{"title":"Meredith Hanmer's Career in the Church of England, c. 1570-1590","authors":"A. Andreani","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04401003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04401003","url":null,"abstract":"This article deals with two pivotal decades in the life of Meredith Hanmer, an Anglican divine of Welsh descent who built his career in the Church of England against the backdrop of shifting ecclesiastical policy, religious debate and the upsurge in anti-Catholicism. Hanmer was close to the establishment but his career trajectory apparently shifted in the early-1590s, when he resigned two London benefices to move to Ireland. This study reconstructs the years preceding this move focussing on Hanmer’s professional advancement and on the publication of his first works, which will enable us to gauge his multifaceted profile as a scholar and as a clergyman. While he courted favour and established his name as a learned preacher, archival records bear a clear witness to his highly controversial conduct.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"44 1","pages":"47-72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04401003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43939438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rapture and Horror: A Phenomenology of Theatrical Invisibility in Macbeth","authors":"M. Tassi","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04401001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04401001","url":null,"abstract":"Macbeth is arguably Shakespeare’s greatest experiment in the phenomenology of horrible imaginings. For all of its visible supernatural trappings, Macbeth is a play radically steeped in the invisible, which exerts a gravitational force on all aspects of performance. The phantom dagger, King Duncan’s slain body, Lady Macbeth’s murky hell—these unseen supernatural sights are as phenomenologically palpable and horrifying in the theater as the weird sisters are. Invisible elements of the play’s world permeate the visible, producing a pervasive sense of unease, dread, and horror in the theater. The experience of horror co-exists with another strongly felt experience, that of rapture, which arises especially in moments when the Macbeths are fascinated with invisible phenomena and enter into trance-like states of deep absorption, ecstasy, and madness.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"44 1","pages":"1-26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04401001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42047904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sadeler and Procaccini: The Secular Decoration of Castello Visconti di San Vito in Somma Lombardo","authors":"A. L. Conte","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04401002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04401002","url":null,"abstract":"The paper investigates the pictorial decoration of Castello Visconti di San Vito in Somma Lombardo, one of the finest examples of Lombard aristocratic villa of the first half of the seventeenth century. Built on a pre-existent medieval structure, the castle was richly decorated by a secular iconographic program that, drawn from Flemish sources, was executed in the period 1604–1609 by an equipe of painters gravitating towards the bottega Procaccini: the most important Milanese workshop of the time. The study, for the first time, retraces the genesis of this commission as well as the execution of the decorative program. Specifically, it individuates the complex series of iconographic sources used by Carlo Antonio Procaccini and his assistants, highlighting a coexistence of both Emilian and Flemish artistic references that is unprecedented in Lombard early Baroque art.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"44 1","pages":"27-46"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04401002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42836868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Leonardo’s Dragons—The “Rider Fighting a Dragon” Sketch as an Allegory of Leonardo’s Concept of Knowledge","authors":"Sharon Khalifa-Gueta","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04401005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04401005","url":null,"abstract":"It has long been known that Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches showing a rider in combat with a dragon do not portray St. George. Viewing these sketches in connection with several of Leonardo’s writings, this essay suggests that they are allegories that should be interpreted on several levels. On the basic level, these combat scenes represent the battle of contraries, based on the symbolism common to Leonardo’s period where a combat between an equestrian and a dragon represented the clash of light versus darkness, life versus death, good versus evil, etc. However, I argue that they also comment on the scientific and philosophical issues that occupied Leonardo, including action versus reaction and the true concept of knowledge as opposed to falsehood and sophistry. This essay interprets these sketches as offering an insight into Leonardo’s analogical approach, which connects common symbolism to his personal perspective on science and philosophy, and thus points to a new way of looking at Leonardo’s drawings and paintings and decodes new aspects of Leonardo’s personal symbolism.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"44 1","pages":"104-139"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04401005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43365518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Edmund Spenser’s Ancient Hope: The Rise and Fall of the Dream of the Golden Age in The Faerie Queene","authors":"J. Russell","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04401004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04401004","url":null,"abstract":"In the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a debate has rumbled over the sources and significance of Platonic and Neoplatonic motifs in Edmund Spenser’s poetry. While this debate has focused on the presence (or absence) of various aspects of Platonism and/or Neoplatonism, critics have largely ignored the hints of magic derived from Neoplatonism. Through the probable influence of John Dee, Marsilio Ficino, and Giordano Bruno as well as Spenser’s own wide-ranging and particular reading, The Faerie Queene makes it evident that the English poet found himself attracted to an ancient hope in the restoration of a Golden Age that would be inaugurated by a great monarch. However, by the end of the poem, Spenser has largely lost faith in the restoration of this Golden Age; what he has uncovered along the way forces a retreat to Christian hope in his personal salvation.