In La Première atteinte contre ceux qui accusent les comedies (1603), the fille d’honneur Marie de Beaulieu praises and defends the commedia dell’arte troupe the Gelosi, directed by the celebrated actress and poet Isabella Andreini and her husband, Francesco. In her Rime, parte seconda (1605), Andreini includes seven poems in praise of Beaulieu, including one about her novel...
Anglo-Saxon Psalter
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British Library Manuscript Stowe 2 (Stowe Psalter) is a late Anglo-Saxon book in Latin with a continuous Old English gloss. Its marginalia include the name “Kateryn Rudston,” written in an apparently sixteenth-century hand; the same hand wrote “Kater” forty-four pages later and may also be evident in the rewriting of some Old English glosses. The signatures offer a rare example of female...
Debating the Literal Sense
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For a relatively brief period in the 1570s and ’80s, the Family of Love was one of the most hated religious movements in England. This was due in large part to a series of polemical works by a handful of reform-minded Protestants who saw Familism as a reprise of Catholic allegorical interpretation. Members of the movement were accused of extending their loose approach to scripture to loose...
Resurrecting Vivisection
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Unlike the title page of the De humani corporis fabrica of Vesalius (1543, 1555), the title page of Realdo Columbo’s De re anatomica (1559) has received relatively little critical comment. A careful study of Columbo’s iconography reveals a theoretical and symbolically veiled defense of human vivisection in keeping with Columbo’s ancient anatomical guides Herophilus and...
A Skeleton in the Closet
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Novella 32 of Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron (1559) recounts a French ambassador’s macabre tale of adultery and punishment, in which a husband forces his wife to drink from the skull of her dead lover. This study argues that the progressive revelation of the secret behind her punishment hinges on an anamorphic vision inscribed both thematically and structurally within the textual...
Writing and Editing Texts for the Classroom
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The Sixteenth Century Journal sponsored roundtable discussion at the recent meeting of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference held in New Orleans— “Conveying Complexity: Writing and Editing for a Classroom Readership,”— was the first of its kind, and we asked participants to submit short essays summarizing the main points they had brought to the panel. Panel members included...