Renaissance Studies Commons^™

In Memoriam: Paul Roger Thomas (1940-2021), Darin Merrill

Quidditas

The Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association announces with great sadness the passing of Paul Thomas, a long-time member of the RMMRA and president ex officio whose unflagging organizational support, irrepressible good humor, unqualified collegiality, and thoughtful scholarship provided an important part of the RMMRA meetings for over three decades.

Elizabethan Technology: Thomas Watson’S Steam Bath For The Relief Of Gout, James Alsop

Quidditas

Thomas Watson (1513-84), Doctor of Divinity and deprived Marian bishop of Lincoln, developed an expertise in the treatment of gout. In his practice of experiential medicine in East Anglia, he used an innovative steam chest: the patient sat in a cut-open empty wine pipe, surrounded by heated bricks, and covered with a sheet. This device, with its method of enclosed steam heat, contrasts sharply with prevailing renaissance therapeutic philosophy.

Those Who Weep: Tears, Eyes, And Blood In The Boussu Hours, Katharine Davidson Bekker

Quidditas

Simon Marmion and the Master of Antoine Rolin’s Boussu Hours (ca. 1490-95) is resplendent with imagery of suffering in its unusual marginal decorations. Holy effluvia—blood and tears—flow from golden pages covered in wounds and weeping eyes. These decorations, surrounding the Hours of the Passion, pictorially enact a theological notion of tears as wounding agents, and spiritually prompt the reader’s contrition. Notable wear on the “bloody” page indicates a pattern of tactile interaction between book and reader; this physical engagement with the marginals represents a quasi-liturgical manifestation of guilt and efforts made to abate it. The gestural touching of the page …

The Case For Hildeburg: Beowulf And Ethical Subjectivity, Wendolyn Weber

Quidditas

This essay argues for a reading of Beowulf, and the female peaceweaver figures therein, in contemporary philosophical terms of Levinasian ethical subjectivity. Such a reading illuminates the peaceweaver, often caught between action and passivity and viewed as a victim of death-driven masculinist heroic culture, as an exemplar rather of the radical destabilization experienced through ethical subjection and an important key to the complexities of the heroic ethos. It illustrates the enduring value of texts such as Beowulf to inform our understanding of often oversimplified concepts like that of the “warrior ethos” in contemporary culture.

Luigi Pulci’S Fifteenth-Century Verse Parody Of Moses: A Denunciation Of Marsilio Ficino’S Neoplatonic Christianity, Michael J. Maher

Quidditas

In early 1470s Florence, popular poet Luigi Pulci, author of the celebrated epic poem Morgante, wrote a sonnet of religious parody. In Poi ch’io parti’ da voi, Pulci satirizes biblical miracles, immediately earning himself the label of heretic, still attached to his name to this day. A close examination of Pulci’s sonnet, with specific attention given to his treatment of Moses, reveals Pulci’s motivation and the circumstances surrounding composition. Pulci’s scandalous sonnet was in fact an attempt at underscoring the maltreatment of biblical miracles in a first-century Greek text by the Romano-Jewish historian Jospehus. Renowned philosopher Marsilio Ficino, with …

The Bond Of Empathy In Medieval And Early Modern Literature, David Strong

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

This study examines the various means of becoming empathetic and using this knowledge to explain the epistemic import of the characters’ interaction in the works written by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and their contemporaries. By attuning oneself to another’s expressive phenomena, the empathizer acquires an inter- and intrapersonal knowledge that exposes the limitations of hyperbole, custom, or unbridled passion to explain the profundity of their bond. Understanding the substantive meaning of the characters’ discourse and narrative context discloses their motivations and how they view themselves. The aim of this book is to explore the place of empathy in select late medieval and …

Women And Ventriloquism In Early Modern English Drama, Ja Young Jeon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bringing together feminist and theater-centered readings, this dissertation examines the status of female vessels that foreign voices inhabit and animate in early modern drama, arguing that the Greek model of ventriloquism represented by the Pythia exerted a powerful influence on the period’s ideas about women’s speech. In feminist work on ventriloquism, despite highlighting theatrical performance’s dependence on citationality, ventriloquism has been largely understood as an analogue for exploring male poets’ authorial power to appropriate women’s voices. In these readings, the term ‘ventriloquist’ is mainly identified with the person who throws his voice into human or nonhuman objects, reminding us of …

