2008 Abstracts

Melissa Azar (The University of Texas at El Paso):
"Ethics and Femininity: Emmanuel Levinas, William Shakespeare, and the Other"

The theories of Emmanuel Levinas promote an ethical relationship between two people by requiring that the self respect the alterity of the other. In his definition of a genuine relationship, Levinas maintains that responsibility for the other is imperative. Using Levinas as a lens from which to view William Shakespeare's play, Twelfth Night, reveals an ideal example of ethnicity in the relationship between Viola and Olivia. Shakespeare's hero, Viola, uses disguise to not only reveal the nature of a genuine relationship, but also to "unmask" Olivia's true character, displaying responsibility for the other as well as altruism through detachment from the self.

Christopher Baker (Armstrong Atlantic State University):
"Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV and Jeremiah"

The last line of Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV ("Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me") is a reworking of Jeremiah 20:7 ("O Lord, thou has deceived me . . . ). The Hebrew verb represented by "deceived" in the KJV is actually closer to "seduced" or "raped." Whereas Jeremiah complains of this seeming abuse by God, Donne's speaker seeks such a sexual encounter with Yahweh (not unknown elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible) to complete the eradication of his "bethrothal" to sin. The poem's speaker neither transgenders himself as female nor desires a personal sexual thrill but rather invites a paradoxical "violation" which aligns him with Jeremiah's biblical precedent.

Joyce L. S. Beck (Texas Christian University):
"MYSTIC DISCOURSES OF HAGIA SOPHIA : DONNE'S VERSE EPISTLES AS WISDOM LITERATURE"

John Donne's verse epistles addressed to noble ladies have been linked to poetic traditions of friendship, Petrarchan love convention, Protestant praise of the image of God in individual women, and, most recently, to a 'metaphysics' of contingent poet and patron social relations. A comment in Herbert J. C. Grierson's Introduction suggests, though, that these verse letters may also belong to another tradition—that of Renaissance Wisdom literature, and with it praise of Hagia Sophia or Sapientia Dei. As mystery literature, the verse epistles, like the Anniversaries, may belong to the Greek Platonic, Hebraic Scriptural, and medieval theological tradition of Wisdom, as it was rediscovered and amplified in the Renaissance.

Charles Beem (University of North Carolina at Pembroke):
"The Pastimes of George Ferrers: Reconstructing the Life and Career of a Tudor Renaissance Gentleman"

George Ferrers (1510- 1579), was the 'lord of misrule,' over the final two Christmas courts of Edward VI, devising edifying yet spectacular entertainments. Ferrers in fact enjoyed a wide-ranging career as a lawyer, historian, poet, soldier, landlord, and entertainer extraordinaire, enjoying the favor and patronage of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I. Ferrer's relationship with Elizabeth, however, is much more obscure; accusing her and John Dee of practicing witchcraft during Mary's reign, and later becoming embroiled in the Ridolfi plot of 1571. Amazingly, Ferrers appears to have successfully negotiated his way through such an historical land mine, and died comfortably in his bed in 1579. His life story seems to identify him as a quintessential Renaissance man. This paper will begin and end with a description of Elizabeth's arrival at Kenilworth in 1575, in which she engages in a conversation with the "lady of the lake," whose oration was written by none other than George Ferrers.

Greg Bentley (Mississippi State Univeristy):
"'What fury rais'd thee up?': Justice, Gender, and the Ideology of Revenge in John Webster's The White Devil"

By calling upon the Furies, each character in John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi," rather than enact justice, desires to exact retribution or revenge. Most specifically, when the male characters, especially Brachiano, Francisco, and Flamineo, experience a figurative castration, they try to restore their sense of lost masculinity by resorting to the concept of the Furies. In turn, when the female characters—Cornelia, Isabella, Vittoria, and Zanche—try to assert the phallus, they are not only accused of behaving like a Fury, but they are also ideologically and physically crushed by the homo-social order for trying to inhabit the privileged signifier. Although at first all four women try to resist the power of the homo-social order, they ultimately either prop up or become excutors of the very ideological order that marginalizes, dehumanizes, and even annihlates them.

David Bergeron (University of Kansas):
"A Murdered Playwright, a Presumptuous Actor, and The Martyred Soldier "

Henry Shirley's only surviving play was published in 1638, although acted many years earlier. Shirley, in fact, had been murdered in 1627. My interest in this text centers on its "paratextual" apparatus. John Kirke, the actor-playwright, signs the epistle dedicatory to Sir Kenelm Digby and probably also writes the address to the reader. This dramatic text has the distinction of being the only such text to have such paratexts writen by an actor since the 1623 Shakespeare Folio. I focus on these documents in order to discern their function in Shirley's text.

Jacob Blevins (McNeese State University):
"Marvell’s Two Gardens: Re-Writing the Roman Hortus"

Andrew Marvell offers a unique look into the process of classical appropriation and the subsequent attempt at redefining the poet as a relevant, timely, and significant figure for his own ideological space. The interaction, or rather evolution, of Marvell's "twin" poems, "Hortus" and "The Garden," illustrates a method of imitation and influence that is indicative of the psychological processes of identity formation that were central to humanism and that were the cause of conflict and crisis in the assimilation of the classical and Christian in Renaissance texts. Marvell's "Hortus" represents a very simple form of appropriation; in Greene's terms the poem might be called eclectic or sacramental. Even though the poem is not a direct imitation of a specific classical source, it is an attempt at re-creating a classical mode, a classical space, with no identification in the present—even in the actual language used. For the effective humanist writer, this kind of total reliance on tradition is unacceptable; it devalues the relevance of the writer's current context. In "The Garden," Marvell attempts to "re-write" the classical space that dominates "Hortus," but he must do it in a way that both fixes his work in a tradition and exposes what that tradition lacks. Marvell's garden poems contain the fissures and ideological repositioning that is characteristic of humanism's classical crisis.

Doot Bokelman (Nazareth College):
"Franciscan Virtues and Islamic Vices in Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Martyrdom"

Around 1326, Lorenzetti created a fresco San Francesco in Siena's Chapter Hall recounting the martyrdom of Franciscan monks beheaded by command of a sultan. The roof of the sultan's loggia has seven statuettes. Based on traditional iconography I will identity the three figures on the left gable as Cardinal Virtues and those on the right gable as pagan figures. Having revealed their names, I will propose a plausible identity for the now covered central figure, who is compositionally higher than the other six. Finally, I will show that these seven figures are relevant to this particular scene and to the beliefs and practices of the Franciscan monks.

Gary Bouchard (Saint Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire):
"Known To Him At Last': A Reconsideration of Serena's Silent Surrender in Book VI of Spenser's Faerie Queene"

"Known to Him at Last": Reconsidering Serena's Silent Surrender in Book VI of The Faerie Queene.

Readers of Book VI of Spenser's Faerie Queene have long regarded this story as one more unfinished Spenserian plot lapse. This paper suggests that Spenser never returns to this story because it is already finished, and its conclusion is not dissolute separation and silence, but sexual union. Recognizing this should prompt readers to contemplate the provocative suggestiveness of Serena's initial and enduring wound and behold in her journey a more provocative sequence of events than has been acknowledged.

Erin Breaux (Louisiana State University):
"Lovers and Liars in Eden: The Influence of Song of Songs on Paradise Lost"

For centuries, critics have found problematic not only Milton’s depiction of sexuality, but its very presence in pre-lapsarian Eden. Over the last century of Milton studies, scholars have explored Milton’s idea of marriage, Satan’s rhetoric, and Milton’s appropriation of classical, contemporary, and Biblical genres. Recent critics have also become interested in the role of education within Paradise Lost. Yet no one has investigated how and why these issues intersect through Milton’s use of the Song of Songs in his epic poem. This paper considers how Milton uses structural and thematic elements of the Song of Songs in key moments between Adam, Eve, and Satan in Books IV and V. By transforming well-known material into pedagogical poetry, Milton can represent spiritual sex and intimate conversation, and also distinguish between godly lovers and bad lovers.

Robert Bucholz (Loyola University, Chicago):
"The Stomach of a Queen or Size matters: Gender, Body Image and the Historical Reputation of Queen Anne"

The year 2002 marked the 300th anniversary of the accession of Queen Anne to the thrones of England Scotland and Ireland (reigned 1702-14). Unlike the 400th anniversary of Elizabeth I's death in 2003, Anne's year was almost universally ignored, even by the scholarly world. This happened despite a reign that was in some ways more impressive than Elizabeth's. In just twelve years on the British throne, Anne defeated the Sun King, Louis XIV, in the War of the Spanish Succession; she acquired Gibralter, St. Kitts, Newfoundland and valuable trading rights by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713); established the Union with Scotland; presided over an unprecedented expansion in British wealth; as well as a cultural explosion--this was the age of Newton, Wren, Handel, Swift, Defoe, etc.--every bit the equal of that of her Tudor predecessor.
     And yet, Anne's historical reputation is non-existent with the general public, and generally pretty low among practicing historians. One reason for Anne's poor posthumous reputation is that her personality--shy, quiet, thrifty, loyal to her marriage--tends to excite neither Hollywood screen-writers nor feminist historians looking for early rebels against the dominant patriarchy. Another reason for Anne's relative obscurity may be that she was fat. This paper seeks to explore the significance of Anne's body and its perception to her rule and her reputation both in her lifetime and subsequently. It argues that even professional historians have largely failed to view Anne's size independently of the sort of age-old stereotypes under which people of size labor even to the present day. This paper asks why this should be so; what it says about the historical profession; and what historians ought to do about it. Along the way, the paper offers a preliminary view of how fatness was constructed in the early modern period, one which takes on the myth that size prejudice is relatively recent in the West.

