Renaissance Studies Commons^™

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 …

Renaissance Courtesy And Book Vi Of The Faerie Queene, Matthew S. Martini

Dissertations and Theses

Book VI of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, with its chivalric and pastoral characteristics, has confounded critics for several generations. This thesis provides a chronological reading of Book VI that addresses many of its problems in the context of conduct manuals such as Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier and Stefano Guazzo's Civile Conversation. Rather than dismiss many of the tensions and contradictions in the text, this study seeks to embrace them by interpreting them with Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogism as expressed in The Dialogic Imagination.

In chapter one, connections are made between the opening …

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 …

Review Essay: Miran Bozovic. An Utterly Dark Spot: Gaze And Body In Early Modern Philosophy, Shankar Raman

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Miran Bozovic. An Utterly Dark Spot: Gaze and Body in Early Modern Philosophy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

The Lioness In The Text: Mary Of Egypt As Immasculated Female Saint, Onnaca Heron

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The oral legend of Saint Mary of Egypt, whose death is assigned the date of about A.D. 430, was first recorded in Greek by Sophronius, bishop of Jerusalem, in the mid-sixth century; roughly two centuries later, Paulus, the deacon of the church of holy Naples, translated Sophronius’s text into Latin. While closely following his Greek source in the Latin translation, Paulus the deacon inserted a “Prologus auctoris,” an introductory allusion to the blinding and healing of Tobit by the archangel Raphael

“Falseness Reigns In Every Flock”: Literacy And Eschatological Discourse In The Peasants’ Revolt Of 1381, Tison Pugh

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The literature of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, a miscellany of fourteenth-century poetry and prose penned before, during, and after the insurrection, often stresses the importance of literacy to the nonaristocratic population of England. Since literacy was a primary marker of one’s social status in the stratified society of medieval England, the rise of literacy in the lower orders pointed to a dramatic change in the prevail- ing socioeconomic structure. In the literature of the revolt, eschatological themes highlight the tensions resulting from this tremendous upheaval in the traditional estates. The power of literacy is depicted as adumbrating a new …

The Repudiation Of The Marvelous: Jonson’S The Alchemist And The Limits Of Satire, Ian Mcadam

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Our present conception of alchemy is, at best, shadowy and confused. As Charles Nicholl states in The Chemical Theatre, "The modern image...tends in two directions: one scientific, the other magical. The first defines alchemy simply and chronologically as early chemistry...out of which modern chemistry began to emerge during the seventeenth century.” On the other hand, “alchemy is popularly defined as one of the ‘occult arts’.... To us, the alchemist’s avowed quest for miraculous substances—the Philosopher’s Stone which converts all to gold, the Elixir Vitae which confers immortality—belongs to the realm of magic rather than science.” Nevertheless, to consider Renaissance …

Review Essay: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Ed. The Postcolonial Middle Ages, Dorothy Kim

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Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. The Postcolonial Middle Ages. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. 286 pp. ISBN 0312219296.

Montaigne And The Coherence Of Memory, Douglas Mcfarland

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Among the many classical authorities to whom Montaigne refers either through direct reference or quotation, little attention has been paid to Lucan and to his contribution to the intellectual and rhetorical strategies of the Essais. Hugo Friedrich, for instance, in his chapter on Montaigne’s intellectual inheritance from the classical world, does not even mention Lucan’s name. Although Virgil, Lucretius, Plutarch, and several others clearly have influenced both the style and content of the Essais in seemingly more direct and overt ways, Montaigne, nevertheless, turns to Lucan consistently and with regularity. The essayist directly alludes to Lucan on three occasions …

Meter Change As A Relic Of Performance In The Middle English Romance Sir Beues, Linda Marie Zaerr

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Despite the paucity of direct evidence of performance, some form of public representation of the Middle English popular verse romances remains a possibility, and that possibility has been reached by extrapolation from a number of directions. The convergence of evidence, though indirect, has become convincing, and a new approach strengthens that likelihood even further. In an attempt to understand if and how the romances were performed, scholars have considered internal references to performance, historical documents of performance and audience, physical evidence from the manuscripts, cognitive theory, theory of orality and “mouvance,” and evidence from textual variants.

Review Essay: James Sharpe. The Bewitching Of Anne Gunter: A Horrible And True Story Of Deception, Witchcraft, Murder, And The King Of England, Frances E. Dolan

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James Sharpe. The Bewitching of Anne Gunter: A Horrible and True Story of Deception, Witchcraft, Murder, and the King of England. New York: Routledge, 2000. 238 pp. + xvi. $26.00.

Review Essay: John Kitchen. Saints’ Lives And The Rhetoric Of Gender: Male And Female In Merovingian Hagiography, Isabel Moreira

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John Kitchen. Saints’ Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. 255 pp. ISBN 0195117220.

Full Issue

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No abstract provided.