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1995 Colloquium Paper Abstracts

"'But what on earth can long abide in state?': From Ovid's Metamorphoses to Spenser's Muiopotmos"

 In Muiopotmos, Spenser relates the mock epic/tragedy of Clarion, a butterfly who falls victim to a spider. Clarion's fate plays itself out against a backdrop of metamorphic and aetiological myth. Spenser presents his adaptation of the Ovidian story of Arachne, which explains the ancestry of the spider, and invents a metamorphic story of Ovidian flavor to explain likewise the origin of the butterfly. These two stories, both depictions of divine jealousy, and their implied relationship to Clarion's story together place into question Clarion's moral culpability: does he bring his downfall upon himself? At the same time, these stories shrink his tragedy from the epic proportions invoked by the opening allusions to the Aeneid to a more diminutive scale. By adapting and imitating Ovidian metamorphic myth, Spenser thus weaves multiple perspectives upon Clarion's fall.
 
 

"The Other Apocalypse: 2 Esdras and The Faerie Queene"

 Spenser's use of apocalyptic Scripture has long been recognized, particularly his use of the Book of Revelation in Book I of The Faerie Queene. In Book V, the Book of Justice, Spenser alludes to a different apocalyptic work, 2 Esdras. We tend to think of poetic allusions to Scripture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as invocations of canonical authority, but what of allusions to noncanonical Scripture? This paper will look at the medieval debate about the status of 2 Esdras and its sixteenth-century result, suggesting that the apocalyptic theme of this work was peculiarly suited to Spenser's picture of the desire for as well as the fear of end times.
 
 

"Spenser's Defense of Historical Fiction: Briton moniments and The Faerie Queene"

 In book ii, canto x of The Faerie Queene, Spenser temporarily suspends the narrative and recounts the "noble deeds" of Elizabeth I's great ancestors. This little piece of historiography (the Briton moniments) is based on the accounts of early Britain found in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and its Tudor successors. Although Spenser is largely faithful to his sources, at crucial moments in the Briton moniments he suggests that a great amount of fiction is inherent in Geoffrey's Historia, despite the status it acquired in the Tudor period as Britain's legitimate history. Spenser's purpose, I believe, is not so much to detract from the value of his authorities as to expose the mechanism by which myths in historical writing serve to legitimize and glorify the Tudor dynasty. By placing his capsule version of the great chronicle tradition side by side in the same canto with his own imaginary account of the Fairy Queen Gloriana's lineage, Spenser further claims that his fiction, The Faerie Queene, can justly occupy a position equal to that of Geoffrey's Historia in Britain's collective memory.
 
 

"Amoret's Orgasm: The Significance of Female Sperm in Book III of The Faerie Queene "

 A seminal debate takes place in the second half of the sixteenth century over the existence and meaning of female sperm. In the service of arguments for the equality of the sexes, many doctors rehabilitate the Galenic two-seed theory of reproduction to replace Aristotle's one-seed theory. Pregnant with misogynistic implications, the Aristotelian theory supports the traditional dualities of male/female, active/passive, form/matter, etc. Renaissance interpretations of Galen's theory, on the other hand, liberate the female from passivity and materiality. Spenser's description of Amoret's passion in the 1590 version of The Faerie Queene reveals that he espoused the two-seed theory. Interpreting the anatomical allegory of the Garden of Adonis in this light offers an explanation for Spenser's pointed rejection of the traditional dualities. Not surprisingly in a book about a female knight, Spenser endorses Galenic feminism in his celebration of generation.
 
 

"Latin Influences on Old English Syntactical Patterns"

 Aelfric, the most outstanding author of late Anglo-Saxon prose, was a master in Latin and the majority of his works are based upon Latin sources. However, the maturity of his vernacular prose can be seen in the independence of the syntactic structures of his texts from the Latin sources on which they were based. As we will see, in three of his Lives of Saints, those of Saints Oswald, Edmund, and Swithun, he renders Old English versions which do not result in odd or unnatural constructions due to Latin influence. This degree of structural independence becomes more evident if we compare his works with the ninth-century Old English translation of the Latin versions of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, particularly with the recreation of the Life of Saint Oswald.

