Medievalisms 1

“Renaissance Medievalisms” An international conference at the Centre for and Victoria College, University of Toronto Friday-Saturday, 6-7 October 2006

Abstracts

PLENARY 1: Paul F. Grendler (U of Toronto) Continuity and Change in Italian Universities, 1400-1600 The second most important and longest enduring medievalism, after the Roman Catholic Church, is the university, a creation of the Middle Ages. Like their medieval counterparts, universities today teach and award degrees in law, medicine, philosophy, and the humanities. Professors lecture, students study, and civil authorities meddle, as they did in the Middle Ages. But many changes have occurred as well. Determining the extent and magnitude of change and continuity between medieval and Renaissance universities is a complex and much discussed issue. It is sometimes seen as an issue of scholasticism vs. humanism in sixteenth-century universities. But that was only one issue. In so far as time allows, the paper will reflect on continuity and change in universities in such areas as the practice of disputations, the teaching of natural philosophy, law, and medicine, and the role of civil authorities.

PLENARY 2: Alexander Nagel (U of Toronto) When medieval is not medieval: alternative antiquities in the Renaissance Traditional scholarship on emphasized the period’s debt to the antique— a Greco-Roman “antique” understood in primarily neoclassicist terms. And yet a good deal of art that we now class as “medieval” was of great importance to Renaissance artists. Mosaic and “cosmateque” work, for example, underwent a revival under the direction of Lorenzo the Magnificent in Florence and in the Rome of Bramante, , and Peruzzi. An interest in Byzantine icons informed some of the most significant works by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and others. Byzantine and Romanesque church designs were arguably more important for Renaissance architects than ancient Roman models. Rather than claim these as “medieval” revivals, however, this paper argues that these models and traditions were also understood in their own way as antique. The most famous case—and it has turned out to be typical, not exceptional—is that of the 11th-12th- century baptistery in Florence, which was believed by virtually everyone in the period to be an ancient Roman building. A whole range of artifacts and monuments that are no longered classed as ancient art were considered antiquities in the Renaissance. A more variable antiquity emerges, one defined less by a historically motivated interest in classical culture than by an ideologically grounded interest in pristine and archaic forms.

SESSION 1A Medieval Aesthetics and Strategies in Art - 1

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Michael Grillo (Univ. of Maine-USA) Renaissance Historical Revision: The Old Conversant with the Ancient in a New Critical Language of Aesthetics In his first Introduction in the Vite…, Vasari separates the Italian Renaissance from its Medieval predecessors in a manner that resonates with earlier writings from the Quattro- and Trecento, of Alberti and Petrarch. In framing a critical language of Renaissance art, however, their arguments focus on formal aesthetics, undermining any possibility of considering alternatives to Classical forms as possibly more appropriate to both Platonic and Aristotelian thought. Renaissance Historical Revision first looks back to the French Gothic, to establish a separation between Classical form and thought, as a means of then setting the stage for how Tre- and Quattrocento artists could draw from a variety of historical traditions according to the specific needs of each project. The extreme foment of their era in politics and religion, encouraged experimentation with disparate cultural forms as a means of articulating new ideas pertinent to these changes. The paper will look to three eras as models of how Medieval aesthetics played out in Renaissance strategies, in the works of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Ghiberti and Donatello, and finally, Raphael. Ultimately, such a study becomes possible only with a break from a linear, teleological history of Renaissance Art.

Erik Inglis (Oberlin College-USA) Lightly-worn antiquity: Early Gothic Architecture in Fifteenth Century France The monastery of Saint Denis and the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris were both begun in the mid-twelfth century, and largely finished by the middle of the thirteenth. After their completion, they remained central monuments in France. My paper would examine their meaning in the fifteenth century by using three types of evidence: their depiction in works of art; the celebration in texts; and their important role in diplomatic visits. Taken together, these three forms of evidence suggest that the buildings’ antiquity was both recognized and worthy of praise. By treating Notre-Dame and Saint-Denis as an honorable architectural heritage, the French behave in the same way that the Romans treated the Colosseum and Pantheon. The difference, of course, is that the Romans celebrate classical antiquities, while the French celebrate antiquities of medieval origin.

Ethan Matt Kavaler (U of Toronto) The Gothic of the Renaissance Although little discussed, Gothic remained the leading architectural style throughout Northern Europe until at least 1530, decades after Italianate forms had entered the local repertory. Indeed, Gothic architecture witnessed a burst of creative development at the end of the fifteenth century, a dramatic renewal of an authoritative manner that was nurtured by the most talented artists and prominent patrons. These monuments have generally ceded place to considerations of Italianate developments, partly a consequence of a Burkhardtian enshrinement of the Renaissance as the birthplace of the modern world. Yet the lack of attention paid to the Late Gothic impedes our ability to deal with questions of artistic mode or language at a time when conscious choice replaced inevitable recourse. Moreover, it dulls our sensibility to Gothic design as a concentrated marker of the sacred during this period, as a means of equipping monuments and framing spaces for religious service.

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SESSION 1B Shakespeare and Middle Ages

Gary Waller (Purchase College – USA) Shakespeare's Reformed Madonna: All's Well that Ends Well and the Madonna del Parto In this paper, I will be drawing on my ongoing study of the Mariological underground in early modern England which hearkened back, with a mixture of nostalgia and deliberate provocation, to medieval modes of thinking and apprehension. Specifically I will focus on the final scene of All’s Well that Ends Well. The momentary tableau of Helena’s reappearance in 5.3 links the play with a very specific medieval miracle and artistic tradition that is a powerful reminder of the rich ideological contradictions in the ways medieval and early modern women were represented. Helena is the Pregnant Virgin. Behind her appearance is the artistic tradition of the Madonna Gravida, Helena may embody the Reformation’s emphasis on virginity transformed into domesticated and fertile chastity; she also (literally) embodies the ‘old’ religion’s contradictory affirmation of virginity and incarnational sexuality. These Reformation rival discourses paradoxically combine with a vigorous affirmation of sexuality. I will speculatively make a further link to the radical Reformation’s rediscovery of spiritual sexuality and to recent Italian work on the merging of the chaste Virgin and the sexuality of the ‘other’ Mary in late medieval/early Renaissance art.

Philippa Sheppard (CRRS) Shakespeare’s Joan of Arc My paper will examine the ways in which Shakespeare in his play Henry VI, Part I, alters the image he finds in the English Chronicles of the iconic medieval figure of Joan of Arc for his own dramatic purposes. Holinshed writes very little about Joan’s activities apart from relating her initial private conference with the Dauphin, and her confession and burning at the stake. He ignores the fact that the Catholic Church had overturned its earlier condemnation of her as an heretic. Shakespeare enlarges her role in English history, using her as a foil for Talbot, another medieval hero, and draws on Elizabethan models for her military rhetoric. Her dialogue is marked by careful logic, in contrast to the portrait of her in Holinshed, in which she had “the name of Iesus in her mouth about all hir businesses” (III 600). Throughout the play, Shakespeare depicts Joan much more as a military adversary to Talbot than as a visionary or mystic. She is pragmatic and wily, rather than saintly and inspiring as she is in earlier Continental depictions (Christine de Pisan). Yet the jingoistic portrait that Shakespeare obviously set out to achieve thwarts him, and she is a more positive character than he intended, balancing the play’s slant towards Talbot. We see in embryo Shakespeare’s great gift: his ability to capture our interest and sympathy for all his characters, even his villains.

