Renaissance Studies Commons^™

The Agency Of Prayers And Their Benefit To The Dead: The Continuity Of The Commemoration Of The Sinful Dead, 400 - 1240, Stephanie Victoria Violette

Quidditas

According to their hagiographies, medieval saints could cure or let languish the devoted followers of their cults. Humans were at their mercy, and of course by extension at God’s mercy. For the ordinary dead, however, these roles were reversed. In Late Antiquity, Augustine of Hippo’s De cura pro mortuis gerenda reveals the belief that the living had the power to aid their deceased loved ones, as well as the anxieties theologians had about the place of commemoration within a Christian framework. Conversely, in Gregory the Great’s sixth-century Dialogues (book four) a different clerical viewpoint emerges, one much more at ease …

Martin Luther, The Devil, And The True Church, Thomas Renna

Quidditas

Martin Luther refers to the Devil more than any other Reformer. Since the 1960s, historians have been more attentive to the role of Satan in his theology and polemical writings. But the place of the Evil One in Luther’s outlook goes beyond the typically medieval emphasis on the Fiend’s “private” function in tempting individual consciences. It is argued here that Luther integrated the Devil into his view of history and the two churches, the true and the false. The Reformer closely associated Satan with the persecuted church and its Catholic oppressor, as well as with the Jews, Turks, wayward Lutherans, …

Full Issue

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No abstract provided.

The Agency Of Wives In High Medieval German Courtly Romances And Late Medieval Verse Narratives: From Hartmann Von Aue To Heinrich Kaufringer, Albrecht Classen

Quidditas

In some secular medieval literature married life increasingly gained respect and literary traction, as illustrated by the rise of genres such as verse narratives (fabliaux, mæren, novelle, tales), early prose novels, didactic literature, and Shrovetide plays. In that world we encounter many discussions about the proper relationship between husband and wife, about the individual’s role within society, and also about economic and financial aspects that had a large impact on private life, and hence also on the gender relationship. The phenomenon of female agency within marriage, which this paper will investigate, comes to the fore in more texts than …

Sibling Affection And Domestic Heterosexuality In Lodovick Carlell’S The Deserving Favorite, Mario Digangi

Publications and Research

Lodowick Carlell’s play The Deserving Favorite (1629) deploys the ideological strategy of using erotic “likeness” to validate marital unions as consensual and erotically compatible. In an era before the normalization of heterosexuality, the play suggests that sexually passionate marital relations earn legitimacy to the degree that they emulate the affectionate relations between women and between siblings. Although eroticized female friendship approaches the ideal of a consensual and sensual partnership, intimate relations between women seem best to thrive in a separatist environment removed from courtly social and economic exchanges, including the marital negotiations crucial to cementing dynastic and political alliances. Brothers …

Playthings In Early Modernity: Party Games, Word Games, Mind Games, Allison Levy

Ludic Cultures, 1100-1700

Why do we play games—with and upon each other as well as ourselves? When are winners also losers, and vice-versa? How and to what end do we stretch the spaces of play? What happens when players go "out of bounds," or when games go "too far"? Moreover, what happens when we push the parameters of inquiry: when we play with traditional narratives of ludic culture, when we rewrite the rules?

An innovative volume of fifteen interdisciplinary essays at the nexus of material culture, performance studies, and game theory, Playthings in Early Modernity emphasizes the rules of the game(s) as well …

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

“Dwellers In Shadows” & Abbatial Jerusalem: Reformed Monastic Ideas By The Third Crusade In The Sermons Of Garnerius Of Rochefort And Adam The Scot, Todd P. Upton

Quidditas

In the crusading era of the Twelfth Century, a majority of Latin sermons presented Jerusalem as a visio pacis (“vision of peace”) that maintained an original characterization of the city made by Pope Urban II’s 1095 sermon at Clermont that launched the First Crusade. This essay demonstrates significant ways in which Garnerius of Rochefort and Adam the Scot transformed that visio pacis by the end of the twelfth century. For Garnerius (d. 1215)—a bishop at Langres (in northeastern France) from 1193 who wrote against the Amaurian pantheistic heresy, and died at Clairvaux—the traditional Augustinian visio spiritualis of Jerusalem was reversed, …

Delno C. West Award

Quidditas

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

Recipient of the West Award for 2017

Kristin M.S. Bezio

University of Richmond

The Local Costs Of Religious Reform And The Decline Of Parish Performances In Tudor England, James H. Forse

Quidditas

The volumes of the Records of Early English Drama show that there was a lively tradition of local, religious performances throughout England in the late medieval and early Tudor period. Parishes, large and small, rich and poor, supported plays, processions, ales and other activities like Robin Hood celebrations. Great care, money and time went into creating costumes and staging for these events. Most of these local performances disappeared by the middle of the sixteenth century. A few, notably at York, Chester, Coventry and Norwich, continued into the early 1570s, but focus on these performance “giants” of English theatrical history fails …

