2005 Abstracts

Alarcon, Carolina (American U) "Never Make a Pretty Woman Your Wife: Tintoretto's Unconventional Interpretation of Ovidian Mythology"

Tintoretto's painting Venus and Mars surprised by Vulcan offers one of the most original interpretations of Ovid's ancient myth concerning marital peccadilloes. At first glance, the painting affirms recent interpretations of the work as belonging to a long-standing Renaissance penchant for mythological paintings of Petrarchan females. However, such an essentialist reading could be missing part of the social complexity of male and female relations in the Renaissance. This paper suggests that Tintoretto's portrayal of sexually defiant and transgressive female in the work may be an effort to capitalize on the growing anxiety over the role of courtesans in Venetian society.

Alexander, John (Texas A&M U) "Borromeo and the Architecture of Convent Reform (1564-1565)"

In 1564, Carlo Borromeo (1538 - 1584), the cardinal-archbishop of Milan, began to enact strict reforms in convents under his jurisdiction. This included the addition or alteration of specific architectural features. His reforms reveal two characteristics of contemporary architecture for the Catholic Church: practical criteria and social engineering. While a variety of architectural expressions could be appropriate for churches and the buildings of religious institutions, patrons consistently expressed very practical criteria. Borromeo's instructions also enforced social order by maintaining a strict physical separation between the nuns and the outside world, thereby controlling and setting them apart as a sacred caste.

Andreadis, Harriette (Texas A&M U) "Some Versions of Pastoral: Women's Queer Spaces"

In "The Arte of English Poesie" (1589), George Puttenham writes that the purpose of the Eglogue is "to insinuate and glaunce at greater matters, and such as perchance had not bene safe to have beene disclosed in any other sort" The coded nature of the Renaissance pastoral suggested by Puttenham can be seen in the ways that the forms and conventions of pastoralism opened up a space for a female same-sex erotics in early modern poetry by women. Here, I explore how the pastoral often has provided an important vehicle for the coded expression of a female same-sex eroticism.

Baker, Christopher (Armstrong Atlantic State U) "Shylock's Contentment"

Examination of a single trope, the fly, offers a heuristic for appreciating the ways in which Ovidian, Petrarchan, and Metaphysical poetic styles were appropriated by Donne and Shakespeare. Donne's "The Flea," borrowing an Ovidian seduction motif, recalls a Petrarchan passage from Romeo and Juliet in which Romeo envies the flies which kiss Juliet. Yet Donne's flea is the trope for a more witty, spiritualized, erotic encounter. This metaphoric complexity is heightened by the fly's brief mention "The Canonization." Incinerated in the taper, the fly becomes an unmistakably Metaphysical figure in its multiple meanings, including the burnt offerings of biblical holocausts.

Berghof, Alice (U of California–Irvine) "The Failure of Prophesy in Rembrandt and Milton"

This paper contrasts literal with figurative proximity in Rembrandt's Jeremiah and Milton's invocation to Book IV of Paradise Lost, a poetic version of failed prophesy. Hoogstraten claimed that the most effective way to show proximity is to reveal the texture of the object. I will test his theory by doing a close analysis of the deployment of paint contrasting Jeremiah with his surroundings. If he is associated with the chaos in the background, he is a tragic and human rather than epic and divine figure. I will make an analogy between brush strokes and grammar.

Bilak, Donna (The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture) "An Analysis of Bronzino's Portrait of a Young Man"

This paper looks at Bronzino's oil-on-panel painting, Portrait of a Young Man (Metropolitan Museum of Art), ca. 1535-40. The sitter is an unidentified aristocratic Florentine youth whose pose and fashionable attire epitomizes Cinquecento courtly qualities. While examination of the portrait from this perspective provides much information for art and cultural historians, there is another aspect of this painting that calls for investigation. The portrait appears to contain an image within the sitters‚ image, detectable by means of X-radiography, giving it a hidden subtext. Therefore, analysis of the portrait's X-rays taken by the museum reveals more than what meets the eye.

Bird, John Evertt (Columbia U) "Producing (and Reproducing) Professional Identity in Thomas Edward's Narcissus"

With its parodies of Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" and Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," Edwards's mock complaint, "Narcissus," offers an entry point into some of the ways in which Elizabethan poetry is a site of authority both shared and contested among the young men who wrote poetry and is a community of writers that is articulated through what Mikhail Bakhtin describes as "professional stratification" Stratification is a social process, one that is not entirely unproblematic, and is articulated in Edwards's mock complaint as a problem of identity, one that discloses as much aggression toward his contemporaries as admiration.

Blevins, Jacob (McNeese State U) "Finding Fit Words: Public Voices and the Private Self in Shakespeare's Sonnets"

Most critics would now agree that Michel Bakhtin's assertion that lyric poetry is fundamentally a monologic genre misrepresents the complex construction of lyric subjectivity. Still, there is much to be done to understand fully the heteroglossic processes that are part of the lyric genre. Set within various discursive contexts, the sonnets of Shakespeare in particular demonstrate a subjectivity rooted in the speaker's need to address and respond to the heard and unheard voices of others. Whether through rhetorical questioning or the invocation of traditional tropes or conventions, Shakespeare's speaker is in constant dialogue with speech that exists beyond the page.

Brink, Jean R. (Arizona State U), "Spenser in Ireland: The Grey Administration, 1580-1582"

Numerous post-colonial studies of Spenser's life and works, based on Raymond Jenkins' secondary scholarship (1932-38), ignore contemporary accounts of the Grey administration in Holinshed and Camden. Using events identified as important by these 16th-century historians, I will show that power struggles in England were replayed in Ireland and later shaped assessments of Grey's administration. I will also correct the view that Spenser, a twenty-five year-old secretary, enjoyed the partnership with Lord Grey that Richard Boyle later experienced as the secretary to Sir George Carew. Boyle and Carew were much closer in social status than Spenser and Grey.

Brooke, Irene Trevor (U of Houston) "Lodovico Dolce and Titian's Poesie"

This paper examines the influence of Lodovico Dolce on Titian's poesie, arguing that a particular relationship exists between the paintings done for Philip II and Dolce's vernacular translation of the Metamorphoses: Titian's free visual interpretations of the Metamorphoses often correlate to Dolce's open paraphrase of the poem. Generally, Titian's poesie are more fully understood when viewed in light of Dolce's Dialogo della Pittura, where the author, drawing upon a well-established literary tradition, compares artists to poets. Responding to Dolce's Transformationi in his own poesie, Titian was challenging his friend and engaging with him in the paragone of the arts.

Brothers, Lester D. (U of North Texas) "Marking Time, Making Music: On Science and Music in Compositions for the Elizabethan Consort"

Among many technological innovations of the sixteenth century, devices for measuring time had a profound effect on Early Modern culture. The impact on music is attested perhaps most obviously by a small repertory of English compositions for the viol consort spanning the half century between 1585 and 1636. Compositions by an anonymous composer (1585), Osbert Parsley (1585), Edward Gibbons (1625), and presumably Charles Butler (1636) form a unique corpus in the history of hexachordal compositions, rich with cultural revelation.

Buccola, Regina (Roosevelt U) "Dr. She and Other Improbabilities, or How a Pinch of Fairy Lore Solves a World of Problems in All's Well That Ends Well"

Over the years, the problems posed by Helena from William Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well have contributed in no small degree to the characterization of All's Well as a "problem play." Helena occupies a liminal position over the course of the play that would have aligned her in the minds of early modern theater goers with cultural figures imagined as occupying similarly ambiguous social, class and gender positions, the fairies. Drawing upon the fairy bride and fairy midwife traditions, changeling lore, and the belief that fairies possessed miraculous healing powers, I demonstrate how Shakespeare uses these popular traditions in his rescension of New Comedy paradigms.

