This article examines Mary Magdalene’s biblical identity and poetic representation in selected sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish texts. An alternative reading or “re-visioning” (Adrienne Rich’s term) of the narratives that tell her story reclaims her figure from masculinist characterizations of Mary Magdalene that have made an enduring…[Read more]

In this book chapter, Dr. Davis examines the depiction of a dissimulated desire for material improvement (mejora) as it is expressed in the epic poetry of imperial Spain, particularly in Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana. She shows that within the aristocratic context of the times, the desire for personal betterment or “mejora” is always contingent…[Read more]

The nautical motif of the ex-voto (votive offering) is a lyric genre that reflects poetically the possible experience of a shipwreck survivor. Paradoxically, many of the poets who evoke the perils of sea travel never left Spain or, at most, sailed only the waters of the Mediterranean. Their writing of the sea remained consistently codified in…[Read more]

The biographical trajectory of the Franco-Flemish composer Josquin des Prez can be described as exciting and his musical contribution as transcendent in an era of sublime creativity that coincided with the artistic and intellectual rediscovery of the values of classical Greco-Latin antiquity. A contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo,…[Read more]

In his response to the Dauphin, his threats before Harfleur’s walls, and his St. Crispin’s Day oration, Henry V deploys what we might call proleptic histories of the present as a means of rhetorical persuasion. Henry invites his audiences, that is, to imagine themselves in the future, understanding the present as part of their own history. Hen…[Read more]

In this early article, written in the wake of the publication of Alessandro Martinengo’s _La astrología en la obra de Quevedo_ (Madrid: Alhambra, 1983), Dr. Davis focuses on the astrological tropes in a Quevedo sonnet on the nativity of Christ to see whether this poetic text can shed additional light on the poet’s documented penchant for…[Read more]

Professor Davis’s early article on appropriations of the Indies by Spanish poets who remained in Spain invites us to contemplate a body of poetry that plays the idea of American treasures against the value of true, spiritual riches.

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]

This essay analyzes the work of the poetic function as defined by Roman Jakobson in poems by Francisco de Quevedo that concern themselves with the trope of the rending of the rocks at the moment of Christ’s death on the cross, and in other poetic texts of Quevedo.

Focussing on the Duchy of Cornwall’s organisational structure during the Wars of the Roses, this survey examines the principal offices (which evolved around administration of its marine and terrene regalities) and personnel (administrative elite) in Cornwall and Devon. Consideration of successive Princes’ Councils and counsellors (and Councils of…[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]

Analysis of the participation of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid in the commemorative events of the first centenary of Beethoven’s death (1927)

Before arriving in Spain, Francisco Corselli had developed an important career as opera composer and sacred music when he arrived in Spain in 1733 from Parma thanks to his previous relations with Isabella de Farnese, the future queen of Spain, and with the ducal house of Parma. At the Madrid court, he began his career as ‘maestro de música’ for…[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]

Results of automatic language identification in Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, Aleandro’s diaries, and a 1512 letter from Aleandro to Erasmus

This dissertation develops a methodology for understanding tonality and tonal structures in Renaissance polyphony by exploring the ways that the modern-day analyst and listener experience tonal phenomena in this music through a historically-informed lens. Regarded as one of the most important composers of the late-sixteenth century, Tomás Luis de…[Read more]

This monograph does not represent the 1979 Revolution as a rapture in Persian poetry, rather it sees the continuity; Shams demonstrates that Islamic Republican poetry was in fact in the making decades before the Revolution. In its study of war poetry, this monograph remains focused on official poets alone. For an understanding of other (official)…[Read more]

The drama of the Niger Delta region has enjoyed robust scholarship. This essay interrogates J. P. Clark-Bekederemo’s drama against the cultural milieu of the region and tries to investigate the connections between the rich folklore of the area and the wealth of poetry and imagery contained in his drama. The essay investigates the terrain,…[Read more]

CFP – AIWAC 2nd edition Rome 2022

This study presents a reconstruction of the performance of the melancholic character in Golden Age theater. It argues that critics have overlooked the way this character type was acted on the original stage. Using Lope’s El Príncipe melancólico [The Melancholic Prince] as a case-study to speculate on the actor’s paralinguistic gestures and movem…[Read more]