Several of Francisco de Quevedo’s hagiographic poems are puzzling because of their irreverent tone. Edward M. Wilson and Jose Manuel Blecua both noted that “la relacion entre las dos caras de un Quevedo es cuestión difícil y delicada para los modernos;” indeed, the writer’s particular blend of “las burlas con las veras” has attracted attention s…[Read more]

Using the transatlantic relación of Diego Portichuelo de Ribadeneyra (1657) as an example, this essay tracks some of the ways in which several religious passengers narrated their experience crossing the Atlantic Ocean in the Spanish Indies fleets during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Of particular importance here are the ways in…[Read more]

This chapter is the product of a Keynote Address that Dr. Davis offered at the VII Conference of the Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro which took place at Robinson College, Cambridge, 18-22 July, 2005. Here the author examines a variety of kinds of early modern Spanish maritime writing (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries).

Literary translations work with, rather than out of, the space between languages. Translations evolve not only across linguistic and cultural borders but also across time. It is notable that Shakespeare’s own play texts feature translational properties that can be amplified in translation. This translingual property makes Shakespeare’s text inh…[Read more]

Avery Cornburgh (d.1487) of Bere Ferrers (Devon) and Dovers (Essex) – a Lancastrian, Yorkist, and Tudor household servant – was one of the appreciable numbers of crown servants utilised in local government during the fifteenth century. Serving in Cornwall and Essex as JP, MP, sheriff, and commissioner, he was prominent in Cornish affairs as a res…[Read more]

(Re-)constructing the lineage of one lesser-gentry family in eastern Lancashire (from the thirteenth-century Oldham family to their sale of Werneth Hall), this study – utilising wills, inventories, deeds, parish registers, and other archives – surveys the Cudworths’ socio-political, religious, and educational interests, as well as their wider ass…[Read more]

Socio-economic roles and family life from the late-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century are explored in this study of one non-gentry (yeomanry) family in eastern Lancashire: the Stansfields’ genealogy is (re-)constituted – utilising wills, inventories, parish registers, and other archives – against the broader background of their kinship rel…[Read more]

Some of the complexities of inheritance practices are studied through the example of one non-gentry (yeomanry) family in eastern Lancashire: this study – using wills, parish registers, and other archives – (re-)constructs the Cudworths’ genealogy, and examines their familial ties, socio-economic roles, and disposition of property within local and…[Read more]

Though English supporters of the Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (d.1384)—known as “Lollards”—had been drawn from academic and noble/gentry circles during the later-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries, persecution, equation of heresy with sedition, and the failure of Sir John Oldcastle’s Rebellion (1414) ensured overt abandonment of Lollard i…[Read more]

Duchess Anna Amalia (1739-1807) was a central figure in the duchies of Weimar and Eisenach for over fifty years – as wife of the reigning duke, then as custodial regent and finally as mother of the reigning duke. The article comes to the conclusion that the duchess could barely affect the emergence of the configuration that has been referred to in…[Read more]

The article examines regulations for »order« at the princely courts in the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century and asks how these prescriptive documents sought to establish “good order” at court. Special attention is paid to the theological justifications of order as well as the confessionality and the confessional character of court orders. T…[Read more]

After the Seven Years War German petty courts increasingly felt obliged to justify their very existence. Therefor members of the reigning dynasties developped strategies to represent themselves as ›enlightened‹ rulers. Especially for non-reigning princesses, practice and patronage of the fine arts – theatre, music, landscape gardening, liter…[Read more]

Freemasonry has traditionally been seen as a key influence in the rise of the Bourgeoisie, since it allegedly subdued social boundaries and behavioural norms of the Ancien Régime. This paper, however, argues that the masonic lodges at least in the smaller German court towns, adopted various elements of court society – organizational structures, my…[Read more]

The idea of the North in Western society has a long and distinguished history. Indeed, the only ‘purely ethnographic treatise that survives from antiquity’ is Tacitus’s Germania, his description of the Germanic peoples (Mellor 1993: 14). Tacitus produced his short treatise as a way of forcing Romans to confront the luxurious decadence that he fe…[Read more]

The metatheatricality of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has invited recent directors to tell particular kinds of socially progressive stories. This article uses the notion of “social reparation” to theorize remedial uses of Shakespeare in adaptations that give artists and audiences more moral agency. By imagining more inclusive local habitations and s…[Read more]

Heracles/Hercules is a particularly striking example of how European societies have received, appropriated and reshaped classical heroic myths into the early 21st century. Is the ancient hero thus also a European site of memory? It will be shown that it was a specific aspect of the myth that was evoked particularly frequently and became a topos by…[Read more]

The rise of global Shakespeare as an industry and cultural practice—the incorporation of Shakespearean performance in cultural diplomacy and in the cultural marketplace—is aided by digital tools of dissemination and digital forms of artistic expression. Shakespeare has evolved from a cultural nomad in the past centuries—a body of works with no pe…[Read more]

This essay traces some of the contexts and media in which “Heracles-Hercules” – as a hero between virtue and hubris – was visible in European societies from the end of the middle ages onwards. It discusses whether this example of the reception, appropriation and transformation of classical myths in the early modern period can be understood as a…[Read more]

For two years, from 1788 to 1790, Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1739-1807) exchanged her familiar surroundings with Rome and Naples. She undertook her furthest and most ambitious journey at the age of almost 49. For the only time the princely widow left Germany or the German territories of the Reich. During her stay, the Duchess…[Read more]

The screen as an interface immerses audiences in an alternate universe. As a result, that interface seems transparent. Through analyses of performances that call attention to filmic genres, such as Edgar Wright’s parody film, Hot Fuzz (2007), and the Wooster Group’s multimedia production, Hamlet (2007), as well as (meta)theatrical operations on…[Read more]