Chapter 2: The Survival of English Chivalric Romances provides an account of the documentary evidence of manuscripts, entries, printings, and adaptations which detail the survival of English chivalric romances. The discussion considers other cultural artifacts and related literary kinds which include materials from the tradition of these romances…[Read more]

Chapter 3: The Significance of English Chivalric Romances describes the main features of English chivalric romances: all-embracing idealism; overarching motifs, like separation-and reunion, exile-and-return, sieges, and quests; typical characters: ladies, knights, stewards true or false, and fair unknowns; amatory motifs: courtly love,…[Read more]

Chapter 4: Macbeth: Loyal Stewards and Royal Succession views the play as a romance defined by its overarching structure as exile-and-return of the rightful and qualified successor to the throne. Malcolm proves himself worthy in the Court Scene in England, where his test of Macduff demonstrates his ability, superior to his father’s, to establish “…[Read more]

Chapter 5: Hamlet: Courtly Revenge and Chivalric Succession sets Hamlet’s confusion about the appeal of a chivalric figure as a figure of justice and the ghost’s injunction to courtly revenge for adultery and incest at least as much as murder, in the larger context of the struggle between Denmark and Norway. Whatever befalls Hamlet occurs in the…[Read more]

Chapter 6: Othello: Courtly Love and Chivalric Justice explains the sudden onset of Othello’s jealousy in terms of the known propensities of intermediaries in courtly love to betray their function and thereby alter perceptions of relationships among lady, lover, and their go-between. It interprets the dichotomies between Venice and the Levant on t…[Read more]

Chapter 7: King Lear: Courtly Romance and Chivalric Restoration sees the opening perversions of and developing machinations of courtly love as means leading to the undoing of Edmund, Goneril, and Regan. It sees Edgar, the instrument of their undoing, fulfilling his obligations to father and godfather, as the fair unknown made so by internal exile…[Read more]

Entries identify chapter and page.

“Appendix: Census of English Chivalric Romances through 1616” compiles data on manuscripts, printings, entries, and adaptations of English chivalric romances from standard sources: Short-Title Catalogue, Annals of the English Drama 975-1700, and the Stationers’ Register, among others. Tabulations of the data through 1610 serve as the basis for t…[Read more]

Reflects all works cited or consulted in preparing this book. The disproportion between pre-1970 and post-1970 works reflects the greater and lesser relevance, respectively, of most work in the field of English chivalric romance to my thesis. Recent scholarship has approach the subject less from a literary and historical than from a political,…[Read more]

This textual crux all modern editors unanimously and silently emend, from the Folio “he”, their copy text, to the Quarto “you.” Although they find F so nonsensical as to deserve no comment, Shakespeare, his company, and his audience found it not only sensible in a play involving jealousy, but also powerful. The difference between then and now…[Read more]

Surveys the contemporary and modern designations of the genre of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Considers the gothic, not the humanistic, character of chivalric romance and the range of chivalric romances both idealistic and satirical. Accepting the medieval treatment of The Iliad as chivalric in nature, views Shakespeare’s play as a com…[Read more]

The position of the archbishop of Canterbury at the heart of the Establishment engendered requests to be patron, advocate or opponent of almost every conceivable development in national life. One such entanglement was his role as unofficial advisor to the Lord Chamberlain in the matter of the licensing of stage plays. According to the report of…[Read more]

Michael Ramsey’s time as archbishop of Canterbury (1961-74) was a crucial period of transition in evangelicals’ view of themselves and of how they should relate to the wider church. However, Ramsey has often been assumed to have been either indifferent or actively hostile to evangelical concerns. This chapter argues that this understanding of R…[Read more]

This essay explores two main themes, one major and one minor. After an examination of Michael Ramsey’s own engagement with inter-faith theology in the abstract, it briefly considers his interventions on behalf of Anglican minorities caught up in religiously inflected conflict overseas. The main preoccupation of the essay, however, is with the i…[Read more]

This article explores the interface of multiple legal systems in early modern Daghestan. By comparing colonial engagements with legal plurality with indigenous genres of Daghestani legal discourse, I aim to shed light on the plurality of legal systems that preceded as well as informed legal discourse under colonialism. The Daghestani turn to…[Read more]

The friends, followers, and fans of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, made no small contribution to the world of early modern English letters. This essay contributes to our growing understanding of the Essex circle’s literary afterlife by contextualizing BL Additional MS 18638, an early seventeenth-century manuscript containing a partial English…[Read more]

BL Additional MS 17492, the so-called Devonshire Manuscript of Henrician courtly verse, is a prime example of how social and cultural phenomena contributed to early modern manuscript culture. Among the treasures of the Devonshire MS is a series of lyrics that chronicles a fascinating courtly intrigue of the 1530s: the illicit, clandestine marriage…[Read more]

Between 1836 and 1865, a series of marriages took place within the Greek Orthodox community of London. Initially performed in homes and a converted chapel, ceremonies began to be held in the newly constructed Greek Orthodox Church from 1850 onwards. Unaware of the legal necessity of registering marriages with the government, marriages were not…[Read more]

From 1798 to 1944 the display of coats of arms in Great Britain was taxed. Since there were major changes to the role of heraldry in society in the same period, it is surprising that the records of the tax have gone unstudied. This dissertation evaluates whether the records of the tax can say something useful about heraldry in this period. The…[Read more]