CENTERS AND PERIPHERIES

IN EUROPEAN RENAISSANCE
CULTURE
Essays by East-Central European Mellon Fellows

Edited by
Gyrgy E. Sznyi and Csaba Maczelka
SZEGED
JATEPress
2012
Published by the
Research Group for Cultural Iconology and Semiography
Institute of English and American Studies
University of Szeged
H-6722 SZEGED, Egyetem u. 2. HUNGARY
<ieas@lit.u-szeged.hu>
The production of this book was supported by
The Mellon Foundation
via the Council of American Overseas Research Centers
and
by the European Union and co-funded by the European Social Fund.
Project title: Broadening the knowledge base and supporting the long term
professional sustainability of the Research University Centre of Excellence at the
University of Szeged by ensuring the rising generation of excellent scientists.
Project number: TMOP-4.2.2/B-10/1-2010-0012
Cover Design:
ETELKA SZNYI
The Authors, 2012
JATEPress, 2012
ISBN 978-963-315-079-5
Gyrgy E. Sznyi & Csaba Maczelka ed.
Centers and Peripheries in European Renaissance Culture.
Essays by East-central European Mellon Fellows.
Szeged: JATEPress, 2012
GYRGY E. SZNYI
(University of Szeged; Central European University, Budapest)
Pastoral, Romance, Ritual and Magic in
Shakespeare and The Winters Tale
According to American scholar, Wayne Shumaker, while reading poetical works one
cannot feel a major gap between people of the past and today, on the other hand,
scientific ideas and texts open an enormous abyss and make us aware that those people
were very-very different from us. Magic provides a curious case. It is a kind of scientific
discourse, and although it has been long invalidated by new paradigms of the natural
sciences, it has not lost appeal and is still appealing to large masses of people in the
postmodern age. Shakespeare himself was influenced by magical notions from astrology
through alchemy to diabolical practices and these notions have various function in
different groups of his plays: the histories, tragedies, comedies, or the romances
incorporate magic in their own right. My paper looks at some general characteristics of
his last plays, paying special attention to the characteristics of the romances, such as
ritualistic representations. The supernatural and magical elements of the romances will
be analyzed in The Winters Tale as a test case and in its conclusion the paper looks at to
what extent this play balances between the Aristotelian and Platonic ideals concerning
literature: to hold the mirror up to nature versus to apprehend more than cool reason
ever comprehends.
What Is Our First Impression of The Winters Tale?
Shakespeares great tragedies usually do not have a simple plot, and disregarding the
rules of unities they test the attention of the audience with various complexities.
Nevertheless they do not perplex with illogical action or unbelievable characters. The
secret to this is motivation one can say that the tragedies are more or less carefully and
well motivated in respect of action as well as character. In the last plays, however, the
106 RENAISSANCE CENTRES AND PERIPHERIES
situation is rather different. Later I will come back to this question in detail, at the
beginning let us just have a look at the plot of The Winters Tale.
There are two kings, Leontes and Polixenes, ruling two countries, Sicilia and
Bohemia, which are separated from each other by an apparently rather wild sea. The
kings spent their youths together like brothers and now Polixenes visits his pal after
many years, enjoying also the hospitality of the kings wife, Hermione. When he decides
to take his leave home, Leontes tries to convince him to stay and urges his wife to beg
the guest. As he finally reluctantly agrees to stay on a while, Leontes is taken by a fit of
jealousy and becomes convinced that Hermione eloped with Polixenes, what is more,
her present pregnancy is due to this adultery.
He goes as far as wanting to have Polixenes murdered, fortunately Camillo, the lord
entrusted with this task renounces allegiance and flees with Polixenes to Bohemia. Then
Hermione is banished and her new-born baby, Perdita is given to another Lord,
Antigonus with the command that he abandons the offspring on the shores of Bohemia
to perish where his unlawful father came from. Antigonus carries out the mission and
as a reward he is duly devoured by a wild bear while his ship is destroyed in the storm
with all its crew.
To gain final proof, Leontes sends for a judicium to the oracle of Apollo in Delphi,
but when the answer arrives claiming that his friend and his wife are innocent, he does
not believe it. Hermione faints and is reported to be dead by the widow of Antigonus,
Paulina, the outspoken critic of the seemingly possessed king. Leontess son also dies
out of remorse over the fate of her mother. The king now all of a sudden breaks down,
repents, and is ready to repair all his violent transgressions, but this seems to be too late.
He does not know that his daughter was found by shepherds in Bohemia and will be
brought up to a happy rural life.
Act IV starts after sixteen years of gap. Perdita is now a beautiful young lady whose
charm has enchanted even the Bohemian kings son, Florizel. The suspecting father
reveals the budding love and banishes his son because of neglecting his rank. The prince
revolts and flees to Sicilia to take shelter in the court of Leontes who is still in deep
remorse over his past sins. Most of these complicated events are not shown but revealed
in the conversation of two courtiers, while long scenes are devoted to the country fair
of the shepherds where Florizel courts Perdita, and where a memorable clown,
Autolycus cheats on the naive rustic characters.
Act V brings about the peripeteia and anagnorisis: Leontes recognizes Perdita as his lost
daughter, this fact will lift the barrier from the marriage of Florizel and the princess.
Now the arriving Polixenes is also happy and reunites with his old friend and in a semi-
miraculous scene even Hermione comes to life. Paulina presents her as a statue and
Leontes is taken by the scene, but when he repents for the thousands time, his reward
is complete restitution.
Not much is believable in the play, after all this is a tale. But even then, a lot of things
can irritate the audience until it is realized that the logic of representation is very
GYRGY E. SZNYI 107
different from that of the great tragedies. Those critics, who have not dismissed the play
as a straight failure, have been working hard to reveal the special representational logic
characteristic for all the last plays of Shakespeare. The interpretive keys seem to be the
cultural tradition and literary conventions of pastoral and romance.
