chamberlain

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In October fo 1533, fourteen-year-old Catherine de' Medici married Henri, duc d'Orléans in a union meant to secure a favorable political alliance between Francis I, the King of France and Pope Clement VII, her uncle and legal guardian. When, however, the Pope unexpectedly died less than a year later, Catherine’s symbolic worth virtually died as well: leaving a less than enamored France to bear the burden of one whose status, as R. J. Knecht has noted, “was immediately reduced to that of a foreigner of relatively modest origins.”1 When Henri unexpectedly died following a ceremonial jousting match in 1559, Catherine …

Latin Grammar In The Cathedral School: Fulbert Of Chartres, Bonipert Of Pécs, And The Way Of A Lost Priscian Manuscript, Elöd Nemerkényi

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The starting point of the classical tradition in medieval Hungary is marked by a letter written by Bishop Fulbert of Chartres in Northern France to Bishop Bonipert of Pécs in Southern Hungary. In this letter, dated by its editor to 1023, Fulbert assured his colleague, Bonipert that he was going to send him one of his copies of Priscian: “Our son and your faithful servant Hilduin has told us of your gestures of charity toward us and dutifully stated that you would like one of our copies of Priscian. We are happy to send this by him, and whatever else …

“True” History And Political Theory: The Problematic Orthodoxy Of The Troublesome Raigne Of King John, Cynthia Bowers

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The anonymous Troublesome Raigne of King John was performed by the Queen's Men probably during the height of the Armada crisis; it appeared in print in 1591. The play's few critics unanimously conclude that it is essentially a work of propaganda, a monument to Tudor orthodoxy and its principal buttress, obedience doctrine. Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth MacLean, recent historians of the Queen’s Men, add to the critical consensus their belief that Troublesome Raigne, like other Queen’s Men’s plays, attempts to convey “true” history, i.e., history consistent with official Tudor political and religious policy. The formation of the company and …

Metacognitive Expressions In La Respuesta A Sor Filotea, A Seventeenth-Century Text By Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz, Alfredo Urzúa B.

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In the Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz, her famous letter/treatise, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648/51–1695) eloquently defends her right to study, learn, write poetry, and pursue academic matters. In this document, Sor Juana repeatedly refers to her intellectual activities as arising from an innate desire in her. This “desire to know,” that she “knows not whether to take as a Heaven-sent favor or as a punishment,” was indeed a recurrent theme in her mental explorations. Sor Juana’s Respuesta a Sor Filotea constitutes an extraordinary example of an early essay-like …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner: Nothing’S Paradox In Donne’S “Negative Love” And “A Nocturnal Upon S. Lucy’S Day”, Sean Ford

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John Donne's complicated use of paradox is nowhere more inviting than in the grammatical and conceptual use of the word "nothing," especially when Donne chooses to give this noun the quality of substance and presence, rather than using it to denote the absence of anything. Two poems in particular, from the Songs and Sonets, give affirmative existence to a nothing in order to make distinct arguments regard- ing the status of an existing thing. Both “Negative Love” and “A Nocturnal Upon S. Lucy’s Day, being the shortest day” rely on this paradox to give a precise definition of the …

Review Essay: Melitta Weiss Adamson, Ed. Regional Cuisines Of Medieval Europe: A Book Of Essays, Debby Banham

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Melitta Weiss Adamson, ed. Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: a Book of Essays. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. 304 pp.ISBN 0415929946.

Review Essay: Andrew Hadfield. Literature, Travel, And Colonial Writing In The English Renaissance 1545–1625, Joan Pong Linton

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Andrew Hadfield. Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance 1545–1625. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 328 pp. $75.00. ISBN 0198184808.

Review Essay: Shari Horner. The Discourse Of Enclosure: Representing Women In Old English Literature, Alison Gulley

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Shari Horner. The Discourse of Enclosure: Representing Women in Old English Literature. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. viii + 207 pp. $21.95. ISBN 0791450104.

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No abstract provided.