Bunker, Nancy (Macon State C) " 'Of Mysterious Origin, but with Purpose Clear': Recovering The Wisest Have Their Fools About Them as Inns of Court Drama"

Discovered among the former Lord Chief Justice Ranulph Crewe's family papers, The Wisest Have Their Fools About Them (c late 1620s) suggests an instructional function for Inns of Court audiences replete with future lawyers and statesmen. References to inheritance law and usury rates expose a malleable justice system, but combined with overt criticism of the Duke of Buckingham's failed military campaigns, Wisest violated Crewe's professional loyalties. My essay argues that Crewe prevented the play's performance and publication; his action distanced the Inns from the increasingly volatile political climate.

Carrington, Jill (Stephen F. Austin State U) "Bellano's Madonna Panel of the Roccabonella Monument: a Case Study in Observant Franciscan Art"

This paper treats a lifesize panel depicticting the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Anthony and Peter Martyr. It is part of the tomb of professor Pietro Roccabonella which was completed by Bartolomeo Bellano and set up in 1498. The paper will consider whether this panel suits its setting in the Observant Franciscan church of San Francesco Grande in Padua by reviewing the artistic features and liturgical preferences that presently define Observant Franciscan art. The Observants were the reforming branch of the Franciscan order who claimed to more closely represent the original, simple ideals of Francis himself.

Chamberlain, Stephanie (Southeast Missouri State U) "Designing Women: Enforced Marriage and Patrilineage in All's Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure"

Marriage is problematic in virtually all of Shakespeare's comedies, with individual desire often being subsumed by conflicting familial demands. More often than not, it is Shakespeare's women who are coerced to wed to satisfy the demands of a patrilineage eager to protect patrimony and/or patrilineal design. My paper examines enforced marriage in All's Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure, arguing that the poor and/or lesser-born women who manipulate such unions not only challenge gender expectations; they also betray early modern cultural anxiety about the role of women in the transmission of patrimony and patrilineage.

Cheney, Liana De Girolami (U of Massachusettes–Lowell) "Giorgio Vasari's Iconologia: The Chamber of Fortune's Allegories of Virtues in the Casa Vasari."

There is an underlying philosophy in the Chamber of Fortune of the Casa Vasari that provides unity and meaning to the various personifications, allegories of virtues and classical stories. However, Vasari's philosophy emerges as a set of personal convictions rather than the results of systematic thought. The eight allegorical virtues (Honor, Prosperity, Fortitude, Liberality, Sagacity, Prudence, Patience and Justice) framing the personification allude to the intellectual function of the personification and explain the moral meaning revealed in the classical stories. This presentation will examine one aspect of the symbolism in the Chamber of Fortune, the eight allegories of virtue and their emblematic signification.

Claytor, Heather (Texas State U–San Marcos) "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream: Reflections on Shakespeare and Milton"

In dreams, when all of our inhibitions are down, we may begin to understand what it is that we believe and think. In Paradise Lost, A Midsummer Nightís Dream, and Hamlet, we see Milton and Shakespeare explaining their opinions on the province of dreams in the experiences of the characters they have created. For Milton, dreams are a prophetic tool and can be used to educate not only the characters, but the audience as well; for Shakespeare, dreams become a retreat for characters who cannot understand or properly explain what is happening to and around them.

Clements, John (Independent Scholar) "The Myth of the Clumsy Knight in Heavy Armor"

Popular culture often depicts the Medieval armored warrior as a lumbering overburdened figure slowly hulking about in heavy armor with a cumbersome bludgeoning sword. Despite the continuous martial importance of the armored warrior, common opinion is that he was a clumsy, slow, awkward moving "lobster." This was a leitmotif of much 19th and 20th century writings on fencing and combat in the Middle Ages. Even within circles of modern academia this opinion has become something of an unquestioned mantra. Claims that unhorsed a knight was at his foe's mercy have unfortunately become common. This myth of untutored knights clumsily swinging swords while stomping around is terribly inaccurate. The reality was something quite different.

Cobb, Barbara Mather (Murray State U), "Accession and Futility: Shakespeare, Audience, and the Henriad"

In the period from 1595-99, Shakespeare's popular audience is concerned about political transition. In the Henriad, Shakespeare's audience sees Henry V's success and recognizes in it their own distance from such success. Shakespeare does not pretend to the role of monarch-making; his audience finds in his plays reflections of their fears for the state of common Londoners, in the wake of the acts of monarchy. Henry V is an emotional roller-coaster ride for its original audience; in its compressions and expansions Shakespeare's audience finds not a monarch-in-the-making, but a manifestation of its own sense of desire and futility in fearing a rocky accession.

Collmer, Robert G. (Baylor U) "Valladolid in 1600: The English College, the Damaged Virgin, and Prospective Martyrs"

The Colegio de San Albano, established at Valladolid in 1589 by the English Jesuit Robert Persons, trained seminarians as missionaries to England. In 1596 in Cadiz a statue of the Blessed Virgin with the Baby Jesus was damaged by the Anglo-Dutch invaders led by the Earl of Essex and Charles Howard, "Elizabeth's Admiral." In 1600 this statue was formally removed to the college. Two sources for this ceremony exist. A two-part Spanish book published in 1600 gives details about the men who were braving martyrdom. The other is the eight paintings by Diego Diez Ferreras done prior to 1679 describing the Cadiz invasion and the acquisition of the damaged virgin.

Cormier, David (Saint Louis U) "Rereading Lucy Hutchinson's The Life of Colonel Hutchinson and Order and Disorder: Ebb, Flow, and the Resurrection of a Female Voice"

The Anglo-American feminist's focus on rejections of male patriarchy in female texts has limited the works they spend their time analyzing. Conversely, the French feminist's focus on language, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the development and identification of an ecriture feminine has limited their scope by distancing them from the historical archival work and rediscovery of neglected female texts. As a result, texts like Hutchinson's Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson and Order and Disorder have been unexplored. I propose Hutchinson's writing be examined as an example of l'ecriture feminine Feminists, like Irigaray, Kristeva, and Cixous, seek in their feminist tracts.

Cornelison, Sally J. (U of Kansas) "Tales of Two Bishop Saints: Zenobius and Antoninus in Florentine Renaissance Art and History"

On May 9, 1589 the body of the sainted Florentine Archbishop Antoninus Pierozzi (d. 1459, canonized 1523) was placed in a tomb housed within a sumptuous new chapel designed and executed by Medici court artist Giambologna and his collaborators between 1578 and 1588 at the Dominican church of San Marco, Florence. This paper will examine the St. Antoninus Chapel's historical, formal, and iconographical references and ties to Florence's first sainted bishop, Zenobius (d. ca. 424), his place of burial in Florence Cathedral, and the ways in which these connections were exploited for political and religious purposes in late Renaissance Florence.

Cox, Catherine I. (Texas A&M U–Corpus Christi) " 'What if the sickness should come...who would I willing spare?': Private Voices and the Plague in Early Modern England"

Although largely abandoning the startling tropes associated with plague poetry and pamphlets, late sixteenth and seventeenth century diarists in describing their lives during times of pestilence adopt narrative structures familiar to them through sermons, poetic and prose narratives, and drama. They often cast themselves as the central characters in God's providential play, a drama filled with judgments and merciful reprieves. The diaries' blending of subjective narratives and religious paradigms thus bridges the public and private spheres as well as the established genres and the developing novel.

