Abstract:In Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church (1659), John Milton calls for the abolition of tithes—compulsory fees collected, in part, to finance the training of ministers at Oxford and Cambridge—on the grounds that they confer a "monopoly" on the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Though the poet was just one among dozens of pamphleteers and thousands of petitioners in the dispute over tithes, his case for abolition is eccentric. Milton frames the monopoly not as a problem of institutions, I will argue, but rather as a problem of ideas. On this account, politics is supposed to establish conditions under which the mind, naturally endowed with the faculty for "true theologie," is free to acquire "Christian knowledge." At the heart of the treatise is a belief that ordinary people are sufficiently capable of self-education that large-scale efforts at social change are unnecessary. Milton's fantasy of untutored erudition sets the polemic apart from the views of his erstwhile allies, with significant consequences for our sense of the poet's republicanism as he turned at last toward epic.
{"title":"Milton and the Education Monopoly","authors":"Matthew J Rickard","doi":"10.1353/sip.2022.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2022.0012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church (1659), John Milton calls for the abolition of tithes—compulsory fees collected, in part, to finance the training of ministers at Oxford and Cambridge—on the grounds that they confer a \"monopoly\" on the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Though the poet was just one among dozens of pamphleteers and thousands of petitioners in the dispute over tithes, his case for abolition is eccentric. Milton frames the monopoly not as a problem of institutions, I will argue, but rather as a problem of ideas. On this account, politics is supposed to establish conditions under which the mind, naturally endowed with the faculty for \"true theologie,\" is free to acquire \"Christian knowledge.\" At the heart of the treatise is a belief that ordinary people are sufficiently capable of self-education that large-scale efforts at social change are unnecessary. Milton's fantasy of untutored erudition sets the polemic apart from the views of his erstwhile allies, with significant consequences for our sense of the poet's republicanism as he turned at last toward epic.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"119 1","pages":"495 - 525"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47004780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Medieval monastic poet John Lydgate is not an author we expect to see in seven-teenth-century print. It is surprising, then, to find The Life and Death of Hector (London, 1614), an anonymous modernization of Lydgate's Troy Book (1420). While not a translation of a classical source, Hector was written in a context where classical translations were increasingly discussed and printed. However, in addition to the influence of Renaissance humanist theories of translation in Hector, the anonymous poet's efforts are also in line with Lydgate's own translation techniques; indeed, Lydgate becomes a model for the Hector poet's correction of Lydgate himself. In this way, the Hector poet's additions to, modernizations of, and deviations from the Troy Book source become an exemplar of what William Kuskin has described as the "recursive" nature of literary history, a literary history that simultaneously repeats and transforms the past. Within this single early seventeenth-century book, distinct traditions stand together, supplementing rather than erasing one another in a celebration of multiplicity and multivocality.
{"title":"Correction, Modernization, and Elaboration in a Seventeenth-Century Translation of John Lydgate's Troy Book","authors":"Mimi Ensley","doi":"10.1353/sip.2022.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2022.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Medieval monastic poet John Lydgate is not an author we expect to see in seven-teenth-century print. It is surprising, then, to find The Life and Death of Hector (London, 1614), an anonymous modernization of Lydgate's Troy Book (1420). While not a translation of a classical source, Hector was written in a context where classical translations were increasingly discussed and printed. However, in addition to the influence of Renaissance humanist theories of translation in Hector, the anonymous poet's efforts are also in line with Lydgate's own translation techniques; indeed, Lydgate becomes a model for the Hector poet's correction of Lydgate himself. In this way, the Hector poet's additions to, modernizations of, and deviations from the Troy Book source become an exemplar of what William Kuskin has described as the \"recursive\" nature of literary history, a literary history that simultaneously repeats and transforms the past. Within this single early seventeenth-century book, distinct traditions stand together, supplementing rather than erasing one another in a celebration of multiplicity and multivocality.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"119 1","pages":"469 - 494"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41495674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay revisits one of the oldest topics of Shakespeare criticism: the relation between Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and the plays. From Charles Gildon forward, critics see the narrative poems as a "promise" of the plays. This critical template, however, puts history backward: Venus and Lucrece become linear promises of an art that does not exist. The critical template also endorses the faulty paradigm underwriting Shakespeare criticism: the poems are the product of a "man of the theater." William Shakespeare was a man of the theater, but he was also a print poet who saw five poems published during his lifetime: Venus (1593), Lucrece (1594), "The Phoenix and Turtle" (1601), Sonnets (1609), and A Lover's Complaint (1609). In particular, Venus and Lucrece invaluably record a fiction of their role in Shakespeare's dramatic canon. In turn, the plays record a fiction of the performance of the printed poems. By revising the received wisdom, we may introduce a more accurate map of Shakespeare's literary career. This map preserves the integrity of a developing Shakespeare canon of poems and plays, and it recognizes that the poems gesture to the plays and the plays to the poems. To support this argument, the essay features evidence from Shakespeare's own canon fictions: intratextual moments in the poems and plays that record a narrative about the structure of his career. Yet other evidence emerges: from the narrative poems' genre, minor epic; from a neglected canon topos emerging from antiquity, "great things and small"; from the poems' reception history; and from both biography and bibliography. Venus and Lucrece are not simply commercially driven works produced in a youthful moment of dramatic inactivity; they are types of generic form and literary character in a remarkably structured canon on page and stage. As Shakespeare gets ready to retire, he presents his canon in Cymbeline in just this way. In the end, we may view Venus and Lucrece as integral to his dramatic career, at once fountains and foundations for comedy, history, tragedy, and romance.
