Examines Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors and the epistemological challenges of differentiating twins in light of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, specifically his theories of substance and individuation.

Shortly after publishing the first edition of his Essays in 1597, Francis Bacon drafted De sapientia veterum, a series of unpublished essays designed to re-read classical mythology as indicative of political and scientific truths. An early, if partial, expression of Bacon’s project to facilitate mastery over the natural order, De sapientia has c…[Read more]

By applying translation theories and discourse analysis to the study of thirteenth-century English law, it is apparent that some of the terms used in secondary works and printed editions of primary sources are not based on the actual manuscript sources but instead modern biases (intersecting ethnicity and gender). The knock-on effect of this…[Read more]

While the Res Gestae are understood as an important source for the life and work of Augustus, Henning Ohst presents letters of the Princeps. These have survived only in fragments and through other authors, but still offer research opportunities for new questions. The focus of the contribution is the relationship of the Princeps to poets such as…[Read more]

More detailed discussions on: Y. Brandenburg: Amare mit Infinitv. Bedeutungsentlehnung und Sprachgebrauch bei Sallust und Horaz, Glotta 98, 2022, 68–77 (362f.); A. J. Woodman: Horace’s Second Ode, MH 79, 2022, 55–76 (363f.)

This essay examines English Renaissance chess manuals in order to understand why chess, a game that encourages subterfuge and stratagem, was nonetheless figured as the paradigmatic example of a virtuous pastime. Particular attention is given to da Odenara Damiano’s The Pleasaunt and Wittie Playe of the Cheasts (1564), Arthur Saul’s The Famous Gam…[Read more]

The case of Cicero’s de inventione is interesting for many reasons. First, the work is an early example of the construction of cultural memory in the field of Roman rhetoric. Second, this work shows a strong connection between rhetorical theory, the Ciceronian interest in other disciplines (especially philosophy) and the oratorical formation of a…[Read more]

The Dictio 17 (= 239 Vogel) of Ennodius is a controuersia in which the declamator speaks against a son who did not provide for the care of his aged father and thus procured his death. The argument is reinforced by examples of animals – eagles and wolves – who, unlike the defendant, take care of their parents. In the example of the eagles, Enn…[Read more]

While the discipline of computational linguistics mostly deals with the modeling and the investigation of individual languages (often “big” languages such as English, German, Arabic, or Chinese), Multilingual Computational Linguistics focuses on the comparison of languages, trying to develop new methods and techniques by which languages can be com…[Read more]

An introductory lecture for non-specialists on medieval schooltexts for sex education of pre-pubescent boys: Rota Veneris, Pamphilus De Amore and, especially, Facetus ‘Moribus et vita’, of which a most complete 13-14th century translation into Catalan survives. The author has published numerous scholarly papers and an academic book on this subject.

Since H. Humbach’s Baktrische Sprachdenkmäler (Wiesbaden, 1966) the main etymological
proposal for Bactrian χϸονο ‘(calendar) year, (regnal) year’ has been A. Thierfelder’s suggestion of a loanword from Hellenistic Greek χρόνος ‘time’. In this article the plausibility of this etymology is re-examined, and it is further argued that it should b…[Read more]

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]

Die Vita der heiligen Adelheid von Vilich, geschrieben um 1056/57, wird vor dem Hintergrund ihres Entstehungskontextes interpretiert.

Lotharingia and East Francia: Marriage as a Political Instrument? – Kings and nobles arranged marriages for their daughters in order to form or strengthen po- litical alliances. Historical writers of the tenth century interpreted the relations of the Ottonian kings Henry I and Otto I with the Lotharingian dukes Giselbert and Conrad the Red in t…[Read more]

The present article examines the Corpus Leidense, the group of eight Ciceronian treatises among which the De natura deorum was also transmitted, focusing on its archetype. The second and longer section contains the first complete list of the 174 identified manuscripts of De natura deorum, with 57 new items added to the 117 already listed by Pease…[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]