Deanne Williams (York Univ.) Love on the Rocks: Cymbeline and the Franklin's Tale The connections between Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale and Shakespeare’s Cymbeline have received surprisingly little attention. Accounts of Shakespeare’s use of Chaucer are, for the most part, limited to what we may consider the usual suspects: Troilus and Cressida, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and, to a lesser extent, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This paper forms part of a larger argument in which I propose that Shakespeare’s romances offer a sustained reading of Chaucer’s romances: a reading instigated, at least in part, by the publication of Speght’s Chaucer in 1598. It elucidates the many connections between Renaissance Medievalisms 4

the Franklin’s Tale and Cymbeline – from the shared character Arveragus (which Cymbeline spells Arviragus) to the concern with what Chaucer calls “olde gentil Britouns;” from its concern with the enforced separation of a happily married couple, with a jealous suitor, and with the questions of freedom and trust within marriage. Most importantly, each romance hinges upon the deceptive potential of sight. The threatening and then magically disappearing rocks in the Franklin’s Tale symbolize the physical as well as sexual dangers of a prolonged separation. In Cymbeline, a stolen glance at Imogen’s delectable birthmark allows Jachimo to lend support to his false claim that he has had an affair with her. In each case, the relationship falters with a rash promise, and both Cymbeline and the Franklin’s Tale explore of the perils of saying too much, or the power of what Cecil Day-Lewis called “not saying everything.”

SESSION 1C Science and

Bert S. Hall, (U of Toronto) Galatea's Paddle-Wheel Seashell, Leonardo’s Armoured Wagon and Ramelli's Crossbow: Medieval Roots of Renaissance Artist Engineers The Renaissance produced many examples of novel technological solutions which it displayed with charming artistic bravura. Raphael's Galatea flees Polyphemus in a seashell equipped with paddle wheels, a painterly trope that became canonical after his death. gets credit for inventing a wooden tank, a self-propelled war- wagon, in an illustration frequently reproduced. Agostino Ramelli displays a dazzling array of machines, including some very odd crossbows, in illustrations that the American Patent Office used as references. But in each case, the objects in question are derived not from classical models or from the rediscovery of classical texts, but from the late medieval technical treatises that first appeared in princely courts. This paper explores the medieval roots of Renaissance technology using illustrations taken from artists and engineers of the sixteenth century.

Hans Peter Broedel (Hamilton College) “Now I will believe that there are unicorns” the existence of fabulous beasts in Renaissance Historiae Naturalia This paper examines the survival of classically authorized fabulous animals in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century natural histories, and compares the understanding of these animals with that of traditional medieval sources – most importantly those of the bestiary and natural philosophical traditions. I argue that precisely because there was no unambiguous evidence either for against the existence of such creatures, because their characteristics were entirely the products or oral and textual traditions, changing perceptions and interpretations of fabulous animals reveal the epistemological and philosophical bases of Renaissance natural history with particular clarity. Through a close reading of the works of Conrad Gesner (1551), John Maplet (1567) and Wolfgang Franzius (1612), the paper demonstrates the affects of changing epistemologies, humanist textual scholarship, and religious change upon accounts of fabulous animals, highlighting in particular the division between traditional modes of engagement with the natural world and those of early modern intellectual discourse.

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Gabrielle Sugar (York Univ.) Medieval Concepts in an Early Modern Universe: The Plurality of Worlds Debate and Johannes Kepler's Somnium In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus posited a new vision of the universe. Yet, it was the implications of his ideas, such as the concept of a plurality of worlds— worlds like Earth that also contain life— that became the focus for many scholars after him. The discussion of plural worlds, however, was not new: throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Aristotelian rejection of the idea inspired critical discussion of the issue. My paper argues that this discussion of plural worlds in the medieval period, combined with the knowledge of the new astronomy, directly lead to Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (pub. 1634), his fictional description of a world in the moon. Using both his imagination and empirical evidence, Kepler develops the medieval discussion of plural worlds, so that such a concept is no longer merely a theological possibility, but an actual reality. By examining the Somnium, I discern how the medieval debate plays a key role in the new way of understanding the early modern universe.

SESSION 2A Medieval Aesthetics and Strategies in Art - 2

Jennifer Sliwka (Johns Hopkins University) License and Authority: Domenico Beccafumi and the Pavement of Siena Cathedral With his designs for the marble pavement of Siena Cathedral c. 1519-47, Domenico Beccafumi joined the medieval artistic tradition of figurated pavements initiated almost two centuries earlier. Conceived in the last years of the Sienese Republic, the designs present an exemplary instance of the continuation of trecento Sienese ‘civic’ art which its characteristic a fusion of art, politics and religion, while also introducing Beccafumi’s interpretation of the new ‘maniera’ style. The subjects of the pavements, Old Testament narratives of Moses and Elijah, will be examined in relation to the political and religious climate of the period and in particular to the Sienese notion of the primacy of justice which derived from the medieval and communal nature of the city-state. Beccafumi’s narratives also identify the site of the pavements within the Cathedral as a locus of civic commemoration as they mark both the crypt of the early church and the original location of the high altar. In a period when fundamental conceptions of Sienese self-identity, such as the unity of Church and State and the primacy of justice, were being threatened, Beccafumi was consciously constructing a narrative program which referred back to an authentic source of law. Consequently, the designs may be read as an exhortation to re-establish both the civic and ecclesiastical values which had marked the ‘golden-age’ of fourteenth-century Siena.

Myra Nan Rosenfeld CRRS) In Praise of the Goths, Italian Renaissance Architects and Medieval Architecture Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1555), in his unpublished Book VI On Domestic Architecture, written in France and known in two manuscript editions (1541-1549), praised French vernacular late-medieval domestic architecture for its excellence in planing, and in Book III, On Antiquity, published in Venice in 1540, he commended the Goths for building parts of buildings which were durable and solid. Earlier in the fifteenth century, Alberti had praised the medieval Cathedral of Florence. Pope Pius II had a church built in Pienza Renaissance Medievalisms 6

(1459-1464) in the Gothic style. Cesare Cesariano used illustrations of the section and of the façade of Milan Cathedral to illustrate his 1521 Italian translation of Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture. Later in 1523 and 1546, Baldassare Peruzzi and Vignola designed façades for the Church of San Petronio in Bologna in the Gothic style. This paper will investigate what medieval architecture meant for these Italian Renaissance architects and the reasons for their positive attitude toward it.