DePrano, Maria (UCLA) "The Three Graces Emblem: An Exploration of Three Medals by Niccolo Fiorentino Based Upon the Gender of the Sitter"

The Three Graces embellish the reverse of three medals by Niccolò Fiorentino from late Quattrocento Florence, that of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Maria Poliziano, the sister of the humanist, and Giovanna degli Albizzi, the daughter-in-law of Giovanni Tornabuoni, the Medici banker. This paper will investigate the way in which the gender of the sitter on the obverse shifts the meaning of the Three Graces emblem on the reverse when interpreted with an understanding of men and women's roles in Florentine society.

Dickson, Donald R. (Texas A&M U) "Henry Vaughan's Medical Library"

One of the remaining puzzles in the life's story of the poet Henry Vaughan (1621-1695) concerns his medical career. If we wish to know more about the kind of medicine he practiced, we must turn to the books from which he learned medicine and especially at his marginalia in them, which has not yet been examined. When we look at his annotations and marginalia in the medical texts he owned, we see that he followed the basic principles of Galenic medicine, even though he tried to popularize Hermeticism in his translations..

Dover, Paul M.. (Georgian Court U) "The Renaissance Popularity of 'Pliny's Ape': Early Printed Versions of Solinus' Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium"

Nearly forgotten today, regarded as little more than a fabulist with an overcooked imagination, the late antique geographer Solinus was a source of great fascination to Renaissance readers, enjoying 11 separate printings before the year 1500 alone. Based upon the author?s examination of copies of Solinus from the first century of print, many of which were annotated by their readers, this paper seeks to explain why this work retained its popularity against a backdrop of the revival of antique learning, the gradual expansion of European geographical knowledge and consciousness, and an emerging empiricism in the face of the natural world.

Enos, Carol Curt (Independent Scholar) "Shakespeare's Lancashire Links"

The theory that Shakespeare was a 'servant' in the homes of Alexander Hoghton and Sir Thomas Hesketh before joining the acting groups of Ferdinando Stanley in Lancashire has been revived by E.A. K. Honigmann in Shakespeare, the 'Lost Years.' Honigmann surmised that Cotton, whose family leased land from Alexander Houghton and were related to and friendly with them, introduced Shakespeare to the Houghtons as a bright young man who could serve as schoolmaster for their children. Because the Houghton home was a center of the Catholic counter-Reformation activity, bustling with Catholic priests surreptitiously, for security, the schoolmaster, too, would have been a reliable Catholic. Other threads link three important areas to William Shakespeare and Lancashire via the Stratford grammar school, Mary Arden Shakespeare's family, and the London theater world. Those threads will be the focus of the paper.

Etheridge, Charles (Texas A & M U-Corpus Christi) " 'Orlando! Thou Art Overthrown': Wrestling in As You Like It"

Shakespeare's As You Like It is an instance of the way he used sport to signal audiences that a character—in this case, Orlando—is a person of moral worth. His use of sport is paradoxical, because Orlando's sport is wrestling, traditionally a 'low' sport, and yet through it Orlando establishes his gentlemanly qualities and captures the eye of the fair and highborn Rosalind. Furthermore, the homoerotic nature of wrestling as a sport subtly foreshadows and comments on the sexually charged foreplay between the two lovers, especially when Orlando woos Rosalind when she dresses as a man. This paper briefly surveys some major texts of courtesy literature, exploring attitudes toward wrestling. It then explores both the class and sexual connotations of wrestling in As You Like It.

Fitzpatrick, Joan (U College Northampton, United Kingdom), "Flesh and Metal: Aspects of Elizabeth I in Spenser's Book of Justice"

This paper argues that Munera from Book 5 canto 2 of Spenser's Faerie Queene resembles Queen Elizabeth I not only via the Petrarchan ideal but in her refusal to marry, her alleged frugality in prosecuting war in Ireland and her pity for her Irish subjects. Spenser may have been thinking of the pity shown to one Irish subject in particular, Gráinne Ní Mháille, which led to the public ridicule of Richard Bingham, governor of Connaught. Munera's death thus constitutes a fantasy that Bingham, as Talus, enacts revenge upon the women who undermined what Spenser regarded as effective rule in Ireland.

Ford, John R. (Delta State U) " 'Wherefore Art Thou Balthasar?': The Hazards of Doubling in Romeo and Juliet"

This paper will look at possibilities of doubling in Romeo and Juliet, especially involving Balthasar, who suddenly appears late in the play as Romeo's confidant, replacing Benvolio, who just as suddenly has disappeared. How do the ambiguities latent in the practice and recognition of the doubling convention trouble some of the play's metatheatrical and thematic questions? In a play haunted by the ambivalence of names and naming, how might an audience respond to the double vision of doubling, where two characters restlessly inhabit the same actor's body, like two meanings wrestling in a pun? What's in a name?

Frontain, Raymond-Jean (U of Central Arkansas) " 'Much Wit in Praise of Folly': Thomas Coryate's Ludic Humanism"

Much of the tension animating Thomas Coryate's Crudities derives from the difference between how he wished to be perceived and the defensive way that he feels obliged to fashion his persona. Early in his travels Coryate played the fool so that he might disarm suspicion of himself as a stranger and negotiate the threats hazarded by every traveler in that period. Coryate justifies this strategy by citing the examples of More and Erasmus, who presented themselves as "wise fools." Coryate was taken at his word by early readers and repeatedly dismissed as a fool. The prefatory verses contributed by members of Prince Henry's circle contrast dramatically with Coryate's carefully constructed persona, making the Crudities an example of failed self-fashioning.

García, Patricia M. (Our Lady of the Lake U) "Catholic Martyrs, Mothers, and Wives in the Early Modern Period: The Lives of Margaret Clitherow and Elizabeth Cary"

This paper will examine English Catholic identity in the early modern period as reflected in and determined by pedagogical texts used by the English Catholic community. By analyzing spiritual biographies used for religious instruction, I will demonstrate how the practice of the Catholic faith defines it as a "true" religion in contrast to Protestant works and practices. In doing so, the writers of such works also seek to define English Catholicism.

Getz, Christine (U of Iowa) "Of Innocent Pastimes, Incompetent Playing, and Chromatic Music: The Milanese Resistance to Carlo Borromeo's Musical Policies"

This paper explores the role of the Milanese patriciate in shaping musical policy in Milan during the early years of Carlo Borromeo's tenure. It reveals that the Milanese aristocracy resisted Borromeo's ban on carnival by ignoring archiepiscopal directives and appealing directly to papal authority. It demonstrates that the Fabbrica of the Duomo, rather than the Archbishop, controlled what was heard in the city's largest ecclesiastical institution, and even dismissed an organist selected by Borromeo because his playing failed to sastisy current musical tastes. Finally, it shows that the aristocracy played a crucial role in identifying the composers who eventually were asked to contribute intelligible polyphony for use in the Dioceses.

Gilkeson, Xochitl (U of Wisconsin), "Side by Side and Beside Themselves: Elizabeth I, Shakespeare's Cleopatra, and the Doubling of the Sovereign Self"

This essay argues that the histrionic nature of Cleopatra's character in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra possesses rhetorical overlap with the performative subjectivity of Elizabeth Tudor's monarchial self. Their shared fondness for theatrical spectacle confounds the distinction we would make between the fictionalized image of the woman and the actual woman we perceive, the "doubleness" each performatively embodies. This essay argues that Cleopatra's consideration of which image of her self will be her legacy evokes the way Elizabeth attempted to go beyond being a mere specular object to become a creative actor in the manufacturing of her mythic stature.

