bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Prison and Knightly Identity in Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur
Authors: Davidson Roberta
Published: April 2015

Due to his incarceration, Malory was forced to solve the problem of proving knightly identity when the knight is unable to express that identity physically. He redefines the nature of knightly action as internal prowess.
Intertextuality and Gauvain
Authors: Hogenbirk Marjolein
Published: April 2015

Medieval Flanders was a polyglot and rich cultural region in which many different literary genres and matières circulated. This article explores the way authors alluded to other texts and traditions current in Flanders, as well as the effects these allusions might have had on their unknown intended audience.
Hi sette sijn vechten an hare minne : Love and Adventure in Die Wrake van Ragisel
Authors: de Bundel Katty
Published: April 2015

Die Wrake van Ragisel , as it appears in the Middle Dutch Lancelot compilation , is an adaptation of an older translation into Middle Dutch of the Old French La Vengeance Raguidel . This article reads Die Wrake van Ragisel as a parody of the traditional themes or worldy chivalry and love. To this end special attention is paid to changes vis-à-vis the original and the consequences these have for our interpretation of the romance. The resulting reading argues for a meaningful role of Die Wrake van Ragisel within the compilation as a whole.
Reconfiguring Wace's Round Table: Walewein and the Rise of the National Vernaculars
Authors: Walters Lori J.
Published: April 2015

This article explores the possible origins of the Middle Dutch character Walwein in Wace's Roman de Brut . After first considering the character's name and his association with chess in Wace, it moves to a study of competing fourteenth-century French and Germanic models of empire.
Assimilating Saracens: The Aliens in Malory's Morte Darthur
Authors: Hoffman Donald L.
Published: April 2015

The trajectory of Malory's whole work implies a complicated pattern of understanding and misunderstanding of the Saracen climaxing in a kind of whinging Armageddon as the remnant of Camelot surrenders to martyrdom in the Holy Land.
About the Saxon Rebellion and the Massacre at Amesbury
Authors: Nickel Helmut
Published: April 2015

It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment; to see all ages in a sort of splendid foreshortening. That is the use of tradition; it is telescope history.
Odysseus, Parzival, and Faust
Authors: Jaeger C. Stephen
Published: April 2015

This essay takes 'charismatic representation' as the category that makes the three figures of the title comparable. It argues that each of the works creates exemplarity in the main characters by projecting their strength, desirability and destinies into the supernatural, at least to the point where a contest with the supernatural is an option, which ends inevitably in higher reconciliation. After defining 'charismatic representation,' it focuses on the elements that best illustrate that mode and that best invite comparison of the three works: the fantastic, the rise of the hero, and defiance of the gods.
Reading Like a Woman in Malory's Morte Darthur
Authors: Davidson Roberta
Published: April 2015

Women characters' position as involved spectators facilitates their use as readers and teachers in Morte Darthur . Malory's use of these characters to model the act of reading reflects his own position as a redactor and involved, analytical reader of his sources.
Sir Gareth and the 'Unfair Unknown': Malory's Use of the Gawain Romances
Authors: Sanders Arnold
Published: April 2015

Malory's 'Gareth' narrative achieves comic effects by combining episodes from the 'Fair Unknown' romances with others from the Gawain romances, especially those involving beheading games, bed tests, and confrontations with 'felon knights.'
A Tale of 'Simple' Malory and the Critics
Authors: Lynch Andrew
Published: April 2015

Malory criticism from Saintsbury to Vinaver and C.S. Lewis sought increasingly complex and thoughtful ways to reconcile a liking for the Morte with its perceived lack of an intelligent or respectable author.
Divine Love or Loving Divinely?: The Ending of Malory's Morte Darthur
Authors: Sweeney Mickey
Published: April 2015

This article examines the merits of two potential readings of Malory's ending to the Morte Darthur : is Launcelot being envisioned as a martyr for the 'religion of love' or as a saint martyred by love?
'Delyver Me My Dwarff!': Gareth's Dwarf and Chivalric Identity
Authors: Huber Emily Rebekah
Published: April 2015

In Malory's Tale of Sir Gareth , the servant dwarf functions as a catalyst for the development of Gareth's chivalric identity.
'I love nat to be constrayned to love': Emotional Charity and Malory's World
Authors: Ackerman Felicia Nimue
Published: April 2015

The concept of emotional charity offers a useful way of thinking about Malory's Morte , and vice versa.
The Worst Arthurian Cartoon Ever
Authors: Salda Michael N.
Published: April 2015

Filmation's 1972 Daffy Duck & Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies represents the nadir of Arthurian animation.
Lancelot's Wives
Authors: Cooper Helen
Published: April 2015

In a German romance of Anglo-Norman origin, a fifteenth-century chronicle and a sixteenth-century potboiler, Lancelot takes the role not of adulterous lover but of suitor and husband.
The (Non-)Christian Knight in Malory: A Contradiction in Terms?
Authors: Armstrong Dorsey
Published: April 2015

