The Question of Esoteric Writing in Machiavelli’s Works

Contributor(s): Rasoul Namazi

The question addressed by this article is whether esotericism or secret teachings exist in Machiavelli’s writings. This question has been a major point of contention between the commentators of Machiavelli, with many denying the existence of esoteric teaching in the Machiavellian corpus. This...

“Of rose and pomegarnet the redolent pryncesse”: Fashioning Princess Mary in 1525

Contributor(s): Stephen Hamrick

While a more accurate appraisal of Mary Tudor’s life and reign is underway, historians of literature continue either to ignore or to misinterpret surviving representations of Princess Mary. To begin correcting this failure, the article analyzes a complex 1525 verse portrait of Mary, setting that...

“No chronicle records his fellow”: Reading Perkin Warbeck in the Early Seventeenth Century

Contributor(s): Igor Djordjevic

This article argues that John Ford’s play Perkin Warbeck should be read in the context of “new” Jacobean readings of the historiography of Henry VII’s reign. After tracing the origins and dissemination of Warbeck’s scaffold confession of imposture, and exposing the sixteenth-century chroniclers’...

Thomas Browne and the Silent Text

Contributor(s): Jessica Wolfe

Throughout his writings, the physician and essayist Thomas Browne (1605–82) grapples with the problem of how and whether to interpret the silence of texts. His innovative solutions to the problem of “negative authority,” the term used in early modern theological debates over the significance, or...

Ecclesiastical Chronotaxes of the Renaissance

Contributor(s): Damiano Acciarino

During the sixteenth century, confessional disputes between Catholics and Protestants became the “battlefield” for determining and shaping the reformed Christian religion. Antiquarian erudition played a key role in this process, acting in accordance with the diverse cultural systems in place,...

Translating Dramatic Texts in Sixteenth-Century England and France: Introduction / Traduire le texte dramatique au seizième siècle en Angleterre et en France : Introduction

Contributor(s): Anne G. Graham, Ágnes Juhász-Ormsby

Robert Radcliffe’s Translation of Joannes Ravisius Textor’s Dialogi (1530) and the Henrician Reformation

Contributor(s): Ágnes Juhász-Ormsby

Joannes Ravisius Textor’s Dialogi aliquot festivissimi (1530) exerted considerable influence in England in the 1530s. The English Textor movement was spurred primarily by the dialogues’ effectiveness in advancing and popularizing specific religious changes promoted by the government as part of...

Toning Down Abraham: Arthur Golding’s 1577 Translation, A Tragedie of Abraham’s Sacrifice

Contributor(s): Anne G. Graham

Arthur Golding was a prolific Elizabethan translator, most famous for his rendering of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In 1577, he translated Théodore de Bèze’s 1550 tragedy, Abraham sacrifiant. While the Huguenot’s play has been widely studied, Golding’s translation has received almost no scholarly...

“Comme espics dans les plaines”: Patterns of Translation of Robert Garnier’s Epic Similes in Thomas Kyd’s Cornelia (1594)

Contributor(s): Marie-Alice Belle

Although celebrated in its time as a worthy contribution to the poetic experiments of the late Elizabethan age, Thomas Kyd’s 1594 Cornelia, translated from Robert Garnier’s Cornélie (1574), has long been held by modern criticism as a minor work in the playwright’s career. Previous attempts to...

Towards a Typology of Cross-Channel Dramatic Borrowings: The View from the White Cliffs

Contributor(s): Richard Hillman

Scholarship on the diverse ways in which early modern English playwrights “translated” French textual material, dramatic and otherwise, has by now accumulated enough specific instances to justify an overview of methods and results. There are few outright translations of French plays, but the...

