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The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Poems Of Debate And Praise: Women As Published Authors In Sixteenth-Century France, Anna Soo-Hoo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Non-fictional, published poetic exchanges between men and women in sixteenth-century France provide new perspectives into how women writers operated in a literary culture whose main producers and dominant voice were male. Contrary to the notion repeated by many critics that women of that period were supposed to stay out of the public sphere, my study finds that publishing a woman’s poems did not destroy her reputation, and there appears to have been no major backlash when a man decided to include poems by a female contemporary in his book. My study takes as its point of departure the notion that …

The Source And Application Of Thomas Müntzer's Theology Of Divination In His Marginal Notes On Tertullian, Roger Drinnon

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

Drinnon, Roger A. “The Source and Application of Thomas Müntzer’s Theology of Divinization in His Marginal Notes on Tertullian.” Thesis, Concordia Seminary, 2021. 101 pp.

Traditional Lutheran and Marxist interpretations of Thomas Müntzer inadequately account for Müntzer’s theology and practice. The doctrine of the order of creation tied Müntzer’s theology and practice together. According to the order of creation, the goal of the material world was to return to God at the end of time. Müntzer’s writings on the order of creation stated the doctrine was the central tenet of Christianity. By returning to God, Müntzer believed the creation would …

Signal To Noise: Harmonic Temperaments And Patterns Of Interference, Dylan A. Marcheschi

Theses and Dissertations

An audio/visual exploration of historical tuning systems. Most contemporary Western audiences will seldom if ever encounter harmony outside of post-Renaissance tuning conventions. This presentation highlights some of those pre-orthodox harmonic relationships which existed throughout most of history. The corresponding paper documents correlates in recent advances of acoustic ecology.

Power Dressing: Feather Fans And The Visual Language Of Female Portraiture, Charlotte Svetkey

Theses and Dissertations

Feather fans in sixteenth-century portraiture not only allowed the female sitter to express her own claims to wealth, status, and power but also acted as a visual indicator of changes that were occurring on the global stage. Both fans and sitters will be evaluated through ideas of gender and class.

Thomas Middleton And The Plural Politics Of Jacobean Drama, Mark Kaethler

Late Tudor and Stuart Drama

Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama represents the first sustained study of Middleton's dramatic works as responses to James I's governance. Through examining Middleton’s poiesis in relation to the political theology of Jacobean London, Kaethler explores early forms of free speech, namely parrhēsia, and rhetorical devices, such as irony and allegory, to elucidate the ways in which Middleton’s plural art exposes the limitations of the monarch’s sovereign image. By drawing upon earlier forms of dramatic intervention, James’s writings, and popular literature that blossomed during the Jacobean period, including news pamphlets, the book surveys a selection of …

The Medici Example: How Power Creates Art And Art Creates Power, Margaret Hayden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project looks at two members of Florence’s Medici family, Cosimo il Vecchio (1389-1464) and Duke Cosimo I (1519-1574), in an attempt to assess how they used the patronage of art to facilitate their rule. By looking at their individual political representations through art, the specifics of their propagandist works and what form these pieces of art came, it is possible to analyze their respective rules. This analysis allows for a clearer understanding of how these two men, each in very different positions, found art as an ally for their political endeavors. While they were in power only one hundred …

Shakespeare And The Chronicles: The Test Case Of Richard Ii, Brandon Coimbra

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Shakespeare wrote most of what we know as his English history plays rather early in his career. He was skilled at making the genre more than a copy of the published historical documents and chronicles of his day. Scholarship has long recognized his favorite sources and has established a solid collection of the material he used to bring his country’s past to life on stage. There are many scholarly studies of the influence of Froissart’s, Holinshed’s, Hall’s and Stow’s Chronicles, among others, and they usually describe what Shakespeare borrowed or sometimes even altered from those sources. What they do …

Re-Drowning Ophelia: The Representation Of Female Disintegration In Recent Films Of Hamlet, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

Presented at the Fall 2001 Popular / American Culture Association of the South, Atlantic Beach, Florida, this paper examines several depictions of Ophelia in films of Hamlet starring Kenneth Branagh, Ethan Hawke, Mel Gibson, Kevin Kline, Derek Jacobi, Richard Burton, Campbell Scott. The title hints at Mary Pipher's Re-Claiming Ophelia, in light of then widely circulating Julia Stiles interpretation, where we repeatedly see her contemplating her suicide by drowning. My study elevates the Ophelia of LisaGay Hamilton in the Campbell Scott Hamlet, released the same year. The presentation featured video clips from this Campbell Scott production, originally airing on …

Teaching The Structure Of Hamlet: The "To Be Or Not To Be" Soliloquy Repositioned In Recent Film Adaptations, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

At a crucial turning point in online access to quality productions of Shakespeare, the (April 2010) Great Performances airing of Hamlet (with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart), the occasion arose to turn the open access to it into teaching strategies. Along with all else quirky about it, the production accepts what seems to be a trend in recent film adaptations, dating from at least Zeffirelli's with Mel Gibson in 1991; that is, to rearrange the sequence of Hamlet's 2.2 and 3.1 soliloquies. The precedent dates to the 1603 First Quarto, perhaps, but everything else about the first quarto …

