Editorial Board : David Bennett (Near Eastern Languages and Cultures), Loren Blinde (English), Lisa Boutin (Art History), Val Cullen (English), Francesca Marx (English), Aaron Moreno (History), Dana Polanichka (History), Ned Schoolman (History), Alison Walker (English)
Managing Editor: Blair Sullivan (CMRS)
The Use and Impact of the English Levied Soldiers in Anglo-Norman England, CRAIG NAKASHIAN
This article argues for an increased focus on the native English levies as a viable military force, especially within England itself. The levies of Englishmen, and of French on occasion, played a much more important role in keeping order, defending the kingdom from external invasion, and putting down rebellion than is commonly assumed. The fyrd survived the Conquest, was used extensively by William I, and was even used overseas in an offensive capacity. It was used by William II to put down a rebellion, and was again used by his brother Henry to put down a rebellion. During his reign, the fyrd continued to be used by Henry I, though as a domestic force rather than an overseas one. Henry II’s attempt to reconstitute the fyrd in 1181 indicates that the system was still considered valuable.
Seeking Truth and Bearing Witness: The Noli Me Tangere and Incredulity of Thomas on Tino di Camaino’s Petroni Tomb (1313–1317), LISA M. RAFANELLI
This article examines Tino di Camaino’s monument for Cardinal Riccardo Petroni, focusing on the narrative cycle of relief panels on the tomb casket. The reliefs are shown to function in a complex and reiterative manner, speaking to the hope for personal resurrection and reunion with God at the end of time, as well as to the salvific potential of a well-lived, well-balanced life of devotion and professional achievement. It is proposed that this relatively uncelebrated monument mediates between what Panosfky described as “prospective” early Christian and medieval tomb sculpture and the more “retrospective” Renaissance tombs. This article also explores the meaning of the pendant panels of the Noli Me Tangere and Incredulity of Thomas and proposes new theories about sources of inspiration for the artist, the possible interests of the deceased in the question of bodily Resurrection, and his devotion to Saint Mary Magdalene.
The Sultaness, Donegild, and Fourteenth-Century Female Merchants: Intersecting Discourses of Gender, Economy, and Orientalism in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale, MARJORIE ELIZABETH WOOD
This article intersects feminist, colonialist, and materialist approaches to Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale by mooring the tale’s gender and Orientalist discourses in a materialist criticism that positions the tale historically within late fourteenth-century England. In Chaucer’s England, female merchants dominated the victualling, ale-brewing, and cloth-making trades. An economic subtext in the tale reveals the narrator’s preoccupation with changing economic roles for women, particularly with regard to the Sultaness and Donegild, who represent respectively the female victualler and ale-wife. Because female economic power is linked semiotically in the tale to fears about the East, the tale’s Orientalist themes are conjoined with both gender and economic discourses. Finally, this article suggests that because the Man of Law omits the female industry of cloth-making, the Wife of Bath completes the “triad” of female merchants. This reading provides a new context in which the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale can be interpreted.
A Tale of Two Codices: The Medieval Registers of the Order of the Garter, T. TOLGA GUMUS
This article compares two extant versions of the medieval register of the Most Noble Order of St. George of the Garter—one published, the other still unpublished—in an attempt to determine which manuscript preserves the text of the original, now lost, register more faithfully. Following a brief sketch of the history of the Order in the late Middle Ages and description of the two manuscripts in question, I compare the evidence of the two codices according to three categories of information contained therein: lists of attendance for the Order’s chapter meetings; records of irregular events; and finally the scrutiny lists, which record the knights’ nominations for new members. I argue that while one version, an early modern copy, generally preserves the superior text, both manuscripts should be taken into consideration when reconstructing the history of the Order.
Fools and Saints: Derision and Regenerative Laughter and the Late Medieval and Early Modern Hagiographic Imagination, THOMAS LEDERER
Carnivalesque misrule is not alien to Christianity. Some of the more exotic phenomena of medieval Christianity—and hagiography—can be explained as forms of religious carnival. These include holy folly, “inclusive” laughter at the expense of a humiliated saint, and the liturgical Easter laughter. Believers enjoyed, and authorities permitted, laughter as a social safety valve and as a means of expressing festive joy and acknowledging the victory of God’s kosmos over postlapsarian khaos. At the same time, medieval Christians lived in perpetual fear of an unholy carnival of ungodly folly, destructive rather than regenerating, dangerous rather than entertaining. During the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, carnivalesque patterns were instrumentalized so as to create and propagate new social orders and religious beliefs. Although Protestantism owed a good deal of its success to carnivalesque laughter, it quickly distanced itself from misrule once it had obtained the status of established churchdom.
Elizabeth Russell’s Textual Performances of Self, JESSICA L. MALAY
Elizabeth Russell was a scholar, courtier, and religious activist during the reign of Elizabeth I. She was one of the famous Cooke sisters, and her early education included training in Latin, Greek, and modern European languages. She authored a diverse set of texts, including elegies, translations, prefaces, and progress entertainments, gaining a reputation as one of the most learned women in England. Through her texts she performed a narrative in which she promoted and published her preferred identity as the powerful matriarch of an increasingly successful elite family or “house.” This identity, buffeted by the deaths of two husbands and the political vagaries of the time, required constant renegotiation both in its public manifestation and personal conceptualization. Her texts negotiated with culturally established definitions of the ideal “female,” both appropriating discourses allowed to women and circumventing the restrictions for self-expression inherent in these discourses through a variety of discursive, spatial, and visual strategies.
Theatrical and National Spaces in Cymbeline, GAVIN PAUL
This article explores the manner in which Cymbeline works to create a feeling of geographic scope and a sense of a coherent national space within the bounds of the theatre. To do so means examining the play’s experimentation with perspective, its fascination with the limits of eyesight, as well as its emphasis on movement and travel. Notions of perspective, time, and space are pervasive in Cymbeline; accordingly, it is a play that frequently identifies and strains against the physical boundaries of the stage. Nevertheless, as evidenced by Simon Forman’s account of the play (1611), meta-theatrical moments that highlight the physical restrictions of the theatre coalesce with moments that revel in its physical possibilities. With references to early modern cartography, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Shakespeare’s Henry V, and the writings of King James, I contend that as Cymbeline telescopes between meta-theatrical and theatrical effects, the theatrical experience—the proclivity to imaginatively participate—is enhanced.
Review Article:Hellenism, Cultural Assimilation, and Resistance in the Roman Near East, WALTER WARD