Laura Blom (Johns Hopkins University) The Otto Prints: Renaissance Refashioning of Medieval Imagery I will discuss the role and function of the so-called ‘Otto Prints’: a collection of 42 related prints, round or oblong in shape, made primarily by Baccio Baldini, c. 1465-1480. How the prints participate in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s revival of medieval customs, especially relating to the amorous poetry written by Lorenzo and his circle, will be discussed, as well as the prints’ dependence on Duecento poetry for their portrayal of courtly love. I will also examine the affinities between the prints and medieval French and Italian ivories: in size, imagery, and possibly also function, the prints parallel fourteenth-century ivory mirror covers, and serve as emblems for the activities and subject of love. In use, the prints likely adorned boxes containing gifts exchanged between courtly lovers, similar to Trecento ivory boxes, also frequently decorated with chivalric scenes. The prints will be contextualized within Quattrocento Florence by examining how the prints specifically reference and adapt their medieval precedents, and how they participate in a conscious revival of medieval customs.

SESSION 2B English Literature-1

John Kunat (Sunoma State University – USA) Warfare and Nobility in the : Shakespeare's Historical Drama The European nobility was a class defined by its military orientation and capacity. This situation persisted in most countries from the beginning of the feudal era until at least the end of the sixteenth century. Although the English nobility, like its continental counterparts, placed a high value on military virtue, by the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign, a large section of this class was integrated into the nation’s emerging commercial sector. A conflict thus existed in England between the discourses employed to represent nobility and the actual experiences of that class. As this conflict became more acute, representations of medieval militarism became more common, as evidenced by such things the revival of the knightly tournament in the form of the Accession Day tilts and in the realm of literature the deliberate medievalism of Spencer’s Faerie Queene. The tension between the nobility’s self-image and its actual practices is also evident in Shakespeare’s history plays. Military prowess is consistently glorified in these plays, while the means used to achieve military ends are persistently critiqued.

Diane Cady (Mills College) A Very Lord of Merchants: Selling Poetry in the Middle Age The Middle Ages often serves as a convenient point of departure for heralding the advent of modernity. This practice is evident in recent work in new economic criticism, which explores the isomorphic links between money and language but remains silent in regards Renaissance Medievalisms 7

to the Middle Ages. I argue that the intersections among economics, poetics and erotics located in the Renaissance by scholars such as Patricia Parker have their origins in late medieval rhetorical treatises, which present poetry as a mercantile activity. In this economy, texts are feminized commodities that “must be brought to market” (to adopt Marx’s language) through amplificatio, evidentia, and other rhetorical techniques. These ideas are evident not only in Renaissance poetics, but also in more modern definitions of what gives a text aesthetic “value.”

Joseph Campana (Rice University USA) Chaucer, Spenser, and the (Dis)continuity of Romance Time Recent attempts to trouble the border between the late medieval and the early modern have come through invocations of the historicity of the Reformation or early Tudor literature and culture. But, an understanding of Renaissance medievalism must explore complex temporalities, patterns of resurgence and discontinuity, uniquely visible in the genre of romance. The notoriously inchoate relationship between Chaucer and Spenser provides an index of the resurgence of the medieval in early modernity as a resurgence of uncanny romance temporality. When Spenser invokes Chaucer as the “well of English vndefyled” we must understand this not as the nostalgia that instantiates tradition but as the activation of two Chaucerian temporalities: a) a camp deployment of outmoded or degenerate forms in the “Tale of Thopas” and b) the violent collision of magic and technology, of past and future tenses in the “Squire’s Tale.” Chaucerian temporalities are not only conditions of possibility for The Faerie Queene but models of romance as an archive of Renaissance medievalisms exceeding the conditions of historicity.

SESSION 2C The Middle Ages to the Service of Renaissance Politics and Empire

Vittoria Feola (Libre Université de Bruxelles, Belgium) Medieval metaphysical poetry and 17th-Century rhetoric of empire: the case of Elias Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum Elias Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (London, 1652) has been called an alchemical work and as such associated with Interregnum radical literature. But Ashmole (1617-92) was neither an alchemist nor an enthusiast. He was the collector of a fine library of medieval metaphysical poems, some of which he edited in the Theatrum. The aim of my paper is to show that Ashmole's Theatrum was a conscious exploitation of medieval metaphysical poetry in order to argue the need for England to build an empire. I will show that alchemy could be a 'deck-genre', a fashionable editorial format in which to hide political discussions. Ashmole's uses of Medieval metaphysical poetry sheds new light onto seventeenth-century English rhetoric of empire. It also calls for a reconsideration of the link between alchemy and Interregnum radicals.

Lidia Radi (U of Richmond-USA) Joan of Arc and the Crusade: Improving a Renaissance King through medieval examples In 1518 the French author Guillaume Michel publishes Le Penser de Royal Memoire, an allegorical work on a political subject, addressed to Francis I. In this text, Michel recycles many poetic techniques from his predecessors (“Grands Rhétoriquers”), notably allegory Renaissance Medievalisms 8

(with a drive to carry it down to the last detail that harks back to 13th- or 14th-century practices) and the genre of the fictional epistle. In fact, what is most striking is the manner in which Michel combines these two devices, most notably in the Penser’s third fictional epistle sent by Joan of Arc. The author transforms the heroine’s golden spurs into an incredibly detailed “enumerative” allegory: each part represents a virtue and recalls the king to his duty to defend the Catholic faith. This epistle constructs a generic moral portrait of the ideal king while making the desired crusade its first application. The Penser was written as a consequence of the Concordat de Bologne (an agreement signed by Leo X and Francis I) where the French king promised the pope his help in the war against the Infidels. The crusade is a typical medieval idea, but it is also a Renaissance one, although the latter time period never acts on it. In a recent article, the scholar Olga Zorzi Pugliese has shown that Castiglione, in one of the first drafts of his Cortegiano, defends the project of a crusade under Francis I. Castiglione’s position is very similar to Michel’s in his Penser. The analysis of such texts undoubtedly challenges our notion of the “Renaissance” and allows us to revise easy assumptions on the extent of Renaissance culture’s “break” with “Medieval” habits and models.

Ivana Elbl (Trent Univ.) Latter-Day Alexanders and Ceasars: The Early Avis Dynasty in the Panegyrics The writings of Renaissance Portuguese historians and diplomats offer a rich insight into the contemporary notions of glory, fame, and prescriptive honour. As elsewhere in Europe, these notions were deeply grounded in medieval values and garbed in the language of comparison with Greek and Roman Antiquity. The representation of the early members of the Avis Dynasty in Portuguese histories of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century clearly reflects the past dependence of societal values. The political and military accomplishments of Dom João I, his sons and grandsons are garbed in the language of conquest, chivalric exploits, and personal heroism and ranked at par or higher than those of the iconic figures of the Antiquity. Such rhetorical devices are pan- European and almost prescriptive in their application. However, the Portuguese panegyrics go beyond the clichés: They offer a fascinating reflection on the elite’s conceptualization of recent historical events, in particular the early overseas expansion. By presenting the early Avis princes as crusading and conquering knights worthy of the company of ancient and medieval heroes, the contemporary Portuguese literature not only reflects their self-image but also creates a yardstick by which later members of the dynasty would be measured. This helped to create a pattern of unfulfillable expectations that hastened the collapse of the House of Avis.