Codex Exoniensis, Fols. 123b-124b: An Old English Poetic Romano-British Arts Encomium, Liam O. Purdon

Quidditas

Codex Exoniensis, fols. 123b-124b, commonly called The Ruin, is an Old English poem that has suffered both from physical damage, and from a kind of interpretive “damage,” the result of critical resignation in response to the work’s physical condition, revealing itself as much in continued critical acceptance of the work’s title as in continued acceptance of the critical assumption that the work’s total effect is forever lost to us. Enough of the poem’s whole and fragmentary lines exist, however, to confirm the purpose of two distinct emphases that draw attention to a yearning for restoration of the cultural traditions once …

Visualizing Women: Teaching Modern Images And Medieval Texts About Pre-Modern Women, Esther Liberman Cuenca

Quidditas

This paper examines two visual texts for teaching a course called “Saints, Wives and Witches” at the University of Houston-Victoria: Jennifer A. Rea’s graphic novel Perpetua’s Journey (Oxford, 2018), which illustrates the eponymous North African martyr’s third-century prison diary, and the film Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen (2009), directed by Margarethe von Trotta, who drew on feminist readings of Hildegard of Bingen’s writings for the purposes of dramatization. The course itself followed a chronology that took students from antiquity to the early modern period and was divided into thematic units that highlighted women’s intersecting identities with regards …

Alt Wars Of The Roses: A Guide To The Women In Shakespeare's First Tetralogy (Especially Richard Iii) For Fans Of Philippa Gregory's White Queen Series, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

Since The Other Boleyn Girl made such a splash, especially with its 2008 film adaptation starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, novelist Philippa Gregory has turned out book after book of first person female narratives, historical fiction of the era of the early Tudors and the Cousins’ War. (Gregory has an aversion to calling it "Wars of the Roses" but seems to be the sole voice against that classification.) With the film series of The White Queen released in 2013, we have what some consider a fuller pop culture alternative perspective on the women who intersect with the plays that …

What Happens (And Doesn't) In Hamlet (And Who Cares?), Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

This lecture, sponsored by Sigma Tau Delta, uses the classic text by John Dover Wilson, What Happens in Hamlet, to initiate some important considerations on appreciating and teaching Hamlet. Attached as addenda 3 is a Handout which includes the list of soliloquies, keyed to act, scene, lines, as recorded in both the Riverside 2^nd edition and Norton 3^rd edition texts.

Wilson often gravitates to conundrums of the text. Is Hamlet fearing his own mental instability when he warns Marcellus and Horatio that he may put an "antic disposition" on? Why does Shakespeare give us two versions …

Hellish Indigestion: Consumption As Knowledge In Medieval Descensus Christi Accounts, Harley Joyce Campbell

Quidditas

Present throughout medieval iconography and drama, the hellmouth relays a frightening glimpse of what awaits sinners after death. However, our perception of the hellmouth becomes complicated when we study these images in conjunction with Hell’s portrayal as a speaking character. Ascribing anthropomorphic qualities to Hell makes its theological implications more approachable for a non-clerical audience, effectively forming connections between human sinners and a figure of unimaginable monstrosity. This essay examines the medieval Latin Gospel of Nicodemus and its first Middle English descendant, the verse Digby Harrowing of Hell, in terms of how these texts describe the physiology of Hell …

Premodern Pedagogies: Queer Medieval Materiality, Hilary Rhodes

Quidditas

In this paper, I address some of the challenges facing medieval queer history in the classroom, in academic scholarship, and in public-facing work. My intentions are to dynamically integrate some common pedagogical questions with supporting literature to explore them, and argue that any comprehensive study of premodern men, women, and gender must take queer history into account. The subject may feel intimidating, but I encourage all historians to familiarize themselves with the material, gain confidence in teaching it, and integrate it even outside of dedicated courses on the history of gender and sexuality. The below is offered as a brief …

The Birthplace Of Saint Wulfthryth: An Unexamined Reference In Cambridge University Library Additional 2604, Jessica C. Brown

Quidditas

Cambridge University Library Additional 2604 is a fifteenth-century miscellany that is largely comprised of East Anglian and Kentish saints’ lives. It also includes a vita of Saint Edith-the patron saint of the convent at Wilton in Wessex. This vita names the birthplace of Edith’s mother, St. Wulfthryth, as ‘Lesing’ in Kent. I suggest that this unique reference may come from a desire to firmly connect Edith’s mother as well as Edith herself to a Kentish heritage.