An analysis of the figures of Sir Palomides and Sir Galahad in Malory's Morte Darthur reveals that both the non-Christian and the ultra-Christian knight pose similar threats to the Arthurian social order.
Elaine of Ascolat's Death and the Ars Moriendi
Authors: Reynolds Rebecca L.
Published: April 2015

Le Morte Darthur 's contemporary audience would have recognized Elaine's death speech as Malory's possible censure of her love for Launcelot when read in relation to the Ars Moriendi .
Malory's Launcelot and the Language of Sin and Confession
Authors: Cherewatuk Karen
Published: April 2015

Malory takes Launcelot through two stages of the sacrament of penance, contrition, and confession in the Sankgreal , but delays the third stage of confession until the penitent's satisfaction proves equal to his sin and earns him salvation.
Torec , Cosmic Energy, and Pragmatism
Authors: Morey James H.
Published: April 2015

The recirculation of cosmic energy between the worlds of fairies and mortals defines the adventures of the hero in the Middle Dutch Torec . A comparison with Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene reveals the logic of how characters are named and how contact with the fairy world is gradually lost, even as Torec grows in wisdom and love.
A Knight of God or the Goddess?: Rethinking Religious Syncretism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Authors: Tracy Larissa
Published: April 2015

An analysis of the pentangle and of Morgan le Fay in SGGK suggests that the poem is neither a reaffirmation of Christianity nor a tool of conversion, but a poem of religious synthesis in which paganism and non-Christian ideologies—like the Jewish Kabbalah—are presented as parallels to Christianity, not wholly appropriated or obliterated.
Masculine Excess, Feminine Restraint,
and Fatherly Guidance in the Middle
Dutch Walewein ende Keye
Authors: Perry Lucy
Published: April 2015

Excesses in the characterization of Keye are in contrast to Walewein's role in Walewein ende Keye . But is it sufficient to read Keye as a foil for Walewein and Walewein as a paragon of virtue? Examination of male and female relationships in the narrative suggests that masculine and feminine roles are controlled by the construction of Walewein as a paternal figure rather than a lover.
The Law of the Lake: Malory's Sovereign Lady
Authors: Kaufman Amy S.
Published: April 2015

Nynyve challenges preconceptions about women in romance by acting out her desires in the Morte Darthur without being forced to exist in its margins.
The Reel Arthur: Politics and Truth Claims in Camelot, Excalibur , and King Arthur
Authors: Davidson Roberta
Published: April 2015

Filmmakers use King Arthur as a platform for their own agendas and as a figure of hope. Examination of three works reveals a range of implicit and explicit politics.
The Rise of Sir Gareth and the Hermeneutics of Heraldry
Authors: Tiller Kenneth J.
Published: April 2015

Expanding on Bonnie Wheeler's study of color and alchemical practices in Malory's The Tale of Sir Gareth , this study finds that the procession of colors Sir Gareth battles draws signification from medieval heraldic, in particular, Iohannes de Bado's fourteenth-century Tractatus de Armes . Malory transforms Gareth into one of the 'Grete Knights' through the order of the heraldic color spectrum, correlating each knight's color to the landscape the knight inhabits.
Cinema Arthuriana without Malory?: The International Reception of Fuqua, Franzoni, and Bruckheimer's King Arthur (2004)
Authors: Sullivan Joseph M.
Published: April 2015

Filmmakers deviate greatly from traditional Arthurian narrative, challenging the distinct expectations that each national audience brings to this most un-Malorian picture.
Catholic Church History: One Hundred Years of the Discipline
Authors: O’Malley John W.
Published: April 2015

This article provides a general survey of developments over the past 100 years in the study of the history of the Catholic Church. It therefore provides the context for the other contributions in the issue, which deal with particular epochs or cultures. Included in it, for instance, are listings and analyses of major instruments of research such as encyclopedias, descriptions of shifts in historical method, assessments of the impact upon historians of events like the First and the Second Vatican Councils, and discussions of the vocation of Catholic historians of the Church.
“National and Universal”: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Catholic Missions and World Christianity in The Catholic Historical Review
Authors: Dries Angelyn
Published: April 2015

The Catholic Historical Review initially focused on Catholic Church history in the United States, but the purpose soon expanded to the “larger domain of church history, both national and universal.” This examination of the journal since its first issue highlights the treatment of mission history and sketches the relationship between missions and world Christianity.
From Patristics to Late Antiquity at The Catholic Historical Review
Authors: Clark Elizabeth A.
Published: April 2015

Since The Catholic Historical Review , founded to focus on North American Catholic history, has published few articles on early Christianity, this essay focuses mainly on the book reviews published. Since 1915, there have been major shifts in the historiography of late antiquity and late-ancient Christianity. More recent interest in social and cultural history has strongly influenced the creation of new areas of scholarship.
Medieval Studies in The Catholic Historical Review
Authors: Constable Giles , Bruce Scott G.
Published: April 2015