Liana Cheney (UMASS Lowell):
"Giorgio Vasari's 'Madonna of the Rosary'"

In 1572, Giorgio Vasari depicts the "Madonna of the Rosary" for the private chapel of the Capponi family in the church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. In the "Ricordanze", Vasari explains the commission as well as documenting the assistance of Jacopo Zucchi in the completion of the painting. The inclusion of the mysteries in roundels reveals the influence of Lorenzo Lotto's "Madonna of the Rosary" of 1539 at Cingoli in Vasari's composition. The discussion of this paper focuses on the symbolism of Vasari's painting as a reflection of the Tridentine Reform in Florence.

Ashley Combest (University of Tennessee, Knoxville):
"Retelling Through Revenge: Origin, Reproduction, and the Transmission of History in Hamlet"

In reconsideration of Benjamin's thesis concerning the relation between origin and reproduction, this paper examines the structure of revenge in Hamlet as a traumatic reversal of Benjamin's terms, one in which reproduction precedes originality. Rather than diminishing the "aura" of an original through reproduction, in Hamlet origins must be authenticated by repetition, for the shape of revenge is such that a prior offense must be re-presented in order to justify the violence of retribution. Hamlet's efforts at revenge can be seen as an attempt to integrate origin into a play that is cut off from its originating cause, since his father's murder occurs outside the space and time of the play. This activity, though traumatic, is no less imaginative in addressing a fundamental problem of causality in Hamlet.

Megan Conway (Louisiana State University - Shreveport):
"Interpretations of the Nastagio tale: Boccaccio, Botticelli and Jeanne Flore"

Both disturbing and fascinating, the story of Nastagio (Day 5, Story 8) is an unforgettable addition to Boccaccio's Decameron. Dense with supernatural action and vivid imagery, it is not surprising that the tale should later become the subject of a four-panel work by Botticelli, and subsequently retold by Jeanne Flore in story collection of the early French Renaissance. While the subject matter remains basically the same, both Botticelli and Flore tamper significantly with the details of Boccaccio's narrative. I will explore the paintings and written versions of the Nastagio tale and examine how these different interpretations reveal the authors' differing intentions and their social perspectives.

David Cormier (Saint Louis University):
"The Rhetoric of “the Reader” and “the Self” in John Milton’s "An Apology Against a Pamphlet." "

This essay examines John Milton's final antiprelatical tract, An Apology Against a Pamphlet , from the perspective of rhetoric, focusing in on his recognition of the role the Reader is playing in the debate between Joseph Hall, SMECTYMNUUS and Milton's own writing. More specifically, it explores the implications of a reader centered text which lays open the writer's self-identity in an early modern pamphlet war. What could this indicate in terms of empowerment for the reader at the point of the transition from the Early Modern period to the Modern? Milton was criticized in his own time for his openness and the overt role his private life played in his public arguments, how does this shed light on Milton conception of self hood and readership in a new era?

Eric De Barros (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign):
"'Yet are they but our schools of lunatics': Madness, Education, and Bodily Discretion in The Changeling"

In this study, I re-evaluate Carol Neely's argument in "Hot Blood: Estranging Mediterranean Bodies in Early Modern Medical and Dramatic Texts" that medical discourses provided Middleton and Rowley the resources to construct the bodies of Spanish aristocratic women as racially distinct from the bodies of English middling-sort women in The Changeling. I argue, instead, that the bodies of the women representative of this contrast in the play— respectively, Beatrice-Joanna and Isabella— are equally hot and equally Spanish; and I consider the way that both plots, through structural-institutional internalization, explore how specific spatio-temporal structures succeed or fail to discipline the most defective of bodies.

Marina Della Putta Johnston (University of Pennsylvania):
"Gaspara Stampa's Poetic Double Portrait"

My paper presents a reading of Gaspara Stampa's sonnets 55 and 56 on a double portrait of her lover Collaltino da Collalto and herself. I look at how Stampa appropriates Petrarch's model in the sonnets on Simone Martini's portrait of Laura and the Petrarchist tradition of poems on paintings and changes it to create a strikingly original poetic dyptich. Unlike traditional Petrarchists writing on existing paintings, in these two sonnets, Gaspara Stampa lays out the program for a work she is commissioning to artists working in a variety of media that suggests a keener awareness of the debate on art and of artistic practices than evident in most Petrarchist poems on portraits.

Phillip J. Donnelly (Baylor University):
"The Unity of Book 7 in the 1667 Paradise Lost"

Despite attempts to explain why Milton later divided Book 7 of the 1667 Paradise Lost, less attention has been given to his reasons for imagining Book 7 as a unity in the first place. My argument first explains how the ten-book arrangement of the 1667 Paradise Lost reveals a direct engagement with the sequence of topics in Plato's Republic. I then consider how Book 7 of the 1667 Paradise Lost addresses the corresponding book of the Republic. Milton places a discussion of astronomy in the midst of a dilated paraphrase of Genesis 1 & 2 specifically, I argue, in order to foreground how those biblical narratives constitute an alternative to Plato's corresponding account of the best education for rulers.

Landis Duffett (Missouri State University):
"In the Battle for Hamlet's Soul, Everyone is a Loser: The Futility of Doctrinal Attributions in Recent Theological Debate over Shakespeare's Hamlet"

In recent years, scores of scholars have intervened in a now prolific academic debate over where best to pin down the doctrinal affinities of Shakespeare's play Hamlet. I argue that the centrality to Hamlet of the themes of linguistic indeterminacy and epistemological paralysis render any attribution of "Protestant" or "Catholic" or even "Christian" absurd. I use a deconstructive method to explore how critics who argue for the attribution of a doctrinal position to Hamlet do so at the expense of an appreciation of the openness and ambiguity in the play. Ultimately, the play's themes of epistemological uncertainty, linguistic indeterminacy, and the gap between moral conscience and action are most fruitfully explored not in a context of Christian theology but rather of modern Western philosophy.

Yael Even (University of Missouri-St. Louis):
"In the Eye of the Florentine Beholder (Part II)"

The present paper examines audiences' responses to public art in Medicean Florence. It evaluates the differences between the attitudes of patricians and plebeians not only to religious images but also to those featuring so-called pagan themes. One of the purposes of this research is to analyze the influence that mythological scenes had on so-called ordinary Florentines.
My research thus far reveals that most commoners participated in most outdoors pageants as spectators and had access to innovative images (some of which have been considered so highly that they are still extant). I have also found out that the slightly educated citizens learned the meaning of outdoor statues and paintings by hearsay.

Vitaliy Eyber (University of California, Berkeley):
"Marvell's Monument to Wit: How to Read "Upon Appleton House""

The proposed paper is a preview, or a nutshell version of the dissertation entitled "'Upon Appleton House': An Analytical Commentary." The underlying premise of the project—a line-by-line commentary on the poem—is the recognition of Marvell's great poem as deserving a particularly prominent place in the Renaissance literary canon: I suggest that "Upon Appleton House" is the most aesthetically complex long poem of the seventeenth century, and, line-for-line, quite possibly the most sustained, most spectacular production of wit in English.

Joan Faust (Southeastern Louisiana University):
"Andrew Marvell's "The Garden": Seedbed of Art"

Though Marvell's "The Garden" celebrates prelapsarian solitude, it deviates from the traditional praise of rural retreat and solitude: most of these poems include romantic love in the experience; Marvell's speaker instead ends on praise of life before women. There's the critical rub, prompting accusations of "misogyny," "homosexuality," and even "androgyny" in the speaker's stance. However, Marvell's "Garden" needs no female presence because the subject of the poem is a solipsistic one that requires solitude: the creation of art itself. Marvell describes the process of artistic creation by annihilating the boundaries between literary, visual, and horticultural art. Through his playful literalizing of metaphor, his enactment of visual art theory, and his acknowledgment of seventeenth-century horticultural practices, Marvell's rambler through "The Garden" enacts the boundless role of "artist."

William C. Ferleman (Oklahoma State University):
"Seduction Through Simulation: Milton's Excoriation of Effeminate Popery"

The rather sustained extent to which Milton associates Charles and his monarchy with effeminacy and womanliness typically goes unnoticed or unstated in Milton scholarship. Indeed, for Milton and many other independent-minded Protestant religionists, there was not a major logical leap to be made between Papists, Popery, or the detrimental — and Satanic — institution of Roman Catholicism and "bad women," or women-rule in the main. Many Protestant factions held the belief that the Roman Catholic Church was effeminate in nature and therefore also tyrannical and despotic: Milton, too, identifies women-rule as primarily tyrannical and therefore Catholic-like.

John Ford (Delta State University):
"Recounting Our Dreams: Re-imagining Shakespeare in Christine Edzard’s The Children’s Midsummer Night’s Dream"

An adaptation of a Shakespeare play often employs strategies that simultaneously recover and resist Shakespeare's version, presenting itself, on the one hand, as an adaptation of an original Shakespearean work and, on the other, as an original work daring to use Shakespeare's play as source. Implicit, or explicit, in these adaptations, is a declaration of independence from a Shakespearean progenitor that paradoxically reaffirms a Shakespearean allegiance. What could be more Shakespearean than the audacious boast of an upstart crow? Or, in the case of Christine Edzard, little eyases that cry out on the top of question? Indeed, Christine Edzard's The Children's Midsummer Night's Dream offers interesting variations of those two strategies, marked by bold redefinitions of space and of audience collaboration.

Bethany Getz (Baylor University):
"Touches of sweet harmony': Music and Social Harmony in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice"

Lorenzo's dialogue on the music of the spheres that begins Act 5 of Merchant of Venice helps the audience understand how this troubling play ends comically. Due to the monophonic nature of harmony in the theory of the music of the spheres, Lorenzo defines "harmony" as a quality arising from correct ratios and proportions. This theory of harmony is applied to the human soul, epistemology, and, finally, relationships between people. By mirroring cosmic harmony, music not only restores the human soul to harmony, but also plays an important role in how humans know and assign value and thus live harmoniously with one another.