Les vies françaises de l’Arcadia : du roman de Sir Philip Sidney à ses adaptations dramatiques en France

Contributor(s): Alban Déléris

Dans les années 1580, Sir Philip Sidney s’attelle à l’écriture de son oeuvre majeure, l’Arcadia, vaste roman pastoral dont la composition inachevée s’étale sur plusieurs années, et la publication posthume. Sa diffusion à l’étranger, et notamment en France, est rapide et l’Arcadia fait en effet...

La farse d’Amphitrion (Anvers, 1504), première traduction française d’une comédie plautinienne

Contributor(s): Mathieu Ferrand

La farse d’Amphitrion paraît à Anvers en 1504, dans un recueil de vers anonymes. Il s’agit de la première traduction française d’une comédie plautinienne. L’analyse du texte et du paratexte permet d’abord de reconstituer le portrait intellectuel de l’auteur — un poète de la cour de Bourgogne — et...

Représentations des textes et des savoirs chez Charles Estienne : la « vive parole » d’un humaniste

Contributor(s): Hélène Cazes

Homme aux savoirs multiples et homme de vulgarisation, Charles Estienne (1514–1564) s’intéressa à la traduction et à l’édition théâtrale parallèlement à ses activités éditoriales et scientifiques, tant en latin qu’en français. Non pas en marge, mais au centre d’une carrière consacrée à la parole...

Traduire la Philanira de Claude Roillet, ou, le laboratoire de la forme poétique théâtrale

Contributor(s): John Nassichuk

Claude Roillet, professeur de lettres aux collèges de Bourgogne et de Boncourt, fit paraître en 1556 le recueil de ses oeuvres de poète et de dramaturge sous le titre Varia Poemata (Paris: Guillaume Julien). Cette collection contient notamment quatre tragédies latines, intitulées Philanira,...

Les premières traductions de l’Iphigénie à Aulis d’Euripide, d’Érasme à Thomas Sébillet

Contributor(s): Virginie Leroux

En 1506, Érasme est le premier à traduire en latin des tragédies grecques entières, en l’occurrence deux tragédies d’Euripide, Hécube et Iphigénie à Aulis. S’il adopte pour l’Hécube une traduction vers à vers, il opte dans l’Iphigénie pour une traduction plus détaillée en veillant à produire dans...

Traduire, imiter et réécrire Agamemnon à la Renaissance : les tragédies de Charles Toutain (1556), Roland Brisset (1589) et Pierre Matthieu (1589)

Contributor(s): Louise Frappier

Le théâtre de Sénèque a exercé une influence majeure sur le développement de la tragédie française au XVIe siècle. Sa tragédie Agamemnon est ainsi à l’origine des pièces de Charles Toutain, Roland Brisset et Pierre Matthieu. D’un auteur à l’autre, l’écart avec le texte-source devient toutefois de...

Piety and Conflict in the Early Reformation: Introduction

Contributor(s): Andrew Gow, Robert J. Bast

The Extract of Various Prophecies: Apocalypticism and Mass Media in the Early Reformation

Contributor(s): Jonathan Green

The compilation known as the Extract of Various Prophecies (Auszug etlicher Practica und Prophezeiungen) was the most popular prophetic pamphlet in Germany in the decade between 1516 and 1525. While the Extract was known to contain excerpts from the Prognosticatio of Johannes Lichtenberger and...

Why Was There Even a Reformation in Lindau? The Myth and Mystery of Lindau’s Conflict-Free Reformation

Contributor(s): Johannes Wolfart

Histories of Lindau emphasize a remarkably conflict-free course of early reform in that particular locale. This view is established and maintained by multiple means, including hyper-credulity towards the peacefulness asserted by local authorities, anachronistic projections of the confessional...

Sex, Blasphemy, and the Block: The Trial and Execution of Ludwig Hätzer

Contributor(s): Geoffrey Dipple

In early 1529, the Protestant authorities of Constance executed Ludwig Hätzer for disobedience and moral depravity. Although the court documents avoided any reference to his religious teachings, contemporaries speculated about the role that perceptions—that he was an Anabaptist who espoused...