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The Ruined Landscapes of Beowulf: Apocalypse and Hope Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2024-04-06 Lisa Myers
Abstract: A wide variety of scholars have examined the settings of the Old English epic Beowulf, interpreting the text in a myriad of ways and providing valuable information on sources and analogues. This article seeks to build upon and add to this body of scholarship by applying landscape history and a variety of archaeological evidence to the poem in order to develop a further understanding of the
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Aid from the Elf-Ruler: Line 1314a and the Pre-Christian Antecedents of Beowulf Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2024-04-06 Michael D. C. Drout, Caiden Kumar
Abstract: Line 1314b of Beowulf is regularly emended to “alwalda” (Ruler of All) from the manuscript form “alf walda” (Ruler of Elves). But the other instances of “alwalda” in Beowulf do not have visible space between the l and the w, and no plausible motivation for the addition of an f and a space has been proposed if the exemplar read “alwalda.” We contend, therefore, that MS “alf walda” is correct
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Polydore Vergil as Arthurian Witness: On King Arthur and Count Hoyer the Red in the Mansfeldische chronica (1572) of Cyriakus Spangenberg Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2024-04-06 William C. McDonald
Abstract: Cyriakus Spangenberg (d. 1604), a prominent Protestant theologian, seeks to trace and celebrate the history of the comital House of Mansfeld in his dynastic chronicle, Mansfeldische chronica (Eisleben, 1572). There, he includes a brief biographical entry on King Arthur that links the Round Table to Hoyer the Red, imagined progenitor of the Counts of Mansfeld and Arthurian paladin (fl. ca
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Making Commotion: Riot and Protest in the Texts of 2 Henry VI Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2024-04-06 Anna N. Ullmann
Abstract: This essay argues that the textual differences between the quarto and folio versions of William Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI evince the three-way ideological contestation between the aristocracy, the middling sort, and the lower classes in early modern England. Perhaps the most famous scenes from the play, those depicting Jack Cade’s rebellion, exist in both versions, but the portrayal of the
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The Politics of Wedding Poetry under the Cromwellian Protectorate: Sir William Davenant and "Hymen's Policy" Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2024-04-06 Niall Allsopp
Abstract: This essay presents a reading of Sir William Davenant’s previously unstudied poem “Epithalamium. The Morning after the Marriage of the Earl of Barymore with Mrs. Martha Laurence,” written in October 1656. The poem offers a significant comparison to Andrew Marvell’s near-contemporary wedding song for the marriage of Oliver Cromwell’s daughter Mary. It thereby sheds light on Cromwellian poets’
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Rasselas: The Enigma and the "Agile Music" Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2024-04-06 Mark Loveridge
Abstract: This essay reads Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (1759) against the background of negative or apophatic theology and argues that it is unique among Johnson’s works in expressing a sense of life as an enigma. The silent or hidden symbol of the story is the Giza Sphinx, one of the foundational symbols of such theology: the second-century Church Father Clement of Alexandria, whose works Johnson owned
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St. Beowulf: Hagiography and Heroic Identity in Beowulf Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2024-02-17 Peter Ramey
Abstract: Debates over the role of Christianity in Beowulf have not fully taken into account hagiographic models. Although saints' lives were among the first written materials to flourish in early medieval England, relatively little has been done to examine the influence of hagiography on Beowulf. After considering some of the reasons for the lack of such approaches, this essay examines Beowulf in
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The Cloak and the Clog: Tudor Portraiture and Sir Thomas Wyatt's "Myne owne John Poyntz" Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2024-02-17 Carl Grey Martin
Abstract: This essay explores how the visual culture of the portrait in the early Tudor period, epitomized by Hans Holbein's work, informed and intensified the self-examination, pictorialism, and textual play of Sir Thomas Wyatt's "epistolary satire" to John Pointz, a fellow courtier. Specifically, I argue that Wyatt's ambivalent self-description in this overtly self-righteous poem reimagines the memento
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"From god astraye went": William Forrest's Contra-Reformation "Legend of Theophilus" Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2024-02-17 Oliver Wort
Abstract: This is a study of William Forrest's "Legend of Theophilus." In the history of devil-compact literature, Theophilus was the ur-Faustus, the preeminent example all across medieval Europe of the foolish man who, for worldly gain, abandoned his soul to the devil. Finished on 27 October 1572, Forrest's version of this tale is a rare example of an English Theophilus legend written in the aftermath
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Passions and the Passion: Robert Southwell's Mary Magdalene Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2024-02-17 Emily A. Ransom
Abstract: While still a fugitive at large, the Jesuit poet Robert Southwell published his best-selling prose masterpiece, Mary Magdalens Funerall Teares, which deftly combines the English literary vogue of complaint with Ignatian meditation in an eloquent grand style. While scholarship has mostly treated this work as a meditation for recusant Catholics separated from Christ's body in the Eucharist
