The Southern African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
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For content queries on this community please email Professor Victor Houliston : victor.houliston@wits.ac.za Alternatively use the following telephone number to contact Prof, Tel: 011 717 4357
The Southern African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies is the official publication of the Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS) and is published annually.
Instructions to Contributors The journal welcomes submissions in any of the disciplines of the humanities relating to the Middle Ages or the Renaissance up to 1700. All submissions will be refereed. Typescripts should be prepared in accordance with the MLA Style Manual and submitted by email in a file format compatible with Microsoft Word.Browse
Recent Submissions
Now showing 1 - 5 of 151
- ItemA Mediaeval Miscellany(Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2016) Lee, Brian S.A collection of previously published articles chiefly on medieval and early modern subects, notably Chaucer
- ItemThe Queen's Two Bodies and the Elizabethan Male Subject in John Lyly's Gallathea (1592)(Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017) Singh, AmriteshThis article reads John Lyly’s Gallathea as an experiment in the representation of Elizabeth in the political context specific to the mid- to late-1580s. The argument diverges from the critical tradition that regards the play as part of a series of attempts to promote representations of Elizabeth as the Virgin Queen, which included Lyly’s Endimion. The article presents Gallathea as introducing a parallel strain in Elizabethan political discourse where, instead of being divorced from one another, female sexuality and female authority exist in a state of happy union. Concomitantly, the article highlights how Gallathea gestures towards a new code of manhoodand courtliness that does not regard the union between female sexuality and authority as a cause for anxiety, thereby showcasing Lyly himself as the ideal male subject in this discursive realm, equally desirous of and deserving Elizabeth’s patronage.
- ItemJoseph Naci, his locotenente Francesco Coronello, and the State of the Duchy of the Archipelago (Naxos), 1566-1579(Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017) Hendrickx, Benjamin; Sansaridou-Hendrickx, TheklaThis article examines the duchy of the Archipelago under Joseph Naci and Francesco Coronello, leading to the abolition of the duchy, which was created in 1204 after the occupation of Constantinople by the crusaders. The duchy, which survived the final fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, came itself to an end with the death of Joseph Naci in 1579 and its transformation into an Ottoman sancak. Nevertheless, some Byzantine and mainly medieval ‘Frankish’ institutions and titles did survive. This article studies the legal, institutional and practical implications of this process, thereby paying due attention to elements of continuity of feudal ‘Frankish’ institutions and traditions as well as to its gradual replacement with the Ottoman system. However, the new world order of the sixteenth century, which drastically changed the existing values and worldviews, had an inevitable influence on the Mediterranean lands, even on backwaters such as the Archipelago. This article shows how even Naxos could not escape these changes.
- ItemLuther'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 HLuther 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?
- ItemEarly Renaissance Idealization as a Framework for Contemporary Jewellery Design(Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018) Newman, Nina; Stevens, IngridPlato, 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.