"Hail To The King[S], Baby" Arthur Vs Army Of Darkness, Jeff Massey Ph.D., Tabitha Ochtera Mlis, Mba

English: Faculty Publications

Given the current penchant for “medieval misappropriation” among white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and political pundits, medievalists are clearly justified in directing their critical attention toward debunking the overly popular neomedieval misrepresentations portrayed in so much serious modern Arthuriana. Yet, it is worth remembering that comedy also played an essential role in medieval Arthurian storytelling, and that neomedieval comic representations of King Arthur (and his silly English kuh-nigguts) remain worthy of critical attention as well, perhaps especially so during times of modern “darkness.” Two major strains of neomedieval Arthurian comedy remain perennially present in modern media: those following Mark Twain’s time-traveling Connecticut …

Zucchero E Status E Tutto Bello, Ava Garofono

Italian Renaissance Foodways

No abstract provided.

Meet Me In The Middle Ages: Engaging With Fantasy, Reality, And Collaborative World-Building, Amanda Greene

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay accompanies and describes my thesis project, Medievalia Miscellany, a magazine for middle-grade readers which explores the world of medieval fantasy through art, comics, stories, and activities. Throughout the essay, I use my own term “archaeological upcycling” to discuss and explore a variety of relationships between ideas of parts and a whole. I then use it to characterize the way stories are created out of many different parts and how these parts help a reader to relate to both the world of the story and the world in which they live. I describe the genre of medieval fantasy …

Il Corpo E Il Sacrificio Delle Donne; Affermazione Femminile Di Sé Attraverso Il Cibo, Katherine Sanchez

Italian Renaissance Foodways

No abstract provided.

A Humanist's Account: Manetti On Humanism's Impact On Morality In 15th Century Italy., Connor Kurtz, Beau Kilpatrick

Undergraduate Research Events

Abstract

Religion, art, and politics were at their peak during the Italian Renaissance. However, because of the generously allocated talent of the Italian sphere at this time it is easy to overlook the contributions of those who broke away from the Catholic concentration and kick started this humanistic era. Giannozzo Manetti, an Italian politician who in 1452 wrote De Ignate er Excellencia Hominis, a challenge to Pope Innocent III’s philosophy. The text has been translated to “On Human Worth and Excellence” and describes a deep-rooted foundation of humanism in religion. He concludes a functionality of society and religion in …

“Whenever We Crossed A Mountain / On This Earth, Yet Another One Appeared”: Circumstantial Poetry In ʿAbd Al-Ghanī Al-Nābulusī’S (D. 1143/1731) Travelogues, Tom J. Abi Samra

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

This essay identifies an early modern aesthetic that mobilizes the mundane to make a point about the world or the grandiose. Through a close reading of the poetry in the travelogues of the 17th-century Ottoman Damascene scholar ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1143/1731), this essay identifies, theorizes, and historicizes early modern Arabic circumstantial verse—what the 19th-century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé calls vers de circonstance. By drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the “chronotope,” this essay shows how the poetry in Nābulusī’s travelogues fits within, and sometimes advances, their linear narrative. If poetry is expected to transcend the chronotope in which …

The Consolation Of Exempla: Gower’S Sources Of Hope And “Textual Healing” In The Confessio Amantis, Curtis Runstedler

Accessus

This article examines the role of exempla as the root cause of hope and healing in John Gower's Confessio Amantis. I argue that these exempla provide remedial action in the text. The exempla are sources of metaphorical healing in the text, functioning as what I have termed “textual healing,” that is the medicinal aspects of the text that helps remedy Amans (and the reader, to a certain extent) back to full health. This article also draws upon reading the Confessio Amantis as a consolatio poem, linking it to Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy in particular. I also discuss the role …