SESSION 3A From Medieval to Renaissance Spectacle

Anna Maria Testaverde (Univ. of Bergamo – Italy) Classic literature and medieval treatises in the allegorical masquerades in the age of Duke Cosimo I (1545-1569) In the history of the Florentine spectacle in Cosimos’age, the famous masquerade Genealogy of the Of The Gods (1565) was planned by the court iconographer Don Vincenzo Borghini on the model of the De Genealogiis Deorum of Giovanni Boccaccio. The masquerade (with 265 allegories) is the most significant result of the knowledge of Renaissance Medievalisms 9

Borghini, built on the classics of the pagan iconography (Omero, Macrobio, Plutarco), but even on the Egyptian culture of Horapollo, Diodoro Siculo. The allegorical masquerade is a ‘renaissance' reading of the medieval “palio”, enriched from the ‘spectacular' use of the classic symbology, filtered by humanists like Pietro Valeriano. Artists like Bachiacca, Bronzino are the creators that interpret this inheritance and that translate it in the stage planning of scenic costumes. In the years '80 of the XVI century, the allegorical masquerades had been left and the use of the allegory passed in the theatrical ‘intermezzo'.

Gianni Cicali (U of Toronto) The “inventio crucis” in Italian Theatre of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries The Legend of the True Cross originated in the Fourth Century and involves two major historical figures, Emperor Constantine the Great and Pope Sylvester I, as well as Saint Helen, Costantine’s mother. The discovery of the true cross became part of the liturgy and of the calendar, and inspired a rich variety of artistic works through the ages. In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Florence, this ancient legend played an important role in sacred plays by Castellan de’ Castellani, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, and Lorenzo “il Magnifico” de’ Medici. It also appears in an important, emblematic, and anonymous sixteenth-century manuscript, the Commedia della croce. In my presentation, I will indicate how, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this legend was used to advance the thoroughly medieval aspiration for a harmonic union between Empire and Papacy, West and East, and Power and Religion, according to a family centred mythopoiesis of the Medici, even when used for two different political agendas reflective of different world view.

Ruth S. Noyes (Johns Hopkins – Baltimore USA) Rubens and Baroque Medievalism The first painted version executed by Peter Paul Rubens for the High Altar of the Oratorian Congregation of Santa Maria e San Gregorio Magno in Vallicella (1606), offers a unique case study towards the understanding of Medievalism in Post-Tridentine Rome. Essential to my analysis of the project is the role played by Cesare Baronius, whose vast study of medieval art and philosophy informed Rubens’ conception for the work. The High Altar project presents a neo-Gregorian hermeneutic, culminating the Baronian agenda. In my paper I will argue that Rubens constructs a visual and ideological representation based on the medieval concept of the centralization of the icon in liturgical practice. By returning to an ostensibly medieval mode of decoration, Rubens forges a pedigree for the Chiesa Nuova. Rubens’ artistic conception is part of a concurrent campaign led by Baronius himself to promote the canonization of Filippo Neri, the congregation’s founder.

SESSION 3B English Literature-2

Gabriela Debita (Univ. Ottawa) The Last Ovidian Heroine. Mary Wroth and the Renaissance Heroides Renaissance Medievalisms 10

The English Renaissance sonnet, in its early stages, is wrought by the anxiety of negotiating earlier Dantesque and Petrarchan influences with an emerging English literary sensibility of love and longing. Despite its rarity as the only Petrarchan sonnet sequence written by a woman, Mary Wroth's "Pamphilia to Amphilantus" negotiates a very similar tension between tradition and innovation, yet in slightly different terms. Wroth's poetry is, simultaneously, more innovative in its reworking (rather than plain rejection or satire) of Petrarchan conventions, and more medieval in its reliance on Ovidian mechanisms, which calls to mind the love poems of Heloise, the courtly and courting rituals in Marie de France's romances, or the responses of Constance to Baudri's erotic letters. From the way in which she sets up her poetic persona as a literary Arachne, interiorized and labyrintine, to the prevalence of Ovidian tropes (the burning hearts, Cupid's darts), to the fact that her entire sequence could be regarded as a Renaissance "Heroides"- the love confession and the plaint of a bereft woman, in "Pamphilia and Amphilantus," Wroth interweaves the medieval tradition of Ovidian desire and longing with the intrinsically Renaissance form of the sonnet sequence.

Linda Vecchi (Memorial Univ.) A Vale of Tears: Early Modern Women's Writing and the Lamentory Style One of the most evident signs of the persistence of medieval thought and modes of expression into the in England is the prevalence of complaint literature during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Spenser_s Complaints volume, published in 1591, which overtly mixes medieval forms of plaint (‘Mother Hubbard’s Tale’) with more _modern_ verse lamentations (‘Muiopotmos’) is just one extended example of an early-modern writer working within (and beyond) the traditions of medieval literature. Another writer of this time, who proceeds Spenser in adapting the forms and moods of lamentory verse to her writings, is Isabella Whitney. Whitney’s two published works, A Copy of a Letter (1567) and Sweet Nosgay (1573) demonstrate a familiarity with the popular forms of complaint and, like Spenser’s later collection, reveal how this medieval form of verse could be ‘modernize’ to suit a Renaissance audience. More significantly for my interests, however, Whitney’s lamenting verses reveal a gendered manipulation of complaint’s preoccupation with expressions of loss and regret which would reverberate throughout the texts of her female contemporaries. Since antiquity women have been associated with mourning and grieving. In some cultures only women have been allowed to mourn publicly. Even before the end of the Renaissance, the all-to-familiar ghostly women who rend their clothes and tear their hair in The Mirror for Magistrates tales had become cliched images, repeated endlessly in the ‘feminine complaints’ of the Elizabethan poets. However, in the writings of the women of the sixteenth and early seventeenth-centuries, like Isabella Whitney, complaint became more than a simple narrative form, it became a distinctive feminine mode of artistic expression which allowed these women to transcend the experiences of sadness which frequently inspired their writings. This essay intends to work through Whitney’s writings to show both how she adapted the traditions of medieval complaint to her individual works and how Whitney’s true ‘female complaint’ offers one example of what I see to be a distinctive mode of early modern feminine discourse.

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Brandon Alakas (Queen's Univ.) “Education and the Good Institutions” of Utopia: Relocating the Origins of More's Pedagogy within a Monastic Intellectual Tradition My discussion of More’s medieval heritage centres on his adaptation of critical elements of monastic life in order to shape the Utopian’s programme of individual formation. In Utopia, I argue, More grants us a vision of a society that is modelled almost entirely on monastic principles and presents, in part, a vision of a commonwealth whose social arrangements have their roots in the principles of monasticism. While this union is significant for a number of reasons, I focus primarily on its impact within a pedagogical context. Although More wrote no formal treatise on education, I argue that Utopia comes closest to this genre by methodically setting out a programme for the formation of a particular kind of individual that embraces humanist and monastic ideals. While critics have tended to situate the resemblances of Utopian education within the ideas propounded by Erasmus and Vives, by stressing the strong influence medieval and particularly monastic thought exerted over Utopian pedagogy, we are able to complicate assumptions about More’s humanism that locate its origins solely in antiquity.

