Pub Date : 2017-05-30DOI: 10.1163/23526963-04301004
Patrick V. Day
Abraham Wheelock’s first edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle appeared at the height of the First English Civil War in 1643, and it is often treated by modern critics as an appendix to the Old English Historia Ecclesiastica to which it is attached. This paper argues that the Chronicle participated in a larger royalist campaign to establish the West Saxons as the institutional forbears of the first two Stuart kings. The West Saxon genealogies authorize a seventeenth-century conception of patriarchal, divine kingship when they trace Alfred to the biblical Adam. Alternatively, the medieval Chronicle presents the advisory body of the Anglo-Saxons, the witan, as a potentially restrictive force upon the monarchy—an image incompatible with a royalist agenda. Wheelock mediates the contradictory presence of the powerful witan by diminishing its historical importance through excision, substitution, and inconsistent translation so that the Chronicle may more easily conform to early modern perceptions of absolutist kingship.
{"title":"Rectifying a Chronicle of Contradictions: The Political Context of Abraham Wheelock’s 1643 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle","authors":"Patrick V. Day","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04301004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04301004","url":null,"abstract":"Abraham Wheelock’s first edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle appeared at the height of the First English Civil War in 1643, and it is often treated by modern critics as an appendix to the Old English Historia Ecclesiastica to which it is attached. This paper argues that the Chronicle participated in a larger royalist campaign to establish the West Saxons as the institutional forbears of the first two Stuart kings. The West Saxon genealogies authorize a seventeenth-century conception of patriarchal, divine kingship when they trace Alfred to the biblical Adam. Alternatively, the medieval Chronicle presents the advisory body of the Anglo-Saxons, the witan, as a potentially restrictive force upon the monarchy—an image incompatible with a royalist agenda. Wheelock mediates the contradictory presence of the powerful witan by diminishing its historical importance through excision, substitution, and inconsistent translation so that the Chronicle may more easily conform to early modern perceptions of absolutist kingship.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"43 1","pages":"81-107"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04301004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41752796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-05-30DOI: 10.1163/23526963-04301003
Ashley M. Voeks
This essay examines expressions of retribution in “Vengeances,” Book VI of Agrippa d’Aubigne’s seven-book epic, Les Tragiques (1616). Early modern registers of vengeance provide contexts for the ways in which Aubigne navigates a self-proclaimed duty and desire to see that justice is served, in both earthly and celestial realms. Early modern vengeance, it is argued here, can best be understood in performative terms. As this essay demonstrates, verse is a filter through which Aubigne makes manifest his desire for retribution.
{"title":"Performing Vengeance in Agrippa d’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques","authors":"Ashley M. Voeks","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04301003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04301003","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines expressions of retribution in “Vengeances,” Book VI of Agrippa d’Aubigne’s seven-book epic, Les Tragiques (1616). Early modern registers of vengeance provide contexts for the ways in which Aubigne navigates a self-proclaimed duty and desire to see that justice is served, in both earthly and celestial realms. Early modern vengeance, it is argued here, can best be understood in performative terms. As this essay demonstrates, verse is a filter through which Aubigne makes manifest his desire for retribution.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"43 1","pages":"56-80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04301003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46281328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-05-30DOI: 10.1163/23526963-04301002
John M. Adrian
Though typically seen as occasions of royal performance, Elizabethan progresses were also opportunities for the cities visited by the English queen to fashion and project images of themselves to the reigning monarch. Unlike those created by Bristol (1574) and Norwich (1578), Sandwich’s 1573 entertainments feature few formal pageant devices and therefore appear to be much less elaborate. Nonetheless, the citizens of Sandwich did indeed “speak” to their queen over the course of her three-day visit, though they relied primarily on spatial and topographical performance. Everywhere Elizabeth went and everything she saw—the gate through which she entered, her route through the town, the location of her lodgings, the buildings and landmarks that she was shown—were part of a calculated attempt to assert Sandwich’s historical importance and continuing vitality. These messages sought both to refashion reality (Sandwich was in economic decline) and to shrewdly lay the groundwork for the town’s formal request for royal aid. This paper looks closely at sixteenth-century Sandwich’s layout, topography, buildings, and town records to provide a “close reading” of Elizabeth’s visit.