Gillotte, Donna (Independent Scholar) "Florence as the New Jerusalem in the Frescoes in the Guild Hall of Judges and Notaries"

One of the most unique and unprecedented fresco cycles in the history of guildhall decoration survives from 1366 in the former guild hall of Judges and Notaries in Florence. Heraldic emblems abound in a large circular diagram surrounded by six winged figures on the vaulted ceiling of the Audience Hall. This paper will examine the distinctive iconography associating it with the Heavenly Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. I propose that these frescoes represent not only the Guild's perception of the city's civic destiny but also that they illustrate the manner in which Trecento Florentines conceived of their place in the world.

Goodchild, Karen (Wofford C) "Vasari, Bronzino and the Burlesque"

Giorgio Vasari's brief vita of Agnolo Bronzino notes the latter's "fanciful and bizarre" burlesque capitoli as the best of his literary output. Only in this description does Vasari provide a literary link between the suave Bronzino and his eccentric artistic forefathers, Pontormo and Piero di Cosimo. Although admired by many, Bronzino's Burlesques and the literary companions that encouraged their production brought the painter censure. This paper will examine how Bronzino's Burlesque themes might be negatively alluded to in his biographies of his predecessors, and will show the rivalry between Vasari and Bronzino to be literary as well as artistic.

Grahovac, Diane (Independent Scholar) "Beyond Love's Lamentations in Sidney's Astrophil and Stella"

Despite his familial connections and devoted service to the Queen, Elizabeth refused to advance courtier poet, Philip Sidney. Shunned repeatedly, Sidney relieved his angst with writing, believing that such exorcised the monsters from his brain. While his scripted masques, pastoral narratives, and bold letters failed to urge Elizabeth into action, his desire to communicate his frustrations could not be quelled. As with other persuasive attempts, in Astrophil and Stella Sidney imbeds in veiled terms within the lines of love sonnets the disappointments of his impoverished state, thus masking rank and title's pecuniary loss with the sorrowful loss of love.

Hampel, Sharon (U of Colorado, Boulder) "The Earth was Formed": Milton, Ebraeo, Kabbalah, and the Perfectible World."

"The Earth was formed but in the womb as yet" (Paradise Lost 7.276). Ignoring this stunning image of a world reborn, critics have characterized Mitlon's Hebraism as legalism or Platonism. Jason Rosenblatt attributes Milton's Hebrew learning to John Selden, the pre-eminent Hebraist legal scholar. Characterizning Milton as a mystic, Denis Saurat can only find images of an absent Deity in the Zohar, an eleventh-century Kabbalistic text. A more persuasive source of Milton's Hebriat ideas about creation lies in the work of Leone Ebraeo, a Jewish phiosopher who wrote the Lurianic and Kabbaistic Dialogi d'Amore in 1501. Ebraeo's work and Paradise Lost idealize love as creation and Creator.

Harkins, Matt (Washington U)"An 'Antedate' for Young Love"

The narrator of Marvell's "Young Love" reveals a crucially unstable stance towards a young girl—a stance at one moment seemingly innocent, while at another disturbingly sexual. Comparing this poem with "A Dialogue between Thyrsis and Dorinda" allows us to see the poet's distrust of "antedating," of enjoying future pleasures early. The speakers of both poems are blinded by such antedating. In "Young Love," Marvell offers a self-deluding speaker, one eager to frame his "love for the girl as innocent, but hesitant to acknowledge the underlying eroticism of this love.

Herron, Thomas (Hampden-Sydney C), "'Faire Graces Many One': Una, Duessa, and Rule in Ireland"

This paper will further unravel the allegorical tangle of Spenser's paired protagonists Una and Duessa, in order to uncover new facets of their (and Queen Elizabeth's) Irish relevance in Book I of The Faerie Queene. Just as the evil anti-type Duessa's name is partly based on the Irish dubh, or "black," for example, úaine (pronounced "una") means "green," the color of fertility. It is the antiquated and feared principle of localized faction—one might even say constitutional autonomy—that Duessa's duplicity represents. Una, by contrast, represents Spenser's idealized vision of Queen Elizabeth's power in Ireland: a country re-united, or una-fied by a colonial, Protestant empress.

Hillar, Marian (Center for Philosophy and Socinian Studies, Houston) "Transcription of the Sixteenth-Century Manuscript by Michael Servetus, Declarationis Iesu Christi Filii Dei libri quinque"

We report transcription of the Latin manuscript entitled Declarationis Iesu Christii Filii Dei libri quinque Authore Michaele Serveto alias Revves Tarraconensi. This manuscript is located in the Hauptstaatsarchiv, Stuttgart. An analysis of the manuscript indicates that it was a copy prepared from an early manuscript of Michael Servetus which could have been a preliminary sketch for his De Trinitatis erroribus libri septem published in 1531.

Holderby, Shawndra (Mansfield U) "Evil and Unnatural: Stepmothers as Witches in Early Modern Fairy Tales"

In early modern society, stepmothers are a very difficult and uneasy topic. Their mere presence means that the "natural" mother has died and another woman has usurped the mother's place in the family. The stepmother may be a widow herself and she may have her own children, which she is bringing into the house. It is also possible that she may have more children with her new husband, and those children may alter the inheritance. All of these very real issues are reflected in the fairy tale portrayal of stepmothers as unnatural and even evil.

Howard, W. Scott (U of Denver) "That Noble Flame: Literary History and Redemptive Time in Katherine Philips' Elegies and Society of Friendship"

Friendship is the most significant topic in the poetry of Katherine Philips, but has yet to be examined as a trope for historical representation. The poetic elegy in particular facilitates Philips' articulation of the spiritual bonds between friends that manifest their singularities through occasions of loss. I argue that Philips' elegies-most notably "To Mrs. M. A. at parting" (1667)-construct friendship as an historiographic principle for her Society of Friendship that counters, through a dialogic and pseudonymous lyric discourse, early modern histories of sacrificial violence.

Howey, Catherine L. (Rutgers U), "Grave Histories: Women's Bodies Writing Elizabethan History"

This paper uses interdisciplinary approaches to examine the joint tomb of Catherine Grey and Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford alongside the funerary monuments and portraits of other female courtiers. These sources demonstrate that women by their court activities, family connections, portraits, and tomb monuments, participated at the court of Elizabeth I and fashioned histories of Elizabeth's reign. Some of these personal histories confirm the glories of Queen Elizabeth I's court, but others offer revisions of the monarch's reign—all of which should be examined to expand our understanding of the last Tudor monarch.

Hulse, Clark (U of Illinois at Chicago), "Elizabeth I and the Shadow of Place"

In this talk, I will discuss begin with Nicholas Hilliard's account of his conversation with Elizabeth when she sat for her portrait. From the basis of the Hilliard-Elizabeth encounter, I will ask what Elizabeth's own artistic theories might have been, and how a consideration of them changes our understanding of the Elizabethan portraiture in general. The talk will, of course, be accompanied by slides.

