Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 articles from March 2000

Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 archives from March 2000

Gorboduc as a Tragic Discovery of "Feudalism".(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... Renaissance literary studies have long depended on the master narrative of an "early modern" transition from "feudalism" to "capitalism": from a conglomeration of land-based, militarized, and politicized households to a nation of privatized...

Community, Authority, and the Motherland in Sackville and Norton's Gorboduc.(16th century playwrights Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton)(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton's Gorboduc (1561-62) has elicited critical interest mainly because it is the first blank-verse tragedy in English and because it engages the politically delicate matter of the Elizabethan succession. As...

"Therefore, Since I Cannot Prove a Lover".(courtly love in William Shakespeare, Ovid, and Andreas Capellanus)(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... Well, say there is no kingdom then for Richard; What other pleasure can the world afford? I'll make my heaven in a lady's lap, And deck my body in gay ornaments, And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks. O miserable...

Epic Thansgression and the Framing of Agency in "Dido Queen of Carthage."(play by British writer Christopher Marlowe)(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... In book 2 of the Aeneid, its hero, relating the terrible story of Troy's last night, recalls his encounter with a terrified Helen in Vesta's shrine. Convinced that she is primarily responsible for Troy's fall, Aeneas is about to slay her when...

The Globe and Henry V as Business Document.(Globe Theater; play by William Shakespeare)(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... Early modern dramatic texts have been read as political documents, aesthetic statements, and instruments for social change, but they were also the property of a working company, as Roslyn Lander Knutson and others have pointed out. [1] In order...

Female Performativity in The Tragedy of Mariam.(17th century play by Elizabeth Gary)(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... [T]he semblances and appearances of all things cunningly couched, are the principal supporters of our Philosophy: for such as we seem, such are we judged here. --Philibert de Vienne [I]t can never be obvious what a woman has inside...

Mariological Memory in The Winter's Tale and Henry VIII.(plays by William Shakespeare)(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... The Winter's Tale and Henry VIII are built on a paradox--their women protagonists acquire increased moral authority even while they are being demoted and persecuted. The structure of these plays supports this empowering through a series of...

Margaret Cavendish's Dramatic Utopias and the Politics of Gender.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... In a 1663 epistle addressed to scholars at Oxford and Cambridge, Margaret Cavendish compares herself and her female counterparts to "[b]rids in cages [ldots][that][ldots]hop up and down in our houses, not suffered to fly abroad to see the...

Recent Studies in Tudor and Stuart Drama.(Review)
March 22, 2000... No generalization about a single year's collection of books can claim much significance--even in the millennium year--yet it is a rare SEL reviewer who can resist making something of the texts she has just herded into a single essay. So I begin...

ERRATA.(vol. 40, no. 1, "Poetic Parthenogenesis and Spenser's Idea of Creation in The Faerie Queene")(Correction Notice)
March 22, 2000... We regret that printer's errors appeared in SEL 40, 1 (Winter 2000) in the article by Elizabeth A. Spiller, "Poetic Parthenogenesis and Spenser's Idea of Creation in The Faerie Queene." Page 65, lines 27 & 28: "eidoV" should read...