{"title":"Venus and Adonis The Rape of Lucrece, and the Shakespeare Canon","authors":"P. Cheney","doi":"10.1353/sip.2022.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2022.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay revisits one of the oldest topics of Shakespeare criticism: the relation between Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and the plays. From Charles Gildon forward, critics see the narrative poems as a \"promise\" of the plays. This critical template, however, puts history backward: Venus and Lucrece become linear promises of an art that does not exist. The critical template also endorses the faulty paradigm underwriting Shakespeare criticism: the poems are the product of a \"man of the theater.\" William Shakespeare was a man of the theater, but he was also a print poet who saw five poems published during his lifetime: Venus (1593), Lucrece (1594), \"The Phoenix and Turtle\" (1601), Sonnets (1609), and A Lover's Complaint (1609). In particular, Venus and Lucrece invaluably record a fiction of their role in Shakespeare's dramatic canon. In turn, the plays record a fiction of the performance of the printed poems. By revising the received wisdom, we may introduce a more accurate map of Shakespeare's literary career. This map preserves the integrity of a developing Shakespeare canon of poems and plays, and it recognizes that the poems gesture to the plays and the plays to the poems. To support this argument, the essay features evidence from Shakespeare's own canon fictions: intratextual moments in the poems and plays that record a narrative about the structure of his career. Yet other evidence emerges: from the narrative poems' genre, minor epic; from a neglected canon topos emerging from antiquity, \"great things and small\"; from the poems' reception history; and from both biography and bibliography. Venus and Lucrece are not simply commercially driven works produced in a youthful moment of dramatic inactivity; they are types of generic form and literary character in a remarkably structured canon on page and stage. As Shakespeare gets ready to retire, he presents his canon in Cymbeline in just this way. In the end, we may view Venus and Lucrece as integral to his dramatic career, at once fountains and foundations for comedy, history, tragedy, and romance.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"119 1","pages":"405 - 433"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45792107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Throughout John Milton's dramatic poem Samson Agonistes, the postures of the body allow individual characters to overcome the faltering capacities of speech, mind, and spirit. Early in the play, prostrating affords Samson the opportunity to make sense of his fractured and traumatized mental condition. Through the posture of grinding, the play conceives of a "sensate community," by which Dalila and Samson can achieve a shared, if fleeting, understanding of each other. Samson's leaning against the pillars, as summarized by a passerby, is a sophisticated model of spiritual identity that rejects the ableist assumption of any individual's physical or visual autonomy. In conclusion, this essay turns to the aesthetic and moral implications for Milton of "tugging" the pillars down in the play's final sequence of violence.