Evan Getz (Baylor University):
"Lucy Hutchinson and Margaret Cavendish: Poetics of the Sublime and the Beautiful"

David Norbrook and Jonathan Goldberg offer competing narratives of the sublime to account for Lucy Hutchinson's poetics and clarify her attitude toward Lucretian atomism; yet these accounts better suit the poetry of royalist Margaret Cavendish, Hutchinson's counterpart. The accounts of natural causation in both poets demonstrate that Hutchinson makes the beautiful and not the sublime her poetic aim. Cavendish describes natural causes in terms of mechanical necessity and the sublime forces of motion, introducing a dialectical tension between fixed and open physical principles. Hutchinson takes up Cavendish's themes of motion, form, and providence to show that true poetry participates in the Beauty that reveals the glory of the Creator.

Elizabeth Gilly (Independent Scholar):
"Raphael's Unione and the Influence of Leonardo"

Raphael's application methodology, dubbed unione by art historians because of its compositional tonal unity, began to shift soon after his arrival in Rome at the close of 1508. It is marked historically through the writings of Vasari and visually in recent technical examinations by a change in his predisposition towards Perugino, favoring instead the techniques of Leonardo. Examinations have revealed that his Alba Madonna ca 1509-11 typifies a key moment in this transition and characterizes Raphael's vital yet underestimated contribution to the intellectual understanding of colore in the Cinquecento. More importantly, it strongly suggests Raphael's intention of unione as an advance of Leonardo's sfumato.

Linda Gottlieb (Independent Scholar):
"Flemish Women and the State of the Art; How the Female Touch Molded the Brueghel Legacy"

The Brueghel family dominated art, print publishing and the international copper trade during the 1600's in the Low Countries. Led by Mayken Verhulst, they worked in Antwerp amidst political and social change. The Brueghel's unique expertise created a trend for their generation, bridging the technical refinement of Flemish primitive art and the expansive imagination seen later in the work of Rubens and his followers.
Verhulst's keen sense of marketing and publishing prints established financial security for future generations of Brueghels.

Richard Hardin (Univ. of Kansas):
"The Pleasures of Amphitruo on the English Stage"

Imitators of Plautus's Amphitruo delight in the unusual dramatic variety of the plot: farcical, physical comedy; romantic and high comedy in Amphitruo & Alcumena; the moment of wonder when Alcumena gives birth to both Jupiter's and Amphitruo's sons and Jupiter speaks in an explosion of thunder and lightning. The associations with Shakespeare's late romances and other English Renaissance comedies are discussed.

Brian Harries (Universtiy of Kansas):
"The Problematic Permeability of Poetry and History in Sidney’s Defence"

In his Defence of Poesie, Philip Sidney makes a clear division between the genres of poetry and history. His view of history as a project of storytelling and myth making is surprisingly complex and modern. Although he initially presents a rigid separation of historical representation and artistic creation, his further discussion blurs the lines between the two in many areas. Sidney creates a continuum between pure poetry and pure history that gives us a framework for contextualizing the sixteenth-century understanding of numerous writings. Sidney's discussions of the purpose for poetry and the appropriate uses for historical content can help us understand how Early Modern audiences would have perceived such writings.

Nancy Hayes (St. Ambrose University):
"The Relative Rhetorical Power of Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare's Henry VI Part Three and Richard III"

I will examine the rhetorical effectiveness of the character of Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard III, particularly as she debates with King Edward IV and King Richard III in efforts to ensure the well-being of her children. Her rhetorical abilities improve as her moral obligation becomes clear and she learns from her female peers how to sharpen her verbal tools, her weapons. This virtuous, intelligent, and brave portrayal of a historical personage who was evidently not such a positive figure must have been calculated by Shakespeare to endear her to his audience, of which his own queen was a part. I surmise that the theme of queenly power held dramatic and political interest for the playwright.

Michael L. Hays (Independent Scholar):
"Is Renaissance Shakespeare Modern or Medieval?"

My paper addresses a simple question: whether Shakespeare is "modern" or "medieval." Looming large in my answer is the literature characteristically medieval, predominant in centuries before Shakespeare's birth and throughout his lifetime, English chivalric romance.

Romance pervades his canon. Hybrid romances emphasizing emotions and manners influence early comedies and late romances. Chivalric romances stressing action and issues (succession, legitimacy, governance) influence histories and non-Roman tragedies.

Regarding Shakespeare as medieval makes historical and critical sense, and serves pedagogical purposes. Making him "other," we can avoid making him our contemporary and help students appreciate what is different from us.

Thomas Herron (East Carolina University):
"The New English 'Lycidas': Milton's Irish Sources and Inspiration"

Little if anything has been published regarding the Irish context and sources of Milton's "Lycidas." The fatal journey of its subject Edward King on route to Ireland resonates with symbolic importance from a "New English" point of view. Major recognized sources of the poem are Lodowick Bryskett's "Pastorall Aeglogue" and Edmund Spenser's "Colin Clouts Come Home Againe": Milton picks up the pastoral-heroic mantle cast off by Spenser and Bryskett in Ireland and so shapes his own poetic persona as their rightful heir in verse and religion. Coincidences between the publication date of the poem (1638) and the political policy of Lord Deputy of Ireland Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, will also be explored.

Caroline Hillard (Washington University in St. Louis):
"Antique Guises: Monuments and Method in Florentine Historiography"

Few monuments are as prominent in Florentine historiography as Florence's Baptistery, long believed to be a relic of the city's Roman past. In the 1540s, Florentine scholars Giambattista Gelli and Pierfrancesco Giambullari reinvented the structure's history, claiming that it was built from Etruscan spoils. With the Baptistery as a case study, I explore how Florentine authors manipulated monuments to promote their visions of Florentine history during the reign of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici (1537-1574). As I show, the conception of antiquities depended less on archaeological inquiry than on an agenda of self-promotion. Ironically, this agenda also prompted sophisticated formal analyses, which occasionally resulted in genuine discovery.

Tim Moylan (Saint Louis University): "Norwich, Elizabeth and the Rhetoric of Welcome"

In 1578, Norwich found itself staring down the barrel of the queen on progress. Elizabeth was coming. As she crossed East Anglia, her entourage fanned out across the countryside, serving notice that the Protestant watchdog did not sleep. For many in Norwich, the queen came with welcome reinforcements in the battle against Catholics and their sympathizers, and they seized the opportunity to display their zeal. At the same time, they were keenly aware that Elizabeth was courting Francis, the Duke of Anjou, a Catholic and a Frenchman. This posed a political and aesthetic challenge for the Norwich party planners. That the queen spoke favorably of Norwich on her departure suggests that they were successful, though a close look at what they did, whom they employed, and how they framed their rhetoric indicates just how difficult it was to negotiate an encounter with Elizabeth.

Carlton Hughes (Univ. of South Carolina):
"A Serpent in the Garden: Leonardo's Stage Set for the Festa del Paradiso"

On January 13, 1491, a brilliant "Paradiso" spectacle, manned by performers perched in a stage set designed by Leonardo, and witnessed by 200 dignitaries, culminated a festa at the Sforza court honoring Duchess Isabella. But why had the scheming Lodovico Sforza, de facto ruler of Milan, arranged that celebration praising his nephew Duke Giangaleazzo's wife? Analysis suggests that the imagery of Leonardo's apparato covertly played on the rumors about the ducal couple's unconsummated marriage. By commissioning a spectacle with imagery construing Isabella as the ideal Virgin/Venus/Eve, Lodovico tacitly, but memorably and publicly, pinned the onus of conjugal failure squarely on the dominated Duke.

Denna Iammarino (Marquette University):
"Spenser’s Poetic Evolution: Interpreting the World of Colin Clout "

In between installments of his epic and twelve years after the publication of his first pastoral, Spenser returns to the pastoral world and his pastoral persona in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (CCHA). This study argues that Spenser produces CCHA in order to overtly introduce and strengthen an interpretative model he begins to erect in the early books of the FQ. This model is based on several tenets of Augustine's exegetical model and stresses questioning as a form of interpretative development. The shepherds in CCHA represent this sort of questioning reader. Moreover, they exhibit an interpretative evolution from praising peers in The Shepheardes Calender to a poetically aware and critically conscious audience in CCHA.

Kimberly Ivancovich (Pennsylvania State University):
"Titian's Caricature of the Laocoön: The Multiplicity of Play"

The Caricature of the Laocoˆn,a woodcut designed by Titian from approximately 1545, represents the famous sculptural group as apes instead of humans. Despite the theories proposed to explain this unique image, without documentation, a definitive interpretation has yet to be developed. The difficulty, I propose, is that the image is meant to be "read" on several levels, all of which involve an element of play. The image becomes both a parody and critique of artistic and printmaking processes while simultaneously commenting upon the cultural response to the famous sculptural group.

Mark Jones (Trinity Christian College):
"Green indeed is the colour of lovers': Love and Landscape in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost"

For the development of national imagining during the English Renaissance there is perhaps no metaphor more fitting than that of the Elizabethan garden. And there is no Shakespearean play more replete with garden imagery than Love's Labour's Lost, in which a garden of the academy turns out to be situated within a garden of love, which, in turn, is nestled within a garden of tragedy. Ultimately, however, the play's setting discloses itself as a terrain similar to the green spaces of the history plays. Thus the garden imagery in the play facilitates national imagining and projects a harmonious commonwealth.

