"Playing the Machiavellian Prince? Elizabeth I, Machiavelli and Realpolitik"
Paola Baseotto
Insubria University (Como, Italy)
Co-sponsored with the Program in Italian Studies
5:00 PM, 203 Scheide Caldwell

"Impossible Decorum: Humanism and Frottole in the Manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Alpha.F.9.9"
Giovanni Zanovello
Indiana University

Although the frottola was undoubtedly popular in Italian Renaissance palazzi, one almost recoils from placing this unsophisticated musical repertory within the set of austere symbols that aristocratic interiors were meant to manifest. By exploring a metaphorical sound within a metaphorical space - the musical pieces in the context of the layout and decoration of a 1496 Paduan frottola manuscript - we discover that the relationship was problematic but unavoidable. The contrast between the highly learned framework and the more vernacular content of this manuscript arguably reflects the tension between the rigorous standards of Humanism and a secular repertory just beginning to adjust to a new role.

Co-sponsored with the Department of Music
4:30 PM, 209 Scheide Caldwell

"Liquid Fortification and the Law in King Lear"
Kathy Eden
Columbia University

This talk will offer a philological argument about Shakespeare's handling of the law in King Lear. The point of departure for the philology is philosophy, especially Stoic philosophy, with its doctrine of natural law, its narrative of the relationship between law and kingship, and its distinction between legal and extra-legal forms of exchange.

4:30 PM, 209 Scheide Caldwell

"'Closer Than the Shirt on Our Body': Lucifer and the Fall of the Rebel Angels"
Meredith Gill
University of Maryland

In 1530, when Luther preached a sermon for Michaelmas, he devoted much of his homily to the fallen angels and to the devil who, he said, was closer to us than our shirt. The study of angels was a formal component of the medieval theological curriculum, and angels are equally a ubiquitous, vibrant and multifaceted presence in Early Modern culture. The subject of Lucifer and his dark consort led writers and artists to meditate not only on the identity of spiritual substance but also on the character of human will, goodness and salvation.

5:00 PM, 209 Scheide Caldwell

"Freedom Delivered: The Glorious Revolution, John Dennis and the Anxiety of Empire"
Oliver Arnold
Department of English
5:00 PM, 209 Scheide Caldwell

"The Quest for Purity in Cervantes' World"
Christina Lee
Department of Spanish and Portuguese

This presentation explores Cervantes' literary treatment of the men and women who were singled out in authoritative discourses and practices of demarcating, containing and marginalizing the social elements that were perceived as polluting and thus threatening the well-being of the rising Spanish nation-state during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. More specifically, it investigates how Cervantes' fictional representation of the nominally unclean - that is, New Christians (conversos, Spaniards of Jewish descent, or moriscos, Spaniards of Moorish descent), illegitimate children, and unchaste or dishonored women - reveals the fictitiousness of the very notion of the exemplary or authorized Spaniard as a culturally pure subject.

4:30 PM, 209 Scheide Caldwell