This article examines the character and scope of research on medieval Catholicism published in The Catholic Historical Review . It considers the rate of publication of medieval scholarship in the journal over the past century and classifies these contributions by subject matter and geographical focus. The article also shows how The Catholic Historical Review has widened its scope since the Second Vatican Council to include new approaches to the medieval past. As a result, the journal has emerged as an important venue for historical research in medieval ecclesiastical history.
The Historiography of American Catholicism as Reflected in The Catholic Historical Review , 1915–2015
Authors: Gleason Philip
Published: April 2015

This essay surveys and provides limited commentary on the articles and book reviews dealing with the history of American Catholicism that have appeared in The Catholic Historical Review since it began publication in 1915.
Old Irish Curad-Mír and Old Norse Mannjafnađr : Two Forms of Literary Man-Comparison in Early Medieval Literature
Authors: Frotscher Antje G.
Published: April 2015

Verbal contests for superiority between warriors in a maledominated heroic society exist in a number of cultures and literary traditions. In the literature of early medieval Iceland and Ireland these man-comparisons have been formalized to a point where they appear as instances of what looks like an autonomous literary genre. The Old Icelandic mannjafnađr occurs in the Norse sagas both as a legal procedure and as a popular form of entertainment at feasts, the most notable example being the poetry-and-drinking contest in Ôrvar-Odds saga . The early medieval Irish narrative tradition of the Ulster cycle knows two instances of the contest for the curad-mír , the Champion’s Portion, in Fled Bricrenn and Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó . Comparing the two traditions as to their origins, context, content, function, and style, this paper once again takes up the question of possible direct literary influences between Irish and Norse medieval literary culture.
Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis: Chronographia and Topographia in Petrarch’s Sestina XXII and Tullia D’aragona’s Sestina LV
Authors: Pallitto Elizabeth A.
Published: April 2015

Tullia d’Aragona (1510–1556) is a poet whose work is only now being edited, translated into English, and subjected to critical analysis. While earlier nineteenth-century criticism focused disproportionately on the biographical aspects of the life of this courtesan poet, late twentieth-century critics grapple with theoretical language on the subject of women writing in the Petrarchan tradition: self-betrayal or self-fashioning? What is the role of gender, if any, when a female poet engages with the Petrarchan tradition? A close reading of two poems is used to elucidate larger issues, such as canon formation and marginality. While Petrarch’s sestina ends with the use of the impossibility topos and focuses upon his own death, the closing lines of Tullia d’Aragona’s sestina juxtapose cosmic apocalypse and the force of individual love. The analysis partakes of Ann Jones’s cultural studies approach and utilizes Thomas Greene’s theory of Renaissance imitation, specifically in the dialectical or heuristic mode.
Respublica : England’s Trouble about Mary
Authors: Winkelman Michael A.
Published: April 2015

This essay examines Respublica by Nicholas Udall and argues for a positive reevaluation of this neglected and maligned play performed before Queen Mary in 1553. Respublica addresses the tribulations facing an unmarried, Catholic female sovereign, difficulties compounded by Northumberland’s failed coup and England’s poverty. Underneath its explicit themes—the denunciation of greed and the apotheosis of the Queen— Respublica offers sage counsel from its privileged position as an imaginative historical allegory. Its courtly venue, that is, allowed dicey questions of policy to be handled with some impunity. This essay will show how Udall invokes familial and religious analogies of government, such as the figuration of Respublica as Widow England and the equation of Mary with Truth the daughter of Time, in order to justify Mary’s rule; conversely, the drama advises the monarch to exercise mercy towards her loyal though reform-minded subjects. Though ultimately unpersuasive, Respublica deserves attention as a rare example of humanist political drama, well crafted to convince a Christian prince.
Wonders of Mathematical Magic: Lists of Automata in the Transition from Magic to Science, 1533–1662
Authors: Kang Minsoo
Published: April 2015

This essay examines lists of automata that appear in five texts from the Renaissance and the early Enlightenment period with the purpose of not only identifying the items that have captured the imagination of both Hermetic magicians and early modern scientists, but also of elucidating the various symbolic and philosophical uses they were made in different historical and intellectual contexts. The author begins by pointing to the odd situation of similar groups of wondrous objects used to support ideas that are commonly regarded as antithetical, namely spiritual magic and empirical science, and links it to recent scholarship on the transitional period of the seventeenth century that sees a closer connection between Hermetic thought and the origins of modern science. The fascination with automata gives evidence to interest in what we call applied science shared by Renaissance Hermetics and early modern natural philosophers. The authors of the texts are Cornelius Agrippa, John Dee, Tommaso Campanella, John Wilkins, and Florentius Schuyl.
Did Brigit Love Animals Like a Good Celt Should?: An Inquiry into Cogitosus’s Life of Saint Brigit
Authors: Olsen Cristina
Published: April 2015