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"I do play the touch": Touchstone and Testing in As You Like It Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2024-02-17 Lauren Weindling
Abstract: This article takes as its subject a philological explication of the name of Touchstone, the fool in William Shakespeare's As You Like It, unpacking its connotations by tracking its usage in early modern print material. Literally a stone used to test gold's purity, the touchstone's metaphorical usage reveals a cultural desire to know true from feigning and likewise intimates violent interrogation
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"Text up his name": The Authorship of the Manuscript Play Dick of Devonshire Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2024-02-17 Brett Greatley-Hirsch, Matteo Pangallo, Rachel White
Abstract: The manuscript play Dick of Devonshire has been attributed to several early modern dramatists, including Thomas Heywood, Robert Davenport, James Shirley, and Thomas Dekker. Identifying the author is important to obtaining a better understanding of the play's place in the Caroline commercial theater industry and how it came to be staged by Queen Henrietta Maria's Men in the summer of 1626
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Editor's Note: Louis Round Wilson Prize for 2022 Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Reid Barbour
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Editor's NoteLouis Round Wilson Prize for 2022 Reid Barbour The Editorial Board of Studies in Philology voted at its annual meeting in May 2008 to establish an annual prize of $1000 for the best article published in the journal during the previous year. The prize was named in honor of Louis Round Wilson, whose monograph Chaucer's Relative
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Investigating English Sanctity in the Middle English St. Erkenwald Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Dominique Battles
Abstract: This essay extends the analysis of an earlier article, published in the previous issue of Studies in Philology, which argues for an Anglo-Saxon cultural identity for the nameless man in the tomb in the Middle English St. Erkenwald. The present essay examines the fictional scenario of the poem, involving the exhumation and investigation of an early English saintly body during renovations at
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James Reshoulde and Elizabethan Scribal Culture Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Steven W. May
Abstract: Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. poet. 85 (Ra), and Marsh's Library, Dublin, MS Z 3.5.21 (Ma), are two of the most important anthologies of Elizabethan lyric poetry. We have long known that Ra was compiled at St. John's College, Cambridge, apparently by John Finet. He credits his fellow Johnian, James Reshoulde, with two poems in Ra, one of which is answered by a poem in Ma. Reshoulde is not named
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Milton's Legal Duel: Nature and Norm in Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Ben LaBreche
Abstract: Scholars have often linked John Milton with natural law; this article argues instead for the strong interest of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes in legal positivism. By the mid-seventeenth century, thinkers like Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes were in their different ways proposing a natural law based on self-preservation rather than theology, and as a result natural law became increasingly
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John Locke, Ecological Imperialism, and the Narration of the Land in Robinson Crusoe—A Tale of the Anthropocene Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Terence N. Bowers
Abstract: The influence of John Locke's political thought on Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe has often been discussed. Most studies have focused on how the novel speaks to political crises in England, especially those surrounding the Glorious Revolution, which have traditionally been seen as forming the key context for understanding Locke's Two Treatises of Government. But recent scholarship has shown
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An Essay concerning the Origine of Sciences and the Mode of Scriblerian Satire Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Pat Rogers
Abstract: A short satire, An Essay of the Learned Martinus Scriblerus concerning the Origine of Sciences, concerns the alleged role of an anthropoid race of pygmies in the evolution of human knowledge. It was first published in the Miscellanies of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift in 1732, and has been attributed to both of these authors. The aim of this article is to provide the first full account
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Contents of Volume 120 Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-11-03
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contents of Volume 120 Atkinson, Amanda. The Figura Serpentinata in Paradise Lost. 340 Battles, Dominique. Investigating English Sanctity in the Middle English St. Erkenwald. 603 Battles, Dominique. Who (What) Lies in the Tomb in the Middle English St. Erkenwald? 391 Bowers, Terence N. John Locke, Ecological Imperialism, and the Narration
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Who (What) Lies in the Tomb in the Middle English St. Erkenwald? Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-08-05 Dominique Battles
Abstract: This article makes the case for an Anglo-Saxon cultural identity for the nameless man in the tomb in the Middle English St. Erkenwald on textual, hagiographic, historical, art historical, and literary grounds. The poem’s historical proem, akin to similar prologues in Middle English lives of pre-Conquest saints, evokes the negative stereotype of the primitive Saxon heathen popular in the post-Conquest