Iammarino, Denna (John Carroll U) "Anchored in Reason: The Presence of Classical and

Augustinian Rhetorical Traditions in Edmund Spenser's Fowre Hymnes" [Abstract not available]

Isaacson, Emily (U of Missouri–Columbia) "Containing Amoret: Finding a Happy Marriage in The Faerie Queene"

Of the couples introduced in The Faerie Queene, Scudamore and Amoret have the most troubled relationship. In the 1590 edition, the pair happily reunites after Britomart's rescue of Amoret; however, Spenser revised in 1596 and the couple never meets. Since Scudamore is unable to enter Busirane's castle to rescue Amoret, the elimination of the reunion presents the reader with the problem of understanding the nature of good marriage, troubling the expectations for the husband's behavior and responsibilities. Spenser's presentation of Amoret's treatment by male characters participates in the general tension about marriage in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Jensen, William M. (Baylor U) "A Scandal in the Sistine Ceiling? The Virgin Mary as Promiscuous Coquette?: A Semiotic Exploration of the Jacob-Joseph Lunette"

A. Hughes objects to the identification of the right side of the Jacob-Joseph lunette as the Holy Family because the woman is "extraordinarily coquettish" and has "two children" which would be "scandalous" for the Virgin. Using semiotic theory, I will argue that Hughes misreads the signs and that an analysis of Michelangelo's "personal code" of "somatic signing" supports the Holy Family designation within an allegorical formulation. The proposed meaning harmonizes with the political theology of the chapel and with Michelangelo's self-fashioning as a poet-theologian, like Dante.

Johnston, Marina Della Putta (Rosemont C) "Renaissance Visualisations of the Heart from Boccaccio's Decameron"

My paper focuses on the visual representation of the metaphorical and physical hearts central particularly to the fourth, fifth, and tenth day of the Decameron. I analyze Italian, French and German illustrations and Italian paintings of Boccaccian hearts from the Quattrocento and Cinquecento in relation to the written text and to Boccaccio's own illustrations. I look at the illustrator or at the painter as Umberto Eco's lector in fibula and propose that the reader of an illustrated edition of a literary work is not simply reading the original text but a version of it modified by its added visual context.

Jones, Mark (Trinity Christian C) "Salerio, Solanio, and 'all the boys in Venice'"

In the critical history of The Merchant of Venice, surprisingly little has been said concerning two of the play's most visible characters, Salerio and Solanio. And what has been said has generally been unenthusiastic: critics seem to agree that these characters are negligible. In an Althusserian perspective, however, their social anonymity is precisely what makes them such effective agents of ideological dissemination, especially when state apparatuses are challenged by alien interests. In Venice, renowned for its fair treatment of strangers, it ultimately falls to Salerio, Solanio, and "all the boys in Venice" to police the boundaries between self and other.

Jones, Norman (Utah State U), "Elizabeth, Cecil and the Pragmatics of Rule: Managing Elizabethan England"

A monarch can only do what is possible within the existing structures of government. Focusing on the problem of religious reform, this paper explores the limitations imposed by Tudor governing structures and the ways in which Elizabeth and Cecil worked within them. It will ask if Elizabeth had a "grand strategy," or if her actions were as much a product of the bureaucratically possible as it was a reflection of her values.

Kelter, Irving A. (U of St. Thomas, Houston) "Paul Minerva of Bari and The Dominican Opposition to Copernicus"

In 1616, the De praecognoscendis temporum mutationibus of Paul Minerva of Bari, O.P., appeared. In this work, Minerva refuted the thesis of the mobility of the earth. Minerva coupled this refutation with a rejection of the views on magnetism proposed by William Gilbert in the De magnete. This paper will examine Minerva's arguments. It will also place Minerva's work in a tradition of Dominican opposition to the Copernican cosmology that stretches back to the appearance of Copernicus' revolutionary ideas in print.

Keyes, Flo (Castleton State C) "Beyond Words: The Effects of Various Final Tableaux in Performances of The Merchant of Venice"

Shakespeare's plays were meant to be performed, not read. Various meanings inherent in the text emerge when the play is staged. Although the text ends when the words stop, a performance has one final moment during which an image can be engraved on the audience's minds, reinforcing or redirecting what came before. Using The Merchant of Venice, we can see how these final tableaux shape our overall reactions to the play. These moments remind us that plays need to be seen in multiple productions to explore their interpretive possibilities. Reading the words is not enough because theatre goes beyond words.

Klawitter, George (St. Edward's U) "The Mower Poems in Myth: Damon as Orpheus"

Reading all four of the Mower poems, one is struck by their eminent variety: no two written on the same theme. Yet they share in common a wonderful musicality in the lilting arc for which Marvell had a practiced ear. Because of such lyricism, it is quite natural then that one might wonder what effect Orpheus and his musical gifts had upon the workings of the Mower poems. Aside from the Orphic luster of rhyme and meter, it becomes clear, however, that nothing less than the Orpheus story is recreated, albeit with Marvellian twists and turns.

Land, Norman E. (U of Missouri-Columbia) "Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Filippo Lippi and Apelles in a Tale by Matteo Bandello"

Although the life and works of Apelles are known to us through Pliny's Natural History, he was reborn as a literary image in fifteenth century Italy, when he became the stereotypical ancient painter. Both the events of his life and the structure of their presentation had a profound influence on the ways in which Renaissance authors perceived artists. The impact of the literary image of Apelles on the writing of an artist's life is nowhere better illustrated than in a tale by Matteo Bandello.

Laulainen-Schein, Diana (Arizona State U), " 'Shee had done good, and Never did any Hurt': Witchcraft Accusations against Cunning Folk in Early Modern Lancashire"

Cunning folk, or those who were believed to use magic to do good rather than to do harm, generally are acknowledged to be important in understanding early modern witchcraft beliefs but have not been studied. A controversial group, cunning folk are alternately argued to be more or less likely to be accused of witchcraft. It seems logical to assume that cunning folk would have handled far more cases of witchcraft than the courts, dealing with less serious cases of suspected bewitchment with countermagic or other less dramatic (and ultimately less documented) methods than those utilized by the courts. The data for Lancashire analyzed in my study supports the conclusion that a large number of cunning folk were accused of witchcraft in this county.

Le Marchand, Bérénice (San Francisco State U), "Mirrors and Blasons: Poetic Dissection and Female Corporal Fragmentation."

This paper parallels the mirroring effects found in anatomical blasons, a literary genre "fabricated" during the Renaissance in France, with the technical advancements of the manufacturing process of the looking-glass. The glass mirror during the sixteenth-century was very small and contributed to a reduced and partial vision of the body. I argue that this fragmented image reflected by the mirror is in correlation with the anatomical blasons composed by the French blasonneurs. The anatomical blasons praise the female body parts, and offer a fragmented vision of the body.

Marquis, Paul A. (St. Francis Xavier U, Nova Scotia) "Interiority and Dissent: Editorial Design in Richard Edward's Paradise of Dainty Devices"

Popular edited anthologies compiled in the Elizabethan period lend themselves to the study of interiority and its forms of dissent, as their lyrics often allude to anxieties that derive from political and religious conflicts. For example, Richard Edward's Paradise of Dainty Devices, a popular poetic anthology initially comprised of 99 poems by numerous authors, was first published in 1576 but revised and reprinted in 1577, 1578, 1580, and in 1585. The editors rearranged, omitted and added poems in these editions to strengthen the rhetorical power of the text, especially addressing the policy of religious intolerance practiced by the Elizabethan state.

Matar, Nabil (Florida Institute of Technology) "The 1589 Moroccan Delegation and The Battle of Alcazar"

The Battle of Alcazar was the first play on the English stage to present Moorish figures and to be based on a Moroccan historical episode: the battle of Kasr al-Kabir on 4 August 1578. Since all Moorish plays in London appeared soon after the visit of Moors to London – there is a kind of cause-effect relation -- this paper will argue that Peele wrote the play, ten years after the actual battle had taken place, to warn against the course of political negotiations that was taking place between England and Morocco during the visit of the Moroccan delegation in January 1589.