Projecting onto the past modern challenges and values concerning the environment leads to broad claims concerning a universal Celtic “love” of nature and animals and an inventorying approach to source analysis. For example, that Cogitosus’s Life of Saint Brigit is brimming with animals does not prove that a sentimental relationship existed between saint and animal. Taking into account the spiritual, economical, and political nature of hagiographical works reveals that in a seventh-century rural environment such as Kildare, animals (including pets) were important for human survival. Thus, the more powerful and far-reaching a saint’s influence over the barnyard economy and over the uncontrollable natural forces that threaten to disrupt the precarious balance of that economy, the greater the political and spiritual influence of the monastery associated with that saint. In other words, under Cogitosus’s penmanship, animals are pawns that serve to demonstrate Brigit’s spiritual power and the Kildarian monastery’s political authority.
"Rex Francie in regno suo princeps est": The Perspective of Pierre Dubois
Authors: Jones Chris
Published: April 2015

“‘Rex Francie in regno suo princeps est’: The Perspective of Pierre Dubois.” Pierre Dubois, lawyer by profession and author of a number of tracts written in support of the Capetian king Philippe IV le Bel during the first decade of the fourteenth century, is often considered to be amongst the first exponents of the idea that the world is naturally divided into self-contained political units whose rulers recognize no superior temporal authority. This article sets out to explore the place occupied in Dubois’s thought by the contemporary western Empire, an institution whose rulers had frequently claimed to be, and had been traditionally regarded as, a necessary apex of temporal power. It suggests that Dubois assigned a unique and necessary function to the western emperor and questions the view that he formulated a conception of the world which completely dispensed with the need for an ultimate temporal authority.
Confronting the “Temple Of Chastity”: Isabella d’Este in the Context of the Female Humanists
Authors: Rossi Nassim E.
Published: April 2015

“Confronting the ‘Temple of Chastity’: Isabella d’Este in the context of the Female Humanists.” Active in fourteenth and fifteenth-century North Italy, the so-called female humanists wrote classically inspired texts with the aspiration of entering into the traditionally masculine realm of intellectual discourse and of achieving recognition for their competence. Isabella d’Este, marchesa of Mantua from 1490–1537, assembled and commissioned a classically inspired collection of antiquities and paintings, also with the purpose of contributing intellectually and achieving recognition. Whereas the female humanists were vigorously rejected, Isabella can be argued to have succeeded to some degree. It is tempting to speculate that as a politically influential consort Isabella was immune to the petty slander and manipulations that brought about the marginalization of other intellectually ambitious women. However, the virtual absence of other consorts testing the traditional boundaries of female collecting and patronage is telling. I argue that the integration of chastity as a motif in her collections, through which she effectively challenged the ideology at the same time that she yielded to it, allowed Isabella to achieve intellectual self-expression and recognition.
Friendship without the Friend: The Many Meanings of La Boétie for Montaigne
Authors: Pozen David E.
Published: April 2015

“Friendship without the Friend: The Many Meanings of La Boétie for Montaigne.” Over a decade after Étienne de La Boétie’s sudden death in 1563, Montaigne still writes about La Boétie as his best friend in the Essays . This article draws on the textual and biographic evidence to examine the ways in which Montaigne continues to derive meaning from his deceased companion—the ways in which Montaigne internalizes their friendship and incorporates it into his selfconsciousness. For Montaigne, friendship yields to Friendship following La Boétie’s death, taking on a highly-developed independent life in order to serve many of his psychological needs. Montaigne thus inaugurates a new relationship with La Boétie in the Essays , a relationship forged from the memory of La Boétie but wholly his own. By using a little imagination, Montaigne is not only able to overcome his grief and compensate for the loss of La Boétie, but he also manages to deepen and intensify his connection to the absent friend.
The Poetics of Nullity: “Nonsense” Verses of William of Aquitaine, Jaufre Rudel, and Raimbaut D’Orange
Authors: Bardin Gay
Published: April 2015

“The Poetics of Nullity: ‘Nonsense’ Verses of William of Aquitaine, Jaufre Rudel, and Raimbaut D’Orange.” William of Aquitaine’s riddle poem “Farai un vers de dreit nien” opens the Old Occitan lyric tradition with the provocative concept of a poem about nothing at all. William’s vers invites metapoetic discussion, and in fact inspires a series of poetic replies, including Jaufre Rudel’s “No sap chantar qui so non di” and Raimbaut d’Orange’s “Escotatz, mas no sai que s’es.” In their responses to William’s vers , Jaufre and Raimbaut express their own opinions on the art of trobar . Jaufre privileges the musical component of the troubadour’s art, while Raimbaut exaggerates its formal aspects. Jaufre and Raimbaut’s compositions form part of a new tradition of metapoetic debate that reflects the still fluid parameters of troubadour poetry during the first three generations of troubadour poets. Their compositions thus constitute a canon as paradoxical as William’s originating vers de dreit nien , managing to render canonical the very question of poetic canon.
Documentary Practices and Their Context: Memory, History, and Contemporary Concerns in the Surveys of Marmoutier and Sindelsberg
Authors: Starostine Dimitri
Published: April 2015