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Prosodic Change in Thomas More's Epitaphs for Henry Abyngdon (1518): From Medieval to Renaissance Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-08-05 David R. Carlson
Abstract: Analysis of a corpus of Anglo-Latin verse epitaphs published in the period 1380–1520 establishes that a shift from medieval rhymed dactylic verse, including Leonines and more complex polyrhymed varieties, to Renaissance-humanist classical-style unrhymed verse occurred in the period, irreversible by about 1460. Near the same date, Thomas More’s humanist contemporaries began to practice types
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Translating the Law in the Inns of Court Play Gismond of Salerne (1566–68) Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-08-05 Alice Equestri
Abstract: Gismond of Salerne (1566–68) was a dramatic adaptation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Tancredi and Ghismunda novella produced at the Inner Temple. Positing that the legal background of the authors was reflected in their reception of Boccaccio, this essay investigates the representation and use of various significations of the law in the play. It argues that the Inns authors were receptive to the
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Sir Thomas More and the Tragedy of Citizenship Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-08-05 Tonhi Lee
Abstract: This essay explores the historical and generic basis for a tragic reading of The Book of Sir Thomas More. The early modern period’s dominant forms of tragedy (such as revenge tragedy and historical tragedy) typically focus on the dynastic-imperial struggles of aristocratic powers against the backdrop of centralization and state-building. Sir Thomas More inverts this representational hierarchy
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Richard Linche: The Fountain of Elizabethan Fiction Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-08-05 Katie Reid
Abstract: This essay represents the first scholarly assessment of the complete works of the Elizabethan poet and translator Richard Linche (fl. 1596–1601). Linche was interested in classical mythology, sonnet writing, and prose translation. He was also concerned with the burning literary questions of the 1590s and early seventeenth century. This article analyzes Linche’s sonnet sequence Diella (1596)
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Thomas Watson, Thomas Kyd, and Embedded Poetry Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-08-05 Brian Vickers
Abstract: In this essay, I explore the relationship between Thomas Watson and Thomas Kyd in terms of the practice of “embedded poetry,” when a poet reuses borrowings from other poets. Both Kyd and Watson deployed such borrowings skillfully and consciously for a wide range of dramatic and poetic effects. After defining and illustrating Watson’s rhetoric of “Inventions,” I argue for Watson’s authorship
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Skepticism and the Form of Thomas Hoccleve's Series Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Elizabeth Harper
Abstract: In his Series, the fifteenth-century English poet Thomas Hoccleve repeatedly expresses skepticism about his ability to know himself and about the ability of others to know him. While he repeatedly seeks outside validation from a mirror, from the judgments of others, and from a trusted Friend, each source of knowledge proves to be unreliable. By questioning not only his own perception but
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John Donne and the Legacy of Early Modern Testamentary Verse Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Douglas Clark
Abstract: This article explores John Donne's contribution to the relatively overlooked genre of early modern testamentary verse. I use Donne's work to show that poetic wills and testaments do not simply constitute poems that are structured as lengthy inventories of complaints and bequests. My study instead demonstrates that the formal features of his testamentary poems relate to and deviate from the
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Neglected Witnesses to George Herbert's Musæ Responsoriæ, and a Previously Unpublished Poem, "Wren cum Chirothecis" Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Robert Whalen, Luke Roman
Abstract: This article considers three manuscript witnesses to the Musæ Responsoriæ, George Herbert's answer to Andrew Melville's polemical poem Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoria. None of these, two of them complete copies, was known to Herbert's first modern editor, F. E. Hutchinson, nor are they mentioned in any of the several subsequent editions of Herbert's Latin verse, all of which follow Hutchinson's
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Flawed Beauty, Flawed Cause: The Political Aesthetics of Parnassus Biceps (1656) Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Gina Filo
Abstract: In 1656, clergyman Abraham Wright edited and printed Parnassus Biceps, an unabashedly royalist poetic miscellany. Though under the radar in both Wright's day and our own, Biceps performs crucial political work through a program of aesthetic education. This is accomplished in part by Biceps's repeated insistence on its university pedigree and by the inclusion of a number of "flawed beauty"
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The Impact of Thomas Stanley's History of Philosophy on Margaret Cavendish Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Anita Gilman Sherman
Abstract: This essay argues that Thomas Stanley's magisterial History of Philosophy influenced the evolution of Margaret Cavendish's thought in ways that have not been previously recognized. While scholars have discussed Cavendish's evolving views of atomism and materialism, a comparison of her attitudes toward Pythagoras and toward skepticism before and after 1660 suggests that Cavendish adopted a
