SAJMARS 28

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

PAUL BEEHLER

Associate Director of the University Writing Program (UWP) and Director of the English Language Writing Requirement (ELWR) for the University of California at Riverside, Paul Beehler is an Associate Professor of Teaching in the Department of English. His research interests include Shakespeare, composition theory, and writing programme administration. Currently, Professor Beehler serves on the Committee on Preparatory Education at the University of California, Riverside and chairs the U.C. systemwide committee on English for Multilingual Students. He also co-founded the Writing And Foster Youth Alliance (WAFYA), an organization dedicated to serving former foster youth. Paul’s supportive family includes his wife, Dorene, and two children, Harry and Megan.

DONATO DE GIANNI

Donato De Gianni earned his MA in Classical Philology at the University of Naples ‘Federico II’ and then his PhD at the University of Macerata in Italy. After a research stay at North-West University (South Africa), he has been a Humboldt Fellow at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal (Germany) since September 2017. His research focuses on Latin literature of late antiquity, especially Christian Latin poetry, Latin lexicography as well as the reception of classics.

MARIANNE DIRCKSEN

Marianne Dircksen is a former director of the School of Ancient Languages and Text Studies at the North West University in South Africa. Before her retirement in 2016 she taught Latin language and literature at university level for 40 years. The Histories and Annals of Tacitus were the subject of both her Master’s dissertation and D.Litt. et Phil. thesis. She has published mainly on Tacitus and Latin pedagogy. Since her retirement she has become involved in a project aimed at the translation and annotation of Latin documents dating from the late 16th century.

NINA NEWMAN

Nina Newman is a lecturer at the Tshwane University of Technology, where she teaches jewellery rendering and design, and supervises B.Tech and M.Tech students. Her M.Tech (Fine Arts) degree specialized in Jewellery Design and Manufacture, focusing the translation of idealized Renaissance enamelled botanical motifs into contemporary adornment. Nina has been a finalist or winner in various jewellery design competitions and is a qualified goldsmith. Nina also designs and manufactures contemporary jewellery and takes part in many jewellery group exhibitions.

INGRID STEVENS

The late Ingrid Stevens was a professor in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at the Tshwane University of Technology, teaching painting, ceramics and art theory. Her D.Tech (Fine Arts) thesis focused on sustainability in South African crafts projects, while her master’s dissertation investigated contemporary art criticism. She has published extensively, both in popular press and scholarly journals, on contemporary art, South African crafts and theories of art criticism, and is known for her drawings and ceramics. Very sadly, she passed away in December 2019, while this volume was still in press.

PETER J.H. TITLESTAD

Peter Titlestad taught very briefly in Norway, somewhat less briefly at the University of Natal, Durban under Ray Sands, and then served a life sentence at the University of Pretoria, with a lengthy spell as Head of Department. He was Chair of PanSALB’s English National Body for ten years, with a special interest in language politics. His research focuses on theology, politics and literature of the Reformation era, including Shakespeare, Milton and Bunyan.