Rachel Kapelle (Brandeis University):
"Predicting Elizabeth: Prophecy on Progress"

Prophecies feature in many extant published accounts of the entertainments Elizabeth witnessed at country houses. Elizabeth repeatedly learned that prophets had foreseen her arrival. The popularity of such devices indicates that they played an important role in the dynamic of a royal visit. Scholars have not, however, investigated them as a group. My paper explores the appeal of these devices for both Elizabeth and her hosts. Prophecy was useful because of the relationship it created between the queen and a locale. Prophecy—in an almost ritualistic fashion—incorporated the queen into a space and claimed that she ensured the well being of that space. My study indicates that we need to include prophecy in the list of elements Elizabeth's courtiers drew out of the romance grab-bag to mediate their interactions with the queen.

Susan Kendrick (Emporia State University):
". . . in like causes are effects alike: Incest, Justice, and Gender in Ford's "'Tis Pity She's a Whore""

In John Ford's revenge tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Giovanni defies the laws of Heaven to pursue his incestuous desires for his sister Annabella. While Giovanni believes that life, love, and justice belong to the man whose determination makes him the strongest, Annabella eventually accepts the will of Heaven and repents their affair. Ford's play exemplifies the 17th-century double standard in matters both mortal and spiritual. The play presents a variety of sinful characters, but at the end, the Cardinal considers Annabella's wavering and repentant character the most heinous and eulogizes her: "Of one so young, so rich in Nature's store, / Who could not say, 'Tis Pity she's a whore?" Within the Cardinal's gendered perception of Annabella's sin lurks Ford's condemnation of Catholicism. The play is illuminated by changing images of fire and none of Ford's characters emerge unscathed. Ford's play reveals a society where blasphemy replaces faith, adultery overcomes marital vows, and justice depends on political expediency. A fascinating study in the breaking down of absolutes, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore presents a society, disordered and damned, for which there is no resolution, and no justice.

Marlene Kerrigan (Portland State University):
"Religious iconography and comments on art in Bruegel's prints"

In the decade before his move from Antwerp to Brussels (1563), Bruegel produced a series of prints that depicted the . Their secularized subject matter reflects the state of religious art that was then intermittently discussed at the Council of Trent. In these secularized prints, Bruegel included subtle references to Catholicism, placed into shadows and crowded scenes. When he includes the image of painters, they are hiding their subject matter or a demon looks over the artist's shoulder. Based on visual and historical evidence, scant information on Bruegel's life, and decisions made at the Council of Trent, it is proposed that Bruegel was a Catholic artist who illustrates the difficulties of the post-Reformation period.

George Klawitter (St. Edward's University):
"Andrew Marvell's "The Garden": Tone and Meaning"

Most readers of Andrew Marvell's "The Garden" are charmed by it. They delight in its narrator as he wanders around his "hortus conclusus," stumbling on melons and happy to be alone, devoid of female company. But when it comes to finally understand the poem, readers scratch their heads and offer various meanings, some of them wide of the mark.
Although we tend to focus on Marvell as a great member of parliament who rose to some prominence under the Puritans and remained a passionate and somewhat liberal voice in the Restoration assembly, we forget that the man may not have been born fully mature into his republican leanings but only gradually embraced what a firebrand like Milton would have thrown himself into sight seen. If truth be told, Marvell was a circumspect politician, and his attitude on radical groups would have been more way than warmly receptive.

Jonathan P. Lamb (The University of Texas at Austin):
"The Merchant of Venice and Francis Bacon's New Science"

Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice abounds with the language and epistemology of "if . . . then . . ." to the extent that from its language to its action, and from its character construction to its dramatic structure, the play relies on "if . . . then . . ." for its primary mode of operation. This essay investigates the significance of that operation, arguing that in it we see Shakespeare's affirmatory responsiveness to the so-called "New Science" that would eventually produce the scientific method and form the basis of modern science. The "if . . . then . . ." of Merchant, I want to demonstrate, engages directly with Francis Bacon's 1597 Essayes, which teem with as much "if . . . then . . ." language and logic as does Merchant and which appeared at the moment of Merchant's composition.

Mary Ellen Lamb (Southern Illinois University at Carbondale):
"Moonlit Queens in Jonson’s Oberon, The Fairy Prince and the Perils of Nostalgia for Queen Elizabeth"

The iconography of Jonson's masque, Oberon, The Fairy Prince, evokes Queen Elizabeth as a fairy queen of a moonlit realm. As the monarch of this feminized space, Queen Elizabeth takes her place as a maternal figure not only to Prince Henry, but to King James, whose letters late in her reign referred to her as his mother. If Prince Henry's movement from this space stages his simultaneous leave-taking as well as the continued influence of his mother Queen Anne, then Queen Elizabeth is represented as an equally ambivalent influence on King James. Hers is the influence that he outgrew; hers is the influence that will never entirely be left behind. The continued if muted dominion of Old Queens: that is both the threat and the promise of this masque, in which the power of nostalgia wanes and grows like the moon itself.

Huey-ling Lee (National Chi Nan University, Department of Foreign Languages & Literature):
"Getting Lost in the Wood: The Pursuit of Privacy in Andrew Marvell's 'Upon Appleton House' and Aemilia Lanyer's 'The Description of Cookham'"

If England was indeed "the birth place of privacy," it was inseparable from the rise of private property. Comparing Andrew Marvell's "Upon Appleton House" and Aemilia Lanyer's "The Description of Cookham," this paper will explore the different ways in which the ambivalent meanings of woodlands are exploited to construct an alternative kind of privacy which is defined not by property relations, but by constant movements and deviations.

Although there was the growing desire for privacy in early modern England, such privacy often pertained only to the (often male) householder. However, as my reading of the two poem suggests, even when certain forms of privacy are not available within the country house, it is still possible to resort to alternatives elsewhere in which surveillance and invasion are less likely to occur. Since one is a mere visitor at Cooke-ham, and the other a dependant at Appleton, neither Lanyer's countess nor Marvell's tutor may expect any privacy within the manors. Both poems locate the alternative space in the woodland, but such a space given its association with wilderness and danger is not without its ambiguities. Often identified as the haven of the poor and the deviant, it also threatens to undermine the reputation of those who may resort to such a place for self-examination and private reverie.

In order to recuperate the space from such negative implications, the two poems situate the characters' relationships with the fauna and flora in the estates in such a way that they no longer construe privacy as a state of physical solitude, but as a dimension of certain social practices in an alternative social environment that give both the right to be left alone. Despite their common pursuit of privacy, the two characters' journey to the wood leads to different ends. Whereas for Marvell's tutor the brief moment of privacy is to escape the overwhelming demand of the world and ultimately to empower him to confront it as an authority of his own, Lanyer defines privacy as a class privilege that alienates her countess from those lower beings around her, but legitimizes her entrance into a spiritual elite circle that normally excludes women.

J. B. Lethbridge (East Carolina University -- Tuebingen University):
"Ireland and New English in The Faerie Queene"

Spenser's use of Irish politics in The Faerie Queene is allegorical on the local level, but this allegory is itself allegorical on the grander level of the moral and theological allegories directed not locally, but to all time.

Sarah Lockhart (Independent Scholar):
"The Hypocrisy of Christians in The Merchant of Venice"

This paper will examine William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and will argue that the play is unfairly labeled anti-Semitic. This label is a direct result of the portrayal of the Jewish character, Shylock, within the play. However, a careful analysis of the play reveals that Shakespeare portrays his Christian characters as unflatteringly as Shylock and at times worse than Shylock, albeit they do not suffer the harsh fate of Shylock. This paper will examine the behaviors of Antonio, Solanio, Gratiano, the Duke, and lastly Portia through their interactions with Shylock. Through this examination this paper will illustrate the Christian characters hypocrisy and will discuss Shakespeare's reasoning for this portrayal.

Julia Logan-Bourbois (Autry National Center):
"Creating A Spotless Reputation: The chivalric hero as artistic and military ideal"

At the convergence of art and military history, the central figure of chivalric epics long served as an ideal in Spanish culture. The military successes of early Spain offered the tantalizing opportunity for the quasi-historical epics to ring true to participants. Early chivalric texts promoted and dispersed ideals of masculinity in Spanish society through the lens of quasi-historical events. Later publications promoted a mythic connection to a past that was nostalgic in its judgments and standards that affected the audience. This presentation will explore the use of the isolated yet gallant figure as an artistic and military model during the Spanish Renaissance.

Ellen Longsworth (Merrimack College):
"The Baltimore "Saint John, Virgin, and Mary Magdalene": Probable Relationships of Style and Content "

A fragment of a life-size terracotta and polychrome group of Saint John, the Virgin, and Mary Magdalene in The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore has been identified as part of a "Stations of the Cross," as belonging to a "Bewailing of Christ," and as a representation of a "Lo Spasimo," and therefore part of a "Crucifixion" group. Opinions regarding the style of the figures renders them Emilian, Lombard, and Venetian. They are attributed to Antonio Begarelli and, at the same time, are connected to a group of terracotta figures whose style is distant from Begarelli's. A more coherent understanding of the origin and purpose of the Baltimore sculptures is the purpose of this study.

Elizabeth Martin (University of Maryland at College Park):
"Sidney's Sovereign Ladies of May"

Among the questions raised by Sir Philip Sidney's Lady of May, Queen Elizabeth's selection of husband for the May-Lady has caused substantial debate: according to the logic of the masque, Elizabeth selects Sidney's intended loser, the shepherd Espilus. Although several arguments provide a basis for understanding the immediate political atmosphere in which The Lady of May was presented, they may obscure a broader reading closer to Elizabeth's concerns: female sovereignty in marriage. Espilus ultimately wins the May-Lady, not because Elizabeth rejected Sidney's political beliefs, but because Espilus permits the May-Lady to achieve political success within her pastoral context.