Pastoral and Romance in the English Renaissance
One of the most important characteristic features of Renaissance literature in Europe
as we all know was the revival of Antiquity: the Latin and Greek languages, the
classical metrics, and the Greek and Roman literary genres. Among these, particularly
important was the pastoral mode, with eclogues, pastoral comedies, even with longer
narratives. Enough to think of the Neo-Latin poetry of Giovanni Pontano (1426-1503),
head of the Academy in Naples; of Janus Pannonius (1434-72), humanist of the
Hungarian Matthias Corvinus and acknowledged author of vitriolic epigrams and
moving elegies; or Michael Marullus (1458-1500), the offspring of Greek exiles, whose
Latin love poems enchanted among many others Pierre de Ronsard.
Those, who fell under the spell of pastoral, included the Spanish ecloguist, Garcilaso
de la Vega (1501-36); Arcadian playwrights, such as Torquato Tasso (Aminta, 1573);
Gian Battista Guarini (Pastor fido, 1585); or the Spanish pastoral novelists, Jorgede
Montemayor (Diana, 1559) and Cervantes (La Galatea, 1585). Greatest and most
influential of all, however, was Jacopo Sannazaro (1455-1530), member of the Academia
pontaniana, whose Arcadia (1504) set the standards of looking backward to the eclogues
of Theocritus and Virgil, at the same time inserted classical poetry in a novel framework
of prose narrative.
Sannazaros Arcadia consists of twelve poems embedded in the story of the hopeless
love of Sincero for Phyllis. Like Virgils Gallus, Sincero travels to Arcadia and becomes
enchanted by the simple and happy life of shepherds which helps to distract his
attention from his own misery. As John Scott writes, the fiction is transparent, and the
poet certainly has no intention of being bound by simplicity or reality; instead, he
succeeds in creating an artefact, a literary mosaic, which was admired and imitated for
well over two centuries in Western Europe. As we know from William Empson and
1
others, pastoral has been a genre, or rather a mode of literary expression which describes
the country with an implicit or explicit contrast to the urban. Its purpose is usually
escapism from the complicated and tiring world of the city but it also often develops
political allegory.
2
Dr. John A. Scott in Krailsheimer ed., The Continental Renaissance, 1500-1600, 168.
1
Some important works on pastoral in English: Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral (1935); Kermode,
2
English Pastoral Poetry (1952); Williams, The Country and the City (1973); Poggioli, The Oaten Flute: Essays on
Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal (1975); Alpers, What is Pastoral? (1986); Hiltner, What Else is Pastoral?
(2011).
108 RENAISSANCE CENTRES AND PERIPHERIES
The rise of pastoral in English Renaissance literature is quite an interesting story. It
was the members of the Areopagus and here it is irrelevant if that was a real or virtual
literary society , Philip Sidney, Edward Dyer, and Edmund Spenser, who put forward
a program of vernacular literature based on classical principles: Greco-Roman metrics
and genres, primarily pastoral. As Spenser recalled in his Two Other Very Commendable
Letters addressed to Gabriel Harvey, the Cambridge professor and friend, who himself
wanted to be epitaphed as the Inventour of the English Hexameter:
3
Now they have proclaimed in their areiT pagT, a generall surceasing and silence of
balde Rymers, and also of the very beste to: in steade whereof, they haue by authoritie of
their whole Senate, prescribed certaine Lawes and rules of Quantities of English sillables,
for English verse.
4
In the annus mirabilis of Elizabethan literature, 1579, Spenser published his The
Shepheardes Calender which was meant to be a model work of this program, trying to
prove that it is possible to write classical poetry in English with all the characteristics of
eclogues-based pastoral listed above. Around the same year, Sidney wrote his Old
Arcadia, which also contained eclogues embedded in a pastoral narrative of classical
simplicity. From the preface to The Shepheardes Calender and from Sidneys theoretical
work, The Defense of Poesie (1581) it is equally clear, that both authors also being the
students of the classicist Gabriel Harvey were well aware of the history, typology, and
intricacies of the pastoral tradition, still, there are some characteristic divergencies from
the classical models. Most striking is, that in spite of the proclamation of the Areopagus,
Spensers eclogues are not written in classical metres, rather in rhyming stanzas, some
of them even recycling Chaucers metrics. Likewise, the eclogues of Sidneys Old Arcadia
are also far from pure, unrhyming classical patterns, what is more the work also contains
non classical genres, from songs to complicated sestinas.
The proposition seems to hold according to which pure literary classicism in the
English Renaissance was a short lived theoretical program, soon giving way to a much
more mixed, contemporary, European, at the same time nationalistic poetics in which
the home-bread late medieval poetical traditions were as effective as the modern Italian
and Spanish models. As the mysterious E.K., Spensers mouthpiece (probably the poet
himself) emphasized in the preface to The Shepherds Calender, Chaucer and Lydgate
provided ample artistic strength as the foundation of this new poetry. Then the
commentator added by painting a wide literary landscape:
So flew Theocritus, [ . . . ] Virgile, [ . . . ] Mantuane. So Petrarque. So Boccace; So Marot,
Sanazarus, and also diuers other excellent both Italian and French Poetes, whose foting
this Author euery where followed.
5
Gabriel Harvey, Encyclopaedia Britannica (11 edition, 1911).
th 3
Spenser, Poetical Works, 635.
4
Spenser, Poetical Works, 418.
5
GYRGY E. SZNYI 109
In The Defense of Poesie Sidney also became less dogmatic about the choice between
classical and rhyming verse:
Now, of versifying there are two sorts, the one ancient, the other modern; the ancient
marked the quantity of each syllable, and according to that framed his verse; the modern,
observing only number, [ . . . ] the chief life of it standeth in that like sounding of the
words, which we call rhyme. Whether of these be the more excellent, would bear many
speeches. [ . . . ] Truly the English, before any vulgar language I know, is fit for both
sorts.