“Documentary Practices and Their Context: Memory, History, and Contemporary Concerns in the Surveys of Marmoutier and Sindelsberg.” The paper addresses an intricate balance between imagining, recording, and forging the past, and reminds of the need to examine documents in their historical context. It shows that medieval plans of Alsatian monasteries Marmoutier and its priory Sindelsberg cannot be adequately interpreted outside their cultural and political environment: for writing history where no sources were available, their authors wavered between conflicting desires to record the authentic past and to invent a history of the monastery that would help claim its lost possessions. An attempt to capture the past in this atmosphere produced a plan that was chronologically ambiguous, a plan that amalgamated bits of oral tradition and the monastery’s documentary history in an anachronistic representation. The study of Marmoutier’s plan should remind historians of the Middle Ages of the intricate balance between text and context, paleographical and diplomatic evidence, and the environment in which written evidence originates.
Alea Iacta Iudiciorum EST : Legal Satire and the Problem of Interpretation in Rabelais
Authors: Renner Bernd
Published: April 2015

Much has been written about the changes that Rabelais’s work undergoes after the twelve years of silence that separate the first editions of Gargantua and the Third Book . This paper attempts to address the issue from the angle of satire, an aspect that has been somewhat underestimated in the discussion of the Pantagrueline Chronicles . An analysis of the three major episodes of legal satire, from Pantagruel , the Third and Fourth Books respectively, will show that the aforementioned modifications are reflected in the development of the satirical attitude that the author displays. These observations will facilitate the task of defining the hermeneutical shifts in Rabelais’s work in a more concrete fashion and thus shed some light on one of the major problems in Rabelais criticism: the question of interpretation.
Homer, Heliodorus, and Cervantes: Some Observations on Anagnorisis in Los Trabajos De Persiles Y Sigismunda (1617)
Authors: Mayer Eric D.
Published: April 2015

For the contemporary reader, Aristotle’s concept of anagnorisis , or “recognition,” probably conjures thoughts of a hackneyed narrative tack by which an author might structure his fiction with a view to a “marvelous” if predictable conclusion. Yet, anagnorisis enjoyed privileged status in Renaissance literary theory and practice, being referred to as “the most important part” of the plot by one neo-Aristotelian. Closely reading Cervantes’s final work, a neo-Byzantine romance entitled Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda , one discovers two divergent approaches to writing recognition. For example, one observes Cervantes closely imitating specific scenes and techniques from Homer and others whose recognitions had become paradigmatic in neo-Aristotelian poetics. Quite the opposite, in the episode of Feliciana de la Voz, one observes Cervantes deconstruction of the recognition process. Recognition’s move “from ignorance to knowledge” is rendered problematic, as Cervantes obscures the reader’s access to the “truth” of things, an exegetical problem not unfamiliar to readers of Don Quijote .
“The Merry Life and Mad Exploits of Capt. James Hind,” or, How the Popular Press Created its First Outlaw-Hero in the Wake of the English Revolution
Authors: Piep Karsten H.
Published: April 2015

Between 1651 and 1652, no less than sixteen pamphlets hit the streets of London that chronicled the fantastic feats of James Hind, “notorious highwayman,” making him one of the first outlaw-heroes whose legacy was shaped neither by folk legend nor by “high” literature, but by England’s burgeoning popular press. Read before the backdrop of Civil War, regicide, and Republican rule, then, the pamphleteer’s representations of Hind as a champion of the common people highlight the popular press’s mounting sway over the political debates of the 1650s. More specifically, in extolling Hind’s unlawful deeds so as to foreground persistent societal ills, while transforming Hind into a mouthpiece for a novel brand of populist royalism, the popular press managed to mount a strong challenge to the young republican government, which was already burdened by a general crisis of legitimization.
Fearing My Neighbor: The Intimate Other in Beowulf and the Old English Judith
Authors: Koppelman Kate
Published: April 2015

Combining theories of subject formation from Freud, Lacan, and Deleuze, and Guattari, this essay argues that the Anglo-Saxon heroic self is produced through an intimate association with the enemies he or she is meant to destroy. The hero, in both Beowulf and the Old English Judith , is a figure who is physically and psychically aligned with the monstrous. Beowulf is linked to Grendel through their mutual associations with foreign lands, as well as through their actual battles—fights that demand close physical contact. Judith is linked to Holofernes through similar bloody encounters, but also through the location of the fight itself—within a space of intimacy, the bed-chamber. The essay further argues that such intimate alliances transform the hero into a figure who cannot be reincorporated into the group for which he or she has fought.
Consecratio Cymiterii: The Ritual Blessings of Cemeteries in the Central Middle Ages
Authors: Rivard Derek A.
Published: April 2015

This article studies the Latin west’s liturgical tradition for the consecration of cemeteries and burial places, using traditional textual analysis combined with selective use of anthropological theory of ritual. The earliest texts of consecration are simple prayers found in insular sources, which later Frankish and Roman authors borrowed to create increasingly complex rituals found in the major pontificals composed from the tenth to the late thirteenth century. These benedictions transformed the space of the cemetery into a nexus where the divine, the living and the dead could commune. By means of prayers, songs, gestures and objects, such rituals established a sacred, separate space wherein the Christian community could access the power of the divine, ground its existence within the context of the sacred stories which defined its history and identity, and provide a safe place of rest for the departed members of the community.
Hideus a desmesure : Monsters and Monstrous Knights in Early French Romance
Authors: Hubble Elizabeth A.
Published: April 2015