Marlowe’S Radical Reformation: Christopher Marlowe And The Radical Christianity Of The Polish Brethren, Kristin M.S. Bezio

Quidditas

Although scholars of both literature and history have made arguments for Christopher Marlowe’s religious belief in Catholicism, the Church of England, and even atheism (which could have been conflated with both by different parties during his lifetime), few consider the belief system of the Polish Brethren, a precursor to Unitarianism established by one Faustus Socinus. This essay uses historical and social network analyses to suggest a close tie between Marlowe’s acquaintances and believers in Socinianism. Clues in Doctor Faustus and Massacre at Paris suggest Marlowe’s skepticism concerning the doctrines of Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. Furthermore, repeated references to Poland and …

Apocalypse Then, Apocalypse Now: Rethinking Joan Of Arc In The Twenty-First Century, Timothy M. Thibodeau

Quidditas

Joan of Arc has stood alone among legendary figures of the Middle Ages in her capacity to be appropriated and employed for a host of modern noble causes. However, a fresh examination of Joan’s words and deeds reveals that her aims and objectives were not the universal “greater goods” of modern activists who have used her story to craft their own narratives. I propose that Joan’s continued attractiveness as a cultural icon now faces two major obstacles. First, in the wake of the rapid secularization of modern western society and the evolution of social mores related to gender identity and …

What Women Know: The Power Of Savoir In Marguerite De Navarre’S Heptaméron, Nora Martin Peterson

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

The verbs savoir and connaître appear in central moments in the Heptaméron. Knowledge—as it appears in the frame narrative and in the novellas—can be a way for men and women to debate, among many other things, the relationship between the sexes. When women use this word, or when they demonstrate that they know something, it creates the space to participate – not always unambiguously – in otherwise male-dominated conversations. How Marguerite writes about the acquisition, possession, fragmentation, or loss of knowledge, underscores her interest in exploring the role of women in communities of knowledge.

Allen D. Breck Award

Quidditas

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

Recipient of the Breck Award for 2017

Steven Hrdlicka

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

“Me Thinks If I Were A Man”: An Analysis Of Dorothy Leigh’S Mother’S Blessing As A Response To Joseph Swetnam, Julia Combs

Quidditas

As one of the first and most popular female-male authored conduct manuals of the seventeenth century, Dorothy Leigh’s The Mother’s Blessing is usually placed in the company of private, domestic literature. However, it does not sit comfortably there. Leigh claims to forget herself, as she rhetorically navigates her way through the constraining but enabling genre of the conduct manual. In this paper, I position Leigh as one of the initial respondents to Joseph Swetnam’s pamphlet The Arraignment of Lewd, idle, froward and unconstant women . Swetnam also claimed forget himself, as he stirred up the ire of writers in …

Labouring For The Lost Love, Christine S. Williams

Quidditas

Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost often is considered a “problem play” because of its emphasis on word-play and its extreme “topicality” to a 16th-century, London audience. Yet imaginative staging reveals that the play actually provides excellent opportunities for connecting with our current millennial students and audience members.

A Dialogue On Disaster: Antichrists In Jewish And Christian Apocalypses And Their Medieval Recensions, Natalie E. Latteri

Quidditas

This paper examines textual and iconographic representations of antichrist personae in medieval Christian and Jewish manuscripts. Through a common language of polemics, Christians and Jews conflated antichrist personae to represent a more generalized category of apocalyptic antagonist that reflected the most significant temptations and threats to each respective religious community. As will be argued here, the greatest temptation and threat for Christians and Jews alike were those posed by members of the other religious group

Milton And The Middle Ages: Poetic Analogues And Visual Representations Of The War In Heaven, Expulsion Of The Rebel Angels, And Michael And The Dragon, Steven Hrdlicka

Quidditas

Milton is not typically connected to the Middle Ages as much as to the later Enlightenment and the Romantic periods. Yet many distinctively medieval ideas can be seen in Paradise Lost, especially in the scenes that are related to the War in Heaven. Milton’s account of the war displays a medieval understanding of history in terms of typology in the drama of salvation. Particular details about the war itself such as St. Michael and Lucifer’s sword fight, Jesus’ eventual ending of the war, and the human characteristics of the fallen angels all have clear parallels in longstanding Christian poetic and …

What Happened To The Grandsons And Great-Grandsons Of The House Of York?, James H. Forse

Quidditas

Josephine Tey, in her famous murder mystery centering on Richard III, The Daughter of Time, asserts that Richard was not a murderous tyrant determined to eliminate any challengers to his throne; rather it was the aim of Henry VII and Henry VIII to eliminate most of the male descendants of Richard Duke of York. Do the fates of those male descendants actually demonstrate that such was the policy of the first two Tudor monarchs?