6
Characteristically, in their later careers both Sidney and Spenser turned back on their
program of classicizing English literature. And with this they also abandoned pastoral,
or to be more precise, they radically developed it into another mode, the romance. When
by 1585-86 Sidney reworked the Old Arcadia, the result was a much less structured,
infinitely more complicated, darker, adventure- and philosophy-oriented work, laden
with miraculous and magical motifs. The same characteristic features can be seen in
7
Spensers magnum opus, the Faerie Queene (1590, 1596).
The tendency from pastoral to romance has been discussed in various ways, referring
either to larger cultural and stylistic trends of the European Renaissance, or to the
nationalistic program of the Protestant elite of the Elizabethan literati, the so called
Penshurst-Wilton circle. In 2000, Warren Boutcher, however, called for a more
differentiated interpretation of English Renaissance vernacular humanism, pointing out,
that it was a rather general feature of the period between the 1570s and the 1620s that
the major European vernaculars collectively played a large role alongside Latin and
Greek in private humanist education, especially that provided for gentlemen and
aristocrats at Oxbridge, the inns of court, and the court itself. The wide scope and
8
versatility of literary interest is clearly obvious in Abraham Fraunces handbook of
tropes and figures which in its title delineates his horizon of reference as a very
ecumenical pool of literary genres and traditions: The Arcadian Rhetorike: or The praecepts
of rhetorike made plaine by examples Greeke, Latin, English, Italian, French, Spanish, out of Homers
Ilias, and Odissea, Virgils Aeglogs, [...] and Aeneis, Sir Philip Sydnieis Arcadia, songs and sonets...
(1588). A year later, George Puttenhams The Arte of English Poesie (1589) offered similar
pan-European, classical and modern references.
In the realm of popular literature from broadsheet ballads through short stories to
plays of various genres the above sketched syncretism was even stronger, most of the
time with less complicated concepts and a stronger attention to popular appeal.
Shakespeare and his contemporaries were notorious to neglect the much debated rules
Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy in Gavin Alexander ed., Sidneys The Defence of Poesy and
6
Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (2004); reproduced in Leitch ed., The Norton Anthology of Theory and
Criticism, 281.
See Gyrgy E. Sznyi, Lattrait de laventure et langoisse du mysterieux and King, Sidney and
7
Spenser.
Boutcher, Who Taught Thee Rhetoricke to Deceive a Maid?, 12.
8
110 RENAISSANCE CENTRES AND PERIPHERIES
of unities and decorum, and forged their successes by concocting whatever was available
around. We have long ago left behind the image of Shakespeare, the poeta doctus, on
the other hand we even more highly appreciate how skillfully he picked up with his
small Latine and probably some other small linguistic resources his topics and sujets.
Shakespeare from his earliest years as a playwright was inclined to freely move among
more classical traditions (for example his recycling Plautus in the Comedy of Errors) or
fully exploiting medieval and Renaissance sources chronicles, legends, verse-romances,
contemporary short stories, or even plays of earlier and his fellow dramatists to create
from them innovative and very effective theatrical performances.
Shakespeares Last Plays
In the 1590s he used a lot of pastoral and romance elements in his so called romantic
comedies, which were less satire-oriented, rather, they presented a world, which after
some disorder, misunderstanding and mismatching can be brought back to harmony
and happiness, concluding usually with multiple marriages. The exemplary model of this
9
concept is As You Like It. After the more serious and pessimistic period of his problem
plays and the tragedies, in his last years he returned to the syncretic model of pastoral
and romance, but with some important modifications. Were these the documents of the
softening heart and the weakening mind of the elderly playwright, or do they show
intriguing new experiments, too? Without wanting to blindly idealizing Shakespeare and
suggesting that whatever he did was perfect, I suggest alongside many critics, that the
last tragicomedies are marked by a special kind of a representational logic which was
inspired by the changes of the cultural trends of the Renaissance world as well as the
theatrical conventions of the English stages challenging Shakespeare to renew his art.
10
In 1608 the Globe purchased the Blackfriars which became the first private theater
whose audience consisted of courtiers not in need of meticulous motivation and
character study, rather excitement, surprise and miraculous elements. This demand was
satisfied by Shakespeares contemporaries, John Fletcher (1579-1625), and his occasional
collaborator, Francis Beaumont (1584-1616), with their hits, such as The Woman Hater,
Philaster, and The Scornful Lady. It is almost certain that Shakespeare wanted to compete
with this new fashion spilling over from the private theater onto the public stages, too.
On the romantic comedies classic works are Knight, The Romantic Comedies (1932); Pettet,
9
Shakespeare and the Romance Tradition (1949); Bradbrook, The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy (1955);
Barber, Shakespeares Festive Comedy (1959); Frye, A Natural Perspective (1965); Muir, Shakespeare: The Comedies
(1965); Lerner, Shakespeares Comedies (1967); McFarland, Shakespeares Pastoral Comedy (1972); Laroque,
Shakespeares Festive World (1991); etc.
It is interesting, that the most important monographs on the representational logic of the romances
10
were published around the 1970s: Frye, A Natural Perspective (1965); Felperin, Shakespearean Romance (1972);
Smith, Shakespeares Romances (1972); Peterson, Time, Tide, and Tempest (1973); Yates, Shakespeares Last Plays
(1975); etc.
GYRGY E. SZNYI 111
On the other hand, this new dramaturgy and philosophy could also be congenial with
Shakespeares changing attitude about the ideals and expectations of the Renaissance
world picture. His last plays The Winters Tale, Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Tempest
(alongside with the also romantic Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen) tell long and
complicated stories using a loose dramatic structure. They often capitalize on the late
Hellenic novels, such as Pericles following the History of Apollonius of Tyre, or Boccaccios
short stories, as Cymbeline incorporates the romance of Zinevra and Bernabo Lomellini.
But behind Shakespeares sujets we also find Longus, Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius; the
Gesta Romanorum; the Amadis de Gaula, the works of John Gower, Holinsheds chronicles,
Robert Greenes pastoral novel (Pandosto) and many other, heterogeneous works, most
of which were available in some English translation or turned into original English
literary products.