SESSION 3C Using the Middle Ages in Geography and Trade

Richard Raiswell (Univ. of Prince Edward Island.) On the Wrong: Johannes Boemus and Omnium Gentium Mores In his 1537 Omnium Gentium Mores, Johannes Boemus purported to offer a detailed description of all the peoples in the world, together with an account of their geographical situation. Though this work was frequently reprinted through the sixteenth century and was cited favourably by scholars such as Jean Bodin, it seems wholly insulated from the general geographical developments of the previous century. It contains not a single reference to the Americas; indeed, the whole text rests heavily upon medieval conceptions of the world and owes much to the mappa mundi tradition. Largely because he appears something of an anachronism in the century of Mercator and Ortelius, Boemus has been given short shrift by modern historians. Yet the very popularity of this text suggests that it must be taken seriously. As I will argue, Boemus’s fundamentally medieval conception of the world gave his readers a far more useful, meaningful and relevant explanation of the world and its inhabitants. In so doing, I will argue that an aspect of the medieval intellectual culture penetrated to the very heart of Renaissance knowledge about the world.

Vincent Masse (U of Toronto) Early Modern geographical writings and the printing of Prester John’s Letter(s) in France, 1470-1535 Prester John, a major figure in European medieval exoticism -- starting in the 12th c., the diffusion of his alleged letter(s) insured fame to his fabled African and/or Asian kingdom -- made a strong comeback during the late 15th and early 16th c. Ongoing European expansion to the Americas, Africa, and throughout the Indian Ocean stimulated a demand for geographical books, a demand which paradoxically was filled in part by medieval texts which were rarely updated and yet readily available once the advent of the helped their diffusion. I examine several French variants of the Letter -- ranging from its c.1475 edition to its inclusion in the 1534 Chroniques & Hystoires -- and put Renaissance Medievalisms 12

them in the context of a growing niche market for printed books in vernacular French relating to faraway lands yet to be discovered.

Erik Thomson (Univ. of Chicago-USA) From Market Customs to Fundamental Law: Free Trade and Medieval Privileges in early 17th Century Sweden I will examine how Swedish statesmen and jurists justified, defended, and even extended the realm’s medieval trading privileges against Dutch criticism that they violated free trade, as recently elaborated by Hugo Grotius. This debate about the relevance of medieval custom in the Northern late Renaissance shaped the organization of trade, the articulation of sovereignty, and the development of natural law. Although Swedish statesmen believed that these customs were in many respects archaic in a moment of innovation in commercial institutions, they none the less viewed the statutes as vital to the health and survival of the realm. They came to represent the customs not only as providential benedictions, but also as parts of the kingdom’s fundamental laws, which could not be abrogated without a loss of majesty. Freedom of trade, for these Swedish statesmen, could not place trade outside sovereignty.

SESSION 4A Humanism and Scholasticism

John Christopoulos (IHPST, U of Toronto) Marsilio Ficino’s Medical Inheritance Historians of Renaissance thought have long reflected on Ficino’s contributions to Humanism, the restoration and development of Platonism and the dissemination of Hermeticism. Through these lenses, Ficino stands in stark contrast with his medieval predecessors. This characterization, however, fails to describe Ficino’s medical thought. An examination of his Consiglio contro la pestilenza (1481) and De vita libri tres (1489), as well as his letters and some passages in the Theologia platonica (1470), reveals that Ficino’s medical theory is fixed firmly within scholastic natural philosophy. In this paper I will examine the scholastic sources of Ficino’s astral-medical thought. Ficino founds his astrology on the authority of Albertus Magnus and keeps it within the theological limits delineated by Thomas in his Summa contra gentiles. From these natural-philosophical and theological foundations, Ficino erects an edifice of astrological medicine that draws heavily on the work of Taddeo Alderotti (1223-1295), Pietro d’Abano (1250-1315), and the Montpellier medici Arnau Villanova (1238-1310) and Bernard de Gordon (1258- 1318).

Michael Edwards (Cambridge - UK), Medieval Philosophy in the late Renaissance: time and duration in Scotist natural philosophy and metaphysics Notions of an abrupt gulf between medieval and ‘modern’ philosophy now seem unsustainable. This is particularly true when considering the scholastic Aristotelian tradition of the late renaissance, which was a complex conversation not only with Aristotle, but also with the great medieval doctors. Some modern scholars have alleged that this was a corrupted and decaying ‘medievalism’, in which later authors distorted the arguments of high scholasticism. In reality, later scholastics took a more nuanced and sophisticated approach to their medieval heritage. The reception of the philosophy and theology of the Subtle Doctor, John Duns Scotus, offers an important on this Renaissance Medievalisms 13

issue. Scotism underwent a renaissance of its own in this period, when chairs in Scotist philosophy were established and commentaries ad mentem Scoti flourished. Using the case of ideas about time and duration, this paper reconstructs how Scotus’ positions were creatively reconstructed and disseminated across the learned culture of late Aristotelianism, but also how more recent arguments from outside this tradition ‘became’ Scotist.

Martin Wagendorfer (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, Austria) The Orthography of Eneas Silvius Piccolomini The early humanists aimed at a revival of the classical antiquity, also in the field of orthography. Whereas the theoretical discussions of Niccoli, Bruni etc. have already been analyzed for several times (e. g. by E. Gombrich), the orthographical practice of the humanists hitherto has not been studied very systematically (Ullman, Besomi). The autographic material of Eneas Silvius Piccolomini, covering nearly four decades (1426- 1464), provides ideal conditions for such an analysis. On this basis it will be tried to demonstrate the coexistence of conservative-medieval and progressive-humanistic elements in the orthography of the later pope und to confront them with the theoretical statements in his letters. Furthermore it will be followed up the development, date and path of the humanistic influence. On this way also parallels to the development of Piccolomini’s script will be pointed out, which has been analyzed in a forthcoming volume (Studi e Testi) of the author.

SESSION 4B Piety and Devotion

John Edward Allard (Providence College – USA), Savonarola’s Rhetoric of Semplicità To judge by its relatively frequent appearance in his preaching, the term semplicità represented a thematic interest of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola. In general, semplicità carried both rhetorical and moral resonances. As a ‘noble simplicity,’ it referred to a natural manner of speech and to an unpretentious way of life. It was consonant with the qualities of honesty and sincerity. In his advocacy of semplicità, Savonarola challenged the humanist rhetoric of his contemporaries. Yet, in spite of this, Savonarola’s rhetoric displayed characteristics that were compatible with those of Florentine humanism in the late Quattrocento. This paper will explore the intersection between the values championed by semplicità and the humanism against which it reacted. Of interest is the apparent contest between one tradition claiming a continuous past (in the case of Christianity) and another that sought to reclaim what had been interrupted (the heritage of the ancient classical world).