A “Medieval” Myth For A “Modern” Empire Britain Under The Shadow Of Arthur (1461–1612), Julian Gonzalez De Leon Heiblum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies the use of the Arthurian myth from the fifteenth through early seventeenth centuries, as a narrative that connected a set of political principles for the unification of Britain and its imperial expansion. Joining other competing political myths in the British archipelago, the political significance of the Arthurian myth has nevertheless been overlooked. On the one hand, the myth informed the transformations of kingship in England and Wales from the crowning of Edward IV to the early years of James’ English reign. It did so specifically within the process of institutionalizing a British crown which was intertwined with …

Maurice Scève Avant La Délie (1535–1544). Une Étude Des Genres Mineurs À L’Origine D’Une Nouvelle Esthétique Poétique, Elizaveta Lyulekina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cette thèse propose d’étudier l’influence du poète lyonnais Maurice Scève, actif entre 1535 et 1562, sur la formation de genres littéraires et le développement de la poésie française de la Renaissance. Elle explore également la contribution considérable du poète à la création de l’identité linguistique et culturelle française.

This dissertation studies the influence of the Lyonnais poet Maurice Scève, active between 1535 and 1562, on the formation of literary genres and the development of French Renaissance poetry. It also explores the poet’s considerable contribution to the creation of French linguistic and cultural identity.

Dante's Inferno In The 21st Century, Ethan Chebi

Italian 347: Out of Florence: Dante in Exile

No abstract provided.

British Literature I, Justin Shaw

Syllabus Share

What does it mean to belong? What does it mean to have an identity? This course serves as an entry point to the study of early British literature and its historical contexts. We examine texts written from the 7th to the 17th Centuries that comprise a portion of what we call British literature. This survey engages poetry, prose, and drama that reimagine the complexities of intersectional identity, render the nation as part of a global stage, and challenge conventions of sexuality and gender. It traces early texts written by and about people on the margins of “Britishness” and "Englishness" such …

Fun With Palamon And Arcite: Rationale And Strategies For Teaching The Two Noble Kinsmen As The Culmination Of The Shakespearean Canon, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

Hardly noticed in the reception of Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human several years ago was his hint that not The Tempest but The Two Noble Kinsmen makes an appropriate final accomplishment. On one level, the play is merely a stage adaptation of Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, with a rather crude couple of subplots thrown in, perhaps to please the commoners. In an undergraduate forum, I am less inclined to evaluate Fletcher's contribution as distinct from Shakespeare, but I do think the play important for how it is representative of many of the co-authored English Renaissance plays …

Shakespeare As Opera In English: Britten's Dream And Adès' The Tempest, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

I assert that we learn Shakespeare better when we study him against the adaptation. Some of the adaptation choices made by opera composers and librettists-- and especially by stage designers in recent productions-- provoke us to critique a production concept for its innovative staging, forcing us to learn more about Shakespeare's original. The recent Metropolitan's The Tempest conveys the 2004 Thomas Adès Tempest as if an 18th century impresario Prospero had conjured or appropriated the contents of the Milan opera house to his island. Meredith Oakes's libretto simplifies much of Shakespearean language to efficient rhyming couplets, yet this opera eloquently …

Remixing The Canon: Shakespeare, Popular Culture, And The Undergraduate Editor, Andie Silva

Publications and Research

This essay explores the benefits and challenges of using digital editing as a platform for social knowledge production. First, I discuss the underlying impetus for the project, my choice of Scalar as a digital platform, and a number of specific assignments designed to develop skills toward the final edition. Next, I analyze examples from student work, considering the larger implications of students’ annotation choices and the thematic focus each of them chose for their acts. Finally, I outline some of the potential pitfalls of this course. My aim is to privilege students’ discovery, negotiation, and ownership of ideas. As a …

“To Multiply Corn Two-Hundred-Fold”: The Alchemical Augmentation Of Wheat Seeds In Seventeenth-Century English Husbandry, Justin Niermeier-Dohoney

