C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tokien as I knew them (never well)

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-142
Author(s):  
Eric Stanley
Keyword(s):  
English Literature ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Renaissance Literature ◽  
Sir Gawain ◽  
Ancrene Wisse ◽  
General Editor ◽  
Katherine Group ◽  
History Of

I attended all the lectures C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien gave in 1948 to 1951. My own teaching of English Renaissance literature at Birmingham University was informed by Lewis’s volume in the Oxford History of English Literature (1954), parts of which I had heard him give as lectures. At Birmingham we started a series of Medieval and Renaissance texts, and I wrote to Lewis and ask him if he would be our General Editor; he said, yes. He asked me to meet him, correspondence followed, and I quote from a long, witty, and wise letter about an edition of mine, and about another edition which Lewis disliked and I also quote from that sharper letter. I knew Tolkien because, as an undergraduate I attended his weekly seminars. At that time he himself was greatly interested in Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group. He lectured on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Much later, in 1972, I met Tolkien again, at a book-launch party. I ventured to speak to him. I gave my name, and in his charming way he said he remembered me. I wondered at that, but took it as evidence of his kindness.

The ‘Angel’ of English Renaissance Literature

1959 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 85-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald C. Baker
Keyword(s):  
English Literature ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Renaissance Literature ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Gold Coin ◽  
Casual Reader ◽  
The Fantastic

They have in EnglandA coin that bears the figure of an angelStampèd in gold …(Merchant of Venice II. vii. 55-57)The scholar or casual reader whose interest is drawn to Renaissance English literature discovers very early that, in the fantastic profusion of puns and punning allusions that delighted the hearts of Englishmen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, second in frequency only to the cuckold's horns is a thin gold coin called the angel. The uses made of it range from the casual pun ‘There's a pair of angels to guide you to your lodgings’ to elaborate metaphors which mold a scene or provide the vehicle for an entire poem, as in Donne's Elegie XI, ‘The Bracelet’.

English Mythography in its European Context, 1500-1650

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria Hartmann
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Renaissance Literature ◽  
European Context ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
European Renaissance

Greco-Roman mythology and its reception are at the heart of the European Renaissance, and mythographies—texts that collected and explained ancient myths—were considered indispensable companions to any reader of literature. Despite the importance of this genre, English mythographies have not gained sustained critical attention, because they have been wrongly considered mere copies of their European counterparts. This monograph studies the English mythographies written between 1577 and 1647 by Stephen Batman, Abraham Fraunce, Francis Bacon, Henry Reynolds, and Alexander Ross. By placing their texts into a wider, European context, it reveals the unique English take on the genre. The book unfolds the role myth played in the wider English Renaissance culture (religious conflicts, literary life, natural philosophy, poetics, and Civil War politics) and shows, for the first time, the considerable explanatory value it holds for the study of English Renaissance literature. Finally, this book is a contribution to the history of myth philosophy. It reveals how early modern England answered a question we still find fascinating today: what is myth?

Feeling

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah McNamer
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Middle English Literature ◽  
Sir Gawain ◽  
History Of Emotion ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Methodologies ◽  
A Site ◽  
Opening Up

The past few decades have witnessed a surge of interest in emotion as a subject of study across the disciplines. This has generated important interdisciplinary conversations, opening up new methodologies and new fields, including a field with special relevance to medievalists -- the history of emotion. How can specialists in Middle English literature contribute in more visible and fruitful ways to the history of emotion? This article gestures towards some ways of bridging the disciplinary divide between literature and the history of emotion. It advocates an approach that does not dismiss, but embraces, the "literariness" of literature as a site for the making of emotion in history. It invites Middle English scholars to consider literary texts as scripts for the production of feeling, and it explains how the concepts of performance and performativity can generate new ways of thinking about emotion historically. Finally, it illustrates a method for reading Middle English texts as scripts for the making of emotion in history by analyzing two texts, The Wooing of Our Lord and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in their historical contexts.

scholarly journals Tsubouchi, Dryden and Global Shakespeare

2012 ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Daniel Gallimore
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
John Dryden ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Antony And Cleopatra ◽  
History Of ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Late Nineteenth

What does it mean for Shakespeare’s plays to be recognized as both ‘universal’ and ‘foreign’ in a recipient culture? In the case of Japan, where Shakespeare was initially received in the late nineteenth century, one answer might be that Japanese Shakespeareans have adopted a kind of ‘soft humanism’; in other words one not specifically situated against the horizon of the English Renaissance, but instead fulfilling a range of purposes within the local culture, not least the touting of ‘universal’ values. Universals appeal to societies perceived to lack a strong awareness of the individuated self, such as in late nineteenth century Japan, where the pioneering Shakespeare translator Tsubouchi Shōyō was among the first to encounter Shakespeare’s works. One influence on Tsubouchi’s translating style that is often overlooked is that of John Dryden, who becomes a central figure in the history of English literature which Tsubouchi published in 1901. Like Dryden, Tsubouchi finds in Shakespeare a forum for philosophical and ideological exchange; Dryden may well have provided Tsubouchi with a critical perspective on their predecessor. This article discusses their relationship with regard to Dryden’s influential adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra, All for Love (1678), and Tsubouchi’s 1915 translation of the same play.

Nuns

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wallace
Keyword(s):  
English Renaissance ◽  
Renaissance Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Andrew Marvell ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Moment

In his poemUpon Appleton House, Andrew Marvell implies that the Appleton nunnery in Yorkshire, along with all its works, vanish “in one instant.” The suggestion that the English nuns disappear the moment they are chased from their buildings is iconic both of English Renaissance imaginings and of modern scholarship. The mysterious absence of nuns was compounded with their excessive presence, a paradox that in many ways compares with medieval Catholic thinking and feeling about nuns. This article examines the representations of nuns in English Renaissance literature and their habitual failure to portray the kinds of lives, and conditions of enclosure, actually known to nuns in England. It also considers how the long history of convent literacies in England, leading from Anglo-Saxon and Latin to Anglo-Norman and English, results in gradual separation of women from the literacy of the clerical elite. The article analyzes Caesarius of Heisterbach’sDialogus Miracolorum, a compilation of miniature ascetic romances written for Cistercian novice monks.

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