These last works of Shakespeare are nearest to the tragicomedies defined by Jon
Fletcher in his famous preface to The Faithful Shepherdess as follows:
A tragicomedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants [i.e.,
lacks] deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy; yet brings some near it, which is
enough to make it no comedy.
11
It is very tempting and easy to talk about the four Shakespeare-romances in relation
to each other. All of them are characterized by resigned melancholy. They have artificial
happy endings: children reconcile with their parents, lovers gain each other, beloved
persons considered to be dead miraculously come back to life but all this happens as
deus ex machina, among unbelievable circumstances and without psychological credibility,
thus leaving the audience with some skeptical embitterment.
It has been pointed out by Michael OConnell and others, that the romances are
12
near to myth-based rituals in which the purpose of representation is to attempt
mastering fate and future by means of ceremonies and magic. Such a program demands
great faith and empathy, without which the poetry will just make you lull.
Another important motif in the romances is the appearance of young, promising
generations, like Miranda and Ferdinand in The Tempest, or Perdita and Florizel in The
Winters Tale. It would be nice to trust in the prospect that they will create a brave new
world when they take the power over from their already shaken parents. After having
got acquainted with Shakespeares histories and tragedies, one has at least some
reservations.
Although The Tempest stands apart from the other three romances with having a strict
and unified plot and time structure, there are interesting convergences, too. One such
feature leads us to the territory of representational logic, which is the emblematic way
of seeing and thinking. The roots of the emblematic epistemology go back to the Middle
John Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess (London, 1608), Preface.
11
Michael OConnell, The Idolatrous Eye, 279-309.
12
112 RENAISSANCE CENTRES AND PERIPHERIES
Ages and are best summarized by the well-known poem of the 12 -century Alain de
th
Lille:
Omnis mundi creatura
Quasi liber et pictura
Nobis est in speculum;
Nostrae vitae, nostrae mortis,
Nostri status, nostrae sortis
Fidele signaculum.
[All the creatures of the world, as a book and a picture are for us as a mirror. Our life,
our death, our condition, our passing are faithfully signified.]
13
In the eleventh century Hugo of Saint Victor added another powerful metaphor to
the exegetical understanding of the universe. As he wrote, the world was nothing else,
but a book written by the hand of God. The idea of the signatura rerum, that is that the
14
things of the world should be read as Gods signs, was not only attractive for the people
of the Middle Ages but also for those of the Renaissance and the Baroque periods.
Salluste Du Bartas, in his Divine Weeks and Works, which was published in English in the
same year as The Winters Tale performed on the stage summarized this doctrine as
follows:
The Worlds a Stage, where Gods Omnipotence,
His Iustice, Knowledge, Loue, and Prouidence,
Do act their Parts; contending (in their kindes)
Aboue the Heavns to rauish dullest mindes.
The Worlds a Book in Folio, printed all
With Gods great Works in letters Capitall:
Each Creature is a Page; and each Effect,
A faire Character, void of all defect.
15
Both in typological symbolism and in emblematic expressions we find an ambition
to reveal some higher truth, moral teaching or universal revelation. It was especially the
sensus tropologicus, i.e. the ethical didaxis which fertilized the early modern imagination,
including the emblem writers.
16
It is possible to argue that late Renaissance drama, including Shakespeares romances
was heavily emblematic, conveying culturally fixed secondary and tertiary meanings (with
Heninger, The Cosmographical Glass, 180-2; see also Bath, Speaking Pictures, 113-5; Daly, Literature in the
13
Light of the Emblem, 16; Fabiny, Shakespeare and the Emblem, 293-307.
See Gabriel Josipovici, The World and the Book, passim.
14
Salluste Du Bartas, His deuine weekes and workes translated: and dedicated to the Kings most excellent Maiestie
15
by Iosuah Syluester (London, 1611), 6.
Cf. Schne, Emblematik, 47-8; Daly, Literature..., 48.
16
GYRGY E. SZNYI 113
Umberto Ecos term overcoding), relying on the shared knowledge of the interpretive
17
community. A simple, but clear example is the speaking names of the young female
characters Perdita is the lost child, Miranda is the wonder of education, Marina in
Pericles is the child of the sea , as we know from the medieval morality plays, speaking
names are an obvious and rather static way of characterization, turning characters to
allegorical or emblematic personifications.
If one is used to the emblematic/allegorical way of thinking and seeing, should not
be surprised at Leontes abrupt fit of jealousy, the attack of the wild bear on Antigonus,
the artificial pastoral world in which Perdita can easily meet with Florizel, or the stupor
that blinds Leontes to recognize the living creature in Hermione presented as a statue.
Critics, socialized among the conventions of the post-Renaissance, naturalistic,
photographic theatre have been greatly disturbed by these features of the romances.
18
On the other hand, the innovative, re-ritualized, strongly symbolic theatre of the
twentieth century, from Antoine Artaud through Samuel Beckett to Peter Brook and
Jerzy Grotowski drove the modern audience with a fresh appreciation back to stages in
many way similar to that of the Renaissance.
The Magical World of the Romances
Shakespeares whole oeuvre is characterized by an interest in occult themes and
phenomena. The topics of the Western esoteric traditions are wide ranging, from
science-related astrology and alchemy through beliefs in supernatural ghosts, spirits, and
witches, to complex world models, such as the Great Chain of Being which seamlessly
accommodated magic power and occult correspondences. In the plays, we can easily
find examples for all these types, associating to contexts of magic, mythology, science
and religion.
Astrological determination is a recurring topic, as at the beginning of Alls Well that
Ends Well when Helena tells Parolles: The wars hath so kept you under that you must
needs be born under Mars (1.1.213). In The Winters Tale Leontes also gives an
astrological explanation about the frailty of women: It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
/ Where tis predominant; . . . No barricado for a belly (1.2.201-4).
Most of the plays as well as the poems abound in alchemical tropes and figures,
sometimes with such technical details that one wonders if Shakespeare had no direct
contact with a practitioner, or if he did not read special literature, such as George
Ripleys The Compound of Alchemy, originally written in 1471, but printed in 1591. Let us
Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, 129.
