L Jardine

Erasmus, man of letters : the construction of charisma in print

The name Erasmus of Rotterdam conjures up a golden age of scholarly integrity. However, as Lisa Jardine portrays him, Erasmus self-consciously created his own reputation as the central figure of the European intellectual world.The name Erasmus of Rotterdam conjures up a golden age of scholarly integrity. However, as Lisa Jardine portrays him, Erasmus self-consciously created his own reputation as the central figure of the European intellectual world.

Isotta Nogarola: Women humanists‐Education for what?†

† A paper given at the Spring Colloquium of the Society for Renaissance Studies, held at the Warburg’ Institute, London, on 13 May 1983.

GLORIANA RULES THE WAVES: OR, THE ADVANTAGE OF BEING EXCOMMUNICATED (AND A WOMAN)

In the last quarter of the sixteenth century England embarked on a strategic rapprochement with the Ottoman Empire. Elizabeth Is excommunication by Pope Pius V in 1570 removed the papal levies for trading with the ‘infidel’, opening up commercial opportunities. England also explored the possibility of calling upon Ottoman military might to support her against the Catholic powers of mainland Europe. One product of this East–West engagement is a remarkable correspondence and exchange of gifts between Elizabeth and the sultana, Walide Safiye. Although the Anglo-Ottoman political accord failed, the exchanges between Elizabeth and the sultana set the tone for Englands subsequent trading position in the East.

Boy actors, female roles, and Elizabethan eroticism

The essays in Staging the Renaissance show the theatre to be the site of a rich confluence of cultural forces, the place where social meanings are both formed and transformed.

‘Why should he call her whore?’: Defamation and Desdemona’s Case

This piece is part of a larger project on the relationship between cultural history and textual studies, taking as its focus the texts of the works of Shakespeare.1 It is also the piece of work with which that enterprise began — I was prompted to want to reconsider the nature of the relationship between history and text criticism specifically by what was happening in work on Othello and in particular on Desdemona. The work began as a polemical intervention, but has, as it has developed, been shaped (and, I hope, mellowed) by my own growing understanding of the complexity of the issues, and my admiration for many of the practitioners in the field of ‘historical’ Shakespeare studies.2 I can think of no more appropriate piece of work to offer as a tribute to Frank Kermode, whose own Renaissance Essays (1971) offer an exemplary practice in drawing together history, scholarship and criticism into a single coherent account of renaissance textuality.