From Beowulf to Marco Polo, monsters figure prominently across the medieval landscape. This essay looks at three medieval French romances whose representations of monstrosity allow the reader to interrogate the role of the monster as that which the knight must overcome. Exploring the complex relationship between knighthood and monstrosity, this essay argues that monsters can represent an integral part of what makes a knight a knight. Beginning with two more well-known characters from Chrétien de Troyes, this essay moves on to examine the monsters in the proto-romance, Le Roman de Thèbes . Monsters abound in Thèbes , and the most insidious monsters may be the heroes themselves. The text’s monstrous rhetoric illuminates the paradox of Oedipus’s sons–they are both valiant knights, in the mode of later courtly heroes, and monsters. Ultimately, this study interrogates the role of monstrosity in the developing genre of romance.
Imagining England in Richard Morison’s Pamphlets against the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536)
Authors: Mottram Stewart
Published: April 2015

This article contests the assumptions of the social historians Foucault, Anderson, Gellner, and Habermas, all of whom date the origins of nationhood in Western Europe to the eighteenth century, and argue that nationhood superseded empire at this time. It explores how England is imagined as both empire and nation in Richard Morison’s pamphlets against the northern rebellions of 1536—the Lamentation and Remedy for Sedition . The article approaches Morison’s pamphlets as Royal Supremacy propaganda, and argues that within them, Morison turned to the character mother England as a means to ventriloquize his support for the empire defined in the 1533 Appeals Act—an empire compact of Church and state, and independent from the Apostolic See. The article reads the Remedy in relation to writings by Tyndale and Coverdale. It concludes that in this pamphlet, Morison makes Bible-reading the cornerstone for his construction of English national identity—an identity based on obedience to scriptural passages that command our obedience to kings.
Images of Time and Eternity in the Religious Poetry of Henry Vaughan
Authors: Hutton Clark
Published: April 2015

While the representations of time and eternity in Henry Vaughan’s religious poetry have been examined by earlier critics, those examinations limit and neglect the role of mystical transcendence in Vaughan that allows the experience of eternity in this earthly life rather than the next life. By employing St. Augustine of Hippo’s discussion of time and eternity as a point of departure, this paper seeks a fuller understanding and appreciation of the transcendent experience of eternity Vaughan’s poetry. Augustine’s understanding of time and its relationship to the memory reveals that several of Vaughan’s poems attempt to transcend time, often through the use of memory, in order to achieve a mystical experience of eternity. These poems catalogue and explore the various means by which and conditions under which a temporal creature might have such an experience, and they document the ecstatic periods that occasionally characterize the spiritual life, while acknowledging the fleeting nature of such periods.
Evergreens of Reason: The Function and Treatment of Nature in the Qasīdehs of Nāser-E Khosrow
Authors: Rafinejad Daniel
Published: April 2015

This article argues that imagery of the natural world is Nāser-e Khosrow’s “technical language” for writing poetry. Nature’s function is to give him a poetic means with which to express all the major concerns of his other work with the intensity of emotion in poetry. Indeed, its use in Naser’s Qasīdehs (odes) is threefold: first, nature permits Nāser both to manipulate and to uphold the structural and contextual requirements of the qasīdeh form. Second, nature is the basis for the Nāser’s allegories for instruction in his philosophy and “the true faith.” Finally, it is through nature that Nāser sets out his biography and achieves his personal, sentimental objective in composing poetry. Nature pervades the reflexive recognition in Naser’s poetry, as he struggles to unify in verse the pains of exile, his highly individuated code of beliefs, and a language that is both uniquely Iranian and uniquely his own. He demonstrates that the existence and the function of the soul, of his soul, are explicable and reflected through the paradigms and processes of the natural world.
Min Herte is Growen into Ston: Ethics and Activity in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis
Authors: Fox Hilary E.
Published: April 2015

The role of ethics in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis has been the subject of much scholarly attention. This essay seeks to elucidate Gower’s reception not only of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (which had been translated into Latin by Robert Grosseteste and adapted by John Trevisa) but of the moralizations on Ovidian texts, and to analyze how these traditions influence the goals of the Confessio . Specifically, it discusses how Genius employs the tale of Medusa to mirror the paralysis, impaired will, and confused desire of Amans, and uses it to argue for an ethical agenda that is practical, rather than theoretical in nature. The tale itself is sourced in the moralizing commentaries on the Metamorphoses and the exempla of thirteenth-century sermons, but it turns these sources to an Aristotelian practical ethic to emphasize the importance of productive, directed action and the role of individual agency in that action.
Fools and Saints: Derision and Regenerative Laughter and the Late Medieval and Early Modern Hagiographic Imagination
Authors: Lederer Thomas
Published: April 2015