{"title":"Milton's Postures: Prostrating, Grinding, Leaning","authors":"John Yargo","doi":"10.1353/sip.2022.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2022.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Throughout John Milton's dramatic poem Samson Agonistes, the postures of the body allow individual characters to overcome the faltering capacities of speech, mind, and spirit. Early in the play, prostrating affords Samson the opportunity to make sense of his fractured and traumatized mental condition. Through the posture of grinding, the play conceives of a \"sensate community,\" by which Dalila and Samson can achieve a shared, if fleeting, understanding of each other. Samson's leaning against the pillars, as summarized by a passerby, is a sophisticated model of spiritual identity that rejects the ableist assumption of any individual's physical or visual autonomy. In conclusion, this essay turns to the aesthetic and moral implications for Milton of \"tugging\" the pillars down in the play's final sequence of violence.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"119 1","pages":"526 - 554"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44164703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:From his verse epistles and libertine poems to his religious polemic and sermons, John Donne routinely invokes the Native peoples of the Americas as exemplars of innocence. Donne's understanding of Native peoples' innocence was influenced by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas's treatise Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, widely read in its English translation, The Spanish Colonie. Las Casas characterizes the Native peoples of the Americas as innately weak, docile, and obedient to argue that they are innocents and that Spanish colonial policy is unlawful; meanwhile, he depicts Spaniards as exceptionally cruel and prone to commit acts of arbitrary violence. Las Casas's depiction of Spain as malicious and the Spaniard as intemperate underwrote English views that Spain's military and colonial dominance was illegitimate. Many scholars cite Donne's references to Amerindians as vulnerable and innocent as evidence that he read Las Casas and shared the friar's compassion for the Amerindians. Donne makes further use of Native innocence, however, as he figuratively identifies his various literary personae as themselves the victims of Spanish violence and the objects of sympathy by comparing them to the Amerindians. Donne holds up Native peoples' perceived qualities of innocence—freedom from sin, criminal blamelessness, childlike ignorance, and sexual (in)experience—as desirable qualities that the English should cultivate to remain spiritually and criminally blameless, unlike Spaniards, as they undertake colonial adventures. Donne's literary invocation of innocence is invariably bound up with the English colonial project. His works encouraged their various audiences, including members of the Virginia Company, to consider Amerindians' perceived embodied innocence in relation to their own pursuit of innocence as a behavioral and spiritual virtue that could advance their colonial objectives.
摘要：从他的诗歌书信和放荡的诗歌到他的宗教论战和布道，约翰·多恩经常引用美洲原住民作为天真无邪的典范。Donne对原住民无辜的理解受到了多明尼加修士Bartoloméde las Casas的论文Brevísima relación de la destruccióon de las Indias的影响，该论文的英文译本《西班牙殖民地》广为阅读。Las Casas将美洲原住民描述为天生软弱、温顺、顺从，认为他们是无辜的，西班牙的殖民政策是非法的；与此同时，他将西班牙人描绘成异常残忍，容易实施任意暴力行为。拉斯·卡萨斯（Las Casas）将西班牙描绘成恶毒的，将西班牙人描绘成放纵的，这让英国人认为西班牙的军事和殖民统治是非法的。许多学者引用了多恩对美洲印第安人脆弱和无辜的提及，作为他阅读《拉斯卡萨》并分享这位修士对美洲印第安人的同情的证据。然而，多恩进一步利用了原住民的天真，他将自己的各种文学人物形象地认定为西班牙暴力的受害者和同情的对象，并将他们与美洲印第安人进行了比较。Donne认为土著人民的天真无邪的品质——免于犯罪、无可指责的犯罪、孩童般的无知和性经验——是英国人应该培养的理想品质，以在精神上和犯罪上保持无可指责，不像西班牙人那样，在进行殖民冒险时。多恩对天真无邪的文学追求总是与英国的殖民计划联系在一起。他的作品鼓励他们的各种观众，包括弗吉尼亚公司的成员，将美洲印第安人对纯真的追求视为一种行为和精神美德，这种美德可以促进他们的殖民目标。
{"title":"John Donne's Colonial Innocence","authors":"José Juan Villagrana","doi":"10.1353/sip.2022.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2022.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:From his verse epistles and libertine poems to his religious polemic and sermons, John Donne routinely invokes the Native peoples of the Americas as exemplars of innocence. Donne's understanding of Native peoples' innocence was influenced by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas's treatise Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, widely read in its English translation, The Spanish Colonie. Las Casas characterizes the Native peoples of the Americas as innately weak, docile, and obedient to argue that they are innocents and that Spanish colonial policy is unlawful; meanwhile, he depicts Spaniards as exceptionally cruel and prone to commit acts of arbitrary violence. Las Casas's depiction of Spain as malicious and the Spaniard as intemperate underwrote English views that Spain's military and colonial dominance was illegitimate. Many scholars cite Donne's references to Amerindians as vulnerable and innocent as evidence that he read Las Casas and shared the friar's compassion for the Amerindians. Donne makes further use of Native innocence, however, as he figuratively identifies his various literary personae as themselves the victims of Spanish violence and the objects of sympathy by comparing them to the Amerindians. Donne holds up Native peoples' perceived qualities of innocence—freedom from sin, criminal blamelessness, childlike ignorance, and sexual (in)experience—as desirable qualities that the English should cultivate to remain spiritually and criminally blameless, unlike Spaniards, as they undertake colonial adventures. Donne's literary invocation of innocence is invariably bound up with the English colonial project. His works encouraged their various audiences, including members of the Virginia Company, to consider Amerindians' perceived embodied innocence in relation to their own pursuit of innocence as a behavioral and spiritual virtue that could advance their colonial objectives.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"119 1","pages":"434 - 468"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42139429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article argues that Thomas Usk centralizes the natural law in his Testament of Love to attempt to bring about a cultural reformation. Throughout his text Usk weaves the natural law into his elaborate model of service, outlining ethical and political concepts that he believes should structure and inform social life in his contemporary London. In doing this, Usk hopes to inspire his culture to abandon the vicious practices that he thinks led to his own imprisonments in the 1380s.
