Quidditas 23 (2002)

QUIDDITAS Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association v olume 23 2002 ii QUIDDITAS 23 (2002) EDITORS Editor: Sharon A. Beehler, Montana State University Associate Editor: Eugene R. Cunnar, New Mexico State University Associate Editor: Margaret Harp, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Associate Editor: Harry Rosenberg, Colorado State University Book Review Editor: Lowell Gallagher, UCLA Associate Editor/Production: Kathryn Brammall, Truman State University MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL AND EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Susan Aronstein, University of Wyoming Sylvia Bowerbank, McMasters University (through 2003) Allen D. Breck, University of Denver (ex-officio) Jean R. Brink, Arizona State University (ex-officio) Stan Benfell, Brigham Young University (through 2004) Eugene R. Cunnar, New Mexico State University (ex-officio) Paul A. Dietrich, University of Montana (ex-officio) Thomas R. Eckenrode, Fort Lewis College (ex-officio) James Fitzmaurice, Northern Arizona University (ex-officio) Lowell Gallagher, UCLA (through 2000) Phebe Jensen, Utah State University (through 2001) Jean MacIntyre, University of Alberta (through 1999) Isabel Moreira, University of Utah (through 2001) Carol Neel, Colorado College (ex-officio) Glenn Olson, University of Utah (ex-officio) Joseph Perry, Brigham Young University (through 2004) Harry Rosenberg, Colorado State University (ex-officio) Charles Smith, State University of Colorado (ex-officio) Sara Jayne Steen, Montana State University (ex-officio) Jesse Swan, University of Northern Iowa (through 2004) Paul Thomas, Brigham Young University (through 2003) Michael Walton, University of Utah (through 1999) Charles Whitney, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (through 2003) Elspeth Whitney, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (through 2003) Jane Woodruff, William Jewell College (through 2004) © Copyright 2002 by The Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association. ISSN: 195–8453 QUIDDITAS 23 (2002) iii NOTICE TO CONTRIBUTORS Founded in 1980 as JRMMRA (The Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medi- eval and Renaissance Association), the journal is published once a year and continues to be so under its current name, Quidditas. Scholars of the Middle Ages or Renaissance are invited to submit essays (twenty to thirty double-spaced manuscript pages) that would appeal to readers of medieval and early modern disciplines. Submissions will be refereed. Manuscripts written in English and dealing with medieval or renaissance studies, regardless of field or nationality, should followThe Chicago Manual of Style and be submitted without the author’s name appearing therein. A cover letter containing the author’s name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, and title of paper should accompany the submis- sion. Please send four copies of the manuscript to: Professor Sharon A. Beehler Editor, Quidditas Department of English Montana State University Bozeman Bozeman, MT 59717-2300 We regret that we are unable to accept e-mail submissions. Authors of accepted work will be asked to supply a copy of the manuscript on a computer disk compatible with Macintosh programs. SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION Subscription to the journal for individuals is by membership in the Associ- ation at the following costs: $25 for graduate students, independent scholars, adjunct faculty, and retired faculty; $35 for Assitant Professors; $40 for Associate Professors; $45 for Full Professors; and an additional $5 at the appropriate level for joint memberships. A single back issue costs $20. For further information, including institution subscription rates, please contact: Professor Susan Aronstein Treasurer, RMMRA Department of English University of Wyoming P.O. Box 3353 Laramie, WY 82070-0001 Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in PMLA, Historical Abstracts, and America: History and Life. iv QUIDDITAS 23 (2002) FROM THE EDITOR Quidditas. This is a Latin legal term that originally meant “the essen- tial nature of a thing” and appeared in fourteenth-century French as “quiddité.” In the Renaissance, the English adaptation, “quiddity,” came to mean “logical subtleties” or “a captious nicety in argument” (OED) and is so used in Hamlet (“Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks?” 5.1.95–97). Thus, the original Latin meaning, together with the later implied notions of intense scrutiny, systematic reasoning, and witty wordplay, is well suited to the contents of the journal. Cover design by Winston Vanderhoof, Truman State University designer. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ARTICLES The Demonization of Sidney’s Cecropia: Erasing a Legal Identity Stephanie Chamberlain . 3 “Women of the Wild Geese”: Irish Women, Exile, and Identity in Spain, 1596–1670 Andrea Knox . 