Carnivalesque misrule is not alien to Christianity. Some of the more exotic phenomena of medieval Christianity—and hagiography—can be explained as forms of religious carnival. These include holy folly, “inclusive” laughter at the expense of a humiliated saint, and the liturgical Easter laughter. Believers enjoyed, and authorities permitted, laughter as a social safety valve and as a means of expressing festive joy and acknowledging the victory of God’s kosmos over postlapsarian khaos . At the same time, medieval Christians lived in perpetual fear of an unholy carnival of ungodly folly, destructive rather than regenerating, dangerous rather than entertaining. During the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, carnivalesque patterns were instrumentalized so as to create and propagate new social orders and religious beliefs. Although Protestantism owed a good deal of its success to carnivalesque laughter, it quickly distanced itself from misrule once it had obtained the status of established churchdom.
The Use and Impact of the English Levied Soldiers in Anglo-Norman England
Authors: Nakashian Craig Meran
Published: April 2015

This article argues for an increased focus on the native English levies as a viable military force, especially within England itself. The levies of Englishmen, and of French on occasion, played a much more important role in keeping order, defending the kingdom from external invasion, and putting down rebellion than is commonly assumed. The fyrd survived the Conquest, was used extensively by William I, and was even used overseas in an offensive capacity. It was used by William II to put down a rebellion, and was again used by his brother Henry to put down a rebellion. During his reign, the fyrd continued to be used by Henry I, though as a domestic force rather than an overseas one. Henry II’s attempt to reconstitute the fyrd in 1181 indicates that the system was still considered valuable.
Seeking Truth and Bearing Witness: The Noli Me Tangere and Incredulity of Thomas on Tino di Camaino’s Petroni Tomb (1313–1317)
Authors: Rafanelli Lisa M.
Published: April 2015

This article examines Tino di Camaino’s monument for Cardinal Riccardo Petroni, focusing on the narrative cycle of relief panels on the tomb casket. The reliefs are shown to function in a complex and reiterative manner, speaking to the hope for personal resurrection and reunion with God at the end of time, as well as to the salvific potential of a well-lived, well-balanced life of devotion and professional achievement. It is proposed that this relatively uncelebrated monument mediates between what Panosfky described as “prospective” early Christian and medieval tomb sculpture and the more “retrospective” Renaissance tombs. This article also explores the meaning of the pendant panels of the Noli Me Tangere and Incredulity of Thomas and proposes new theories about sources of inspiration for the artist, the possible interests of the deceased in the question of bodily Resurrection, and his devotion to Saint Mary Magdalene.
The Sultaness, Donegild, and Fourteenth-Century Female Merchants: Intersecting Discourses of Gender, Economy, and Orientalism in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale
Authors: Wood Marjorie Elizabeth
Published: April 2015

This article intersects feminist, colonialist, and materialist approaches to Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale by mooring the tale’s gender and Orientalist discourses in a materialist criticism that positions the tale historically within late fourteenth-century England. In Chaucer’s England, female merchants dominated the victualling, ale-brewing, and cloth-making trades. An economic subtext in the tale reveals the narrator’s preoccupation with changing economic roles for women, particularly with regard to the Sultaness and Donegild, who represent respectively the female victualler and ale-wife. Because female economic power is linked semiotically in the tale to fears about the East, the tale’s Orientalist themes are conjoined with both gender and economic discourses. Finally, this article suggests that because the Man of Law omits the female industry of cloth-making, the Wife of Bath completes the “triad” of female merchants. This reading provides a new context in which the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale can be interpreted.
The Breathing Instrument: An Iconographic Study of the Concert of Angels in Master Matthias’s Isenheim Altarpiece
Authors: Anderson-Tuft Katherine
Published: April 2015

The Concert of Angels panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece is prominently portrayed in a central position of the retable painted by the German master known as Matthias Grünewald. Yet, both the elusive iconography of the Concert and its prominent placement within an altarpiece portraying the history of Christian salvation have continually puzzled critics and art historians. The Concert of Angels panel draws upon Christian metaphors for music which have been largely forgotten, resulting in an obscured iconographic message. This study explains the iconography of music in the Concert panel to reveal a visual discourse on Christian redemption between the panels of the altarpiece, particularly between the Concert of Angels panel and the celebrated Crucifixion scene in the final presentation of panels. By examining the musical iconography presented in the Concert of Angels panel and placing the piece within its socio-historic-religious context, the seemingly obscure iconographic references become an ingenious visual language for the Christian celebration of salvation within the context of the entire Altarpiece program.
Intimate Enclosures: Framing the English Portrait Limning, 1585–1615
Authors: van Toorn Tai
Published: April 2015

The works of the early modern English painters Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver disclose a tension between the miniature portrait, or “limning,” and its frame. While the frame of the typical Elizabethan and early Jacobean miniature tightly circumscribes an oval space of merely a few square inches, an abundance of visual details, symbols, and inscriptions threatens to burst beyond the border and upstage the face at the center of the portrait. Drawing from the concept of the “parergon,” this article analyzes the miniature portrait’s connections with external physical borders and internal marginal spaces, as well as parergetic devices which enclose, ornament, and supplement the image. Within the historical context of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, frames and framing strategies play an important role in artistic theories and practices, aristocratic culture, the creation of meaning, and conventions for displaying art. The author argues that the relations between strategies of framing and the communicative powers of the face are central to the limning’s mode of representation within elite culture.
Patrimoniolum Ecclesiae Nostrae: The Papal Estates in Merovingian Provence
Authors: Halfond Gregory I.
Published: April 2015

