Leone de' Sommi and Jewish Theatre in Renaissance Mantua

Contributor(s): Donald Beecher

This is a study of a Renaissance artist and his patrons, but with an added complication, insofar as Leone de' Sommi, the gifted academician and playwright in the employ of the dukes of Mantua in the second half of the sixteenth century, was Jewish and a lifelong promoter and protector of his...

Garnier's Historical Sources in Les Juifves

Contributor(s): Damon Di Mauro

Robert Garnier's "Les Juifves" (1583) is generally considered to be the crown jewel of the French Renaissance stage. At the close of his prefatory "Argument" to the play, Garnier obligingly furnishes the historical sources from which he has taken the story of the sufferings of Zedekiah and his...

Les opinions politiques d'un avocat parisien sous Henri IV: Antoine Arnauld

Contributor(s): Michel De Waele

Antoine Arnauld est surtout connu des historiens pour ses attaques virulentes contre les Jésuites. Mais cet avocat parisien a participé à tous les débats qui secouèrent la France durant le règne d'Henri IV. Royaliste convaincu, ardent défenseur des privilèges du parlement, ses opinions politiques...

"Ryse Up Elisa” – Woman Trapped in a Lay: Spenser's "Aprill"

Contributor(s): Marianne Micros

In Edmund Spenser's "Aprill," Colin Cloute, by creating and controlling an idealized woman, has silenced the source of his own creative power. However, Colin's lay contains hints that Elisa is neither perfect nor passive: complex natural and mythological allusions reveal her vitality and...

The Pastime of Master F. J.

Contributor(s): Dale B. Billingsley

Characters in Gascoigne's "Adventures of Master F. J." (1573) use reading as a pastime by which they sort out or complicate their relationships with others; the novel's readers, for their pastime, recreate these relationships as they read the novel. These linguistic, rhetorical and social...

Unica Oblatio Christi: Eucharistic Sacrifice and the first Zürich Disputation

Contributor(s): Keith D. Lewis

The First Zürich Disputation (January 29th, 1523) between Ulrich Zwingli and Johann Faber was the earliest Reformation-era public debate of the doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice. While Zwingli was at an early and relatively fluid stage in his rejection of eucharistic sacrifice, Faber's...

The Fall of Nebuchadnezzar

Contributor(s): Elizabeth Sauer

This paper examines the relationship of verbal expression, political engagement, and historical progress in a poem which has traditionally been labelled undramatic and read as an allegory of Milton's post-revolutionary resignation to quietism. While "Paradise Regained" consists primarily of a...

Marc Lescarbot au pays des Ithyphalles

Contributor(s): Guy Poirier

L’interprétation de l'oeuvre de Marc Lescarbot hésite le plus souvent entre l'aspect encyclopédique de ses ouvrages et leur dimention créative. Dans le présent article, l'auteur tente de situer le discours dont se réclame l'écrivain au coeur du maniérisme poétique du début du XVIIe siècle. Pour...

Sixteenth Century Hospital Reform: Henri IV and the Chamber of Christian Charity

Contributor(s): Daniel Hickey

Created in 1606, the Chamber of Christian Charity was intended to fund pensions for former army officers and amputated soldiers by reviewing the operations and expropriating surplus revenues from local charitable foundations - abbeys, monasteries, hospices and local hospitals. This article...

Henri IV et les Jésuites

Contributor(s): Claude Sutto

Les relations entre la Compagnie de Jésus et Henri IV ont été marquées pendant près de quinze ans par des malentendus, des accidents de parcours, plus encore par des pressions qui s'exerçaient sur celle-ci comme sur celui-là et qui témoignaient à la fois de l'existence de préjugés et de peurs que...

Représentation allégorique d'Henri IV rex imperator

Contributor(s): Marie-France Wagner

C'est à partir de deux images que nous étudions la représentation d'Henri IV rex imperator. La première, gravée en 1602 et réutilisée quelque sept années plus tard, est doublement allégorique; elle met en scène Henri IV à la fois Hercule et Alexandre. La description du premier arc de triomphe de...

Donne's Model: Henry IV

Contributor(s): Anthony Raspa

Donne's Pseudo-Martyr is his first major published work and the longest that he ever wrote. As he argues in it about the relationship of the state and religion to each other, he establishes Henry IV of Navarre, king of France, as one of his models of a competent and tolerant king. Henry's...

Image de force, perception de faiblesse: La clémence d'Henri IV

Contributor(s): Michel De Waele

Parmi les nombreux éléments qui composent la légende d'Henri IV, la clémence qu'il manifesta envers ses ennemis occupe une place de choix. Sans elle, affirment de nombreuses personnes, le premier Bourbon n'aurait jamais pu s'asseoir sur le trône de France. Tous ne partageaient pas cependant cet...

Early English Protestantism and Renaissance Poetics: The Charge is Committing Fiction in the Matter of Rastell v. Frith

Contributor(s): Peter C. Herman

The debate between John Rastell and John Frith constitutes a previously unrecognized ancestor to Stephen Gosson's attack on poetry and Sir Philip Sidney's (problematic) defense of it. Although the nominal aim of Rastell's A Newe Boke of Purgatorye and Frith's A Disputation of Purgatory is...

Re-Reading Folly: Rabelais’s Praise of Triboullet

Contributor(s): Camilla J. Nilles

Rabelais's praise of Triboullet differs from earlier works on folly by using the fool's differing perspective to conduct its search for authentic meaning. The descriptions of the sage mondain and the divine fool initiate the process, establishing folly and wisdom as relative terms, whose meaning...

The Autobiography of Grace, Lady Mildmay

Contributor(s): Randall Martin

The following is an annotated transcription of Lady Grace Mildmay's autobiographical papers, written between 1617 and 1620. These "Memoirs" reveal the preoccupations and moral teachings of an English woman brought up in the reformed faith. They also contain a wealth of information on monetary...

Ad dotandum puellas virgines, pauperes et honestas: Social Needs and Confraternal Charity in Rome in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Contributor(s): Anna Esposito

In the late fifteenth century, Roman confraternities, especially that of SS. Annunziata, provided dowries for poor but "honest" girls. This charitable work was in response to the growing needs of a relatively defenceless segment of a society that was undergoing rapid transformation. This study of...

The Reception of Erasmus’ Adages in Sixteenth-Century England

Contributor(s): Erika Rummel

The Adages of Erasmus, a collection of more than 4,000 classical proverbs, was a bestseller in its time. The book was valued both for its usefulness in Latin composition and its witty asides on contemporary society. The dissemination of the Adages in England is of special significance because the...

Didactisme et parcours discursife dans les Epistres d’Hélisenne de Crenne

Contributor(s): Jean-Philippe Beaulieu

Cet article traite d'un ouvrage moins connu d'Hélisenne de Crenne: les Epistres familieres et invectives publiées en 1539. Il est possible de suivre dans ce recueil épistolaire le cheminement d'Hélisenne de Crenne, de la conformité aux grands codes moraux et didactiques provenant de la tradition...

Religion and the Law in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair

Contributor(s): Jeanette Ferreira-Ross

In Bartholomew Fair, Jonson, speaking for the Establishment, debunks the presumptuous "singularity" of extreme Puritans, demonstrating the folly of "authority" which is rooted not in traditional structures of church and state but in excentricity and private fancies. Jonson's satirical method...