McClintock, Michael (McKendree C) "Authority in the Vernacular: Thomas Wilson's Rhetoric and Logic in the Reign of Edward VI"

This paper will examine Thomas Wilson's The Rule of Reason and his Art of Rhetoric, considering their original publication during the reign of Edward VI (1547-1553). By examining Wilson's examples of effective and ineffective logic and rhetoric in conjunction with contemporary statues, proclamations, and homilies, it will be argued that both works present the same conjunction of verbal and social order to be found in the official documents. The frequency with which Edwardian editions of Wilson's logic were produced suggests that Wilson' works were part of a larger attempt to use print to define a new, godly English nation.

McDowell, Sean (Seattle U) "Richard Crashaw's Reputation in the 1650s: Insights from an Imitator"

During the seventeenth century, several commentators ranked Richard Crashaw's poetry in the same class as that of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Donne. Later writers, however, beginning with Pope, began to view Crashaw's poetry as stylistically excessive, loosely structured, quintessentially baroque, and even at times grotesque. In this essay, I show how sharply these later critical reactions depart from Crashaw's initial reception by analyzing in detail the responses of a reader from the early 1650s—Edward Thimelby—who admired Crashaw's poetry enough to imitate it and then in two verse letters, comment on his effectiveness in following Crashaw's manner. I conclude that Thimelby's poems, while not published until the nineteenth century and therefore not directly influential on the responses of other seventeenth-century readers, nevertheless show us why Crashaw's earliest readers considered his poetry a "lively" art.

McIntosh, Jeri (Johns Hopkins U), "Questioning the Thomas Seymour Affair: Re-reading and Re-dating Princess Elizabeth's Correspondence with Katherine Parr"

By suggesting a new reading of some of Elizabeth's correspondence with Katherine Parr and of the state interrogations of Elizabeth's household in the wake of Thomas Seymour's arrest, this paper challenges the accepted narrative of Elizabeth's youth. This narrative has given rise to assumptions about Elizabeth's sexuality, her reluctance to marry as queen, and consequently the goal of the rhetorical strategies she later employed in her speeches to Parliament and in her literary output as queen. By restoring the letter's original date, this paper aims to contribute to a growing awareness that this accepted narrative is in need of revision.

Meyer, Shannon (U of Nebraska-Lincoln) "Wo(man)'s Best Friend: The Canine Familiar in the Lancashire Witch Trials of 1612"

The Lancashire witch trials consisted of the hanging of eleven witches and out of those eleven, five of them had canine familiars. The witches were headed by two matriarchs who controlled Pendle Forest, and the inhabitants therein, with their reputations for over sixty years before they were arrested. The witches' familiars taught them image magic and controlled many of their actions. The trials also contain very specific details of the demonic pact and allows for a deeper understanding of early modern English witchcraft.

Michalos, Constantina (Houston Baptist U) "Shakespeare's Feminized Friar"

Other than actual clergymen who, necessarily, populate his history plays, William Shakespeare makes little use of this character type. Only in Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare infuses his friar with spirituality, manifested in his empathy for Hero's plight. Moreover, the friar's understanding emerges from a feminized perspective of her circumstances; that is, he correctly interprets Hero's non-verbal behavior and responds with Christian charity instead of speaking her moral condemnation, as do the men around her. By emulating qualities of Jesus that society traditionally ascribes to women, and subverting them as Jesus and women do, Friar Francis effects Hero's resurrection.

Minamino, Hiroyuki (Independent Scholar) "Orpheus in Renaissance and the Power of Music"

The wide circulation of Ovid's Metamorphoses helped the legend of Orpheus and the musical power he is said to have possessed well known in the Renaissance. The virtuoso instrumentalists such as Pietrobono de Burzellis, Francesco da Milano, and John Dowland were equated to Orpheus by their contemporaries. This paper questions whether Pontus de Tyard's description of the musical effects Francesco da Milano induced on his audience and the drawing of a music concert scene in Francesco Marcolini's lute book of 1536 were based on an actual performance in Milan or were simply literary and iconographical imitation of Orpheus' musical power.

Mollendorf, Miranda (U of Minnesota) "The Duplicitous Mirror of Nature: Reflections on a Rustic Basin by Bernard Palissy"

When Bernard Palissy created an elaborately wrought, rustic ceramic basin, including animals and plants cast from life, he was committed to the Protestant cause. Protestant artists such as Palissy, who worked for Catholic patrons, often created objects with two different interpretations—one that catered to their patron and one that reflected their own religious beliefs. Palissy produced this hyper-naturalistic basin in accord with his Protestant aesthetics, using animal symbolism from contemporary zoological texts as religious commentary. As a religious artisan, he also wished to follow in God's footsteps as a divinely inspired creator engaged in producing a microcosmic natural world.

Morgan-Curtis, Samantha A. (Tennessee State U), 'The New Elizabethanism': Nostalgia for and Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in 21st Century Graphic Universe"

In the eight-part comic series 1602, most of the Marvel universe of super-heroes appears in an alternative vision of England. In analyzing these graphic artists' critique of 21st century United States by way of 17th century England, we will see how they open up the representation and use of Elizabeth's image in yet another medium. These artists do change the queen, but in ways that I will argue are consistent with not only Elizabeth's own words and actions but also the uses of Elizabeth's image from the Stuart reign onwards.

Moss, David Grant (Virginia Tech), "From Martyr to Warrior: Elizabeth I in the Works of Thomas Heywood"

Many of the posthumous representations of Elizabeth I might well have shocked the queen had they been produced during her lifetime. The works of Thomas Heywood (1574?–1641) provide some excellent examples of works which portray the queen in a manner not seen during her reign. Heywood's attempts to eulogize and lionize the queen range from Protestant martyr to role model for good women to Zenobia-like warrior queen. This move toward a more imposing and Amazon-like leader suggests that the late queen's image was more malleable and open for modification than that of other, earlier, monarchs.

Moylan, Timothy (Saint Louis U) " 'What You Know, You Know:' Yet Another Look at Iago's Motivation"

Shakespeares' eliding of motivation in Iago suggests that he functions for the audience as a means to relieve the anxiety created by the twin transgressions of Othello and Desdemona, characters drawn so sympathetically that they suspend normal methods of retribution. Iago's Machiavellian manipulation displaces responsibility for the violence necessary to respond to the threat to the social order. Since Iago's express motivations all dissolve under interrogation, Shakespeare may be both providing for an uncritical acceptance of Iago's function and critiquing the culture that relies on it.

Oakes, Margaret J. (Furman U) "Comus and Satan: Familiar Faces of Vice"

How to recognize evil, especially in disguise? Comus and Satan approach their victims as innocent creatures of nature, disguises based on the nature of their victims and with the nature of their particular form of vice. The Lady and Eve are initially beguiled by faces that appear part of a familiar, even domesticated, landscape. But both women have exceptional abilities to withstand the dangers about which they overtly have been warned. Comus and Satan wish to make their victims share in their sin, thus both use familiar, even expected faces, to hide their true and equally familiar faces of vice.

Odom, Glenn and Bryan Reynolds (U of California–Irvine) "Oh Other, Where Art Thou: Boundary Crossing in Titus Andronicus"

There has been a recent profusion of texts dealing with the character of Aaron in Titus Andronicus. Those texts which rely on historical accounts of "blackness" in the period seldom relate this history to a close reading of Titus itself or engage the concept of race with the sophistication the history demands. Our paper views the historical accounts of race, the critical history of Titus, and the text of Titus itself through the lens of "transversal poetics." By situating Titus in terms of its literary, scientific, and social history, we are also able to comment on the related concepts of race and nationality in the early modern period.

