On late-medieval theater in general we report that the periodical European Medieval Drama,* in its seventh, eighth, and ninth volumes, highlights the thespian activities of many countries. Also, on a more theoretic note, an article in Comparative Drama and a monograph are devoted to the origins of theater. Steven F. Walker probes India and Greece before Christ and muses whether staging was a global phenomenon then, where actors performed scenic events in ritual or entertainment, watched by (passive) spectators. The monograph of Eli Rozik rethinks similar origins, where fictional human beings were “imprinted upon” real persons, a process beginning in...

Queen Isabeau’s vilipended reign has generated a great deal of scholarship; however, the monarch’s negative appraisal is mostly an outgrowth of the volatile political constellation in which she operated. During the first half of the fifteenth century, the Hundred Years’ War between France and England (1337–1453) raged on, primarily in the French hexagon. The basic cause of strife had been a dynastic quarrel between France and the kings of England, since the latter held the Duchy of Guienne and resented paying homage to French heads of state. Because the war inflicted unrelenting misery upon the French people — for example,...

Los estudios pioneros de Gaston Zink, consagrados a esclarecer las fuentes que subyacen a la composición de Clériadus et Méliadice (desde ahora: CM — entre 1435 y 1445), fueron el único intento para relacionar este roman con la tradición narrativa francesa medieval.¹ A pesar de la multiplicidad de fuentes posibles y de su compleja relación con el contexto social, Gaston Zink reveló (en la introducción a su edición crítica) una influencia directa, el Roman de Ponthus et Sidoine (PS — fin s. 14/principio s. 15), afirmando que los dos textos compartían varias características.² Postiormente, en 1998, la editora de PS, Marie-Claude de...

The Europeans’ use of money as a medium of exchange for transactions began soon after the twelfth century and continued throughout the commercial revolution (under Italian leadership) even though a barter system prevailed for a long time. Transhistorically, money in its relation to themes or intrigues has had a role in literary works, not yet in the carnival comedies of the fifteenth century, but certainly in Hans Sachs’s writings. Indeed, money has inspired or preoccupied moralists as well as poets (Rutebeuf, Oswald von Wolkenstein, Rabelais, Michel de Montaigne, and Molière), novelists and chroniclers,¹ politicians, ideologists, reformers, economists, and revolutionaries. And...

El presente artículo tiene por objeto abordar el estudio de los prólogos y las dedicatorias de algunas de las obras traducidas durante los siglos XIV y XV con el fin de demostrar, basándome en la información proporcionada en los mismos, que en el siglo XIV comienza a desarrollarse, aunque de manera todavía muy incipiente, la reflexión y la crítica sobre la traducción, que continuará evolucionando a lo largo del siglo XV hasta lograr su pleno auge en el siglo XVIII. La actividad traductora, llevada a cabo en ese mismo período (siglos XIV y XV), de textos latinos, en su mayoría,...

Whether humans can perform the feat of flying is a question deeply rooted in humankind’s consciousness. Certainly our study of ancient civilizations suggests the affirmative if mythology provides a clue. The Assyro-Babylonians believed in Ningirsu and the goddess Lilitu (flying gods), while the Aztecs mentioned the flying Quetzalcoatl.¹ In this study we shall limit ourselves to western Europe and concentrate upon evidence from the latemedieval and early modern periods, roughly spanning 1350–1750, specifically during the time of the so-called witch-craze (1450–1750). In particular, we intend to examine the hypothesis that recorded “transvections” of witches by air could have...

Within the history of translation between the Vulgate by St. Jerome (347– 419/20) and the 1500s, more than a few landmarks are situated in early modern Germany, from Heinrich Steinhöwel’s Esopus (1476) and Niklas von Wyle’s Translatzen (1478) to Martin Luther’s Bible.¹ The diglossia of Latin and the vernaculars in a multi-lingual Europe makes the early modern period fascinating for the discipline of translation studies. This era marks the rise of an educated laity, the block book, and printing, and accordingly has been the focus of much investigative effort within the study of book history. Both translation studies and the...

In Italien begann die Renaissance im 14. Jahrhundert und erreichte ihren Höhepunkt in den nächsten beiden Jahrhunderten. Individueller Ausdruck, Selbstbewusstsein und weltliche Erfahrung wurden nun besonders geschätzt, doch sah man andererseits das ideale Selbstvertrauen als bald eingedämmt. Meine Arbeit soll zeigen, wie die Schriftsteller und Kunsttheoretiker der Renaissance ein berühmtes Sprichwort, “Schuster, bleib bei deinem Leisten!,” interpretierten, das die Kompetenz im Urteil eines Handwerkers auf sein eigenes Werk beschränkt (anstatt andere zu kritisieren). Erkennbar bahnten die schöpferischen Auseinandersetzungen mit dieser Massregel dem selbstbewussten bildenden Künstler den Weg. Sprichwörter, die schon in der antiken und biblischen Literatur vorkamen, vermitteln eine Einsicht...

Alain Chartier’s La Belle Dame sans mercy (1424, henceforth: BDSM) has inspired controversy from its stormy first reception, when certain self-styled “loyaulx serviteurs,” writing to the aristocratic ladies of a court of love, claimed that the work attempted to “mectre rumeur en la court amoureuse et rompre la queste des humbles servants” (362, lines 26–27).¹ These irate readers called for the censorship of the poem, urging the ladies to “destourner vos yeulz de lire si desraisonables escriptures et n’y donner foy ne audience” (362, lines 31–32).² Far from negating the BDSM’s text, such letters incited renewed controversy, generating...

In the year 1420, a small band of Franciscan friars was arrested in Venice by the Signori di Notte [Lords of the Night], one of the special magistracies responsible for policing and prosecuting serious crime. The four friars were charged with violation of the Most Serene Republic’s law against sodomy; what had they done to provoke such a charge? At the time of their arrest, the friars were parading naked through the streets, bearing crosses in their hands and leading a large procession of the faithful in a public exercise of pious devotion.¹ Since the grave charge of sodomy was...

Robert Henryson (1425?–1506?), a Scottish poet and schoolmaster, remained fairly independent when imitating Chaucer in his The Testament of Cresseid; but the Scotsman’s stanzas are often as harmonious as his master’s. Unlike the Testament or Henryson’s Morall Fabillis (late 1480s, inspired by Aesop), texts which have enjoyed critical attention, Orpheus and Eurydice has suffered relative neglect in modern studies.¹ Thus Harriet H. Wood damns the work with faint praise by calling it “the most ambitious, but not the most successful” among Henryson’s poems,² while John MacQueen, who has worked most on Orpheus and Eurydice, rightly laments the fact that...