17
An accurate differentiation of the Renaissance-emblematic and the post-Renaissance photographic
18
theatre was worked out by Glynne Wickham, see his Early English Stages, vol. 2/1 passim. The dilemmas
of verisimilitude and motivation-based critics can be seen in Arthur Quiller-Couchs paper, Shakespeares
Later Workmanship, 749-60.
114 RENAISSANCE CENTRES AND PERIPHERIES
remember Lady Macbeths image what she uses to describe the desirable effect of
drunkenness on Duncans guards:
Memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only. (1.7.66-8)
The reference is to the alchemical vessel, the alembic, this is the brain, in which as
Charles Nicholl explains the crude material of sensory data is purified and separated
and its essence collected in the receipt of reason. Alcohol will so befuddle this process
that there will only be crude liquor of experience. The guards will remember nothing of
the murder of Duncan...
19
All of us remember the witches of Macbeth, or the ghosts of Richard III, Julius
Caesar, Hamlet, and Macbeth, but the best examples to demonstrate the complexity of
the Great Chain of Being, encompassing the whole existence from the elements to the
transcendental spheres are A Midsummernights Dream and The Tempest. The latter reminds
us of that special, eery atmosphere of the last plays in which life, dream, and magic are
completely intertwined.
The Tempest is directed by a real magus, Prospero, a composite character uniting many
Renaissance hermeticist philosopher-scholars, such as the neoplatonist Pico della
Mirandola, the par excellence magus Cornelius Agrippa, the esoteric physician,
Theophrastus Paracelsus, or the hermetic engineer, Cornelius Drebbel, who was
Shakespeares contemporary and they could even be in personal contact since the
Dutchman lived in London from 1604 and occasionally was employed by Jamess
court. Similar doctor-scientists endowed with occult powers are Pericless Cerimon, the
20
Paracelsian natural philosopher who brings Thaisa back to life, or Cymbelines Cornelius
who turns Imogen seemingly dead with his drugs.
We should not forget about the fact, that Shakespeare could even personally be
acquainted with such contemporaries in real London life, for example the
mathematician-magus John Dee who astrologically determined Elizabeths day of
coronation in 1558, and in his older age regularly conversed with angels and spirits; or
Simon Forman, the less highly esteemed, still popular alchemist-gynecologist-quack, who
counseled many women, probably fathered a lot of children, and who, according to the
hypothesis of A. L. Rowse was the physician of Shakespeares mysterious Dark Lady.
21
See Nicholl, The Chemical Theatre, 75.
19
On Drebbel (1572-1633) see <http://www.drebbel.utwente.nl/main_en/Information/History/-
20
History.htm> [access: 2011-11-13] and further literature here. On Drebbel and Shakespeare see Grant,
The Magic of Charity, 1-16; Grudin,Rudolf II of Prague and Cornelis Drebbel, 181-205; Mowat,
Prospero, Agrippa, and Hocus Pocus, 281-303; Mowat, Prosperos Book., 1-33; Yates, Shakespeares
Last Plays, passim.
On Forman the three most important monography are: Kassel, Medicine and Magic; Rowse, The Case
21
Books; Traister, The Notorious Physician.
GYRGY E. SZNYI 115
The very same Forman, as we know, was a passionate playgoer and he saw The Winters
Tale on May 15, 1611 and in his diary gave a rather exact plot summary, except that he
curiously forgot to mention the final act with Hermiones miraculous revival. Instead,
he elaborated on the cozening activities of Autolycus, finishing his resume with the
following moral lesson: Beware of trusting feigned beggars, or fawning fellows.
22
The last plays are frequented by supernatural characters, too. Ariel and other spirits
in The Tempest, apparition of ancestral ghosts in Cymbeline, even mythological gods and
goddesses, such as Iris, Ceres, Juno in The Tempest, Diana in Pericles, Apollo and satyrs
in The Winters Tale. In this drama Apollos oracle in Delphos is the focal point of
supernatural forces. What all other human characters know, but Leontes does not
believe, the soothsayer of the esoteric shrine confirms and thus miraculously stops the
otherwise unaccountable rage of jealousy in the king. Ironically, while the jealous king
23
does not believe what average humans can clearly see, at the end of the play he will have
to believe what no human reason can comprehend: a statue coming to life. Leontes will
need a leap of faith to grasp the incomprehensible; as Paulina says: It is requird / You
do awake your faith (5.3.94-95).
The living statue recalls a great number of myths and stories of miracles. On the one
hand from Greek mythology one can recall the transformation of Pygmalions ivory
female statue; Pandora, the first woman made of clay by Hephaestus at the request of
Zeus; the automata created by Prometheus for his workshop; Talos, an artificial man
made of bronze by Hephaestus in order to protect Zeuss lover, Europa. On the other
hand, one can also remember the Corpus hermeticum, according to which the ancient
Egyptian priests were supposed to infuse life into the statues of their gods by various
magical rites, including musical accompaniment. This legend was much discussed in
24
the Renaissance and particularly glorified by Giordano Bruno in his Italian dialogues,
published in England in the 1580s. Furthermore, as Leonard Barkan has showed, the
25
artwork which is so perfect that actually comes to life was also a central metaphor of the
Renaissance artists ambition to deify himself with his creative energies.
26
In Loves Labours Lost Berowne speaks about the musical-magical power of love:
Loves tongue . . . as sweet and musical
Formans The Bocke of Plaies (Oxford MS Ashmole 208) was discovered in 1832 and first
22
published by J. P. Collier in his New particulars regarding the works of Shakespeare in a letter to the Rev. A. Dyce
(1836). See Pafford, Simon Formans Bocke of Plaies, 289-291. Formans text is available in most
editions of the three Shakespeare plays he included in his notebook: Macbeth, Cymbeline, The Winters Tale.
No need to say, many efforts have been made to account for Leontess jealousy. Recently James A.