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"44 1","pages":"73-103"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04401004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49328711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ars simia naturae: The Animal as Mediator and Alter Ego of the Artist in the Renaissance","authors":"S. Cohen","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04302004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04302004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"43 1","pages":"202-231"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04302004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45101130","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Streaming Music into Renaissance Studies: The Case of L’homme armé","authors":"Kevin N. Moll","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04302001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04302001","url":null,"abstract":"College-level courses devoted to Renaissance culture typically put a premium on incorporating primary sources and artifacts of a literary, art-historical, and historical nature. Yet the monuments of contemporaneous music continue to be marginalized as instructional resources, even though they are fully as worthy both from an aesthetic and from a historical standpoint. This study attempts to address that problem by invoking the tradition of early polyphonic masses on L’homme arme – a secular tune used as a unifying melody (cantus firmus) throughout settings of the five-movement liturgical cycle. Beginning by explaining the origins and significance of the putative monophonic tune, the paper then details how a series of composers utilized the song in interestingly varied ways in various mass settings. Subsequently it sketches out a context for mysticism in the liturgical-musical tradition of L’homme arme , and points to some compelling parallels with the contemporaneous art of panel painting, specifically as represented in the works of Rogier van der Weyden.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"43 1","pages":"109-139"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04302001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44973626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Vaulted with fire”: The Thermodynamics of Infernal Justice in Book 1 of Paradise Lost","authors":"J. Conlan","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04302005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04302005","url":null,"abstract":"Historians of science have noted that Milton’s figurative reference to the “spotty globe” of Satan’s massy shield identifies Milton as an adherent of the New Astronomy promoted by Galileo. Understood in light of the techniques of surveying employed by Galileo, the same shield also speaks to Galileo’s use of parallax, whereby the scientist made his drawings more precise by viewing alternately from the vantage of the heights of Fesole or the valley of the Arno. Milton mentions these places in his epic simile of Satan’s shield: the science behind Satan’s arms in Paradise Lost reveals that Milton’s deep commitment to liberty informs his imagination of how God structured the pains of hell.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"43 1","pages":"232-247"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04302005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41373052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Swords, ropes, poison, fire”: The Dark Materials of Spenser’s Objectification of Despair-Assisted Suicide, with Notes on Skelton and Shakespeare","authors":"James Nohrnberg","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04302003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04302003","url":null,"abstract":"In the Despair episode in Spenser’s Faerie Queene I .ix, the provocative material means for self-slaughter are emblematically doubled with the psychological inducements, particularly on the models of predecessor texts in Skelton’s Magnyfycence and the Cordela story in The Mirrour for Magistrates . The pairing of means and causes is part of a tradition. So also is the despair of a Christian believer over his own sinfulness, in the face of God’s law, as voiced by a conspiratorial evil conscience, leading to a sinful “unbelief and despair of God” (Luther) and likewise unbelief in salvation—and to an unconquerable self-accusation, which doubles the sinner with tormentors, or a diabolic Accuser, and tempts him or her to cut his/her losses, relieve his/her pain, sorrows, and world-weariness, and take his/her life. Other suicidal types in The Faerie Queene and elsewhere, who are not theologically confirmed in their wanhope or assisted by it to their end, such as Phedon or Malbecco, can nonetheless illuminate the projections, temptations, demons, and motions of the Christian despair-er, and his or her adversity, depression, distress, impatience, furor, world-weariness, melancholia, and driven-ness. The despair-er’s condition, as found in Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto Death , can be further illustrated, diagnosed, and ministered to, by means of a variety of early modern and medieval moralizing and homiletic texts. And while the death of Shakespeare’s Cordelia by hanging conforms to Spenser’s account ( FQ II .x.32), her suicidal despair is only a slander bruited by the character Edmund. Rather, it is her would-be rescuer Lear who is the picture of misery and despair.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"43 1","pages":"158-201"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04302003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48947046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hakluyt’s Peripatetic Discourse","authors":"R. Imes","doi":"10.1163/23526963-04302002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526963-04302002","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I examine intellectual correspondences between two manuscripts that Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616) presented to Queen Elizabeth I in tandem in 1584: his well-known “Discourse of Western Planting” and his underappreciated “Analysis” of Aristotle’s Politics . I argue that Aristotle’s vision of the ideal political state as a materially and morally self-sustaining system, as represented in the “Analysis,” serves as the philosophical foundation of Hakluyt’s recommendations in the “Discourse” that England pursue an aggressive policy of expansionist, colonial growth. Hakluyt describes colonialism as a panacea for England’s socioeconomic issues and as the means by which England might become self-sustaining in the manner of Aristotle’s ideal state.","PeriodicalId":55910,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Renaissance Culture","volume":"43 1","pages":"140-157"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526963-04302002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43079334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}