{"title":"‘A supplicacion for the Havon’: Sandwich, Civic Pageantry, and Queen Elizabeth i’s Visit of 1573","authors":"John M. Adrian","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04301002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04301002","url":null,"abstract":"Though typically seen as occasions of royal performance, Elizabethan progresses were also opportunities for the cities visited by the English queen to fashion and project images of themselves to the reigning monarch. Unlike those created by Bristol (1574) and Norwich (1578), Sandwich’s 1573 entertainments feature few formal pageant devices and therefore appear to be much less elaborate. Nonetheless, the citizens of Sandwich did indeed “speak” to their queen over the course of her three-day visit, though they relied primarily on spatial and topographical performance. Everywhere Elizabeth went and everything she saw—the gate through which she entered, her route through the town, the location of her lodgings, the buildings and landmarks that she was shown—were part of a calculated attempt to assert Sandwich’s historical importance and continuing vitality. These messages sought both to refashion reality (Sandwich was in economic decline) and to shrewdly lay the groundwork for the town’s formal request for royal aid. This paper looks closely at sixteenth-century Sandwich’s layout, topography, buildings, and town records to provide a “close reading” of Elizabeth’s visit.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"43 1","pages":"30-55"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04301002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43091223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-05-30DOI: 10.1163/23526963-04301001
Dayton Haskin
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s foundational decision not to teach Latin and Greek opened a vast curricular space for the specialized study of scientific and technological subjects and also for what are now called humanities and social sciences. A printed document headed “English, 1868–69” sets forth MIT ’s plan for a required four-year curriculum in which the professor of English would lecture on a wide range of subjects in the vernacular, from political economy and law, to history and philosophy, to language and literature. This essay traces the effects of a residual hostility against the “dead languages” that informed the teaching of classic English literature, which evinces a steady diminishment of the place of the humanities over time. Climactically, the essay explores a countervailing English examination given by a junior instructor that shows how the scientific and humanities curricula might have been made to work in concert.
{"title":"Shakespeare, Milton, and the Humanities at MIT in Its Foundational Period","authors":"Dayton Haskin","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04301001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04301001","url":null,"abstract":"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s foundational decision not to teach Latin and Greek opened a vast curricular space for the specialized study of scientific and technological subjects and also for what are now called humanities and social sciences. A printed document headed “English, 1868–69” sets forth MIT ’s plan for a required four-year curriculum in which the professor of English would lecture on a wide range of subjects in the vernacular, from political economy and law, to history and philosophy, to language and literature. This essay traces the effects of a residual hostility against the “dead languages” that informed the teaching of classic English literature, which evinces a steady diminishment of the place of the humanities over time. Climactically, the essay explores a countervailing English examination given by a junior instructor that shows how the scientific and humanities curricula might have been made to work in concert.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"43 1","pages":"1-29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04301001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44427354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-12-05DOI: 10.1163/23526963-04202003
Lindsay J. Starkey
Building on both Christian scriptures and Aristotelian notions of the four elements, many patristic, medieval, and sixteenth-century Christians held that water could and perhaps should cover the whole earth. Christian and Jewish exegetes from Basil the Great and into the sixteenth century discussed the dry land’s existence in their commentaries on Genesis 1.9–10, arguing that its existence was either natural, preternatural, or a supernatural act of God. Analyzing patristic, medieval and sixteenth-century exegeses of these biblical verses, this article explores how these Christian and Jewish exegetes categorized water’s failure to flood the earth. It argues that the possibilities for characterizing water’s behavior expanded greatly in the sixteenth century. Whereas patristic and medieval authors tended to claim that the natural order God had established during the process of creation could account for water’s failure to submerge the earth, sixteenth-century exegetes offered a wide variety of categorizations, arguing that water’s behavior was natural, preternatural, supernatural, a wonder, or even a miracle. Drawing on contemporary scholarship on sixteenth-century cosmographical models, this paper argues that fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sea voyages and encounters with people living in the Southern Hemisphere might have led these sixteenth-century exegetes to reexamine the categories as they did.