23
Knapp has explained it in the context of Levinass philosophy of alterity and Derridas notions of
deconstruction (Visual and Ethical Truth in The Winters Tale, 253-78).
See Yates, Shakespeares Last Plays: A New Approach, 90-1.
24
Especially in Spaccio della bestia trionfante (London, 1584), dialogue 3. See Frances A. Yates, Giordano
25
Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 211-3.
Barkan, Living Sculptures, 639-667.
26
116 RENAISSANCE CENTRES AND PERIPHERIES
As bright Apollos lute, strung with his hair;
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. (4.3.339-45)
Hermiones coming to life is accompanied by music, about whose curative and creative
power testified not only the myth of Orpheus, but also the neoplatonic philosophy of
Marsiglio Ficino, Francesco Giorgi, Pierre de la Primaudaye. Thus music creates life
27
and cures old wounds, but also represents the power of love and reconciliation. Pauline
calls her queen as follows: Music, awake her: strike! Tis time; descend; be stone no
more: approach... (5.3.99-100) then to Leontes: do not shun her / present your
hand: / When she was young you wood her; now in age / Is she become the suitor?
And then the king exclaims: O! Shes warm. / If this be magic, let it be an art / Lawful
as eating (5.3.105-111).
Although I cannot agree without some reservation, it is still worth quoting Frances
Yatess opinion with which she integrated The Winters Tale into her elevated vision of
Renaissance hermeticism: The return of Hermetic, or Egyptian magical religion
involves, in the hermetic texts and in Giordano Brunos interpretation of them, the
return of moral law, the banishment of vice, the renewal of all good things, a holy and
most solemn restoration of nature herself. There is perhaps something of this magical
religious and moral philosophy in the profoundities about nature in The Winters
Tale.
28
Frances Yates definitely wanted to see Shakespeares last plays as testimonies for
peace, reconciliation and harmony. But if we consider a possible alchemical reading of
the statue scene, we can also perceive Shakespeares subversive and unorthodox attitude
to traditional esoteric ideas. Iin alchemy there are two parallel processes taking place. On
the one hand the elemental matter is transmuted into gold or elixir, on the other hand,
the operator, the alchemist also goes through a spiritual transmutation. The gender
29
roles in the process are traditional: the active, male principle is in the focus, represented
by the King, the bridegroom, Sun, gold, the lion, and the alchemist himself is
invariably a man. The female principle is also essential in the process as foundation
(earth, Nature), or catalyzer (the Queen, the bride, Moon, silver, the virgin, the whore).
The most elaborate allegorical narrative of these processes is Johann Valentin Andreaes
Chimische Hochzeit (1626, English translation by E. Foxcroft, 1690) and Michel Maiers
Themis aurea (1618, English translation 1656), but of course, one could also rely on native
On the correspondences of music and magic see Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, 12-30; and
27
Wuidar ed., Music and Esotericism, especially Amandine Mussou, Le mdicin et les sons: Musique et
magie... (23-45); Marjorie A. Roth, Prophecy, Harmony, and the Alchemical Transformation of the Soul
(45-77).
Yates, Shakespeares Last Plays, 91.
28
Here I dont want to reflect on the recently ongoing debate whether spiritual alchemy was or was
29
not part of early modern esotericism. A summary and rebuttal of the sceptical opinions of Lawrence
Principe can be found by Calian, Alkimia Operativa and Alkimia Speculativa.
GYRGY E. SZNYI 117
English alchemical texts, such as Ripleys Compound of Alchemy, [Pseudo] Roger Bacons
The Mirror of Alchimy (1597), and many others later republished in a huge anthology of
Elias Ashmole, the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652). All of these transmitted the
above mentioned traditional aproach to gender hierarchy, and Shakespeare was no
exeption when he used alchemical imagery.
It is all the more interesting that on one occasion, in the statue-scene of The Winters
Tale the Bard radically subverted the traditional understanding of alchemy, similarly to
his usual technique of transgressing tradition-based emblematic imagery. As has been
noticed, he often used the emblematic way of expression, employing well-known images
in bonam partem and in malam partem. This is how Richard II will be associated with the
30
setting sun, or the daughter of Antiochus in Pericles turns from the fruit of a celestial
tree and a fair glass of light into a glorious casket stord with ill, not mentioning
being a fair viol [...] played upon before [her] time, / Hell only danceth at so harsh a
chime (1.1.22, 76-85).
At the end of The Winters Tale there takes place a magic transmutation of the stone
statue of Hermione into a living being: Who was most marble, there changed colour
(5.2.89). There is a certain irony in the situation concerning Leontes, the King/Lion to
be exalted into Sun/Gold when he does not notice the trick played on his senses. But
if we take the emblematic setting seriously, we are satisfied to see that he takes the moral
lesson:
I am ashamed: does not the stone rebuke me
For being more stone than it? O royal piece,
Theres magic in thy majesty. (5.3.37-9)
Who is the Royal Piece then, the Magnum Opus? Hermione, the perfect woman who
did not need to change at all, she represented superiority from the beginning. And who
is the alchimist then, the operator, who also undergoes spiritual exaltatio? In this scene
of Shakespeare the two functions, the active operator and the spiritually transmuted
person are separated, or doubled. There is the male king who badly needs the renovation
and regeneration, on the other hand the operator is again a woman, Paulina. It has been
noticed by several citics, that at the end of The Winters Tale Leontes actually is rather
pushed into the background behind the dignified and celebrated female interactions
among Paulina, Hermione, and the lost-found Perdita.
*****
The limits of this study urge me to leave the magic of The Winters Tale and come to
my brief conclusion which I offer as a concise comparison between our play and the
other romances. Among the last plays The Winters Tale has the strongest inclination for
See Daly, Teaching Shakespeare; Sznyi, Matching....
30
118 RENAISSANCE CENTRES AND PERIPHERIES
the pastoral, but it has weaker romance elements than Cymbeline or Pericles and much less
complicated magic than The Tempest. The Winters Tale charms rather with its poetry and
its dramaturgy, although as we have seen, some associations with alchemy in connection
with the statue of Hermione are notable.