{"title":"\"I, Thomas Usk, Traitor\": The Testament of Love and the Ethics and Politics of Service","authors":"Chandler Fry","doi":"10.1353/sip.2022.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2022.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article argues that Thomas Usk centralizes the natural law in his Testament of Love to attempt to bring about a cultural reformation. Throughout his text Usk weaves the natural law into his elaborate model of service, outlining ethical and political concepts that he believes should structure and inform social life in his contemporary London. In doing this, Usk hopes to inspire his culture to abandon the vicious practices that he thinks led to his own imprisonments in the 1380s.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"119 1","pages":"25 - 45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49062397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In act 3 of Ben Jonson's play Catiline, the rebels swear as a group on a raised "silver eagle" in order to transform their attack on Rome into a sacred endeavor. The action, however, is not clearly represented in the classical sources as an oath. In this article, I will argue that Jonson changes a fairly minor detail in the record to a binding pledge in order to critique the civil, political, and spiritual strictures that are imbibed in the 1606 Oath of Allegiance. First, I will argue that the eagle is redolent of both the lectern in Protestant church architecture and the recurring metaphor of James as a protective eagle in his writing; such onstage iconography associates the Oath with Militant Protestantism and James's own semiotic currency of obedience. I will then suggest that the mounted eagle activates an onomastic play on the name of William Parker, Lord Monteagle, who famously betrayed his recusant kin to expose the Gunpowder Plot, at great benefit to himself. Lastly, I will posit that the heraldic associations of the eagle sigil link the Catilinarian bond to proparliamentarian figures such as Edward Coke and Robert Cotton, the latter a friend of Jonson.
{"title":"Swearing and Silver Eagles: Catiline and the Oath of Allegiance","authors":"Richard Stacey","doi":"10.1353/sip.2022.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2022.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In act 3 of Ben Jonson's play Catiline, the rebels swear as a group on a raised \"silver eagle\" in order to transform their attack on Rome into a sacred endeavor. The action, however, is not clearly represented in the classical sources as an oath. In this article, I will argue that Jonson changes a fairly minor detail in the record to a binding pledge in order to critique the civil, political, and spiritual strictures that are imbibed in the 1606 Oath of Allegiance. First, I will argue that the eagle is redolent of both the lectern in Protestant church architecture and the recurring metaphor of James as a protective eagle in his writing; such onstage iconography associates the Oath with Militant Protestantism and James's own semiotic currency of obedience. I will then suggest that the mounted eagle activates an onomastic play on the name of William Parker, Lord Monteagle, who famously betrayed his recusant kin to expose the Gunpowder Plot, at great benefit to himself. Lastly, I will posit that the heraldic associations of the eagle sigil link the Catilinarian bond to proparliamentarian figures such as Edward Coke and Robert Cotton, the latter a friend of Jonson.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"119 1","pages":"140 - 169"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46373398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article considers the role genre expectations have played in shaping the process by which the medieval Latin folktale of the swan children, Cygni, was translated and adapted first into different Old French versions and then into the Middle English prose romance Chevalere Assigne. I argue that the differences in characterization, plot, and tone between the French and English versions should be read as completing the transformation of the narrative from its original folktale form into the form of a chivalric romance.