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The Figura Serpentinata in Paradise Lost Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Amanda Atkinson
Abstract: This essay links the Mannerist figura serpentinata to the figure of the serpent in John Milton's Paradise Lost. The figura serpentinata depicts human forms in twisting, upwardly spiraling poses in order to convey man's moral and spiritual growth through dynamic physical realism. I argue that Milton draws on the figura serpentinata in order to develop a poetics of becoming that links wandering
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Social History and Literary Genres in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain: Or, the Strange and Fascinating Case of Joshua Dudley Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Robert G. Walker
Abstract: The Memoirs of the Life of Joshua Dudley (1772) has received virtually no critical attention since its publication, and this is undeserved. Memoirs participates in several important eighteenth-century literary genres: it is an autobiography and a convict narrative that includes picaresque and sea adventures and subordinates within it poetry and joke-book, trickster anecdotes. Although two
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Writing "Home": Translating Belonging in Beves of Hampton Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-01-26 Emily Dolmans
Abstract: The word home does not have a direct analogue in medieval French, but it often emerges in Middle English romances translated from francophone sources. This essay examines what these translations can tell us about the valences of the word home in Middle English, demonstrating that it had connotations of belonging, emotional attachment, and power, as well as shelter or housing. I argue that
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The Pleasing Analysis of The Faerie Queene Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-01-26 John E. Curran Jr.
Abstract: In his "Letter to Raleigh," Edmund Spenser describes his project using the strange and provocative term analysis. This essay explores three ways in which the Ramist ideas closely associated with this term can inform our understanding of The Faerie Queene. First, since analysis recalls Ramism's ideal of analytical method, organization of matter in a descent from the most general principles
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Acting and Being Acted Upon: Hamlet's Delay, the Secondary Ghost, and the Purgation of Agency and Patiency Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-01-26 Eric P. Levy
Abstract: Though usually construed in terms of defective or recalcitrant agency (not doing what should be done), Hamlet's delay can be freshly illumined by considering it in terms of patiency: the liability to be affected in various ways. Like the Ghost, Hamlet's patiency involves a process of purgation—not of sin, as with the Ghost, but of a way of thinking. The purgative process is challenged by
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The "Puritan" Preacher and The Puritan Widow Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-01-26 Patrick Timmis
Abstract: In a controversial attempt to impose order after the Gunpowder Plot, James I sought to require the entire nation to take an Oath of Allegiance confirming his political and religious authority. This essay traces two popular attacks on London's immorality and disunity performed in St. Paul's Cathedral churchyard that respond to the Oath during this period (1606–1609): Thomas Middleton's "city
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The Garden, the Granary, and "the basic stuff and raw material of true induction": The Eclipse of the Imagination in Francis Bacon's Poetics of Natural History Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-01-26 Adam Neff
Abstract: This essay traces how Francis Bacon's late-career observational methods and poetics of natural history in the Preparation for an Experimental and Natural History (1620) evolve from the more imaginative poetics of the Advancement of Learning (1605). In enacting his project, Bacon recognized and sought to balance the tensions between flattering fictions and empiricism and, as a way of mediating
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Jonathan Wild: Spinoza, the Foil, and the Jacobites Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2023-01-26 Mark Loveridge
Abstract: This essay argues from the nature of Henry Fielding's Jonathan Wild as a miscellaneous linguistic salmagundi to a proposition that it is held together by a leitmotif of equally miscellaneous and perplexing opposites, which Fielding refers to as foils: the good-natured Heartfree being a foil to the villainous and hypocritical Wild. Fielding's usual ethical positives are foiled not only by
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Editor's Note: Louis Round Wilson Prize for 2021 Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Reid Barbour
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Editor's NoteLouis Round Wilson Prize for 2021 Reid Barbour The Editorial Board of Studies in Philology voted at its annual meeting in May 2008 to establish an annual prize of $1000 for the best article published in the journal during the previous year. The prize was named in honor of Louis Round Wilson, whose monograph Chaucer's Relative
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The Head of Satalia: A Romance Monstrously Birthed Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Joel Lipson
Abstract: For medieval authors and modern scholars alike, the twelfth-century legend of the Head of Satalia represents something of a curious aberration. Retold and reimagined in many different literary contexts over several centuries, this etiological narrative of necrophilia, monstrosity, and supernatural destruction inhabits and exposes the overlap between multiple genres of medieval writing. But