One should also remember, however, that this dramaturgy shall only work if we have
the proper key to it. Although The Winters Tale and the other romances do not hold a
mirror up to nature in the sense as Hamlet suggests to the actors, the last plays also tell
a lot about the nature of time and the nature of man in a way as Theseus sees the
working of the poet: to apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends. No
doubt, this is a kind of escapism. But there are personal and social/political situations
(in the life of a man growing old and becoming resigned or in times like the
uninspiring rule of James I after the untimely death of Prince Henry) in which the best
way seems to take the drug of fantasy, hibernate, and use the magic power of the
imagination to regenerate until better times will give a new chance to return to reality.
Postscript. All great art is ambiguous, and subversive to some extent. In The Winters
Tale the escapist fantasy is counterbalanced and subverted by the cheating and cunning
Autolycus and the less than wise shepherds of the somewhat sarcastic Arcadia. Precisely
because of these elements the play leaves in the audience a feeling of quasi- or unreal
solution. But it is ultimately up to us whether we choose the dreamland or the bitterness
of reality.
References
Alpers, Paul. What is Pastoral? University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Bath, Michael. Speaking Pictures. English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture. London: Longman,
1994.
Boutcher, Warren. Who Taught Thee Rhetoricke to Deceive a Maid?: Christopher Marlowes
Hero and Leander, Juan Boscns Leandro, and Renaissance Vernacular Humanism. Comparative
Literature 52.1 (2000): 11-52.
Barber, C. L. Shakespeares Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom
. Princeton University Press,1959.
Barkan, Leonard. Living Sculptures: Ovid, Michelangelo, and The Winters Tale. English
Literary History 48 (Winter, 1981): 639-667.
Bradbrook, M. C. The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy. London: Chatto & Windus,1952.
Calian, George-Florin. Alkimia Operativa and Alkimia Speculativa. Some Modern Controversies
on the Historiography of Alchemy. In Katalin Szende and Judith Rasson ed., Annual of
Medieval Studies at CEU, Vol. 16. Budapest: Central European University, Department of
medieval Studies, 2010, 166-190.
Daly, Peter M. Literature in the Light of the Emblem. Structural Parallels between the Emblem and Literature
in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998 [1979].
Daly, Peter. Teaching Shakespeare and the Emblem. A Lecture and Bibliography. Wolfville: Acadia Uni-
versity, 1993.
Du Bartas, Salluste. His deuine weekes and workes translated: and dedicated to the Kings most excellent
Maiestie by Iosuah Syluester. London, 1611.
GYRGY E. SZNYI 119
Eco, Umberto. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976.
Empson, William. Some Versions of Pastoral. London: Chatto & Windus, 1935 (New edition: 1986).
Encyclopaedia Britannica (11 edition, 1911), <
th
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Gabriel_
Harvey>, access 2011-10-02.
Fabiny, Tibor ed. Shakespeare and the Emblem. Szeged: JATE (Papers in English & American
Studies 3), 1984.
Fletcher, John. The Faithful Shepherdess. London, 1608.
Frye, Northrop. A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1965.
Grant, Patrick. The Magic of Charity: A Background to Prospero. The Review of English Studies,
New Series 27 (Feb., 1976): 1-16.
Grudin, Robert. Rudolf II of Prague and Cornelis Drebbel: Shakespearean Archetypes?
Huntington Library Quarterly 54 (Summer, 1991): 181-205.
Heninger, S. K. Jr. The Cosmographical Glass. Renaissance Diagrams of the Universe. San Marino, CA:
The Huntington Library, 1977.
Hiltner, Ken. What Else is Pastoral?: Renaissance Literature and the Environment. Cornell University
Press, 2011.
Josipovici, Gabriel. The World and the Book. London: Macmillan, 1971.
Kassel, Lauren. Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan England. Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, and
Physician. Oxford: Clarendon, 2005.
Kermode, Frank. English Pastoral Poetry: From the Beginnings to Marvell. London: George Harrap,
1952.
King, Andrew. Sidney and Spenser. In Corinne Saunders ed. A Companion to Romance: From
Classical to Contemporary. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004, 140-59.
Knapp, James A. Visual and Ethical Truth in The Winters Tale. Shakespeare Quarterly 55
(2004): 253-78.
Knight, G. W. The Romantic Comedies. In Knight, The Shakespearian Tempest. Oxford
University Press, 1932.
Krailsheimer, A. J. ed. The Continental Renaissance, 1500-1600. London: Penguin Books, 1971.
Laroque, Francois. Shakespeares Festive World. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Leitch, Vincent B. ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2010.
Lerner, Laurence ed. Shakespeares Comedies. An Anthology of Modern Criticism. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1967.
McFarland, Thomas. Shakespeares Pastoral Comedies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1972.
Mowat, Barbara A. Prospero, Agrippa, and Hocus Pocus, English Literary Renaissance 11 (1981):
281-303.
. Prosperos Book. Shakespeare Quarterly 52 (Spring, 2001): 1-33.
Muir, Kenneth. Shakespeare: The Comedies. A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1965.
Nicholl, Charles. The Chemical Theatre. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
OConnell, Michael. The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm, Anti-Theatricalism, and the Image of the
Elizabethan Theater. English Literary History 52 (1985): 279-309.
Pafford, J. H. P. Simon Formans Bocke of Plaies, The Review of English Studies, New Series, 10
(Aug., 1959): 289-291.
Peterson, Douglas L. Time, Tide, and Tempest: A Study of Shakespeares Romances. San Marino, Cal.:
The Huntington Library, 1973.
Pettet, E. C. Shakespeare and the Romance Tradition. London: Staples Press, 1949.
Poggioli, Renato. The Oaten Flute: Essays on Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal. Harvard University
Press, 1975.
120 RENAISSANCE CENTRES AND PERIPHERIES
Rowse, A. L. The Case Books of Simon Forman: Sex and SOciety in Shakespeares Age. London: Pan
Books, 1976.
