Renaissance Studies Commons^™

Delno C. West Award Winner (2015)

Quidditas

Elizabeth Dolly Weber

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

De Syon Exierit Lex Et Verbum Domini De Iherusalem’: An Exegetical Discourse (C. 400-C. 1200) That Informed Crusaders’ Views Of Jews, Todd P. Upton

Quidditas

This paper assesses how medieval Christian writers transformed encounters with Middle Eastern peoples such as the Jews into a complex theological discourse via the medium used by Pope Urban II in 1095 to launch the First Crusade, the Latin sermon. It argues that a hitherto unnoted homiletic tradition about Jews originated in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages based (1) on exegetical polemics that stretched back centuries in Christian theology, and (2) on a discernible chronicle and sermon tradition that depicted Jews in varying degrees of apologia based on a prophesied role as “witnesses” to the eschatological expectations of …

The Role Of Rumor And The Prodigal Son: Shakespeare’S Sources And Fathers And Sons In The Second Henriad, Steven Hrdlicka

Quidditas

This article challenges traditional, critical interpretations of Shakespeare’s character Prince Hal by examining changes Shakespeare makes to sources he used, in particular the anonymous play Famous Victories of Henry V. Shakespeare does not portray a “prodigal” Prince Hal character as has often been argued by critics, but instead carefully follows Holinshed’s observations that the prince was virtuous in youth and that rumors about the prince’s supposed prodigal behavior were spread by those who were in the service of Henry IV. These rumors were aimed to cause conflict between father and son. Shakespeare’s inclusion of these two important details found in …

The Sin Eater: Confession And Ingestion In The Romance Of Renard, Elizabeth Dolly Weber

Quidditas

The “Confession of Renard,” Branch XIV of the twelfth-century animal epic Roman de Renart (Romance of Reynard the Fox) explores the potential risks of the rite of confession, including the danger of whetting the appetite of the sinner by having him recount and re-live his delicious past sins. The fact that Renard, the “repentant” sinner, actually eats his confessor, suggests not only that merely talking about sin, particularly sexual sin, is a perilous business, but also that confession, like digestion, is a transformational process for both the penitent and the confessor.

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No abstract provided.

Literary Docudrama In The Classroom: Teaching With John Hatcher’S The Black Death: A Personal History, Ginger Smoak, Jennifer Mcnabb

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John Hatcher’s The Black Death: A Personal History is an unconventional text. It recounts the experience of plague by a single, extraordinarily well-documented village in Suffolk, England: Walsham le Willows. While such a focus perhaps seems fairly standard of case studies or microhistory, Hatcher’s book is more than a narrow treatment of a corner of England. In a preface entitled “The Nature of This Book,” he opens with a discussion of both his journey toward the realization that he wanted to write a markedly different sort of treatment of the Black Death than present in extant scholarship and a rather …

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

Symbiotic Werewolves And Cybernetic Anchoresses: Premodern Posthumans In Medieval Literature, Jennifer K. Cox

Quidditas

This paper examines how individual agency in medieval society might be expanded through posthuman configurations; in so doing, it pushes the boundaries of traditional practices in medieval research to include more contemporary ideas. Although as scholars, we must avoid anachronistic readings of these texts, ignoring modern thinkers like N. Katherine Hayles (How We Became Posthuman) and Donna Haraway (“A Cyborg Manifesto”) too easily disregards their valuable – and timeless – insights. While the term “posthuman” can evoke images of cyborgs or superhuman mutants using wormholes to traverse space and time, this pop culture perspective often overlooks less technoscientific examples of …

Domestic Cruelty: Saevitia And Separation In Medieval France, Kristi Diclemente

Quidditas

This article examines the role cruelty played in marriage separation cases in fourteenth-century Paris. Cruelty was an effective and relatively successful means for women to initiate separation litigation. The archdeacon’s court regularly cited saevitia as a reason for its decision to legally separate marriages. Marital cruelty, however was a complicated issue and what constituted cruelty was not defined within the text. Through an examination of the use of saevitia in the legal cases,in conjunction with contemporary exempla of abusive marriages, such as the vita of Godelieve of Gistel, the author finds that it was a complicated term representing a variety …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2015)