Nathan Martin (University of Nebraska, Lincoln):
"The Visitation of Princess Cecilia of Sweden to England, 1565-6"

In 1565-6, Princess Cecilia of Sweden visited Queen Elizabeth in England. Contrary to prevailing views on the matter, Cecilia came to England not to advance her brother's suit in his attempts to wed Elizabeth, but rather she came out of her own curiosity of English culture and because of her own personal friendship with Elizabeth. Initially, Cecilia's experience in England was positive; she met important courtiers and nobles, and attended many social functions as well. Her unchecked spending habits, however, ran her into debt, and clouded much of her time in England. She became unpopular among the populace, the nobles, and the even at times the Queen herself. Since she had no major political role to play in England, she departed in April 1566.

Ann Martinez (University of Kansas):
"Differing but in Degree, of Kind the Same: Anthropomorphism in the Angels of John Milton's Paradise Lost"

The wide-ranging critical discussions surrounding the angelological aspects of John Milton's Paradise Lost tend to focus on the dark side. The charismatic personality and endless layering of Satan has attracted and continues to attract attention from readers and scholars alike. However, Milton, aside from crafting such a memorable nemesis, also "revamped," so to speak, the image of God's Angels. Technically, Milton could say almost anything about Satan's misgivings; however, when venturing into Angel-territory, one would expect him to be more careful. Nevertheless, Paradise Lost is a retelling of the Fall where, aside from his well-known re-characterization of Satan, Milton has re-characterized Angels as well. Through a re-structuring of the Dionysian-angelic hierarchies, and through a carefully crafted binarily-structured "hereticalization," Milton has very deliberately anthropomorphized the Angels.

Steven Matthews and Bryn Johnson (The University of Minnesota, Duluth):
"The Transformation of St. David: Forging the Myth of the Welsh Nation."

The representation of David, patron saint of Wales, underwent a transformation in the year 1616. From a peaceful Celtic monk David suddenly became a warrior hero. This new myth of David as champion was gradually woven into the fabric of emerging Welsh identity in the course of the seventeenth century, and it remains a part of Welsh nationalist discourse today. Ironically, this altered image of David was not created by Welsh writers, but by the Englishman, William Johnson, to tie the English and Welsh peoples more closely together. For this reason Johnson employed "pan-British" motifs established in the Arthurian corpus and elsewhere. This essay traces the transformation of David and the adoption of the new image in Welsh portrayals.

 

Sean McDowell (Seattle University):
"The 'Verged Shade' Versus the 'Expense of Mind' in Marvell's Garden"

The present essay offers independent confirmation of 1668 dating of "The Garden," based on a new contextual reading of the first stanza. In April, 1668, William Davenant, the unofficial poet laureate of England, died, and within days of his death, John Dryden, Marvell's primary poetic rival when writing the Second and Third Advice to the Painter (1666-7), was named official poet laureate. Inspired by these two events, the one following hard upon the other, "The Garden" criticizes the "narrow," self-serving use of poetry for disingenuous, uncritical praise and extols the giving of oneself to the creative process without the expectation of gain.

Timothy McKinney (Baylor University):
"Sacred and Secular in Zarlino's Setting of I' vo piangendo"

The paper examines the interaction of sacred themes and expressive secular genre in composer/theorist Gioseffo Zarlino's spiritual madrigal I' vo piangendo, a setting of Petrarch's eponymous sonnet. I shall discuss specific musical techniques originally deployed by Zarlino's teacher Willaert in his settings of Petrarch sonnets to highlight Petrarch's frequent antithetical juxtaposition of "hard" and "soft" imagery. I then shall show how Zarlino utilizes these techniques not simply to underscore similar concepts in a more spiritual text, but to communicate theological tenets of the Christian faith.

Zsolt Mohi (University of Kansas):
"Perception in A Midsummer Night's Dream"

The exposition and the resolution of the conflict between Hermia and Egeus appear as a frame to the events that take place in the woods outside Athens. The frame and the "picture" represent two opposing modes of perception and correspond to two different aspects of the audience's relation to the performance. The frame is multidimensional and dynamic; it opens up ways to different possibilities of interpretation. This method of representation prefigures the freedom of creative participation on the part of the audience. In contrast, the lovers' experience of the forest at night does not allow them to show awareness of their positions. This is comparable to the other aspect of the audience's reaction in the theatre: a paralyzed subjection.

Maryclaire Moroney (John Carroll University):
"John Derricke's Artegall: Sidney and the New English "Image of Ireland""

The twelve woodcuts appended to John Derricke's Image of Ireland frequently appear as illustrative material in current accounts of Elizabethan Ireland, but have only recently begun to receive scrutiny in their own right. The images promote the view that stability in Ireland may be near at hand thanks to the military and diplomatic successes of Sir Henry Sidney as Lord Deputy. However, the book was written at the end of Sidney's controversial tenure and published in the wake of the Smerwick massacre, during the equally problematic rule of Sidney's successor and Spenser's patron, Lord Gray. Derrick's canny synthesis of compelling images is designed to create and sustain a coherent New English identity in the face of continued crises.

Sara Morrison (William Jewell College):
"If th' unborn/Must learn, by my being cut up, and torn:/Kill, and dissect me, Love': Donne's Active Relics and Static Icons"

John Donne, like many of his fellow sixteenth-century poets, participated in the Renaissance vogue of the poetic blazon. This paper argues that the bodily remnants produced by Donne's blazons recall Catholic martyrs and construct active relics of the blazoned subjects. Donne's poetic "martyrs" are ordinary people for whom the relic tradition functions as a vehicle for self-preservation when faced with dissolution. It is possible to test Donne's preference for rather ordinary people as relics against a poem that Donne wrote to elegize Prince Henry. Rather than interact with poet and reader, the deceased prince is acted upon. Whereas the Protestant relic functions as a symbol only, Donne's active relics participate in post-partition activity that more closely resembles the interactivity of a Catholic saintly relic.

Michelle Moseley-Christian (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University):
"Naked Woman Seated on a Mound: Rembrandt's Revision of a Northern Renaissance Topos"

Rembrandt's etching known as Naked Woman Seated on a Mound is an enigmatic image depicting an unclothed female seated in a minimally described outdoor location. The subject of the print has yet to be identified, and scholarly interpretation has almost exclusively focused on locating sources for the composition and the figure's pose, chiefly from Italian Renaissance paintings and prints. This paper will realign Rembrandt's print with influential visual sources from Northern Europe, a readily available and indigenous bank of visual material that has been overlooked in previous studies of this etching. I will argue that Rembrandt's print was strongly influenced by images of wild women, a prevalent topos in medieval and Renaissance imagery and literature.

Grant Moss (Utah Valley State College):
"'Who are you, and what have you done with the Queen?' Elizabeth Through the Lens of Shekhar Kapur"

The Queen Elizabeth I portrayed by Cate Blanchett in the films of Shekhar Kapur is a vivid and varied character, but one who bears very little resemblance to the historical Elizabeth who has inspired many of us to study the life and works of the last Tudor monarch. By examining Kapur's Elizabeth films along with his earlier works and with other films, I will show how the Kapur Elizabeth is a deliberately anachronistic creation derived from the tropes of earlier costume dramas and Indian cinema rather than from historical sources. Kapur's films are part of a larger movement to "humanize" history by transforming it into narratives modern audiences can relate to rather than presenting the past as something potentially unknowable.

Benjamin Myers (Oklahoma Baptist University):
"Courtesy, Colony, and the Pattern of Holiness in Book 6 of the Faerie Queene"

Despite a critical tendency to assume that the poem condemns Calidore for his "truancy" from his quest, the pastoral world of book six would seem to be more a House of Holiness than a House of Pride, and, despite Spenser's derivation of courtesy from court, he imagines this seat of courtesy to be not London but rather the Munster Colony. To choose the colony over the court is, then, not to choose entire wilderness over civilization. If the pattern of book one holds throughout the epic, it is in the Irish countryside, not in the court of Elizabeth, that true courtesy is to be learned.

Mitylenm Myhr (St. Edward's University):
"The Abbesses and the Archbishop: Two Models of Religious Leadership in Counter-Reformation Bordeaux, France"

This paper examines the leadership qualities of two very different women, who in the early seventeenth century, founded two teaching orders in Bordeaux, France. Jeanne de Lestonnac established the Filles de Notre Dame, and FranÇoise de la Croix, a transplanted Italian congregation, the Ursulines. They did this under the leadership of the archbishop, FranÇois de Sourdis. I focus on the strategies they employed to both obey the archbishop, as well as exert their own wills in the many convents they established. Both were considered by their communities to be successful leaders and served as models for the abbesses who followed.

Brent Newsom (Texas Tech University):
"King Arthur in Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion"

Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion is frequently characterized as a patriotic poem, and scholars of Arthurian literature broadly or of Drayton more particularly tend to consider his usage of Arthurian legend as patriotic likewise. In this paper I question the assumption that the function of Arthurian story in the poem is primarily—or effectively—patriotic. By taking into account Drayton's internal ambivalence about the validity of monumental history, his quiet antagonism toward King James I, and the elegiac quality of many of his Arthurian references, I argue for a reading of Drayton's Arthur not as a signal of patriotism but as an emblem of a glorious but irrecoverable British past in the face of a hopeful but uncertain British future.

Kara Northway (Xavier University):
"The players rvnne of[f] the Staige with there Swordes in there handes': Audience Reactions to Violence in the 1583 Norwich Affray"

In the midst of a 1583 performance at Norwich, three actors in the Queen's Men ran off of the stage with their weapons to help a spectator defend the doorkeeper from a man who refused to pay admission. After a chase through the streets, the gatecrasher was stabbed. What stake did audience members have in initiating, witnessing, or becoming actively involved in this disagreement? I argue that audience members came to the play with expectations of seeing violence and participating in the action. These expectations were conditioned by their previous experiences with civic processions, which archival evidence reveals were more violent than previously assumed.