The papacy was one of the Mediterranean world’s most powerful landowners in the early medieval West. Its property holdings (known collectively as the Patrimonium Sancti Petri ) stretched from Dalmatia to Italy to North Africa. Among its holdings were patrimonial estates in southern Gaul. Although much about these estates remains mysterious, not least of all their shadowy origins and demise, the absence of evidence does not reflect a lack of historical importance. The existence of the Gallic patrimony helped to strengthen ties between the Merovingian kingdoms and Rome, and the property served as an important outpost of papal authority within Gaul. Moreover, the patrimony’s managers (or rectors) were deeply involved in the local politics of Provence. This article surveys the available evidence for the Gallic patrimony, and attempts to situate it within the complex ecclesiastical world of early medieval Francia.
A Crusader in a “Communion of Saints”: Political Sanctity and Sanctified Politics in the Cult of St. Simon De Montfort
Authors: Lawrence John St.
Published: April 2015

Between the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170 and the defeat and death of Simon de Montfort in 1265, few saints appeared in England who had not been royal opponents. Moreover, many prominent churchmen cooperated to oppose royal authority in life and to promote each other’s saint’s cults after death. Their communion of saints existed in tension with Rome. Reforms of the standards of sanctity and miracles progressively reserved the authority to recognize saints to king and pope. Despite the fact that de Montfort was a layman, his career as a crusader and his popular rebellion against perceived royal and papal abuses of power simultaneously established him as a saint in this English tradition and ensured that his sanctity would never receive official sanction. This article establishes the normalcy of the cult of St. Simon de Montfort within its period and place.
Renaissance Flesh and Woman’s Devotion: Titian’s Penitent Magdalen
Authors: Graham Heather Sexton
Published: April 2015

Reading the saint’s nudity from a male, heterosexually-charged standpoint, several contemporary art historians have presupposed an overt eroticism in Titian’s Penitent Magdalen (ca. 1531) that has problematized understanding of its religious function. Recent scholarship concerning the painting’s commission, however, suggests that the work was originally intended for Vittoria Colonna, marchesa del Vasto. In this article I reconsider Titian’s sensuous nude in the context of its function as this woman’s private, devotional artwork. My discussion is predicated upon the assumption that depictions of flesh in a religious context had particular significance for female devotees because Christ’s mortal flesh, which guaranteed both his humanity and humankind’s salvation, was understood to be female. Depictions of sensuous female flesh could therefore function as a reminder of Christ’s own physical humanity and of women’s gender-specific relationship to it. For Vittoria Colonna, Titian’s fleshy Magdalen would have functioned as a uniquely appropriate devotional tool.
The Making of Men, Not Masters: Right Order and Lay Masculinity According to Dhuoda and Nithard
Authors: Leja Meg
Published: April 2015

Examining two texts composed by members of the western Frankish lay nobility over the period 841–843, this article addresses how contemporary conflicts within the Carolingian realm prompted the authors of these texts to reevaluate ideals of lay masculinity. A comparison of how Nithard and Dhuoda privileged certain obligations within a man’s life, articulated distinct models of knighthood, and referenced the type of relationship men ought to have with women, and with their bodies, elucidates the ways in which they sought to reform noblemen’s problematic conduct by putting forward their own models of manly behavior. The study ultimately suggests that Dhuoda and Nithard were reacting against a hegemonic masculinity that defined men in terms of their ability to dominate. In response, both authors formulated ideals of masculinity that positioned men within subservient and dependent relationships and that emphasized the need for men to establish harmonious relations with other men, with women and with their bodies.
Orthodox Puritans and Dissenting Bishops: The Reformation of the English Episcopate, ca. 1580–1610
Authors: Harmes Marcus
Published: April 2015

The reformed English Church retained its bishops and its episcopal hierarchy. Yet contemporary evidence reveals perceptions of English bishops as being withholders of Protestant reform and punishers and persecutors of those churchmen who actively advocated further reform of the Church of England. In a challenge to these impressions, this article surveys the writings of Sir John Harington and Josias Nichols, the first a layman and the second a deprived minister and both interpreters of the reformed English episcopate. An interrogation of their texts shows that both writers identified dissent which emanated from within the reformed episcopate of the Church of England; Nichols in particular asserted his loyalty to the Church of England at the same time that he had dissented from it, using the names and precedents of reformed bishops to argue away accusations of dissent. In examining the responses of Harington and Nichols to the episcopate, this article accounts for the exercise of episcopal authority which was explicitly reformed and Protestant, a point revealed by Harington’s emphasis on the episcopal responsibility for enacting religious reform and Nichols’s account of bishops who sheltered dissenters and encouraged reform of the church.