{"title":"Adapting for Genre in the Middle English Chevalere Assigne","authors":"Miriam Edlich-Muth","doi":"10.1353/sip.2022.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2022.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article considers the role genre expectations have played in shaping the process by which the medieval Latin folktale of the swan children, Cygni, was translated and adapted first into different Old French versions and then into the Middle English prose romance Chevalere Assigne. I argue that the differences in characterization, plot, and tone between the French and English versions should be read as completing the transformation of the narrative from its original folktale form into the form of a chivalric romance.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"119 1","pages":"46 - 63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44895490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article argues that classical visual art played an important role in mediating the relationship between Elizabethan romance and the humanist schoolroom. I advance this claim by following the wayward itinerary through Elizabethan letters of the Greek painter Apelles and his unfinished painting of Venus rising from the sea. In the work of the educator Roger Ascham, the painting serves as an emblem for the fragmented corpus of classical antiquity; Apelles's lost masterpiece enjoys a second life when appropriated in the next generation by John Lyly as a figure for the estrangement of Elizabethan fiction from earlier humanist claims that poetry's purpose was primarily didactic.
{"title":"The Venus of Apelles from Schoolroom to Romance","authors":"Andrew Carlson","doi":"10.1353/sip.2022.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2022.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article argues that classical visual art played an important role in mediating the relationship between Elizabethan romance and the humanist schoolroom. I advance this claim by following the wayward itinerary through Elizabethan letters of the Greek painter Apelles and his unfinished painting of Venus rising from the sea. In the work of the educator Roger Ascham, the painting serves as an emblem for the fragmented corpus of classical antiquity; Apelles's lost masterpiece enjoys a second life when appropriated in the next generation by John Lyly as a figure for the estrangement of Elizabethan fiction from earlier humanist claims that poetry's purpose was primarily didactic.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"119 1","pages":"103 - 64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45448425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article argues that William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus dramatizes the potential ambivalence of pity in rhetorical situations when images and objects that evoke pity not only constitute evidence of genuine suffering but can also facilitate motives of fraud, cruelty, and revenge. The play is organized around six appeals to pity that identify the emotion not only as a key element in the dramatic and rhetorical contexts of the play's aesthetic of blood but also as an emotion that is tied closely to its interest in vengeance and clemency as contrary shaping motives in the construction of Roman pietas, or "piety," a word whose etymological associations with pity were more evident to early modern audiences than they are today. The play is also informed by a tension in Renaissance philosophy between Augustinianism and Stoicism regarding the relative merits of clemency and pity as social and religious values. These divergent and sometimes contradictory ideas about pity, clemency, and piety in the play resonate not only with Elizabethan perceptions of imperial Rome but also with Elizabethan culture's perceptions of its own historical and mythological connections to ancient Troy and, by extension, the Roman Empire. But the play's consideration of these values also reflects an understanding of the practical, everyday circumstances that Shakespeare's playgoers surely contended with themselves when confronted with public spectacles of punishment and execution, when engaged in civic and legal affairs, and when evaluating their social connections with fellow citizens, especially those experiencing distress and suffering in their manifold forms.
{"title":"Pity and Piety in Titus Andronicus","authors":"Shawna K. Smith","doi":"10.1353/sip.2022.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2022.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article argues that William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus dramatizes the potential ambivalence of pity in rhetorical situations when images and objects that evoke pity not only constitute evidence of genuine suffering but can also facilitate motives of fraud, cruelty, and revenge. The play is organized around six appeals to pity that identify the emotion not only as a key element in the dramatic and rhetorical contexts of the play's aesthetic of blood but also as an emotion that is tied closely to its interest in vengeance and clemency as contrary shaping motives in the construction of Roman pietas, or \"piety,\" a word whose etymological associations with pity were more evident to early modern audiences than they are today. The play is also informed by a tension in Renaissance philosophy between Augustinianism and Stoicism regarding the relative merits of clemency and pity as social and religious values. These divergent and sometimes contradictory ideas about pity, clemency, and piety in the play resonate not only with Elizabethan perceptions of imperial Rome but also with Elizabethan culture's perceptions of its own historical and mythological connections to ancient Troy and, by extension, the Roman Empire. But the play's consideration of these values also reflects an understanding of the practical, everyday circumstances that Shakespeare's playgoers surely contended with themselves when confronted with public spectacles of punishment and execution, when engaged in civic and legal affairs, and when evaluating their social connections with fellow citizens, especially those experiencing distress and suffering in their manifold forms.","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"119 1","pages":"104 - 139"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42708307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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