Anna Swartwood (Princeton – USA) On the continuity of the Devotio Moderna The Case of Antonello da Messina Though generally considered “Northern”, the principles of the religious movement known as the Devotio Moderna (founded c. 1384)—Christocentrism with an especial emphasis on the Passion, moral encouragement and admonishment of one’s peers, and, in general, the promise of a deeply felt religious experience without the requirement of official vows nor the abandonment of one’s regular parish church—also appear in Renaissance Medievalisms 14

fifteenth-century Italy. One of the central texts of the movement, the De Imitatione Christi attributed to Thomas à Kempis, circulated in manuscript form in the first part of the century and was subsequently published in several editions in Venice, Rome and Milan beginning in 1483. Additionally, the devotional works of Antonello da Messina (c. 1420-1479), a Sicilian painter exposed to Netherlandish art and artists present at Naples in the 1450s, reflect several tenets of the Devotio Moderna, especially the combination or elision of iconographical elements of Christ’s Passion. A close examination of these works will begin to show how the movement was interpreted artistically, both in the Netherlands and Italy; at stake is the controversial question of whether the Devotio Moderna should rightfully be called a medieval holdover, a Renaissance development that anticipates the Reformation, or none of the above.

Eva Helfenstein (Harvard-USA) The cult of saints and relics in Renaissance Italy: The Chapel of Santa Fina in S. Gimignano One of the main fields of continuity of medieval features in the Renaissance can be found in aspects linked to religion and cult. Even if the cohabitation of Christian and pagan elements in Renaissance culture are no longer considered as a “clash of cultures”, as perceived by Aby Warburg, few studies concentrate on the strong presence of traditional presentations of cult objects, particularly relics. The interest in the fusion of ritual and art in the late medieval and early Renaissance cult image as expression of Belting’s “era of art” leads the attention to the new approaches and perceptions, to the detriment of continuing ways of embodiment of the saint. The 15th c. chapel of Santa Fina in S. Gimignano will be analyzed as example for the continuity of medieval conceptions of sainthood, realized in a Renaissance vocabulary, and set in a broader context of the importance of relics in the Italian Renaissance.

SESSION 4C English and the Orient

Suha Kudsieh (Trent Univ.) Transformed Saracens and the Inception of Colonial Orientalism In medieval romances, Saracens are usually depicted as invading Western Europe (Chançon de Roland), or besieging key European cities (Gerusalemme Liberata). Saracens are invoked when European kings and vassals are summoned to repel Saracen’s attacks (Emaré). The depiction of Saracens in these medieval romances project Europe’s concerns with the expansion of the Ottomans, and with Europe’s curtailed economic and military role in the Mediterranean. This paper examines the shift that takes place in the depiction of Saracens in English poems in the Renaissance. Unlike medieval romances, Renaissance Saracens do not attack cities en mass nor do they pose a physical threat; their threat becomes metaphorical. For example, the knight in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene combats giants and sorcerers in a manner reminiscent of medieval chivalric duals, but the threat of the three Saracens in the poem is contained. The word “Saracens” in the poem acts as a signifier that encompasses not only wayward Orientals (Ottomans or Muslims) but also Roman Catholics. In another poem, Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost is endowed with Oriental characteristics that invoke pagan Greece and Catholic Renaissance Medievalisms 15

Italy, but Saracens are physically absent in the poem. The depiction of Saracens in these English poems shifts to reflect a different political reality; it reflects the rise of England’s political and naval power. This shift marks the inception of England’s colonial praxes and charts later developments in colonial Orientalism as an imaginary knowledge, an aspect that becomes more evident in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

Linda Bradley Salamon (George Washington Univ., USA) 'Muhammad Speaks' to the English: Turks in Andrew Boorde's Introduction to Knowledge (1548) Recent scholarship has illuminated the representation of Ottomans (‘the Turk’) in Elizabethan culture. During the 16th century, however, western imaginings of this Other were in a fluid state, from Saracen ‘knight’ in binary with Crusader, to Turkish merchant and pirate as commercial, political, and military adversary. Boorde’s The First Boke of the Introduction of Knowledg is a transitional text; a guidebook for merchants who want to do business across Europe and North Africa, it is rather clearly modeled on medieval ‘itineraries’ for pilgrims to the Holy Land. A former Carthusian monk, Boorde offers an idiosyncratic chapter on the Turks, incongruent with the image soon to emerge in Hakluyt, Greene, Knolles, et al. It is a bricolage of accurate report of the conquests and practices of Suleyman I with blasphemous calumny of Muhammad as false prophet – the latter an 11th-century survival that parodies the near-sacred Muslim sirah. This is Mandevillian wine in the new bottle of Early Modern travel narrative.

E. Natalie Rothman (U of Toronto, Scarborough) Self-fashioning in the Venetian- Ottoman contact zone: Giovanni Battista Salvago and his Africa overo Barbaria (1625) In 1625 Giovanni Battista Salvago presented to the Venetian Senate a report of his recent journey to the Barbary Regencies. Salvago, an Istanbul-born Venetian dragoman (diplomatic interpreter), was sent on an official mission to ransom Venetian slaves captured by the Barbary corsairs off the shores of Dalmatia the previous year. Based on a close reading of the report and on archival research in Venice, the paper considers the medieval myths of Turkish origins and humanist tropes of Ottoman otherness Salvago invoked in his report. In particular, what kinds of historicity did Salvago ascribe to the societies of Barbary? How did he position these societies in relation to Venice's own medieval grandeur and the wider networks of circum-Mediterranean exchange it had once been part of? By addressing his treatment of North Africa's medieval past the paper suggests how Salvago sought to fashion himself as an educated Venetian, and to ally himself with a patrician perspective on the Ottoman Mediterranean.

SESSION 5A Writing Histories (Humanism and Politics)

Lorenzo Bartoli (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) The life of Dante, from Boccaccio to Bruni The writing of the Vite di Dante e del Petrarca, by the Florentine chanciller Leonardo Bruni (1370/4-1444), in 1436, constitute a decisive turning point in the tradition of Dante biographies. In particular, its explicit anti-boccaccism, and its bold politicization of the figure of Dante (and of Petrarch), offer a privileged point of view from which to examine the construction of a specific humanistic discourse on Dante, which expands from the Renaissance Medievalisms 16

literary, to the linguistic, to the overall cultural reconsideration of the florentine national identity, in the first years of the Medici regime in Florence. The paper will examine the specific political significance of Bruni’s text, vis a vis Boccaccio’s biography of Dante, to emphasize the link between the development of Bruni’s humanistic philology (and anti-medievalism), and its specific political relevance in the context of the Florentine chancillery in the first half of the fifteenth Century.

Daniel Breen (Ithaca College-USA) Making the Chronicle Historian: Geoffrey of Monmouth and Tudor Historiography The story of the British History is a familiar one to many students and scholars of early modern historiography. Throughout the sixteenth century, Tudor historians engaged in a controversy over the veracity of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of the founding of Britain in his Historia Regum Britanniae. At stake is an entire system of understanding national identity, as system that had become essential to English politics and ecclesiology in the wake of Henry VIII’s historically-based justifications for his break from Rome in the 1530s. Observed less frequently, however, are the ways in which this debate contributed to the construction of new understandings about the discipline of history writing. Geoffrey served as a historiographical lightning rod for crucial methodological and conceptual questions: what is historical accuracy or “truth”? How is this truth best compiled or represented? And what, finally, is the historian’s social role in producing such compilations or representations? This essay argues that the controversy over Geoffrey of Monmouth framed disciplinary discussions of historiography in the sixteenth century, and contributed, ultimately, to the philosophical separation of historiography from poetry.