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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Historical Nexus: Bewitching Nurses in Rupert Goold's Visual Medium of Macbeth
(Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018) Beehler, Paul A.J.
This close reading and interpretation of the Early Modern concept of beneficium and maleficium explores the conflation of midwives and witches as it pertains to twenty-first-century images in the PBS production of Macbeth. An exegesis of Rupert Goold’s 2010 film Macbeth starring Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood is at the centre of this analysis. Ultimately, Goold uses the image of the witch in the film to draw a close and historically accurate connection to midwives. More to the point, the image of the nurse as an expression of the seventeenth-century midwife would have coloured a seventeenth-century audience's understanding of the witches’ prophecy because of Macduff’s close affiliation with midwives – he was ‘untimely ripped’ from his mother’s womb. An historical appreciation of the role of midwives is aided by recognizing that midwives were almost exclusively present during live births involving Caesarean sections in the Early Modern period. Shakespeare’s audience would have inherently understood this stark connection between the midwife and witch (as has been noted in recent scholarship). Goold’s twenty-first-century use of the nurse/midwife image, then, reasserts a historical subtext that further complicates the problematic nature of Macbeth. If Macduff is associated with the witches as Goold suggests, should an audience be satisfied with Macbeth’s fall at the hands of Macduff? Most audiences feel a sense of relief oncThis close reading and interpretation of the Early Modern concept of beneficium and maleficium explores the conflation of midwives and witches as it pertains to twenty-first-century images in the PBS production of Macbeth. An exegesis of Rupert Goold’s 2010 film Macbeth starring Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood is at the centre of this analysis. Ultimately, Goold uses the image of the witch in the film to draw a close and historically accurate connection to midwives. More to the point, the image of the nurse as an expression of the seventeenth-century midwife would have coloured a seventeenth-century audience's understanding of the witches’ prophecy because of Macduff’s close affiliation with midwives – he was ‘untimely ripped’ from his mother’s womb. An historical appreciation of the role of midwives is aided by recognizing that midwives were almost exclusively present during live births involving Caesarean sections in the Early Modern period. Shakespeare’s audience would have inherently understood this stark connection between the midwife and witch (as has been noted in recent scholarship). Goold’s twenty-first-century use of the nurse/midwife image, then, reasserts a historical subtext that further complicates the problematic nature of Macbeth. If Macduff is associated with the witches as Goold suggests, should an audience be satisfied with Macbeth’s fall at the hands of Macduff? Most audiences feel a sense of relief once the tyrant Macbeth is retired, but that emotional reaction might be misplaced. The question is a pivotal one that strikes at the heart of this problem play, though there are, of course, many unresolved problems and conflicts in Macbeth. This interpretation simply introduces one more complexity to consider.e the tyrant Macbeth is retired, but that emotional reaction might be misplaced. The question is a pivotal one that strikes at the heart of this problem play, though there are, of course, many unresolved problems and conflicts in Macbeth. This interpretation simply introduces one more complexity to consider.
Early Renaissance Idealization as a Framework for Contemporary Jewellery Design
(Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018) Newman, Nina; Stevens, Ingrid
Plato, in considering idealism, refers to the work of artists as merely representations of objects and suggests that a work of art is a copy of a copy of a form, thus creating an illusion or an ideal form that does not exist. This article considers the dealization of botanical motifs and how this can be said to create a design link between Early Renaissance painting, Early Renaissance enamelled jewellery and contemporary enamelled jewellery. It is postulated here that Plato’s theory on this thrice-removed reality of an artwork can be applied to the jewellery designer where nature (the form) was imitated as an ideal image by Early Renaissance painters (first representation). The idealized images from paintings or drawings were then further adapted by Early Renaissance jewellery designers and applied as even more stylized motifs in the jewels (second representation) resulting in even further idealization of the original form. The same process of idealization used in Early Renaissance painting and enamel jewels is then applied to designing enamelled South African botanical motifs, which creates a contemporary version of the botanical images used during the Early Renaissance, showing that analytical studies of historical art and design can be used by contemporary artists to achieve original designs.
Luther's Commentary on Paul's Galatians and its Elizabethan translation, John Bunyan's 'wounded conscience', and Arthur Dent's Plaine Mans Pathway to Heaven
(Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018) Titlestad, P J H
Luther gave his lectures on Paul’s Galatians in 1534. They offered a rather different theology from his thunderous predestinarian refutation of Erasmus in De servo arbitrio (1525). An English translation of the Commentary on Galatians appeared in 1575, a tattered copy of which fell into the hands of John Bunyan in the 1650s, and is mentioned lovingly in his autobiography for its capacity to assuage the troubled conscience. Luther was Bunyan’s coach in his battles with Satan – his doubts about his election: the Apollyon episode in The Pilgrim’s Progress, with its flaming darts, is central to the allegory and its chief link to Luther’s Commentary. How Marxist critics avoid this raises interesting questions about literary criticism. Another issue is whether Bunyan, under the influence of Luther’s Commentary, moves away from the Calvinist scholasticism of Arthur Dent’s The Plaine Mans Pathway to Heaven (1601) and of how his own experience and his pastoral practice came to be modified. Was Bunyan “Lutheran” or Calvinist? Was Richard Greave, our chief student of his theology, on the mark? And did Bunyan undergo something similar to the ‘tower experience’ which later scholars have attributed to Luther?
Towards a Critical Edition and Modern Translation of Robert Persons' De persecutione Anglicana
(2018) Dircksen, Marianne; De Gianna, Donato
This article introduces a project that aims at providing new authoritative English versions of important (but neglected) documents originating from the Reformation. The translating and editing team consists of both classicists and church historians. The initial text is Robert Persons’ De persecutione Anglicana epistola (1581/2), described by Thomas S. Freeman as the most famous martyrological work produced by an Elizabethan Catholic exemplifying the pseudo-martyr debate of the sixteenth century. De persecutione Anglicana is an original document which gives a first-hand account of the sufferings of Catholics in England under the rule of Elizabeth I; the translation project will make this valuable source accessible to scholars from various disciplines. The specific aim of the article is to illustrate the inadequacy of the existing translation of De persecutione Anglicana. Two selected passages from the Latin text are juxtaposed with the only existing English translation as well as our proposed new translation.

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