Medieval-Renaissance Conference XVIII
The University of Virginia’s College at Wise
September 16-18, 2004

Medieval-Renaissance Conference Committee

Kenneth Tiller, Chair
Dana Sample, Co-Chair
Amelia Harris
Tom Costa
Ross Grable
Richard H. Peake
Roman Zylawy


Keynote Speaker

Bruce O'Brien, Mary Washington College

Bruce O'Brien, Professor of History at the University of Mary Washington. He teaches courses in Western civilization, ancient Greece and ancient Rome, as well as Europe in the Middle Ages, history of the British Isles, the world of late antiquity, Anglo Saxon England, and forgery and history. He is the author of God's Peace and King's Peace: The Laws of Edward the Confessor (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).

Program and Schedule of Events
Thursday, September 16

All sessions will be held at the Chapel of All Faiths; concurrent sessions will be held in

Cantrell Hall, Room 206.

1:00-3:20

Registration and Welcome: Chapel of All Faiths

3:30-4:50
Session 1: ART AND MUSIC
Sten Maulsby, American Catholic University
  "A Case Study in Seventeenth-Century Scottish Harp Music"
Abbe Allen DeBolt, Columbus State Community College
  "Michelangelo and the Sistine Ceiling Prophets"
Edwin R. Wallace, University of South Carolina, Columbia
  "Giotto at Assisi? Pros and Cons, with a Provisional Argument For"
Alecia Harper, University of South Carolina
  "Titian's Venus of Urbino and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili"
Chair: Amelia J. Harris, The University of Virginia's College at Wise


Friday, September 17

8:00-8:30

Coffee

8:30-9:50
Session 2: ELIZABETHAN-JACOBEAN LITERATURE
Gary Ettari, University of Washington
"'Heart's close bleeding book': Spenser, the Heart and the Dilemma of Reading"
Michael Dzanko, University of Ashland
“Pardon the Interruption: Revisiting Sidney’s Old Arcadia"
Chris Hill, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Performing Love in Ben Jonson’s Masques”
Chair: Richard H. Peake, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise

Concurrent Session: MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
John Marshall Carter, Clayton County Schools, Georgia
"The Horsing Around of the Danes: The Anglo-Saxon Cavalry and the New Medieval Military
History"
Char Miller, George Mason University
“Over Dwellings Emptied of Islam"
Kurt M. Boughan, The Citadel
“On Contagious Yawning, Feeling Another’s Pain, and Bristling at Scraping Noises: Pietro
d’Abano’s Expositio Problematum Aristotelis, Book 7”
Chair: Glenn Blackburn, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise

10:00-11:40
Session 3: SHAKESPEARE
Robert L. Reid, Emory and Henry College
“’Where’s the Master?’: The Tempest as Christian Theophany”
Richard H. Peake, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise
“The Question of Desdemona’s Whoredom”
Philip O'Mara, Bridgewater College
"Love and Heroism in Troilus and Cressida: Tragic Dignity Undermined for the Learned"
Chair: Sten Maulsby, American Catholic University

Concurrent Session: GOOD AND BAD IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Jim Baugess, Columbus State Community College
“Soldiers of the Lord”
Trudi Wright, University of Guelph, Ontario
“’Medieval Manic Panics and their Devilish Victims’: The Consensual Perpetuation of
Violence by Adolescents in Medieval Europe”
Chair: Dana L. Sample, The University of Virginia's College at Wise

11:50-12:50

LUNCH Dining Hall

1:00-2:20
Session 4: MILTON
Kristin A. Pruitt, Christian Brothers University
"Politics from Hell"
Donald P. McDonough, Central Connecticut State University
"Milton's Men"
Charles W. Durham, Middle Tennessee State University
"Justice and Mercy in Paradise Lost"
Chair: Charles W. Durham, Middle Tennessee State University