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Alaina L. Bupp

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

“I Am I”: The Allegorical Bastard In Shakespeare’S King John, Alaina Bupp

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Shakespeare’s King John provides readers with a particularly interesting, though relatively unexamined character: Philip Falconbridge, the bastard. This character exists somewhere between the allegorical forbears of medieval morality plays and the intensely interior specificity of the likes of Hamlet. Philip begins the play with a specific, though fictional, identity, but consciously decides to become allegorical. We can see this transformation at the intersection of text and context, of the words spoken by Philip as he becomes Bastard (the allegorical figure) and the First Folio’s construction of that transformation. Bastard employs particular rhetoric to firstly shed his old, specific identity and …

Rewriting A Murder Pamphlet: The Perspective Of Deviance In The Changeling” Appositions, Jennifer Andersen

English Faculty Publications

This article focuses on the relationship between murder pamphlets and early modern drama. I first provide a brief overview of typical features of murder pamphlets. In the rest of the article, I examine a specific example of a play based on a murder pamphlet, Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling. Exploring the play in contrast to its pamphlet source reveals some of the key differences between the two genres: namely, the pamphlet stories typically follow a moralizing narrative that ensures that providence will bring murderers to a just punishment and repentance, whereas the play invites the audience to …

Is Geoffrey Chaucer’S Tale Of Sir Thopas A Rape Narrative? Reading Thopas In Light Of The 1382 Statute Of Rapes, Kristin Bovaird-Abbo

Quidditas

Considering the tale’s placement between two narratives of violence—the Prioress’s Tale and the Tale of Melibee—it is surprising that the Tale of Sir Thopas has not merited more discussion of the potential for violence against feminine bodies. I argue that Chaucer the author introduces significant changes to the typical medieval romance, with the result that Thopas’s actions in the name of “love” conceal a rape narrative that engages late fourteenth-century debates as to what exactly constituted rape. As the transfer of property was a significant portion of such discussions, the 1382 Statute of Rapes prompted concerns about the ability …

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

Allen D. Breck Award (2014)

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Kristin Bovaird-Abbo

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

Causality In La Mort Le Roi Artu: Free Will, Accident, And Moral Failure, David S. King

Quidditas

The thirteenth-century French La Mort le Roi Artu indicates forthrightly how the Arthurian world comes to an end, but the text leaves less clear what motivates the disaster. Many critics attribute the cause to an external force, God or the goddess Fortune, that obliges Arthur and others to pursue their own destruction. A few offer greater insight into the nature of causality in the romance. They see the characters as exercising some degree of free will or even complete liberty. But these critics err in alienating the notion of free choice from moral concerns. In their reading, the heroes suffer …

The Intersection Of Music Philosophy, Performance And Genre In The Middle English Breton Lay Sir Orfeo, Lisa Myers

Quidditas

The Middle English romance Sir Orfeo is a dynamic and creative retelling of the classical Orpheus myth in which the wife of the English king, Orfeo, is abducted by fairies but eventually restored to her position and husband through Orfeo’s musical prowess. While any retelling of the Orpheus myth would necessarily contain references to music and would, therefore, likely use music as an important cue within the text, the poet of Sir Orfeo displays a sophisticated understanding of musical philosophy, composition and performance, as well as the Breton lay genre. The intersection of these elements all work together not only …

Full Issue

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No abstract provided.

The Pilgrim’S Intuitive Cognition In Pèlerinage De La Vie Humaine, David Strong

Quidditas

This article maintains that the Pilgrim in Guillaume de Deguileville’s allegorical dream vision, Pèlerinage de la vie humaine, acquires a previously unrecognized importance through his cognitive abilities. Each personified figure’s significance depends not upon a general introduction, but the Pilgrim’s ability to identify those traits unique to their person. This mode of intellection mirrors the late Scholastic epistemology of intuitive cognition as championed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. This theory allows the Pilgrim to grasp a particular object’s certitude without relying upon universals. Since this philosophy extols intellectual surety, it serves as a framework for interpreting the …