Margaret Reeves (York Univ.) History as a Work in Progress: Elizabeth Cary’s Two Manuscript Histories of Edward II Three hundred years after the deposition (in 1326) and death (in 1327) of King Edward II of England, Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland, completed a 36,000-word manuscript that tells the story of the reign of this unfortunate medieval monarch. Cary=s manuscript is dated January 7, 1626 (1627 New Style), and consists of a 36,000-word narrative that begins with the old King Edward I=s attempts to break his son=s strong emotional bond with Piers Gaveston, and ends with Edward II=s murder twenty years later, shortly after being deposed by his wife, Queen Isabel and her associate, Roger Mortimer. In Cary=s manuscript, medieval English history serves as a vehicle for political analysis that reflects on the contemporary situation, for the narrative explores the nature and political consequences of Edward=s intimate relations with his two favourites, Gaveston and Spencer, in a manner that alludes unmistakeably to the early Stuart kings and their governing practices. That manuscript has never been printed, and is now part of the Finch Hatton collection in the Public Record Office in Northamptonshire, England. This manuscript, with the decorative ornamentation on its title page, the gold- embossed lines on its vellum binding, the gilt edging of its pages, and its prefatory address to the reader, presents itself as a completed project as much in the formality of its presentation as in the comprehensiveness of its historical coverage of Edward=s entire reign. However, less than a year later, Cary undertook the task of rewriting that historical narrative, revising and expanding it to produce a much longer, 54,000-word narrative Renaissance Medievalisms 17

history of Edward=s reign bearing the date of February 2, 1627 (1628 New Style). The revisions are considerable, in that some passages from the earlier manuscript are deleted from the later version, others are substantially reworded, and still others have been expanded and added. This paper is based on an historically-grounded comparison of the content of these two manuscripts. I will examine the extent to which Cary=s revisions are shaped by current developments that were taking place during the intervening months between her completion of the first manuscript at the beginning of the year 1627, and her decision to produce a longer, revised version at the end of that year. In particular, I wish to explain how the changes Cary made to her narrative account of Edward II=s history resonate with changes underway in the early Stuart court. I am interested in the representations of kingship and the royal favourite, and the extent to which such representations reflect on the evolving relationship between the King and the Duke of Buckingham during this troubled year of Charles I=s reign.

SESSION 5B Dreams of a Catholic Past

Candace Lines (Howard Univ., Washington DC) Medieval Fragments in Donne’s Love Lyrics John Donne's many poetic allusions to Catholic beliefs and rituals have been widely discussed in terms of Donne's personal and family history. This paper argues that they should also be read in the context of the historical break produced by the English reformation, in which Catholicism lingered as medieval fragments--monastic ruins, old manuscripts, saints' names, relics--detached from living practice. Donne's Catholic imagery thus calls up a broken, irrecoverable past, the fullness of whose meaning can never be restored. Since these images occur in love lyrics, romantic love and longing become implicated in the same belatedness, impossibility, and absence of meaning.

Abram Steen (Atlantic Baptist University (Moncton, NB) Spenser’s ‘Seven Corporal Works of Mercy’ and Protestant Rituals for the Body in ‘The Faerie Queene,’ Book 1\ This paper examines the scene in Book 1, Canto X of The Faerie Queene (1596) in which Redcrosse Knight encounters the “seven Bead-men” and is instructed in the “7 Corporal Works of Mercy,” a tradition established and popularized by the Catholic Church. Critics have usually viewed the inclusion of this and other “medieval” elements in The Faerie Queene as a superficial form of borrowing that does little to affect or disrupt the essentially Protestant meaning of Spenser’s epic. The poem’s elaboration of a distinctly pre-Reformation ideal of charity differs significantly, however, from the more bureaucratic model that was emerging in post-Reformation England, and this scene recovers and represents specific practices of compassion that were threatened by the Protestant effort to redefine charity as a civic rather than a spiritual responsibility. Of particular significance is the stress that Spenser places on the obligation of Christians to care for the dead by performing an elaborate ritual of burial, a “work” of mercy that reformers intentionally eliminated from the original list of sacred duties because it was seen as helping to sustain Catholic “superstitions” about death and Purgatory. My paper explores the meaning of Spenser’s depiction of the dead by contrasting it with the attack Renaissance Medievalisms 18

by Puritans on funerals and other Protestant death rituals, and relating it, instead, to the effort by moderate Protestants to find ways to adapt and draw on older, late medieval modes of mourning and commemoration.

Gavin Hammel (U of Toronto) ‘Too much forwardnesse to innouate’: A Reformation Debate on Christ’s Descent into Hell and Its Medieval Precedents Was Christ’s descent into hell an act of triumph or one of humility? Between 1523 and 1526 Anton Zimmermann raised precisely this question in a series of publications, provoking a heated, if little studied doctrinal dispute. Historians have generally cast this debate as a conflict between a medieval narrative – the triumphalist, martial narrative of the Evangelium Nicodemii – and an innovating, modern and, above all, Reformed sensibility. In doing so they have largely accepted Thomas Bilson’s (bishop of Winchester, 1597-1616) characterization of his opponents as exemplifying “some mens too much forwardnesse to innouate.” In this paper I will challenge this assumption by tracing the medieval precedent for interpreting Christ’s descent into hell as part of Christ’s salvific sacrifice. Utilizing texts from the rich medieval tradition of passion devotion I will recast this Reformation debate as an outgrowth of tendencies already prevalent in some streams of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century religious thought.

SESSION 5C Theatre Practice and Performance Culture

Elke Huwiler (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) Folk Theatre as Spectacle: Performance Culture in Medieval and Early Modern German Theatre In my paper, I would like to look at strategies of performing cultures in early modern times - or the Renaissance - in German speaking countries, and examine the ways in which traces of medieval performing cultures can be found here. I will be looking at specific theatre practices of early modern folk plays – carnival plays and plays which were embedded in the circle of the celebration of the religious year. My argument is that there are significant parallels to be found in the performing character of these plays and the performing character of medieval plays, for example Easter plays. It is these parallels that I will have a closer look at, examining notions of political strategies, involving of the spectators, intimacy of the performing act, etc. Thereby, questions of continuity and legacy will be addressed, as well as more general questions of the possibility of analyzing performance cultures in a historical perspective.

Kurt A. Schreyer (Univ. of Pennsylvania - USA)‘Palpable gross play’: Mechanical Representation in the Mystery Plays & Shakespeare A century after E. K. Chambers’ Medieval Stage, Shakespeare scholars still struggle with how to approach the relationship between the commercial stage and the mystery plays without placing Shakespeare on one side or the other of a periodizing line that has always been artificial. An ineluctable problem, perhaps, yet a 1572 proclamation hailing an upcoming performance of cycle plays might help us around our critical dilemma. Known as the Chester Banns, this dramatic prologue introduces a historical context to the relationship between pre- and post-Reformation drama that allows us to speak more confidently about the dramatic carryover from the amateur shows of the Corpus Christi Renaissance Medievalisms 19

wagons to Shakespeare’s professional stage. Having presented the historicism of the Chester Banns, therefore, this paper will draw upon the work of REED to explore the manner in which his Midsummer Night’s Dream becomes a fantastical and material excursion into the artisan-player shows of England’s medieval past.