Le Morte Darthur And The Extratextual Significance Of Prophecy Across The Centuries, Stephanie Victoria Violette

Quidditas

Prophecy is the driving force of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. The Morte emerged from a tradition of prophecy that existed long before its creation, and which continued into the early modern period. Prophecy influenced both political and religious spheres, as well as medieval cultural perceptions of time. English culture absorbed the Morte’s prophetic elements and used them to either bolster later uses of prophecy or to defame them. Using the Morte as a starting point, this examination draws on elements from various sources: Greek, Christian, and Welsh folklore, Geoffrey of Monmouth and contemporaries of Thomas Malory. Also part …

The Reception Of Tacitus’ Germania By The German Humanists: From Provence To Empire, Thomas Renna

Quidditas

It is well known he German Humanists (1490-1540) used Tacitus’ Germania to advance their notion of the German nation in response to Italian criticism. But less attention has been given to the German nature of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (1509). I argue that Humanists after Conrad Celtis (Bebel, Wimpheling, Cochlaeus, Brant, Irenicus, Franck, Hutten) emphasized the Germanness of the empire by reinterpreting the traditional Translation of Empire, the Germanic migrations out of Germania after Constantine, and the designation of a new national purpose (the protection and expansion of the Church and the faith). They grafted the …

Full Issue

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No abstract provided.

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2016)

Quidditas

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

This year’s recipient is Samantha Dressel, doctoral candidate in English at the University of Rochester.

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

Small Mid-Tudor Chronicles And Popular History: 1540-1560, Barrett L. Beer

Quidditas

This essay examines twenty-two editions of little-studied small Mid-Tudor chronicles that were published by printers at Canterbury and London. They demonstrate the important role of printers in historical scholarship and offer a significantly different perspective on English history than the better-known, larger contemporary works of Robert Fabyan, Edward Hall, and Thomas Cooper. The chronicles also shed light on the readership of historical works by non-elite readers who presumably could not afford larger and more expensive chronicles. The short chronicles present a simplified view of the past, avoid propagating the well-known Tudor myths including the tyranny of Richard III, and demonstrate …

Master William’S Hamnet: A New Theory On Shakespeare’S Sonnets, Juan Daniel Millán

Quidditas

This essay suggests the Fair Youth in Shakespeare’s Sonnets is Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, to whom he later dedicated the cycle. Nevertheless, the larger claims of the essay are independent of the biographical details of Shakespeare’s life, and even independent of the particular ordering of the Sonnets as they have come down to us.

“The Man In The Shyppe That Showeth The Unstableness Of The World”: Social Memory And The Early Modern English Sailor, 1475-1650, Vincent V. Patarino Jr., Ph.D.

Quidditas

Both medieval and early modern English writers described the tumultuous, raging sea as the epitome of chaos and evil. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both manuscript and print documents connected seething storms with the power and influence of evil, especially the devil. As the Reformation advanced, this link included Satan’s supposed minions, witches. In addition to these texts, woodcut illustrations confirmed in very stark terms, a direct association between the devil, the sea, and sailors’ supposedly anti-religious behavior and beliefs. One powerful image revealed “the man in the shyppe” tormented by the devil; others depicted the devil steering a …

Delno C. West Award Winner (2016)

Quidditas

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

This year’s recipient is Ruth Frost, Associate Professor of History, the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, BC.

Richard Iii: Beyond The Mystery, Daniel Hobbins

Quidditas

He is not the likeliest theme for an American undergraduate classroom: his reign lasted barely two years; he contributed nothing of lasting significance to history; he is more memorable for his spectacular final defeat than for any victory; he was accused of murdering children; and he was after all an English king, as far removed as possible from the typical experience of an American undergraduate. Even the times he lived in are against him. In the immortal words of Mark Twain, his century was “the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages.”1 Yet he continues to …

“Like To My Soft Sex”: Female Revenge And Violence In The Fatal Contract, Samantha Dressel

Quidditas

The Fatal Contract by William Heminge is not a good play. Its critical afterlife is essentially non-existent, with Fredson Thayer Bowers being one of the only critics to discuss it, criticizing its lack of “inspiration” and “ethical spirit.”1 I argue however, that the play is both inventive and moral, despite its many derivative aspects and narrative foibles. I suggest a new reading of the play as deeply innovative in terms of gender and revenge. Bowers criticizes the play’s morality because of the ultimate exoneration of Chrotilda, the central revengeress. The play can be reinterpreted and partially redeemed by understanding Chrotilda’s …