The Prevention Of Infirm Or Monstrous Births, Michael T. Walton, Robert M. Fineman

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From ancient times, humans have tried to improve reproductive outcome, that is, to give birth to healthy, beautiful babies. Both folk traditions and medical theories offered hope that inform or monstrous births could be avoided. While most efforts were ineffectual by modern standards, some may have been beneficial. It was not until well into the twentieth century that clearly demonstrable therapies were developed to improve birth outcomes. However, those therapies were almost as limited as the ancient techniques, in light of the possibilities of genetic therapy in the twenty-first century. In the following essay, we will look at the history …

Review Essay: Lynn Tarte Ramey. Christian, Saracen And Genre In Medieval French Literature, Andrew Cowell

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Lynn Tarte Ramey. Christian, Saracen and Genre in Medieval French Literature. Studies in Medieval History and Culture, vol. 3. New York: Rou- tledge, 2001. 120 pp. ISBN 0415930138.

Review Essay: Bernhard Klein. Maps And The Writing Of Space In Early Modern England And Ireland, David Read

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Bernhard Klein. Maps and the Writing of Space in Early Modern England and Ireland. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave, 2001. xii + 235 pp. $65.00. ISBN 0333779339.

Review Essay: Gloria Allaire. Andrea Da Barberino And The Language Of Chivalry, Fabian Alfie

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Gloria Allaire. Andrea da Barberino and the Language of Chivalry. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997. xiv + 182 pp. $59.95 ISBN 0813015286.

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

The Eastern Journey Of William Feilding, Earl Of Denbigh (1631–33), Jean Macintyre

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Unlike other English courtiers whom Van Dyck painted—Lords John and Bernard Stuart in English court finery, James marquis of Hamilton in armon, Archibishop William Laud in clerical robes—his portrait of William Feilding, earl of Denbigh, depicts him in an exotic costume. The portrait, since 1938 in the National Gallery, commemorates Denbigh’s 1631–33 voyage to India and Persia in East India Company ships. He may have commissioned it for his daughter, the marchioness of Hamilton, or for his son-in-law the marquess, who owned it in 1641 (two years before Denbigh’s death), and in whose heirs’ Scottish mansion it remained until 1919. …

Reading Beyond The Words: Material Letters And The Process Of Interpretation, Sara Jayne Steen

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Until recently, early modern letters, and women's letters in particular, have been neglected as a source of information about early modern life and literary culture, although they have much to say, especially about the manuscript culture of which we now have become aware. In the 1990s, scholars began to cross the traditional disciplinary lines between literature and history and examine letters for indications of social and linguistic interrelationships and of personal artistry. Scholars of historical pragmatics now are treating issues such as how forms of address shifted across time; Lynne Magnusson is completing a book that explores early modern Englishwomen’s …

Dreams At Conception In The French Lancelot-Grail Romances (Thirteenth Century), Reginald Hyatte

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The Lancelot-Grail romances offer problematic instances of rewriting in their treatment of dreams: a songe or a vision recounted to an adult character about himself in the Vulgate Lancelot proper (ca. 1215–20) appears “prewritten” in a later composed romance as his mother’s or father’s dream in an enactment of the scene at or near his con- ception. In the cases under study, Queen Elaine’s dream the night Lance- lot was conceived in the Vulgate Story of Merlin (L’estoire de Merlin, after 1230) and Arthur’s dream soon after Mordret’s conception in the post-Vulgate Merlin Continuation (La suite du …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner: Anne Southwell, Metaphysical Poet, Hugh Wilson

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T.S. Eliot has remarked that "[n]ot only is [it] extremely difficult to define metaphysical poetry, but [it is] difficult to decide what poets practise it and in which of their verses." Although the terminology was initially ad hoc, post hoc, and somewhat hostile, the adjective has been transvalued and it “stuck.” But ever since John Dryden accused John Donne of affecting “the metaphysics,” and “perplexing the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy,” and long before Samuel Johnson wrote that the metaphysical poets were “men of learning,” there has been a tacit assumption that women did not …