Arlen Nydam (University of Texas at Austin):
"Externalized Piety in Sidney's Old Arcadia"

In the Old Arcadia characters deal with spiritual and psychological stress by making external show of their internal state. The disguises of Musidorus and Pyrocles are adopted as a means to enable them to manifest their internal states. Gynecia writes lyrics on the belly of a lute in order to make the instrument "a monument of her mind." Characters’ thoughts, no matter how insignificant, can take the shape of apostrophes to abstractions, animals, and inanimate objects. The book repeatedly shows characters grappling with inner turmoil by performing physical actions, such as withdrawing to solitary places, and performing gestures such as crossing the arms. Impresas also work to externalize some abstract truth about their wearers.
These passages, most of which emphasize the power of nonverbal signification in the OA, often employ terms from traditional Catholic devotional life: withdrawing to the temple of one’s religion; performing one’s devotions; committing sacrilege against one's sweet saint. This is not simply a trendy deployment of conventional Petrarchan vocabulary, but is more likely a reflection of classical rhetorical training mixed with a respect for traditional religion.

Margaret Oakes (Furman University):
"The Rhetoric of Place in War and Commonwealth Literature"

Buildings and other physical locations can take on political and nationalistic significance, especially during times of civil war. However, both sides may be vying for the same important spaces, and may occupy the same spaces at different times. This paper examines the use of architecture and physical space in the rhetoric of the war and Interregnum periods in England. Waller, Denham, and Marvell argue for the importance of certain buildings and structures to represent both war and peace. Fanshawe and Herrick both claim a position of honor for England as she seems to be escaping the strife of Continental warfare. However, Waller and Marvell reflect on the scarring of the English landscape — and psyche — as a result of the ferocity of the war.

Martha Oberle (Frederick Commuity College):
"Books of three Colonies—Continued"

This paper wishes to discuss the fate and its implications of the books of early Maryland, to list as well as possible John Smith's library, and to investigate the maps of the New World made by the early English settlers.

Michele Osherow (University of Maryland, Baltimore County):
"And she saw that he was good: Early Modern Reckonings of the Women of Exodus"

At the very outset of the Book of Exodus we are presented with a number of effective and decisive women who work together in a concentrated effort to preserve life and it is through such efforts that they contribute to saving a nation. This essay will examine early modern commentary, reaction, and representation of the women of Exodus with particular attention to the women's acknowledged role in nation-building. I suggest that the kind of female heroism found in the early chapters of Exodus becomes a marker for a kind of early modern valiant female both in biblical commentary and fictional works. Early modern sermons and biblical annotations differ in their acknowledgements of the Exodus women's influence on national events but there is considerably less dispute regarding the women's success in their "natural" inclinations to give and preserve life. These texts negotiate women's roles in complicated ways.

Allison Palmer (University of Oklahoma):
"The Last Supper: A Meal of Bread, Fish, Lamb, and Guinea Pig"

A large painting of the Last Supper can be found today in the Cathedral of Cuzco, Peru, that features a dramatic image of Christ surrounded by the apostles, all of whom flank a platter holding a roasted guinea pig, called cuy. This painting was completed in 1753 by Marcos Zapata, one of the last native painters of the escuela cusqueña. An understanding of this unique image takes us back to the Renaissance, when Cuzco was established as the first artistic center of the "New World" after the Spanish conquest in 1534. Dependent on Italian Renaissance artists for their iconography, native artists soon began to incorporate regional ideas into their works, and this painting is an excellent example of such acculturation.

Daryl W. Palmer (Regis University) and Fred Terry (Independent Scholar):
"Renaissance Drama and the Problem of Data: A Reconsideration of Gerard Langbaine's New Cataloque of English Plays"

How has and how does technology matter to the study of Renaissance drama? We propose to answer this question tentatively by returning to Gerard Langbaine's A New Catalogue of English Plays (1688). In this work, Langbaine announced a revolutionary notion: English Renaissance drama ought be studied in terms of data. The plays of William Shakespeare, for instance, ought to be approached as problems of data collection, integration, and display. At the time, Langbaine worried that his friends would think him a lunatic. However, when we set consider his project alongside new technologies of data collection, Langbaine's work appears more clearly as a remarkable innovation.

Katherine Powers (California State University, Fullerton):
"Florentine Lauda and Contemplazione"

The lauda was a devotional song in Italian or familiar Latin, and in simple musical style. Developed by Medieval Florentine companies, the lauda was sung around the Italian peninsula by the end of the 15th century: by the lay and clergy for private devotions, for confraternity rituals, and for religious processions. Dominican reformer Savonarola promoted the singing of the lauda, as did his disciple, Serafino Razzi, who composed new works and collected others. Both advocated lauda singing as means for obtaining the emotional devotional state of contemplazione. This paper will describe Razzi's view of the devotional state of contemplazione and his promotion of lauda singing for contemplazione.

Nathan Probasco (The University of Nebraska-Lincoln):
"Disgust, Lamentation and Reconciliation: Queen Elizabeth’s Mixed Reaction to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre"

While most English Protestants simply chastised French Catholics for the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, Queen Elizabeth I exuded remarkable complexity in her reaction. She initially mourned for her dead coreligionists and suspended her nascent marriage negotiations with the French Catholic Duke of AlenÇon. The queen lambasted King Charles IX for his involvement in the bloodshed and fortified England's coast over fear of a French invasion. Diplomatic affairs overrode her religious concerns, however, as she sought to maintain the recently concluded alliance with France and even briefly attempted to restore Anglo-Spanish amity. The precariousness of England's isolation from Catholic Europe forced Elizabeth to put her immediate disgust behind her and look out for the benefit of her subjects.

Helen Qiu (Harvard University):
"Coronation as Ordination: The Crown of Supreme Governor of the Church of England for Elizabeth I"

Elizabeth I was both the Queen of England and the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. My interest is in exploring the significance of her ecclesiastical office ñ a seminal subject that calls for scholarly attention. While the Anglican Church did not ordain women until 1994 — an act of recognizing women's ecclesiastical authority and spiritual leadership, to what extent did Elizabeth exercise her sovereignty in the Church in the 16th century? Was Elizabeth ordained? After closely examining her coronation proceedings, I argue in this paper that Elizabeth's coronation was also her ordination in the Church of England. It laid a religious and legal foundation which would consequentially empower her to rule the church with supremacy.

Jill Raitt (University of Missouri, Columbia):
"How Catholic Was Queen Elizabeth I?"

Arguments about Elizabeth's religion, attempts to find "a window into her soul," are as various as the discussions about Shakespeare's religion in his life and plays and often reveal the scholar's own religious bias. Was Elizabeth a catholic with a small "c", an "Anglo Catholic? If she was a Protestant, was she Lutheran or Reformed? Or, as some have argued, was Elizabeth a modified Erasmian humanist like her father Henry VIII or more like Erasmus himself? Elizabeth cannot be captured under any of these categories. I will pursue what this means along two lines: church-state relations, and the more focused issue of Elizabeth's theology of the Eucharist or, as the Book of Common Prayer calls it, "Holy Communion."

Raychel Reiff (University of Wisconsin-Superior):
"Pens and Swords: A Study of Two Shakespearean Plays"

In As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare shows that neither pens nor swords are mightier than the other. Instead, they reinforce each other as tools used for both good and evil. In the comedy, the utopian society in the forest uses swords and pens for the welfare of the people, while the corrupt court uses them as extensions of the tyrant to threaten, control, and destroy others. In the realistic society of the tragedy, citizens use them in constructive and destructive ways. Although they protect life, promote liberty, and help lead to happiness, they also contribute to chaos, tragedy, and even death. But, both pens and swords are needed to effectively run a society.

Mark Reuter (University of Nebraska at Lincoln):
"Robin Hood: Sixteenth Century Ideas of Masculinity"

Until the later sixteenth century, the courtier epitomized the height of masculinity in England and those adhering to this model co-opted the legends of King Arthur to portray themselves as divinely ordained warriors and rulers. In the reign of Elizabeth I, a new model of masculinity, the "councilor," rose to challenge the courtier for dominance. Councilors, such as William Cecil, gained considerable power under Elizabeth, but needed a myth to combat the Arthurian legends of the nobility. The medieval legends of Robin Hood provided the Elizabethan councilors with the starting point for building their own myth. This paper argues that the transformation of Robin Hood from a yeoman outlaw to an ennobled defender of commoners against the abuses of feudal lords maps out the mindset of the new masculine role of the councilor.

Anna Riehl (Auburn University):
"The Tsar and the Queen: “You speak a language that I understand not” "

Although Elizabeth was Ivan's contemporary, in many ways she was an ultimate foreigner to the Russian Czar. This paper takes a close look at the language of a sample of Ivan and Elizabeth's correspondence in order to investigate how Elizabeth's foreignness to the Russian Czar is compensated or reinforced by fantasy or projection. The analysis of their letters reveals stark differences in their writing and ruling styles: the two writers continuously work at cross-purposes because their primary aims of persuasion are inherently dissimilar. Elizabeth's strategies of withstanding the imposition of Ivan's fantasy add to our understanding of her own monarchical style.

Madeline Rislow (The University of Kansas):
"Renaissance Palatial Power: Genoese Soprapporte in Context"

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the maritime republic of Genoa was home to a prominent and unique sculptural relief type that usually decorated the doorways of private residences. This paper will use three soprapporte (overdoor sculptures) in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum as case studies to explore the iconography, patronage, and use of this sculptural type and to contextualize them within the larger field of Renaissance studies. I argue that these soprapporte helped define the cityscape, for they marked the transitional space between a public street or piazza and a private, domestic realm, as well as projected Genoese identity in areas with which they traded or controlled.