Olszewski, Edward J. (Case Western Reserve U) "Suggestions for the Subject of Pollaiuolo's Ten Battling Nude Men"

This papers argues that Pollaiuolo's engraving of Ten Battling Naked Men represents an episode from the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece based on Petrus Berchorius's Ovide Moralisee, which explains the function of the battling nude warriors, and Valerius Flaccus's Argonautica which identifies Jason in the battle scene. Berchorius interprets the battling warriors as just men who kill the evil in each other through moral instruction. The publication of Berchorius's Moralized Ovid in 1489 offers a date ante-quem for the print. Its audience would have been members of the Florentine wool workers' guild, the Calimala, and aspirants to the Order of the Golden Fleece.

Paul, Ryan (Texas State U-San Marcos) " 'For from thy wombe a famous Progenee,' or 'By me the Promised Seed shall all restore': Spenser, Milton, and the Rehabilitation of Eve"

This paper explores how Milton characterized Eve as well as the influence of Spenser's work on Milton's writing. Despite a tradition of Biblical exegetics that interpreted Eve as the guilty party in the fall, Milton draws upon a burgeoning field of pro-Eve writing and narrative examples of positive femininity in The Faerie Queene to lessen Eve's culpability in the Fall, shift the blame primarily to Adam, and locate within Eve the redemptive power of grace. The paper will explore narrative and thematic elements across Renaissance Biblical interpretation, Spenser's epic, and Paradise Lost to demonstrate how Milton "rehabilitates" Eve.

Pennington, Giles (Albuquerque Academy) "The Renewal of a Tradition: A Post-Tridentine Interpretation of Barocci and Caravaggio"

In the late Cinquecento two paintings exemplified a renewal the Franciscan tradition of the stigmatization as described by St. Bonaventure some thirty-nine years after the event. Federico Barocci's Stigmata, done for the Capuchin church just outside the walls of Urbino, was a significant move away from the iconography established by Giotto three centuries before. The other painting, which represents the beginning of a whole new tradition, was Caravaggio's St. Francis in Ecstasy now in Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum. Each painter apparently wanted to represent the moment of the stigmata in a more spiritual, interior and private fashion than ever before. In so doing they influenced post-Tridentine representations of the subject in profound and lasting ways.

Phillips, Joshua (U of Memphis) "Communicative Ethics, Shame, and Property in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia"

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia—Sir Philip Sidney's elaborate refiguring of pastoral romance—offers an extended meditation on a changing communicative ethos. Playing out his fascination with how meaning obtains depending on the message, the receiver(s), the linguistic context, and the social milieu in which the message is received, Sidney emphasizes shame as an internal and external guide to interpretation. The publication history of the Arcadia, however, presents a counter–narrative that suggests that affective guides such as shame cease being effective, indeed become indecorous, when the hermeneutic constituency changes.

Pinchot, Oliver (Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA) "Gold, Steel, Semiotics and Provenance: Observations on a Helmet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art"

Among medieval states, the surrendered weapons of a conquered ruler represented the victor's political supremacy and generated enormous popular prestige. Such arms often combined rich embellishment and religious texts, affirming their owner's divine support and moral authority, and reinforcing the legitimacy of his rule through public display. Under particular circumstances, the semiotic or sign value of these trophies remained fluid and became transferable from vanquished to victor. A helmet now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, traditionally that of Boabdil, the last Muslim Spanish king, makes an excellent case in point.

Razovsky, Helaine (Northwestern State U) "Cross Dressing and Morality in Dekker & Middleton's The Roaring Girl"

Much of the critical attention to Moll, the cross-dressing character in Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton's early Jacobean comedy The Roaring Girl, has focused on her character's relation to early modern gender roles and restrictions (e.g., articles by Howard, Comensoli, Baston, and Cope). This paper argues that the play offers a radical critique of the criteria used by early modern English society for judgments. Although Moll is the only character who crosses gender lines by cross dressing, many characters in the play cross moral boundaries by "dressing" their greed and other immoral desires in the clothing of moral justification.

Riehl, Anna (U of Illinois at Chicago), "Hilliard's Elizabeth: '… by falsehood to expresse truth…'"

This paper examines the history of the queen's face, "writ by Hilliard" in some representative portraits. In order to interpret the faces Hilliard gives to Elizabeth in his miniatures, this study superimposes onto them the network of criteria, values, and requirements announced in his treatise The Art of Limning. Unlike that of a conscientious restorer of paintings, my task is to figure out the additives and alterations not in order to clean them off, but to make sense of the meaning emitted by the queen's faces produced as a result of translation of flesh into paint.

Schloetzer, Martha (Case Western Reserve U) "When Two is Better Than One: Exploring The Cleveland Museum of Art's Portrait of a Couple"

It is noteworthy that Portrait of a Couple is a double portrait, a rarity in the Renaissance. The artist presumably painted the man and woman separately, while incorporating them into one canvas. Indeed, this approach may explain why the man and woman in the painting do not interact. By comparing Portrait of a Couple to individual portraits from the same period, this paper will explore why the man and woman in Portrait of a Couple elected to present themselves in the form of a double portrait. Several explanations for the reason(s) why the couple was painted together will be offered.

Schwartz, Michael (Augusta State U) "Into Silence: Raphael's Art of Transcendence"

Renaissance painters of merit, such as Raphael, often received the epithet "divino," a term of praise that is related to the transformative force in Raphael's art? This paper focuses on several of Raphael's altarpieces and their varied pictorial means of symbolizing the mystery of being in light of a Renaissance-Christian cosmology centered on the redemptive potential of the Mystical Body. While appealing to the eye of mind, Raphael's art promotes the opening of the eye of spirit, provoking the audience's direct entrance into and experience of the mystery of presence, self-transcendence, stillness, silence, radical aliveness, "releasement" (Gelassenheit)— where such concepts may fall away in the experience of an exemplary pictorial art expounding the spiritual significance of the Eucharist.

Sigfried, Brandie (Brigham Young U), "Irish Challenges to Elizabethan Sovereignty: The Case of Gráinne O'Malley"

In 1593, after years of resisting English colonial expansion on the west coast of Ireland, Gráinne Ní Mháille sailed to England and confronted Elizabeth Tudor in person. As several previous encounters between Gráinne and English officials indicate, the Irish queen was already practiced at pressing Elizabethan assertions of sovereignty into the forms of the Irish tradition of local kingship. As an epistolary parry followed up with the riposte of her visit to London, Gráinne's letter is essentially an invitation for Elizabeth to accept an Irish definition of sovereignty in return for an alliance with the Irish queen.

Silver, Susan K. (U of Memphis) "Satan and Saturn: Women, Witches, and the Appropriation of Power in Renaissance France"

In early modern France, textual accounts of the demonic often rely upon humanist constructs of femininity as a site of social subversion. My paper will address the ways in which the factual and the fictional exert a mutual influence in these discourses. The microcosmic body of the witch provides a theatre where the political ills of the macrocosm can be treated and cured. I will interrogate the structures of gender inversion that contribute to portrayals of witches, and of female bodies generally, as carriers of political disease.

Skeeters, Martha (U of Oklahoma) "The Intersection of Gender and Economy in a Sixteenth-Century English Witchcraft Case"

The accusation of Annis Heard for witchcraft in an Essex village in 1582 was motivated in part by the impact of the protoindustrial textile industry on gender and other social relations. Herd's skill as a spinner for both a clothier and a local accuser appears to have caused anxiety in other women about their own identities as housewives and caused resentment over their dependence on her as employee and friend. A male accuser's loss of sheep may have intensified resentment over her role as an independent economic agent like himself.