Gregory J. Thompson (Florida State Univ.-USA) ‘Exit pursued by a Bear’: Early modern scholarship losing touch with medieval roots of stage practices Toward the midway point of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, the tragic movement of the play, (the tyranny of King Leontes, the supposed deaths of his wife Hermione and his son Mamillius and the abandonment of his newborn daughter Perdita) comes to a climax in the death of his loyal servant Antigonous who is devoured by a bear just off stage. Following this dark comic moment the play takes a decided turn toward pastoral comedy. The stage direction “exit pursed by a bear” has been the subject of much scholarship and debate with discussion ranging from the literary metaphor of the bear to how tragic or comic the moment should be understood to the practical question of whether or not an actual bear may have been used in the Elizabethan staging of the play. This paper will examine the many ways that this moment and stage direction speaks to a bridge between medieval and early modern stage practices. Of particular note will be the fact that while many scholars have dismissed the theory that a real bear was used, this paper will re- imagine and examine the possibility of a real bear in some early productions. By dismissing the possibility of using a real bear some early modern scholars are dismissing the traditions of the medieval staging practices still present in the era called the “Renaissance.”

SESSION 6A Using Medieval Sources

Donald Beecher (Carleton University) The Fables of Bidpai in Sixteenth-Century Venice In a little essay entitled “Hosesta ambitio” Jonson states that “if divers men seek fame or honour by divers ways, so both be honest, neither is to be blamed; but they that seek immortality are not only worthy of leave, but of praise.” Jonson wrote numerous eulogies to leading figures of his age through which he sought to teach the mores and manners of greatness to his readers. His inspiration was clearly Roman, interpreting for his own age those qualities of the admirable in public and private affairs that make for the civil life as well as for immortality. The surrounding economy is of honoured memory both in life and in death, that which Fustel de Coulonge claimed to be the motor of ancient Roman religion—the worship of ancestors. What holds our interest in Jonson’s poems in this vein are the religious overtones. The place to be achieved in the collective memory depended not only upon virtue and circumspection, but their exemplarity for future ages. It then falls to the poet to remember and commemorate those lives in order to establish both their permanence and paradigmatic status. In such writing there is a perfect meeting of the humanist, the classicist, and the moralist. Jonson, in these commendatory works, seldom offered praise without alluding to the continuum between fame, virtue, immortality, and iconicity for future ages, attitudes that he had absorbed from the poems of the ancients, together with their religious values. There was hence the equivalent of a Renaissance Medievalisms 20

god implicit in the model life, the value of which could be secured only through acts of efficient memory.

Jaime Nelson Novoa (Fundaçao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia / Catedra Alberto Benveniste de Estudos Sefarditas / University of Lisbon) Leone Ebreo's Appropriation of Boccaccio's De Genealogia deorum in the Dialoghi d'amore Hailed universally as one of the salient works in the trattati d’amore Renaissance genre which proliferated in the XVIth century, the Dialoghi d’amore of the Portuguese Jew Leone Ebreo are as much a product of the Medieval forma mentis as the are of the Renaissance. In the second of his dialogues the author proposes a lengthy and exhaustive presentation of the gods of antiquity as part of the development of his theory of cosmic love which relies heavily on Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum and includes his firm defense of metaphorical, poetic discourse. Ebreo displays, in addition to an obvious command of Medieval Jewish thought, an acquaintance with Patristic and Scholastic obtained, very likely through his contact with XVth century vernacular humanism in Spain. His use of Boccaccio and the allegorical Patristic tradition as one of the pivotal points in his celebrated treatise displays the ambiguous frontier between “Medieval” and “Renaissance” thought.

Kathleen Cawsey (Wilfrid Laurier University) The Medieval Plowman Figure in Tudor Protestant Pamphlets Several Protestant prints of the Tudor period draw on the medieval figure of the plowman to link their Protestant present with earlier, pre-Reformation English movements such as the Lollards. By using the plowman figure, who ultimately goes back to the 14th century work "Piers Plowman" by William Langland, the Protestant Reformers could suggest that they, in fact, were representatives of an older, truer form of Christianity, and that it was the Catholics who had introduced 'newfangledness' and corruption into the faith. This paper will consider one work in particular, the pamphlet "I playne Piers." It will attempt to decipher the different works, some medieval, some post-medieval, some poetry, some prose, that were woven together to produce the pamphlet text; and it will assess what this layering tells us about the Renaissance use of medieval sources, texts, and images.

SESSION 6C The Comic

Sara Beam (Univ. of Victoria) What Made People Laugh? Satire and Comic Sensibilities during the Farce and sotties were comic genres frequently performed at the king’s court and in the city streets in late medieval and Renaissance France. Their persistent popularity demonstrates a clear continuity in comic sensibilities: what made people laugh changed very little between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Yet the performance of farce could also be dangerous to public order. Archival evidence in particular demonstrates that groups of amateur farce players often mocked authority figures, even Renaissance Medievalisms 21

the king. Why did city officials tolerate and even patronize farce players, particularly in the context of the centralization of political authority attempted by French monarchs during the Renaissance? This paper situates the practice of comic theater in the context of late medieval religious practice and claims that authorities were hesitant to suppress a comic tradition that only asked of the king, his officials and the clergy that they behave as good Christians should.

Brian Gourley (Queen’s University-Belfast) Carnivalising Apocalypse in John Bale’s Three Laws and King Johan The prominent Reformation playwright John Bale incorporated Joachimite identification of the medieval Church with the Whore of Babylon into his prototype envisioning of visible history according to the Revelation model of apocalypse. Although a fuller realisation of Bale’s historical scheme was not to emerge with the publication in the late 1540s of two works of historiography The Image of Both Churches and The Actes of Englysh Votaryes, it had already been to emerge in a primitive, concealed form in the two most accomplished of his five surviving plays the moralities Three Laws and King Johan. Using Bakhtin’s theory of carnival amongst other critical approaches, this paper will consider how these plays imagine the medieval past within a macrocosmic scheme of apocalypse, presenting the Reformation as the inauguration of the sixth age of history that will issue in the End Time. I will explore how this heightens both plays’ historical consciousness, helping them to define the medieval past in relation to the current historical moment of the English Reformation and an imagined future.

Stephen Powell (University of Guelph) Making Chaucer Classical and the Problem of Comedy for Renaissance Editors

It is well established that early modern readers found in Chaucer the sententious sobriety of the Classics. In this paper, I consider another aspect of Chaucer’s work that we now think is just as important, his deep and, especially in The Canterbury Tales, often risqué humour. In their efforts to “classicize” Chaucer, I ask, what did early editors do about Chaucer’s apparently unsententious comedy? My paper focuses on the 1532 edition by William Thynne and the 1602 edition by Thomas Speght, reading them as important markers in the evolution of Renaissance views of Chaucer and what we now term the Middle Ages.