Clifford Ronan (Texas State University):
"Shakespeare's Apogee in Mid-Career"

Early achievements like Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and even Titus Andronicus have distinction, as do such later plays as Timon, Cymbeline, and the collaborations with Fletcher and Middleton. Special commendation goes also to the great Antony and Winter's Tale. But from 1595 to 1606 "Middle' Shakespeare, like Middle Beethoven, brings artistic genius to its apogee. The chief qualities here are variety, geniality, structure, realistic detail, poise, and balance. "Middle' Shakespeare provides mastery of unusually amusing and touching comedy, profound tragedy, and/or clinically-detailed realistic analyses that could "set the murderous Machiavel to school."

Jesse Russell (Louisiana State University):
"The Satanic Epic Revisited"

Throughout the discussion of Paradise Lost, the role of Satan has been a contentious issue. The struggle has largely been between the romantic and the anti-romantic readings of the poem. While the anti-romantic view had the upper hand through most of the 20th century, Neil Forsyth has renewed the romantic appraisal of Satan in his work The Satanic Epic.
     I will show that Forsyth misinterprets Satan's interior life and his status as hero of Paradise Lost. Satan is not the hero of Paradise Lost but rather the villain who dooms himself by his constant rebellion. Satan’s interior life is plagued with agony and evil, which he perpetuates by his own decisions. Moreover, the drama of the poem reveals the illegitimacy of Satan's rebellion. Finally, Satan's rebellion becomes increasingly absurd as Satan rejects the goodness of the world and thus perpetuates his torment, tainting Adam and Evil with his evil.

Abigail Scherer (Nicholls State University):
"Celebrating Idleness: A Reading of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra"

In Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, idle charms are set against purposeful pursuits. Cleopatra's Egypt is clearly designated a holiday world devoted to the glorification of aesthetic play, while the rigor of Caesar's Roman world is soberly tuned to politics and warfare. The variant tones of these two worlds are further articulated in the play's two types of performance: an Egyptian theater which fosters unrestrained, yet graceful designs spun from illusions and lies, and a Romanized theater, didactic and moralistic, which insists on staging idleness only in order to humiliate and condemn it. Furthermore, whereas Romans draw a curtain between theater and real life, that is to say, between the playful and the purposeful, Antony and Cleopatra do not: their so-called reality is full of fancy. To the lovers, all the world is theatrical, and all theater is for them a celebration of idleness. My reading of Antony and Cleopatra argues that it is Caesar's world of political and moral purpose, not Cleopatra's, that the "dungy earth" will ultimately consume. Undaunted by the weight of worldly goals, dismissive of all practical restraints, the idle lovers abide instead in a realm of artistic sovereignty, where honor is not defended but easily dissembled. Yet, rather than begetting a world of chaos and vice, as many early modern polemicists might forecast, the idle abandon of the lovers propagate a private world of the imagination that is boundless and eternal.

Lisa Schuelke (University of Nebraska-Lincoln):
"Meg Goodwin Dances: Aging and Otherness in Stuart England"

This paper examines an early seventeenth-century satirical chapbook entitled, Old Meg of Hereford-shire for a Mayd-marian; And Hereford Towne for a Morris-daunce to demonstrate that the elderly, particularly aged women, were stigmatized in early modern England. The tale of the aged Meg Goodwin revolves around the morris dance, and her central role as a "Maid Marian." Anxieties regarding motherhood and women's power become clear. Though men do not escape the satirist's pen, women are the primary targets. This chapbook illustrates uneasiness with aging, combined with heightened apprehension concerning the threat that older women presented to social order.

William O. Scott (University of Kansas):
"Bargains Broken and Kept in 1 Henry IV: Politics and Personal Commitment"

Bodin, Buchanan, and Hooker partly foreshadow Hobbes's founding the state on gifts and contracts. Such thought extends to nonpolitical bargains too in the play. Among issues, for royalty and others, are conditions under which people either keep or break deals, and expect the same of others. Broken and kept vows are both important, along with surprise gifts that fulfil tacit duties; theft parodies all these. Hal's resolve to "pay the debt [he] never promised" is both surprise gift and quasi-contract. It contrasts with conflicts between king and rebels about breached faith, and it parallels his promise to his father about Percy. The rebels' fear of broken royal bargains makes them guarded, not only toward Henry but among themselves.

Justine Semmens (University of Calgary (Dept. of Religious Studies)):
"La Ligue infernalle: Urban space, gender, and propaganda in the French Wars of Religion "

During the dramatic period of the Holy League's seizure of Paris from 1588 to 1595, gender formed the nexus between social and relative space of the city. This nexus pivoted on the gendering and regendering of urban space based on factional understandings of disorder and the uncontrolled dominance of the feminine as the cause of misrule. Women and the feminine were polemicized in pamphlets, placards and memoirs determined for an audience and civic exposition that inscribed fears and concerns about misrule on public spaces. Social space therefore, provided the landscape upon which the absolutes of danger and sexuality could be relativized, interpreted and codified for the public milieu.

Linda Shenk (Iowa State University):
"Elizabeth I's Pauline Wisdom and John Lyly's Endymion"

In 1589, Elizabeth's bishops turned to professional writers such as John Lyly to trounce the Pauline, mocking voice of Martin Marprelate. Lyly wrote not only Pappe with an Hatchet as part of the anti-Puritan campaign but also, I propose in my presentation, his (perhaps) earlier work, Endymion. Using Pauline theology in this play, Lyly praises Elizabeth as a queen of divine wisdom whose transcendent perspective can control what will become associated with Martinist folly. In turn, Lyly's clever Pauline themes will instigate a trend of aligning Elizabeth with Pauline wisdom throughout the 1590s—a strategy Elizabeth will twice adopt herself.

B. R. Siegfried (Brigham Young University):
"The 'Song on Queen Elizabeth': Coins, Clocks, and the Stuff of Political Satire in Dublin, 1560"

This brief consideration of the Irish "Song on Queen Elizabeth" suggests that, if we are to avoid what W. J. T. Mitchell has described as the "wild overestimation of the power of spectacle" in our accounts of how Elizabeth I was perceived, then our narratives must include more than the rarified objects (of admittedly revealing aesthetic complexity and sophistication) usually noted. This paper argues that we must also lend our attention to the humble vernacular images of every day life, and to the moments when the experience of such images is pressed into language, as in the "Song" considered here. Ultimately, the sly wit of the Irish songster reveals that clocks and coins of Elizabeth's representational forays into Irish culture all too easily became fodder for popular political satire.

Kinda Skea (University of Kansas):
"Mr. Browne, Meet Mr. Milton"

John Milton was known to many as a theological eclectic. His Paradise Lost contains elements of Humanism, Deism, Arianism, Leveler, and Quaker doctrines. However, the influence of the Brownist sect appears more often than any other theological doctrine in this and other of Milton’s books and pamphlets. While the Brownists’ doctrinal and political influence can be seen in the ideology of ten of Milton’s pamphlets and books, the Brownists appear mentioned by name in the text of more than ten pamphlets – in fact, in one pamphlet their name even appears in the title.
Milton’s dissatisfaction with the Caroline church may be traced back to 1637, when he complained of the church’s and the clergy’s greed in his work Lycidas. Four years later, Milton began attacking the episcopacy and the prelacy. His accusations against the Church of England’s doctrine and polity have direct correlations with the writings of Robert Browne, as Milton’s emphasis on the liberty of conscience and the freedom of speech can be traced back to the writings of Browne and John Robinson. Milton’s association with known Brownists/Independents, Presbyterians, and Baptists is evidenced in his integration of their doctrines into his writings.
This paper will examine portions of Milton’s literature in which the Brownists are mentioned specifically by name, as well as the context in which they are mentioned. It will also compare early Brownist rhetoric with that of Milton’s for similarities. Though a large number of sects and political entities influenced Milton, these studies will prove that one of the most influential theological foundations for Milton’s writings was that of the Brownists.

Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler (Texas State University-San Marcos):
"Literary Theory for Changing Times: Milton's Art of Logic"

Milton's Art of Logic is essentially a statement of poetics, of literary theory, and an understanding of that theory may offer important insight into the interpretation of Milton's works, especially Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. Milton's "logical poetics"—based on the work of the French Protestant educational reformer Petrus Ramus—reflected Ramus's practice of honoring and testing intuition. This poetics is most evident in the form and structure of the late poems, exemplified here by an analysis of Paradise Regained. Milton's Ramist poetics leads to a poetry that mediates between psychic needs and being in the world.

Kimball Smith (Kansas State University):
"Losing Control of the Language: A Struggle for Disorder in Shakespeare's Sonnets"

The language of Shakespeare's Sonnets occasionally breaks down into hyper-complexity or ambiguity, in ways that are as striking as they are unclear. Appearing as they do within works capable of the most transparent lucidity, the tangled knots of obfuscatory language stand out with particular impact. If they are not precisely incoherent, they certainly represent a deliberate and intricately befuddling complexification of meanings and referents. Or, to put it more simply, they make themselves deliberately unclear. These moments of impacted communication suggest, I would argue, not the limits of Shakespeare's abilities, but the limits inherent in language itself. And the way the narrator's logic and even the language itself sometimes seems to lose its way reveals an intricate dynamic that moves beyond the desire for clarity toward a deliberate demonstration of the ultimate failure of language to match our desires for clarity and communion. Shakespeare highlights here, not the traditional Petrarchan failure of love, but the necessary failure of language itself.

Geraldo Sousa (University of Kansas):
"The Changeling and Representation of Place"

The action of The Changeling oscillates between Vermandero's castle and Alibius' madhouse. Allusions to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream underscore not only Middleton and Rowley's familiarity with Shakespeare's play but also their attempt to address some of the central concerns of A Midsummer Night's Dream; namely, the function of place, the role of the family and household, and the nature of love and of madness.