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"Scandalous Speech and Slanderous Libelles": Robert Peterson, Claudio Tolomei, and the Translation of Free Speech in Early Modern England Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-09-29 John-Mark Philo
Abstract: At the turn of the seventeenth century, Robert Peterson, an attorney working at the heart of Elizabethan government, translated one of the most detailed works on free speech to have emerged from the early modern era: Claudio Tolomei's treatise on "la libertà del parlare." Drawing on sources ancient and contemporary, Tolomei puts forward a rich and wide-ranging account of free speech and its
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Illuminating Redcrosse's Way: Medieval Apocalypse Manuscripts as Sources for Spenser's Faerie Queene Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Karen Elizabeth Gross
Abstract: It has long been acknowledged that Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene is indebted to the book of Revelation. What has not been recognized, however, is that one of the forms in which Spenser most likely encountered Revelation was illuminated Apocalypse manuscripts created in England in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. These manuscripts hold many surprising correspondences with
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The Problem of Genre and Spenserian Courtesy: Virgilian Georgic in The Faerie Queene Book 6 Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Caralyn Bialo
Abstract: In this article, I read book 6 of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene in conversation with native English didactic and behavioral manuals as I explore the relationship between literary genre and Spenserian courtesy. I argue that Spenser uses Virgilian georgic motifs to transcribe into the idiom of literary genre the courtesy texts' argument that nobility requires the labor of self-cultivation
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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Anne Finch Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Jennifer Keith
Abstract: Archival traces of the manuscript culture in which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, composed their work can yield information available nowhere else about their literary and personal connections. Evidence of Finch's and Montagu's personal and literary links—their socioliterary intercourse (a term I borrow from Arthur Marotti)—lies in the manuscripts preserved
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Editor's Note: Louis Round Wilson Prize for 2021 Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Reid Barbour
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Editor's NoteLouis Round Wilson Prize for 2021 Reid Barbour The Editorial Board of Studies in Philology voted at its annual meeting in May 2008 to establish an annual prize of $1000 for the best article published in the journal during the previous year. The prize was named in honor of Louis Round Wilson, whose monograph Chaucer's Relative
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The Head of Satalia: A Romance Monstrously Birthed Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Joel Lipson
Abstract: For medieval authors and modern scholars alike, the twelfth-century legend of the Head of Satalia represents something of a curious aberration. Retold and reimagined in many different literary contexts over several centuries, this etiological narrative of necrophilia, monstrosity, and supernatural destruction inhabits and exposes the overlap between multiple genres of medieval writing. But
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"Scandalous Speech and Slanderous Libelles": Robert Peterson, Claudio Tolomei, and the Translation of Free Speech in Early Modern England Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-09-29 John-Mark Philo
Abstract: At the turn of the seventeenth century, Robert Peterson, an attorney working at the heart of Elizabethan government, translated one of the most detailed works on free speech to have emerged from the early modern era: Claudio Tolomei's treatise on "la libertà del parlare." Drawing on sources ancient and contemporary, Tolomei puts forward a rich and wide-ranging account of free speech and its
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Illuminating Redcrosse's Way: Medieval Apocalypse Manuscripts as Sources for Spenser's Faerie Queene Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Karen Elizabeth Gross
Abstract: It has long been acknowledged that Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene is indebted to the book of Revelation. What has not been recognized, however, is that one of the forms in which Spenser most likely encountered Revelation was illuminated Apocalypse manuscripts created in England in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. These manuscripts hold many surprising correspondences with
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The Problem of Genre and Spenserian Courtesy: Virgilian Georgic in The Faerie Queene Book 6 Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Caralyn Bialo
Abstract: In this article, I read book 6 of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene in conversation with native English didactic and behavioral manuals as I explore the relationship between literary genre and Spenserian courtesy. I argue that Spenser uses Virgilian georgic motifs to transcribe into the idiom of literary genre the courtesy texts' argument that nobility requires the labor of self-cultivation
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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Anne Finch Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Jennifer Keith
Abstract: Archival traces of the manuscript culture in which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, composed their work can yield information available nowhere else about their literary and personal connections. Evidence of Finch's and Montagu's personal and literary links—their socioliterary intercourse (a term I borrow from Arthur Marotti)—lies in the manuscripts preserved