Delno C. West Award Winner

Quidditas

The West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a senior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the West Award for 2021

Catherine Loomis

Rochester Institute of Technology

"Sapiens Dominabitur Astris": A Diachronic Survey Of A Ubiquitous Astrological Phrase, Justin Niermeier-Dohoney

Arts and Communication Faculty Publications

From the late thirteenth through late seventeenth centuries, a single three-word Latin phrase—sapiens dominabitur astris, or “the wise man will be master of the stars”—proliferated in astrological, theological, philosophical, and literary texts. It became a convenient marker denoting orthodox positions on free will and defining the boundaries of the scientifically and morally legitimate practice of astrology. By combining the methodology of a diachronic historical survey with a microhistorical focus on evolving phraseology, this study argues that closely examining the use of this phrase reveals how debates about the meanings of wisdom, free will, determinism, and the interpretation of stellar influence …

Death, Discipline, And The Dead: Biopolitical Rhetoric In Early Modern English Texts, Leslie Raybuck Malland

Theses and Dissertations--English

Death, Discipline, and the Dead: Biopolitical Rhetoric in Early Modern English Texts locates allusions to the biopolitical culture of Early Modern England within popular English texts. Through my examination of the period’s fascination with death—public executions, newly-authorized anatomies—and the ways in which death, as well as the treatment of the dead, was authorized by and supported the ideological aims of the state, my research identifies how those themes carry over into the most popular works of the day, reviewing instances of both verbal and nonverbal rhetoric across genres to find allusions to biopower — or, state control of the biological. …

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Teaching Premodern Women And Gender, Lucy C. Barnhouse

Quidditas

In her influential History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism, Judith Bennett asked “Who’s afraid of the distant past?” Fifteen years after this book’s publication, the question remains relevant. Teaching the history of women and gender in the premodern world presents linked pedagogical challenges. Most students enter college with little to no background in premodern history. Many find premodern primary sources, when taught with the same pedagogical scaffolding as modern sources, inaccessible due to real or perceived strangeness. These challenges can be compounded by the challenges of teaching women’s and/or gender history. This roundtable addresses strategies for productive …

The Good, The Bad, And The Violent: Analyzing Beowulf’S Heroic Displacement And Transgressive Violence During The Grendel Quest, Jessie Bonafede

Quidditas

Heroic actions are often associated with altruistic feats of humanitarianism, but in Beowulf, the connection between heroism and performative acts of violence reveal significant complications concerning how the poem codifies violence for social honor. A central conflict arises with the poem’s contrasting presentation of Beowulf’s dominance and physical power before and during the Grendel quest with the relatively low social status he incurs amongst his maternal kin group, the Geats. In this paper, I use anthropological and sociological theories of collective violence and dominance versus prestige hierarchies to rethink how violence interplays with the poem’s treatment of lineage and other …

Contemporary History In Early Tudor English Chronicles: 1485-1553, Barrett L. Beer

Quidditas

English chronicles published between 1485 and 1547 are studied here to determine how they dealt with contemporary history. These chronicles obviously covered the distant past, but many end well before the date of publication. Today contemporary history is of great importance to the public as evidenced by a variety of published works, periodicals, and most recently the internet. An analysis of early Tudor chronicles reveals that while many were indifferent to the recent past, others clearly laid the foundation for a focus on the contemporary era. The recognized authors of the chronicles included in this study are Richard Arnold, John …

What She Said: Recovering Early Modern Women’S Experiences Through Court Records, Jennifer Mcnabb

Quidditas

Much of the fame of early modern England’s church courts today is based on their reputation as “women’s courts.” Because ecclesiastical law allowed women to initiate suit and to be sued in their own names, the courts’ records are full of women’s words. But the task of discovering women’s experiences through these records is a methodologically complex one. Words attributed to women, for example, come to us courtesy of the male church court clerk, whose education and legal experience shaped the written record of legal oral proceedings. And while women filing suit gives the appearance of female agency, it was …

Sir John Cheke, Chamberlain Of The Exchequer, 1552-53, James D. Alsop

Quidditas

The most obscure aspect of Sir John Cheke’s public career is his tenure as a Chamberlain of the English Exchequer. This study confirms that Cheke’s chamberlainship was a sinecure, albeit one of prestige and profit. Attention is also paid to the three rising gentlemen who held office under Cheke: Robert Creswell, Roger Higham, and William Hunwyke.

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Allen D. Breck Award Winner

Quidditas

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the Breck Award for 2021

Jessie Bonafede

University of New Mexico

Humorous Spaces And Serious Magic In William Baldwin’S Beware The Cat, Ashley Jeanette Ecklund

Quidditas

When spaces transform in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat, the transition is marked with humor, consistently signaling magic to follow. As an amalgamation of folklore, including magic that manifests around, for, and through cats, Baldwin’s work offers adventure, laughter, and danger alike. Some cats are diabolical, worshiping or holding the soul of a witch; however, their wit constitutes a jocular contrast to that of our interior narrator, Maister Streamer, whose quotation above demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of St. Augustine’s beliefs. Though Beware The Cat was published at the start of the early modern period, the folklore it contains speaks …

“There’S Rosemary, That’S For Remembrance:” Suicide Ideation And Portraying Ophelia’S Madness, Ian M. Borden, Sarah Imes Borden

Quidditas

Ophelia’s madness in Hamlet is too often portrayed or understood in a generalized fashion. Historical analysis of the play, as well as historical and recent reviews of Ophelia’s performance show how Ophelia has been considered a character controlled by outside forces, and her madness lacking direction or purpose. Applying the concept of suicide ideation to the character’s actions illuminates both our historical understanding of the character, and provides modern day performers a cohesive and focused model from which to draw.