Skerpan-Wheeler, Elizabeth (Texas State U-San Marcos) "Milton in Revision: Liberty and Risk"

Milton's idea of liberty was intimately connected to his understanding of language. Following the principles of the classical republicans, Milton saw public speaking and writing as fulfillment of the self. Yet in his antiprelatical tracts and Areopagitica, Milton perceived that engagement with opponents might put the self at risk. However, through revising his own work, Milton came to recognize the potentially liberating power in facing an adversary: through such an encounter one may uncover to oneself what one already intuitively knows, and therefore fully to actualize oneself. This paper illustrates the argument by examining two works that Milton significantly revised.

Spira, Freyda (U of Pennsylvania) "Coming in from the Margins: Daniel Hopfer and the Power of Women"

Focusing on the etcher Augsburg Daniel Hopfer (1470-1536), this paper explores the importance of the Power of Women theme for armor decorators and printmakers during the sixteenth century in Germany. This topos embraces a variety of narratives concerning the battle of the sexes and the power of love/lust. The best known versions of this repeatable and versatile theme of exemplary figures are produced by printmakers, who work in media which are inherently multiple, and by armor decorators, whose designs in many cases are created by these same artists; Hopfer was directly involved in both types of production.

Steele, Brian D. (Texas Tech U) "Rubens's Paragone: Competing with and "as" Pygmalion."

I explore intersections among Peter Paul Rubens's love for painting, love for wife, and inscription of self by locating inscribed viewing positions, examining iconography for clues to pictorial choices, and reading paintings dated ca. 1638 against both conventional subjects and Ovid's story of Pygmalion. Andromeda intimates that Love Frees from Bonds, the Festival of Venus Verticordia prescribes generation as war's antidote, while Het Pelsken pictures "Venus alive." As Pygmalion, Rubens paints sculpture, manifests the love for his creation that Venus rewarded, and wields the goddess's vivifying power as a generative force constituting, for Rubens, the fundamental principle in love itself.

Steible, Mary (Purdue U–North Central) "Shakespeare's Roman Matrons"

Milton's idea of liberty was intimately connected to his understanding of language. Following the principles of the classical republicans, Milton saw public speaking and writing as fulfillment of the self. Yet in his antiprelatical tracts and Areopagitica, Milton perceived that engagement with opponents might put the self at risk. However, through revising his own work, Milton came to recognize the potentially liberating power in facing an adversary: through such an encounter one may uncover to oneself what one already intuitively knows, and therefore fully to actualize oneself. This paper illustrates the argument by examining two works that Milton significantly revised.

Stump, Donald (Saint Louis U), "Una in the Wilderness: Spenser and the 'Miraculous Preservation' of Princess Elizabeth"

In Book I of The Faerie Queene, the trials of Una and the Red Cross Knight are, among other things, a sustained allegory of the turbulent history of the English Reformation from the 1530s to 1559. The episode in which Una is rescued from Sansloy by Satyrane and the woodland satyrs, however, has never been adequately explained in historical terms. I would argue that, following details in John Foxe's "Miraculous Preservation of the Lady Elizabeth" in the Acts and Monuments, Spenser fashioned the episode as a representation of Elizabeth's escape from the many personal and political dangers she faced as a result of Wyatt's Rebellion.

Tallaksen, Robert J. (West Virginia U) "The Handwriting of Michelangelo: Its Transformation from Gothic to Humanistic"

Michelangelo transformed his handwriting between 1497 and 1501 during his first stay in Rome. He abandoned the Gothic mercantile hand that he had learned at school and adopted the humanistic cursive hand, the "Chancery Cursive," that had been used for record-keeping by the Apostolic Chancery since 1431. This script was developed in the fifteenth century from the ninth-century Carolingian minuscule that the Humanists had revived as a book hand. This paper shows that the new handwriting did not evolve from the old, but that Michelangelo must have decided to change it; and also explores reasons for the alteration.

Test, Edward M. (U of California at Santa Barbara), "Transcribing New World Histories in Spenser's The Faerie Queene"

Using the argument that Europeans did not "discover" America, rather they "invented" it, this paper examines how Spenser's Faerie Queene transcribes the New World into English history via Greco-Roman culture. By imagining English possession of the Americas, Spenser occludes the Amerindian cultural landscape, transforming the land, people and culture into recognizable European myth. In particular, my research focuses on 16th century herbals as I explore the appearance of New World fauna in the Garden of Adonis from Book II of the Faerie Queene.

Thomas, Jennifer (U of Florida) "Benedicta es caelorum: Ars Perfecta in Tribute to Mary"

Josquin Des Prez's six-voice Marian motet Benedicta es caelorum held, perhaps, the most prominent position of any musical work of its time. It was included in manuscripts produced throughout Europe and in prints that influenced musical reception for many subsequent decades. It was arranged for instrumental performance and served as a model for polyphonic compositions by the era's pre-eminent composers, among them Palestrina, Lassus, Morales, Mouton, and Willaert. This paper sets forth the dissemination patterns for the work and examines Josquin's compositional techniques, his response to the text, and the aspects of his work that other composers chose to emulate.

Vander Weele, Michael (Trinity Christian C) "Herbert's 'The Parson Catechizing' and The Temple as Social Practice"

Though the parson catechizing is not the same as the poet writing, Herbert's two practices spring from the same rhetorical motivation. Their relationship is more homologous than compensatory. Thus it is helpful to note that Herbert's writing about "The Parson Catechizing" shows both a larger framework and a more interactive practice than was the norm for early seventeenth-century catechism sermons. The more social and interactive character Herbert recommended for this liturgical practice may give us further insight into the social aims of his literary practice.

Vanderpool, Sinda (Baylor U) " 'More You than I': Power and Female Learning in the Early French Reform"

Marguerite de Navarre of early sixteenth-century France constructed her literary identity upon her female gender. In the crowning work of her poetry, Les Prisons (c. 1547), she referenced the work of a female mystic, asserting a "female learning" that is aligned with mystical theology. By juxtaposing male, rational theology to female insight, Marguerite asserted that the female has privy insight into things Divine. Marguerite even boldly called attention to the insufficiency of the male Christian humanists she admired most. In so doing, she denoted an honored place for female writers alongside the most learned males of her time.

Villeponteaux, Mary (U of Southern Mississippi), "To Be Jezebel: Mary, Elizabeth, and Early Modern Attitudes Towards Woman's Rule"

What does it mean for a woman to be labeled a Jezebel? The term was introduced into the English language by John Knox when he used it to describe the "mischievous Marys," Tudor and Stuart. The label Jezebel was thereafter regularly applied to Mary Tudor by Protestant exiles who fulminated against her reign, and from there developed into a noun describing an impudent, manipulative, and sexually transgressive woman. Analyzing what the biblical Jezebel represented and examining instances when the term was applied to Elizabeth I enhances our understanding of early modern attitudes towards woman's rule.

Woodall, Richardine (York U) " 'The fancy outwork nature': Cleopatra and the Fairy Tale Tradition"

In Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare uses many of the conventions of fairy tales to magically extricate Cleopatra from a very bleak position. Throughout the play numerous Roman characters have maligned and condemned Cleopatra. By the ending of the fourth act her situation is quite dire: her army is defeated; Antony is dead; and she has fled to the monument to escape capture. And then when Caesar's men capture and imprison Cleopatra in the fifth act, her fate seems sealed. Unexpectedly, however, the story becomes one of metamorphosis, as dream-visions, prophesies and the clown create an alternative world in which Roman opinion, authority and hierarchy lose their sway.