Arts and Communication Faculty Publications

Agricultural reform movements proliferated in seventeenth-century Europe. For many who sought to make farming more economically productive, the practices of chymistry offered a way to accomplish these goals. Placed in the context of the development of a “vegetable philosophy,” or a theory of generation and growth across mineralogical and botanical domains, this article examines the application of chymical techniques in the attempt to enhance wheat seeds through seed-steeping and “fructifying” experiments among seventeenth-century agricultural reformers, particularly in England. I focus on three main sources: instructional husbandry manuals describing how to create “fructifying waters” to fertilize these seeds, the writings of …

Feminine Performance In The Taming Of The Shrew: Final Speech And Missing Soliloquy, Laura Kolb

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Quevedo Y La Tupida Selva Europea Del Anacreón Castellano, Adrian Izquierdo

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

England's Fairest Creatures, Madison Hart

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Set in 1616 Jacobean England, surrounding a tragic chamber pot incident, the place setting of the small fishing town of Lechlade, England, begins our story. From generations of fisherman, Elias Eaton, is the first Eaton not to bear a son. Instead, his fierce daughter in her mid-twenties, Julia, our protagonist, helps her father at the docks daily. Although Julia is a champion for women of her time, she dreams of there being something more out there for her than the town that has shackled Eatons for centuries. Julia’s mother, Sybil, is the daughter to the town baker. Her literate father …

A Seventeenth-Century Air History In Conversation With Antony And Cleopatra, Laura S. Deluca

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

This article works to unpack the recurrences of air-related language utilized in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Throughout this play, the notions of breath, wind, air, and vapor are consistently referenced, demonstrating the way in which atmospheric intangibility was a key point of exploration for contemporary scientists and philosophers. Through this analysis, it is clear that Shakespeare employs breath in three ways: the breath of (public) life, a lack of breath, and, most importantly, breath as a symbol of power and autonomy, which at times overlaps with the breath of life in ways that demonstrate contemporary conceptualizations of living beings. The …

Mentalités And The Search For Total History In The Works Of Annalistes, Foucault, And Microhistory, Jason U. Rose

The Hilltop Review

In this brief essay, the links between the Annales, the works of Michael Foucault, and microhistory are analyzed through the theoretical lens of histoire des mentalités (mentalités). Common threads that link these approaches include the willingness of using outside fields of analysis as well as the willingness to work with vagueness in search of those who Foucault calls, “lost people.” Relatedly, each of these groups and individuals are willing to analyze all aspects of the historical record to fully understand the minds, cultures, and histories of past people. The key to recognizing the relationship of these approaches involve knowing and …

Quod Inane Vocamus: Lucretius’ Void In Seventeenth-Century Italy, Carlo Bottone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the seventeenth century, the revival of atomic theories and the beginning of barometric experiments sparked a philosophical debate on the existence and the nature of void, which in turn generated new attention to the ancient disputes on void and prompted new interpretations of Lucretius’ examination of inane (De Rerum Natura, I.329-397). Commentators began to discuss the passage beyond the ancient philosophical tradition and in relation to modern ideas and recent discoveries, while Vacuists appealed to Lucretian arguments to prove or deny the existence of an absolute void interspersed among corpuscles.

My research contributes to the scholarship on …

Excremental Ecofeminism: Unearthing Waste’S Feminine And Narrative Agency In Early Modern Literature, Courtney Druzak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to understand the role of forms of waste in early modern literary texts. It both offers up a theory—known as early modern excremental ecofeminism—for reading period specific texts in relation to waste and articulates how we may do so through close analysis of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the elegies of Mary Sidney Herbert, the sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus by Mary Wroth, John Evelyn’s Fumifugium, and finally, William Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra. It chooses a variety of genres across texts from the 1580s to the 1660s both to interrogate …

The Literary Controversies Of Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling, Victoria Duehring

The Forum: Journal of History

This literary review will focus on Michelangelo’s most significant work of color: the Sistine ceiling. Michelangelo’s work has spawned a plethora of literature, but this paper will focus on three main controversial topics: assistants (or lack thereof), the ignudi’s purpose, and restoration. I will also apply a psycho-historical approach to these controversies and identify potential avenues for future research.