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The Hall of Honor: Chaucer, Hawes, and the Conclusion to Gerard Legh's Accedens of Armory Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-07-26 Richard J. Moll
Abstract: Gerard Legh's Accedens of Armory (1562) teaches its readers how to use heraldry to identify men and their families accurately and to assess their characters justly. Near the end of his book, Legh presents an elaborate allegory of a hall of honor which borrows from Stephen Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure and Geoffrey Chaucer's House of Fame. While Chaucer supplies the dream vision structure of
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Venus and Adonis The Rape of Lucrece, and the Shakespeare Canon Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-07-26 Patrick Cheney
Abstract: This essay revisits one of the oldest topics of Shakespeare criticism: the relation between Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and the plays. From Charles Gildon forward, critics see the narrative poems as a "promise" of the plays. This critical template, however, puts history backward: Venus and Lucrece become linear promises of an art that does not exist. The critical template also
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John Donne's Colonial Innocence Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-07-26 José Juan Villagrana
Abstract: From his verse epistles and libertine poems to his religious polemic and sermons, John Donne routinely invokes the Native peoples of the Americas as exemplars of innocence. Donne's understanding of Native peoples' innocence was influenced by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas's treatise Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, widely read in its English translation, The
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Correction, Modernization, and Elaboration in a Seventeenth-Century Translation of John Lydgate's Troy Book Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-07-26 Mimi Ensley
Abstract: Medieval monastic poet John Lydgate is not an author we expect to see in seven-teenth-century print. It is surprising, then, to find The Life and Death of Hector (London, 1614), an anonymous modernization of Lydgate's Troy Book (1420). While not a translation of a classical source, Hector was written in a context where classical translations were increasingly discussed and printed. However
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Milton and the Education Monopoly Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-07-26 Matt Rickard
Abstract: In Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church (1659), John Milton calls for the abolition of tithes—compulsory fees collected, in part, to finance the training of ministers at Oxford and Cambridge—on the grounds that they confer a "monopoly" on the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Though the poet was just one among dozens of pamphleteers and thousands of petitioners
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Milton's Postures: Prostrating, Grinding, Leaning Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-07-26 John Yargo
Abstract: Throughout John Milton's dramatic poem Samson Agonistes, the postures of the body allow individual characters to overcome the faltering capacities of speech, mind, and spirit. Early in the play, prostrating affords Samson the opportunity to make sense of his fractured and traumatized mental condition. Through the posture of grinding, the play conceives of a "sensate community," by which Dalila
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Beowulf Lines 175–88 and the Transmission of Old English Poetry Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-01-27 Leonard Neidorf
Abstract: Lines 175–88 of Beowulf constitute a longstanding interpretive crux. One solution to this crux has been to regard the passage as wholly or partly inauthentic—a solution advocated by no less a scholar than J. R. R. Tolkien in his influential British Academy lecture on Beowulf. Evaluations of the passage's authenticity have hitherto centered on the question of whether it can be reconciled with
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"I, Thomas Usk, Traitor": The Testament of Love and the Ethics and Politics of Service Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-01-27 Chandler Fry
Abstract: This article argues that Thomas Usk centralizes the natural law in his Testament of Love to attempt to bring about a cultural reformation. Throughout his text Usk weaves the natural law into his elaborate model of service, outlining ethical and political concepts that he believes should structure and inform social life in his contemporary London. In doing this, Usk hopes to inspire his culture
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Adapting for Genre in the Middle English Chevalere Assigne Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-01-27 Miriam Edlich-Muth
Abstract: This article considers the role genre expectations have played in shaping the process by which the medieval Latin folktale of the swan children, Cygni, was translated and adapted first into different Old French versions and then into the Middle English prose romance Chevalere Assigne. I argue that the differences in characterization, plot, and tone between the French and English versions
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The Venus of Apelles from Schoolroom to Romance Studies in Philology Pub Date : 2022-01-27 Andrew Carlson
Abstract: This article argues that classical visual art played an important role in mediating the relationship between Elizabethan romance and the humanist schoolroom. I advance this claim by following the wayward itinerary through Elizabethan letters of the Greek painter Apelles and his unfinished painting of Venus rising from the sea. In the work of the educator Roger Ascham, the painting serves