Louis Charles Stagg (University of Memphis, emeritus):
"Joy of the Worm Travel: Offices In Egypt and Eden"

Travel agents J.O. Worm and S.T. Serp here with tragic stories to tell. I booked Cleopatra and her court ladies from Egypt to the next world, to escape Caesar and join Antony in Paradise. S.T. booked Adam and his Rib from Eden's paradise to dusty farmland, when their creator evicted them for disobedience. Creator's son kicked S.T.'s head, eons later, bruising his own heel, S.T. admitted. Which trip cost the travelers more? Company policy remains: "No Refunds; No Returns."

Kirilka Stavreva (Cornell College):
"'The Tongue Is a Fire': Contentious Speech and the Problem of Gender in Early Modern Sermons"

A host of religious texts from the pre-Civil War era expound the warning against the fiery tongue issued in James's Epistle. They focus on the acoustic aspects of contentious speech and its destructive effect on the social fabric and the speakers themselves. None of them singles out female "scolds" as exclusively representative of contentiousness, yet all associate the fiery tongue with femininity. Such gendering of contentious speech endorsed an association of femininity with social disruptiveness, lack of self-control, and propagation of discord. But the gender discrepancy between speech and speaker had further implications. Contentious speech rendered women's bodies capable of masculine propagation, and men's—feminine leaky vessels.

Brian Steele (Texas Tech University):
"The Tears of the Magdalen: Titian's Saintly Sinner in the Pitti Museum"

I scrutinize elements of Titian's painting only briefly examined by others as the pictorial factors relate to widely disseminated ideas in the Legenda Aurea and to historicized concepts of eroticism. Additional primary sources comprise texts by Ludovico Dolce, Francesco Barbaro, and Pietro Aretino; the latter augments symbolic reading of loosened hair with metaphoric reference to touching. Titian's use of the Venus Pudica type for the Magdalen's pose underscores both sexuality and the chastity appropriate to the first day of her repentance, a moment I read critically, in combination with pictorial light and welling tears, against the textual account. Titan's image constitutes a poetic evocation of the Magdalen as saintly sinner.

Shelley Stonebrook (University of Kansas):
"The Angel Writing from Hell: Miltonic Allusions in Joyce's "The Dead""

This paper explores how Miltonic allusions can be used to reveal authorial tensions in James Joyce's "The Dead." Not only did Joyce and Milton share preoccupations as authors, but Joyce named two of the seminal characters in his story, Gabriel and Michael, after the archangels in Milton's Paradise Lost. Gabriel's character from "The Dead" can be read as Joyce in many ways, and allusions to the archangel Gabriel and the imagery of Hell in Milton's work shed additional light on Joyce's relationship with writing and with Ireland.

Josh Thompson (Mississippi State University):
"'Poet, here's a work beseeming thee': The Narrator's Perceptions of Love and Poetry in Christopher Marlowe's Ovid's Elegies"

During the course of Christopher Marlowe's poem cycle, Ovids Elegies, the narrator/poet provides a commentary regarding the nature of his poetic undertaking, the "love poems" of Ovid's Elegies, as well as an insight into his recognition and utilization of poetry and poetry's association with this narrator's notions of "love." I suggest that these programmatic poems reveal Marlowe's maneuverings in drawing a landscape of ideals for the reader that the narrator fails to comprehend. I address how the narrator's inability to find the truth about himself, about love, and about the value of poetry reveals his gross misconceptions of his own contrived and illusory subjectivity, particularly the way in which his ill-conceived notions misrepresent love and poetry—or, more accurately how they constitute his meconnaissance—the great delusions of his life in general. That is, he cannot discover from his experience a personal identity and subjectivity.

Jacob Tootalian (Texas A&M University):
"Friar Bacon's Books: The Scientific Agency of a Renaissance Romance Magus"

Through the lens of legend and literature, the thirteenth-century philosopher-monk Roger Bacon transforms into a wand-wielding, glory-seeking magician in the Renaissance chapbook The Famous Historie of Fryer Bacon. Abounding with the tropes of the magus myth, the narrative, I argue, distinctively depicts the scholarly friar as a sorcerer with a unique capacity for scientific insight, one that makes the chapbook Doctor Faustus appear as little more than a necromantic schoolman. Accordingly, Bacon's philosophical ingenuity registers as a glimmer of the epistemological shift of Renaissance learned culture, conjuring a romance magus inscribed with something of the intellectual agency of the new science.

Lillyrose Veneziano Broccia (Columbia University):
"The Elements of Gaspara Stampa's Rime: Water"

Stampa's water imagery is introduced in her Rime in the dedication's second line, which evokes four different water terms: "Qui dunque V.S. vedrà non il pelago delle passioni, delle lagrime e de' tormenti miei, perchè è mar senza fondo; ma un piccolo ruscello solo di esse . . ." Later in the dedication she reveals her self-given pastoral name, which is derived from Anaxum, the Latin name of the river Piave: ". . . la sua fidissima ed infelicissima Anassilla . . . " This river is in the hills of San Salvatore, a fief that was owned by Collaltino di Collalto, the male love object of many of her poems. Anassilla will be the poetic river that runs through the geography of desire created by the projection of her wishes onto the landscape around her. Just as water changes states in the natural world, Anassilla will take on the liquid forms listed above, as well as others. Following the direction outlined by Aristotle which states, "The natural path is to go from the things which are more known and certain to us toward the things which are more certain and more knowable by nature," I will trace the water terms as they flow from within the female subject to the outside Natural world. The map thus begins with Anassilla's tears and, following their motion, ends with the sea and with the use of the term Water ("acqua"). Human nature reflects the natural world. The movement of emotion from within woman, as she releases her tears, to without, as she translates them into poetry, is how she connects to the world around her.

Nicholas von Maltzahn (University of Ottawa):
"Provincializing Marvell"

In his long career as an MP for Hull, Andrew Marvell's stock in trade was representing the periphery to the centre and the centre to the periphery. His poetry too reveals an allegiance at once to urban sophistication and to rural simplicity, as the artificiality of the former vies in his affections with the rusticity of the latter, the gardener with the mower. Marvell's hard-won mastery of metropolitan culture, especially the literature of the classical past, much coloured his sense of "the sweet fields". His works disclose a revealing ambivalence towards the "Country', by turns respecting the authenticity of his terroir but also condemning it as if consigned by distance to a devalued past.

Jacqueline Whipple Walker (University of Florida):
"Exemplum in John Donne's Sermons: Education by the Living Voice, the Word in Flesh, and Speaking Texts"

Taking the phrases—"Institutio viva voce," "Verbum Caro," and "loquens Scriptura"—that Donne uses in his discussions of exempla and reading what Donne writes about exempla and their uses, we begin to draw conclusions about how Donne uses himself in his religious texts. in three ofhis funeral sermons and four of his "Conversion of Paul" sermons, I argue that Donne uses the Christian examle as an immediate speaking text in flesh that instructs b the living voice. By assesing how Donne uses exemplum/exempla in his own texts, I believe that we can come to a better understanding of how we are to read Donne and his presence in his own work. Therefore, by reading what Donne has to say about the presence and uses of "education by the living voice," "word in flesh," and "the speaking scripture," we can begin to provide for ourselves solid grounds for future readings of Donne's own presence in his texts, particularly Deaths Duell.

JoAnna Walton (Southern Methodist University):
"Philip IV: Spain's Rey de Planeta"

Philip IV is an interesting figure in history for political and social reasons whose life mimics that of several kings, but perhaps none more that François I of France. Actors in an increasingly global world, the two monarchs turned to collecting as an exercise of power and a method of diplomacy. Something happens to the world when one collects. For François I, that something was the modernization of his country and its alignment with ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy. The desire to possess and to display meaningful objects, the basic desire of a true collector, was shared by the monarchs and employed to similar ends. My paper explores the issues of inheritance, the practices of collecting, and patronage under both monarchs.

Wendi Wilkerson (University of Louisiana, Lafayette):
"Lady Mary Wroth and the Tradition of Female Authorship"

It is my contention that Lady Mary Wroth marks a significant evolution of female authorship, because she foregrounds and manifests the importance of women's homosocial relations for their lives and their writing, claims for women the genres previously reserved for men, and asserts traditionally male prerogative of publication. Wroth's position as a significant leap forward in the evolution of female authorship will be discussed through consideration of the female homosocial milieu of Queen Anne's writing coteries, the particularities of Wroth's chosen genres, and the significance of the printing conventions observed by female authors.

Christie Wilson (St. Edward's University):
"Escaping 'that Brutish Babylon': Conversion among Huguenots in Seventeenth Century France"

This paper will explore the meaning of conversion among Huguenots in the early seventeenth century. Despite the pacification of Henri IV, the divide between Catholic and Huguenot was wide. Prominent converts wrote about reasons they left the "Romish Church" for the Huguenot fold. In their personal confessions they talk not of reconciliation, rather they frequently use the language of exile and separation. They work to distinguish themselves from their past in the Roman church and from those who continued to cling to her. These accounts are clear, conversion provided a path out of that "brutish Babylon" of the Catholic Church.

Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign):
"Genre and Courtly Critique in Mary Sidney's Entertainment for the Queen"

This paper analyzes Mary Sidney's "A Dialogue Between Two Shepherds, Thenot and Piers" (1599) written to entertain Queen Elizabeth I on her summer progress. In this text, Mary Sidney revises the genre of Elizabethan progress entertainments, a genre in which aristocratic women were increasingly involved late in Elizabeth's reign. However, because "A Dialogue Between Two Shepherds" was never actually performed before the Queen, its 1602 publication in the popular miscellany A Poetical Rhapsody became its only public "performance" and primary method of dissemination. The entertainment's inclusion in this book accentuates its subtle criticisms of Queen Elizabeth and its condemnation of Petrarchan convention, the foundation of Elizabethan male courtiership.