{"title":"“Let the Waters Be Gathered Together, and Let the Dry Land Appear”: Sixteenth-Century Exegeses of Genesis 1.9–10 in Context","authors":"Lindsay J. Starkey","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04202003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04202003","url":null,"abstract":"Building on both Christian scriptures and Aristotelian notions of the four elements, many patristic, medieval, and sixteenth-century Christians held that water could and perhaps should cover the whole earth. Christian and Jewish exegetes from Basil the Great and into the sixteenth century discussed the dry land’s existence in their commentaries on Genesis 1.9–10, arguing that its existence was either natural, preternatural, or a supernatural act of God. Analyzing patristic, medieval and sixteenth-century exegeses of these biblical verses, this article explores how these Christian and Jewish exegetes categorized water’s failure to flood the earth. It argues that the possibilities for characterizing water’s behavior expanded greatly in the sixteenth century. Whereas patristic and medieval authors tended to claim that the natural order God had established during the process of creation could account for water’s failure to submerge the earth, sixteenth-century exegetes offered a wide variety of categorizations, arguing that water’s behavior was natural, preternatural, supernatural, a wonder, or even a miracle. Drawing on contemporary scholarship on sixteenth-century cosmographical models, this paper argues that fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sea voyages and encounters with people living in the Southern Hemisphere might have led these sixteenth-century exegetes to reexamine the categories as they did.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"42 1","pages":"165-189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04202003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64618910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-11-29DOI: 10.1163/23526963-04202004
Rebecca M. Quoss-Moore
In Nicholas Breton’s 1599 Miseries of Mavillia , women’s education is examined as a social good that can be transferred across classes. In the text, education helps to define the title character as a gentlewoman, but that education is gained from a laundress rather than from any fellow member of the upper class. For the less-educated characters, Breton allows the value they place on learning to also serve as a marker of worth. For the better-educated characters, worth is more explicitly coded by a combination of endorsed social status, clear reward, and moral stability. Although the titular Mavillia endures many miseries despite her attainments and status, education acts as (variously) safeguard, surety, and salvation throughout her story. Moreover, Mavillia is able to use her education to create a “gentlewoman” out of the stubborn daughter of shepherds. In showing Mavillia’s successful transference of that education and its benefits to a woman not born to either, Breton challenges the established social order of restrictive class immobility and emphasizes the potential impact of education on the lives of middle-class and gentry women. Ultimately, Breton’s text argues for education as a potential source of comfort and moral fortitude for women of all backgrounds.
在尼古拉斯·布雷顿(Nicholas Breton) 1599年的《玛维利亚的苦难》(misery of Mavillia)中，女性教育被视为一种可以跨阶层转移的社会公益。在文章中，教育有助于将标题角色定义为一位贵妇，但这种教育是从洗衣女工那里获得的，而不是从上层阶级的任何成员那里获得的。对于受教育程度较低的角色，布雷顿允许他们对学习的重视也作为价值的标志。对于受过良好教育的角色来说，价值更明确地由认可的社会地位、明确的奖励和道德稳定性结合而成。尽管名义上的玛维利亚在她的成就和地位下经历了许多苦难，但教育在她的故事中扮演着(各种)保障、保证和拯救的角色。此外，玛维利亚能够利用她的教育，把一个倔强的牧羊人女儿塑造成一个“淑女”。布列塔尼通过展示玛维利亚成功地将这种教育转移到一个并非出身于这两种家庭的女人身上，挑战了既定的阶级固定的社会秩序，并强调了教育对中产阶级和绅士女性生活的潜在影响。最后，布列塔尼的文章认为，教育是所有背景的女性获得安慰和道德坚强的潜在来源。
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Pub Date : 2016-11-29DOI: 10.1163/23526963-04202005
Gitta Bertram
The title page for the six books on optics by Franciscus Aguilonius shows optics as a science in its own right, as the queen of mathematical sciences. It also offers a visual discussion on the importance of the science within the Jesuit belief and educational system. Drawing on a well-known visual language consisting of allegorical, mythological and architectural elements, Rubens elevates Optics to the status of a queen, while also emphasising the connection of vision, the passions and knowledge, especially spiritual knowledge. This connection is not only the key to understanding of Rubens’s title page, but it explains the awkward outdatedness of Aguilonius’s book, in that it does not touch upon Kepler’s latest theories. The book was nevertheless important for Jesuit teaching in the following decades. This article offers a reading of the Aguilonius title page in its historical context.