19 Glimpsing Medusa: Astoned in the Troilus Timothy D. O’Brien . 31 Interpreting Early Modern Woman Abuse: The Case of Anne Dormer Mary O’Connor . 49 The Fall of Troy and the Rise of Elizabethan Drama: Empowering the Audience Charles Whitney . 67 ADELNO C. WEST AWARD WINNER Tradition and Originality in El Greco’s Work: His Syn- thesis of Byzantine and Renaissance Conceptions of Art Richard G. Mann. 83 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF ALLEN D. BRECK AWARD WINNER. 109 2 Contents BOOK REVIEWS Sacred Narratives by Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici, ed. and trans. Jane Tylus Deanna Shemek. 111 Chaucer and the Discourse of German Philology: A History of Reception and an Annotated Bibliography of Studies, 1793–1948 by Richard Utz Anita Obermeier . 113 Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: a Book of Essays Ed. Melitta Weiss Adamson Debby Banham . 117 Vagrancy, Homelessness, and English Renaissance Literature by Linda Woodbridge Ken Jackson. 120 Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative by J. A. Burrow E. Ann Matter . 120 ARTICLES The Demonization of Sidney’s Cecropia: Erasing a Legal Identity Stephanie Chamberlain Southeast Missouri State University N OCTOBER OF 1533, fourteen-year-old Catherine de’ Medici mar- ried Henri, duc d’Orléans in a union meant to secure a favorable polit- Iical alliance between Francis I, the King of France and Pope Clement VII, her uncle and legal guardian. When, however, the Pope unexpectedly died less than a year later, Catherine’s symbolic worth virtually died as well: leaving a less than enamored France to bear the burden of one whose status, as R. J. Knecht has noted, “was immediately reduced to that of a foreigner of relatively modest origins.”1 When Henri unexpectedly died following a ceremonial jousting match in 1559, Catherine became posi- tively reviled. By the time she died in 1589, she had been thoroughly vilified by virtually all of sixteenth-century Europe. Not only was she blamed for masterminding the massacre of thousands of Huguenots at Paris in 1572, but she was held at least partially accountable for the political unrest regarding the marriage question which unsettled England during much of Elizabeth’s reign. To what degree Catherine was responsible for the atrocities long attributed to her continues as a subject of debate among sixteenth-century French historians. What interests me, however, is the steady deterioration of this early modern widow’s reputation once she emerged from her relatively contained status under coverture into a much more conspicuous role as regent to the minor Charles IX.2 For whatever her degree of com- plicity during the tumultuous years following Henri’s sudden death, demonization became a means by which to combat the threat her unveiled legal status unleashed upon a vulnerable early modern world. By the time Sir Philip Sidney began revisions on his politicized pastoral romance, The New Arcadia, Catherine de’ Medici had hosted the infa- mous massacre of the French Huguenots and had embarked upon the second of two unpopular series of marriage negotiations with Elizabeth I 1R. J. Knecht, Catherine de’ Medici (London and New York: Longman, 1998), 28. 2See Knecht, Catherine de’ Medici. Francis II, who succeeded his father in 1559 at the age of fifteen, was deemed old enough to rule under Salic law. A year later, on his death, Catherine became the official regent to the ten-year-old Charles IX. QUIDDITAS 23 (2002) 5 6 Stephanie Chamberlain on behalf of her sons, Henri, duc d’Anjou and François, duc d’Alençon. It is, perhaps, no surprise then that Sidney’s Cecropia, one who unleashes escalating terror upon an Arcadian community after her husband’s unex- pected death and her son’s displacement as heir to Basilius’s throne, strik- ingly resembles this widowed “Jezebel” of early modern France.3 Indeed, not unlike the vilified Catherine de’ Medici, Cecropia’s emergence from coverture is marked by an escalating tyranny which will not finally be contained until the moment of her death. Even before she takes Pamela and Philoclea captive to force a royal marriage and a place within the Arcadian social and political structure, she is represented as evil personified, as one who thrives on staging terror against those around her. This stylized demonization, I would argue, becomes a means by which to nullify the horrifying legal identity the state of widowhood has created, thereby paving a return to a patriarchally constructed normality. Under English common law, an early modern woman possessed one of two legal identities. As feme covert, a woman’s legal identity was sub- sumed under that of her husband: her right to sue, contract, or bequeath linked to a patriarchal privilege supported by biblical authority.4 Indeed, a wife in early modern England could not, for

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