Concurrent Session: POWERFUL WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Jonathan R. Lyon, University of Notre Dame
“Noblewomen and their Roles in Kinship Networks: An Example from Central Germany, ca.
1150-1200”
Charles E. Beem, University of North Carolina, Pembroke
“Making a Name for Herself: The Empress Matilda and the Construction of Female Lordship
in Twelfth-Century England”
Dana L. Sample, The University of Virginia's College at Wise
“Did Charles IV and the French Nobility Conspire with Queen Isabelle to Overthrow

Edward II of England?”
Chair: Tom Costa, The University of Virginia's College at Wise

2:30-4:10
Session 5: ARTHURIAN HISTORY AND LITERATURE
Judy A. Hayden, University of Tampa
“Hacked all to Pieces and Torn Apart by Horses: Guinevere in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-
Century Historical Chronicles”
MaryBeth Page, State University of New York, Cortland
“A Changing Launcelot: Chrétien to Malory”
Susan E. Murray, University of Guelph, Ontario
“‘Your Veil Takes Me In’: The Recapitulation of Ancient Greek Wedding Ceremonies in
Malory’s Tristram and Isolde”
Chair: Kenneth Tiller, The University of Virginia's College at Wise

Concurrent Session: CONTEXTS AND RECEPTION: SACRED AND SECULAR
Frances Altvater, The College of William and Mary
“Sacramental Connections: the Decoration of the Twelfth-Century Baptismal Font at Brighton
(Sussex, England )”
Thomas Lederer, Universität Freiburg
“Images of DenomiNation”
Wendell Frye, Hartwick College
"Gottfried Keller's Jungfrau als Ritter"
Suzanne Hagedorn, The College of William and Mary
“The Legacy of Mimesis: Re-considering Auerbach’s Dante and Boccaccio”
Chair: Roman Zylawy, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise

4:30
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Bruce O'Brien, Mary Washington College
"Medieval Englishness Reconsidered"

6:30
Dinner: Alumni Hall

Saturday, September 18

8:30-9:00

Coffee

9:00-10:40
Session 6: OLD ENGLISH TEXTS AND CONTEXTS
Sharon Rowley, Christopher Newport University
"The Role of Otherworldly Visions in the Old English Version of Bede's Historia
Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum"
Stephanie Tolliver, University of Richmond
“’Swefna Cyst’: Dream Theory and the Old English Inflection System in The Dream of the
Rood”
Chair: Diane Silver, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise

Concurrent Session: Undergraduate Session I: POETRY AND POETICS
SJenny Kate Harper, King College
“Sir Philip Sidney and the Ethical Purpose of Poetic Invention”
Sunni Blevins, Emory and Henry College
“Gendering the Humoral Temperaments: The Character Development of Prince Hal, Rosalind,
and Cleopatra”
Chair: Matthew Stanley, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise


10:40-12:00
Session 7: MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE IN CONTEXT
Ethna Dempsey Lay, Hofstra University
“The Anglo-Saxon Scop and Chaucer”
Kenneth Tiller, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise
"Malory and the Hermeneutics of Heraldry"
Mark DiCiccio, State University of New York, Cortland
“Teaching Medieval Literature to Secondary School Teachers”
Chair: Philip O’Mara, Bridgewater College

Concurrent Session (BSC): Undergraduate Session II: HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
Jeanette Rasnack, Mary Washington College
"'When Adam delved and Eve span/ Who was then a gentleman?’: Religious Ideology and
Class Consciousness in the Years before the Revolt of 1381"
Andrew Hicks, King College
"Where Did We Come From, Where Do We Go: Native Americans, European Explorers, and
Ideas of Cultural Evolution"
Chair: Julia Yates, The University of Virginia's College at Wise

12:10-1:00

Light Lunch: Chapel

1:00-2:20
Session 8: SHAKESPEARE AND ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND
Michelle Parkinson, Purdue University
"La Jupe Blanche: (Ad)dressing Elizabeth I in the Cultural Imaginary”
Nicholas Vanover, Ohio State University
"Prince Hal's Hamlet"
Sonya Hagler, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
“Playing the Master: Performance, Power, and Social Transgression in The Taming of the Shrew"
Chair: Robin Reid, Emory and Henry College