{"title":"Elevating Optics: The Title Page by Peter Paul Rubens of Franciscus Aguilonius’s Opticorum Libri Sex (1613) in its Historical Context","authors":"Gitta Bertram","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04202005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04202005","url":null,"abstract":"The title page for the six books on optics by Franciscus Aguilonius shows optics as a science in its own right, as the queen of mathematical sciences. It also offers a visual discussion on the importance of the science within the Jesuit belief and educational system. Drawing on a well-known visual language consisting of allegorical, mythological and architectural elements, Rubens elevates Optics to the status of a queen, while also emphasising the connection of vision, the passions and knowledge, especially spiritual knowledge. This connection is not only the key to understanding of Rubens’s title page, but it explains the awkward outdatedness of Aguilonius’s book, in that it does not touch upon Kepler’s latest theories. The book was nevertheless important for Jesuit teaching in the following decades. This article offers a reading of the Aguilonius title page in its historical context.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"42 1","pages":"212-242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04202005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64618930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-11-29DOI: 10.1163/23526963-04202001
Carlo M. Bajetta
While evidence abounds as to Elizabeth I’s proficiency in Italian, only a fraction of her letters in this language has so far come to light, and only one has been edited in Marcus and Mueller’s Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals , the well-known first extant letter by the then Princess to Katherine Parr. A research project commenced in 2009 has so far located about thirty of these, including six (three of which are also in their original drafts) entirely in the queen’s hand. Questions of authorship related to the non-holograph letters, however, clearly arise. By analyzing an unpublished letter by Elizabeth, this paper will try to cast some light on the vicissitudes of the queen’s Italian correspondence.
{"title":"“Nella lingua sua naturale”: Elizabeth’s Italian Letters","authors":"Carlo M. Bajetta","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04202001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04202001","url":null,"abstract":"While evidence abounds as to Elizabeth I’s proficiency in Italian, only a fraction of her letters in this language has so far come to light, and only one has been edited in Marcus and Mueller’s Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals , the well-known first extant letter by the then Princess to Katherine Parr. A research project commenced in 2009 has so far located about thirty of these, including six (three of which are also in their original drafts) entirely in the queen’s hand. Questions of authorship related to the non-holograph letters, however, clearly arise. By analyzing an unpublished letter by Elizabeth, this paper will try to cast some light on the vicissitudes of the queen’s Italian correspondence.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"42 1","pages":"109-123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04202001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64618867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-11-29DOI: 10.1163/23526963-04202002
Kreg Segall
This essay argues that the various images of the laurel wreath and laureation in John Skelton’s The Laurel are marked by ambivalence. Far from a unified and full-throated celebration of his own achievements, the poem partakes of good-humored self-parody, serious self-mockery, and open disgust to undermine and question the political and aesthetic significance of the laurel, and what one must do to achieve it. The Laurel acknowledges and mocks the laureate’s impossible balancing act between a prophetic role as vates and a political role as orator regius ; this essay suggests that this tension is played out in the poem as Skelton considers the appealing immediacy of oral poetry and the compromises of written poetry.
{"title":"The Tree and the Chaplet: Wanting the Laurel in Skelton’s The Laurel","authors":"Kreg Segall","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04202002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04202002","url":null,"abstract":"This essay argues that the various images of the laurel wreath and laureation in John Skelton’s The Laurel are marked by ambivalence. Far from a unified and full-throated celebration of his own achievements, the poem partakes of good-humored self-parody, serious self-mockery, and open disgust to undermine and question the political and aesthetic significance of the laurel, and what one must do to achieve it. The Laurel acknowledges and mocks the laureate’s impossible balancing act between a prophetic role as vates and a political role as orator regius ; this essay suggests that this tension is played out in the poem as Skelton considers the appealing immediacy of oral poetry and the compromises of written poetry.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"42 1","pages":"124-164"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04202002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64618874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-03-15DOI: 10.1163/23526963-04201002
M. Ansaldo
The study of the representation of the interrelated notions of Fortune and Occasio in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida has been largely neglected by critics. This is particularly surprising because this play, where all that takes place is nothing “but the chance of war,” and characters’ efforts and expectations are often contradicted by the turns of events, seems to invite us to meditate upon what determines a successful outcome. This article shows that considering the concepts of Fortune and Occasion, and the imagery traditionally associated with them, can provide original critical perspectives on this play. The manner in which the characters refer to Fortune/ Occasio reveals the extent to which each of them is willing and capable of exercising agency. Sheer opportunism and brute force are what is required to win in the world of the play, where valor, honor and chivalry have become obsolete vestiges of a lost mythical past.
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