Philological Quarterly articles from January 2007

Philological Quarterly archives from January 2007

Apollonius of Tyre in its manuscript context: an issue of marriage.
January 1, 2007... The romance of Apollonius of Tyre was "throughout the Middle Ages, one of the most frequently copied and translated romances of all those which are thought to have originated in the Hellenistic world of the second- and third-centuries A.D. "...

Rich peasants in the Old French fabliau.
January 1, 2007... Three Old French fabliaux, "Le Vilain Mire," "Constant du Hamel," and "Boivin de Provins," reveal an uneasy fascination with a new figure in the social landscape of the thirteenth century, the rich peasant. (1) Economically bound to a rigid...

Dunbar's broken rainbow: symbol, allegory, and apocalypse in "The Goldyn Targe".
January 1, 2007... William Dunbar's "The Goldyn Targe" adheres in most ways to late medieval dream-vision conventions, but idiosyncratically features a ship "Wyth merse of gold brycht as the stern of day, / Quhilk tendit to the land full lustily, / As falcoun...

Masculine Agency and Moral Stance in Shakespeare's King John.
January 1, 2007... While traditionally noted for its unpopularity with critics and audiences, the supposed uniqueness of King John among Shakespeare's history plays has been reassessed over the last two decades. In 1989 Deborah Curren-Aquino proclaimed that time...

"That sublimest juyce in our body": bloodletting and ideas of the individual in early modern England.
January 1, 2007... Blood always speaks beyond itself. A meeting point between the material and the vital, it is a substance suffused with meaning more than physiological. For the ancient writers of Leviticus, life itself was in the blood, and the elaborate blood...

Dryden's "Ceyx and Alcyone": metamorphosing Ovid.
January 1, 2007... "Ceyx and Alcyone" is perhaps the least commented upon of all Dryden's Fables. This is not surprising in some ways because compared to other parts of the collection, such as the extensive altered passages in "Palamon and Arcite" or the greatly...

Alfred in the Neatherd's cottage: history painting and epic poetry in the early nineteenth century.
January 1, 2007... In 1766 the German dramatist and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing warned in his essay Laokoon against over-emphasizing apparent similarities between the arts of poetry and painting, and his views have been restated more uncompromisingly by...

The religious and political vision of Pynchon's Against the Day.
January 1, 2007... Since V. appeared in 1963, Thomas Pynchon has exemplified American postmodernism, and Against the Day carries on the process of undercutting our ontological assumptions and denying us the stability that would support claims of truth or...

From Many Gods to One: Divine Action in Renaissance Epic.
January 1, 2007... From Many Gods to One: Divine Action in Renaissance Epic by Tobias Gregory. U. of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. 247. $30.00. The epic narrator of Paradise Lost sets out on an ambitious course of pursuing "Things unattempted yet in Prose or...

Outward Appearances: The Female Exterior in Restoration London.
January 1, 2007... Outward Appearances: The Female Exterior in Restoration London by Will Pritchard. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell U. Press, 2008. Pp. xii + 266. $55.00. Authenticity was perhaps one of the more contentious issues in Restoration London. If by...

Writers, Readers, and Reputations: Literary Life in Britain 1870-1918.
January 1, 2007... Writers, Readers, and Reputations: Literary Life in Britain 1870-1918 by Philip Waller. Oxford U. Press, 2006. Pp. xii + 1181. $192.50 cloth; $60 paper. This is a massive book, 9.8 x 6.7 x 2.5 inches in dimension and weighing 5.65 pounds....