Visual Representations Of Prester John And His Kingdom, Michael E. Brooks

Quidditas

The mythical figure of the priest-king known to late medieval and early modern Europeans as Prester John fascinated literate Europeans for many centuries. Historians have weighed in on textual depictions of the legendary figure, but visual interpretations by European artists of the physical appearance of this eastern potentate have not been examined in any significant depth. These portrayals primarily took the form of map and book illustrations, and this essay examines the evolving visual representations that European artists developed of Prester John. In general, there was a gradual evolution over time in European artistic depictions of the legendary Prester John, …

Public Shaming: Milton And The English People, Courtney O. Carlisle

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“Public Shaming: Milton and the English People” discusses the role of shame and its performance in John Milton’s First and Second Defence of the People of England. As Milton attempts to shame Salmasius and More, he focuses on bodies and their relationship to shame. For Milton, shame should be morally productive—it is meant to produce a sense of self-consciousness and an appropriate moral awareness. Milton argues that Salmasius and More are shameless and therefore not self-conscious or morally aware. Involved with shame and self-consciousness is a profound awareness of one’s body and its relationship to others and to the environment. …

The End Of An Era: John E. Wills Jr’S 1688: A Global History As A Capstone, Nikolas O. Hoel

Quidditas

When designing a course, an appropriate question is how to end it. What great primary or secondary source will send students off into the larger academic world, outside the immediate class at hand with a better understanding of the period they had just been studying? The quandary is important in every medieval or early modern course; for example, does one end the medieval survey with Dante or Petrarch, or even Erasmus? The necessity for a capstone is no less great in classes that are entitled “England to 1688,” which populate many university course catalogues today. Many monographs and articles have …

Resolving Exeter Book Riddles 74 And 33: Stormy Allomorphs Of Water, Thomas Klein, William F. Klein, David Delehanty

Quidditas

The following article argues that the idea of the allomorph is a productive way to view two “transformation” riddles from the Old English collection of riddles in the Exeter Book. In the view of the authors, Riddles 74 and 33 should both be solved generally as “water,” and specifically as “in the form of a thunderstorm.” Both riddles dramatize the multiple forms that water may take, and meditate on the divinely-ordained grandeur of the storm and the particular paradox of a thing being both immensely violent and necessary for life on earth. Understanding how these riddles play out these truths …

Was Frederick Barbarossa The First Holy Roman Emperor?, Thomas Renna

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Frederick Barbarossa (1152-90) was the first German emperor—later to be called the Holy Roman Emperor—who gave considerable attention to the three terms of the imperial title. His own registers and contemporary chronicles reveal frequent references to the three components of both his title and the Holy Roman Empire. I argue that Barbarossa was the first to attempt to integrate them into the German traditions of the empire, in particular the method of electing the king of the Romans, the historical ties with Charlemagne, and the concept of the empire as an amalgam of smaller principalities. He was the first to …

John Bale’S Kynge Johan As English Nationalist Propaganda, G. D. George

Quidditas

John Bale is generally associated with the English Reformation rather than the Tudor government. It may be that Bale’s well-know protestant polemics tend to overshadow his place in Thomas Cromwell’s propaganda machine, and that Bale’s Kynge Johan is more a propaganda piece for the Tudor monarchy than it is just another of his Protestant dramas..

Delno C. West Award Winner (2014)

Quidditas

David Strong

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

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

On Reading Julian Of Norwich, Luke William Mills

Quidditas

This essay focuses on Julian’s intended audience, claiming that it is more limited than one might at first assume. This leads to a discussion of Julian’s use of paradox, her abrupt changes in modes of discourse, and the conclusion that unless her work is read according to the Augustinian rubric of love, it will be misunderstood.

Teaching Witchcraft In The Digital Age: Adventures In An Online Village, Jennifer Mcnabb

Quidditas

Perhaps nothing is more valued in the modern classroom than student engagement. Pedagogical strategies and exercises for encouraging active learning are both wide-ranging and plentiful. Among the most popular at present is Barnard College’s Reacting to the Past (RTTP) role-playing games: “Reacting to the Past (RTTP) consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors advise and guide students and grade their oral and written work. It seeks to draw students into the past, promote engagement with big …

Full Issue

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No abstract provided.