"Weaving the Past: Anglo-Saxon Scribes and Diplomatic Spoils"

 In confronting the problem of forgeries, the student of early medieval charters, or diplomas, typically finds much more than the pure fabrication of a probative document. Forged charters can often be complex constructs of both fact and fiction in which elements of genuine charters - kernels of truth - may still linger. This paper will examine some Mercian charters of the eighth and ninth centuries and compare them with the famous group of seventh-century forgeries from St. Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury in order to reveal how Anglo-Saxon forgers might have woven diplomatic pasts into charter presents.
 
 

"Ecclesiastical Politics"

 During the sixteenth century, and especially during the reign of Elizabeth I, English scholars began to re-discover the language and culture of Anglo-Saxon England. Their historical inquiries were not motivated by purely academic interests; political and ecclesiastical controversies helped spur and direct these scholars' studies and publications. In this talk, I concentrate on the activities of Matthew Parker (Elizabeth's first Archbishop of Canterbury) and his collaborators in studying, editing, and publishing Anglo-Saxon texts, as I explore how these scholars used Old English works such as Aelfric's homilies, biblical translations, Asser's Life of King Alfred, and Alfred's Preface to the Pastoral Care as "spolia" in constructing their own versions of early English history.
 
 

"Renaissance Portraits of Charlemagne as Crusader"

 For some medieval scholars, the real life exploits and achievements of Charlemagne lacked a certain "pizzazz". As a corrective, they spiced up his vita with the addition of crusading activity in Spain, and even in the Holy Land. Apocryphal legends detail a trip to the East in which Charlemagne liberates Jerusalem and is honored by the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople. As late as the Renaissance, humanists co-opted and embellished this tale in their biographies of Charlemagne. An outgrowth of this legend was a Renaissance prophecy predicting a second coming of Charlemagne, according to which - among other things - he would free Christendom from the Muslim scourge. The questions I will be asking are: How did this legend arise? Why was it so eagerly and uncritically accepted? And, above all, what did it mean to its interpreters, particularly the humanists? In essence, what did Charlemagne - as a crusader of all things - have to do with Renaissance Italy?
 
 

"Medieval Explanations for Modern Experiences: The Summary of the Natural History of the Indies by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo"

 My study concentrates on the Summary of the Natural History of the Indies written in 1525 by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo. The Summary is the first text that depicts and explains the species found in the West Indies. Generally, Fernandez de Oviedo's approach follows the description patterns of previous travel accounts, such as Marco Polo's distinction between "animals like ours and others than ours". The topic I want to address, in particular, is the medieval relics that the Summary shows. Although Fernandez de Oviedo resorts to field work, where the species is observed and studied very carefully, his conclusions are not empirical. On the contrary, he explains his results by going back to his readings of Pliny, the memory of the bestiary, or even reproducing the moralizing fashion of the sermons. His descriptions also show how the lore contained in the ancient books is at a crossroads when it comes to writing on species never seen and described before.
 
 

"'Such is this time': Borrowing and Becoming History in Katherine Austen's
Book M "

 Katherine Austen's Book M -- a collection of never-published meditations and verses composed in England in 1664 -- negotiates seventeenth-century generic conventions for women's private diaries while it simultaneously makes a claim for Austen's place in history. Although Austen composes the divine meditations and paraphrases of sermons expected from a widow like herself, she also interweaves a dramatized record of her struggle to retain ownership of her late husband's estate with commentaries on historical personages and events stretching back into the Middle Ages. In legends of medieval popes and kings, and accounts of women whom Austen sees as exemplary historical predecessors, this financially threatened, Protestant, Restoration gentlewoman finds material with which she ultimately authorizes herself as a prophet: a figure whose privileged vision of time brings with it a place in history.

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