Quiller-Couch, Arthur. Shakespeares Later Workmanship: The Winters Tale. The North
American Review 203 (1916): 749-60.
Schne, Albrecht. Emblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock. Mnchen: Beck, 1968 [1964].
Sidney, Philip. The Defense of Poesy. = Leitch, The Norton Anthology.
Smith, Hallett. Shakespeares Romances: a Study of Some Ways of the Imagination. San Marino, Cal.: The
Huntington Library, 1972.
Spenser, Edmund. Poetical Works. Ed. J. C. Smith and E. de Selincourt (1912). Oxford University
Press, 1970.
Sznyi, Gyrgy E. Lattrait de laventure et langoisse du mysterieux. In LEpoque de la
Renaissance Vol. 4, Crises et essors nouveaux (1560-1610). Ed. Eva Kushner, et al. Amsterdam and
Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2000, 537-50.
. Matching the Falles of Princes and Machiavell: Tradition and Subversion in the
Historiography and Iconography of Shakespeares Histories. In Sznyi & Rowland Wymer
ed., The Iconography of Power: Ideas and Images of Rulership on the English Renaissance Stage (Szeged:
JATEPress, 2000, Papers in English & American Studies 8), 5-33.
Traister, Barbara H. The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman.
The University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Walker, D. P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (1958). Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2000.
Wickham, Glynne. Early English Stages. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966.
Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. Oxford University Press, 1973.
Wuidar, Laurence ed. Music and Esotericism. Leiden: Brill (Aries Book Series 9), 2010.
Yates, Frances A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1964.
. Shakespeares Last Plays: A New Approach. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975.
Contents
Contents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
CENTERS AND PERIPHERIES: A CASE STUDY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
MIKE PINCOMBE
Centre and Periphery in Renaissance Europe:Tudor England in an International
Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
HUMANISM, CONTACTS, LITERATURE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
SNDOR BENE
Renaissance or Medieval Mirror for Magistrates? Andreas Pannonius libelli in
Various Research Perspectives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
IVAYLA POPOVA
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II) and the Balkans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
ANDRS SZAB
David Chytraeus und Ungarn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
VIOREL PANAITE
A French Ambassador in Istanbul, and his Turkish Manuscript on Western
Merchants in the Ottoman Mediterranean (Late-16th and Early-17th Centuries)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
PIOTR URBASKI
Ut Pictura Poesis in Sarbiewskis Theory and Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
PL CS
The Theory of Soul-sleeping at the Beginning of the Hungarian Reformation
Movement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
2 CONTENTS
GYRGY E. SZNYI
Pastoral, Romance, Ritual and Magic in Shakespeare and The Winters Tale. . 105
RELIGION, SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
DARIUSZ NIEKO
The Familiar and the Foreign in the Universal History (Marcin Bielskis Chronicle of
the Whole World). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
TOM NEJESCHLEBA
The Theory of Sympathy and Antipathy in Wittenberg in the 16 century. . . . 135
th
HANNA WGRZYNEK
Medicine and the Origins of Blood Libel Accusations in Old Poland (mid-16 mid-
th
17 centuries). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
th
GBOR BOROS
Montaigne and Descartes in Cosmopolis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
ILDIK SZ. KRISTF
The Uses of Demonology. European Missionaries and Native Americans in the
American Southwest (17-18th Centuries). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
VISUAL CULTURE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
PAVEL KALINA
Giovanni Pisano, Ltd.? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
JERZY MIZIOEK
Towards a New Interpretation of Botticellis Primavera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
IVAN GERAT
Saint Anthony the Hermit in the Northern Renaissance Some Aspects of His
Painted Legends. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
LUBOMR KONECNY
The Poetry of Titians Poesie: The Renaissance View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
CONTENTS 3
OLGA KOTKOV
Where did Maerten van Heemskerck create his painting Venus and Cupid in
Vulcans Forge?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
TADEUSZ J. UCHOWSKI
Die altertmliche berlieferung in den Renaissance-Skulptur-Traktaten. Sonderfall
Marmoraria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
VA KNAPP
GBOR TSKS
The Iconography of King Saint Stephen I in Prints 14501700. . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
ABOUT THE AUTHORS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Preface
The contributions in this volume come from a special group of scholars. Andrew W.
Mellon East-Central European Research Fellowships in the Humanities were established
in 1993 and came to an end in 2010. The programme, which disbursed over 10 million
dollars in funding for over 600 scholars, was administered by the Council of American
Overseas Research Centers in Washington under the direction of Dr. Mary Ellen Lane.
Initially there were eight European institutes of advanced study receiving scholars on the
Mellon programme, but over the years the number increased to seventeen and also en-
compassed institutes in Israel and Turkey.
The particular focus of the Mellon Program was to provide support to the
beleaguered humanities during a period of profound change in Central and Southeast
Europe and to encourage scholarly exchange. Subjects that had once provided a niche
for intellectuals such as medieval and early modern history, classical studies, neo-Latin
literature, music and art history seemed particularly threatened. The attractiveness of
smaller subjects in the humanities always suffer in an economic situation where
teachers and university teachers continue to receive low pay while incomes in other
sectors rise rapidly. Persuading young people to engage with the humanities was and is
a constant struggle. Creating international networks and providing opportunities for
younger scholars to travel and engage in discussions with their counterparts in other
countries is of paramount importance in this effort.
From the outset of the Mellon programme transnational research was seen to be of
particular significance in helping the humanities in Central and Southeast Europe to
engage with and evolve new methodologies and new areas of research. In relation to the
particular historical eras for which the manuscript and rare book holdings of the Herzog
August Bibliothek are richest medieval and early modern Europe communication
between researchers is essential in both directions, for European continental history is
a common and enmeshed history dissociated from todays national borders. The
European nature of Humanist and Renaissance sources in Latin knew no reception
boundaries. The expansive nature of the Holy Roman Empire meant that there was no
one main centre in which historical sources were concentrated. During the Iron Curtain
era scholars working on topics concerning the many former German-speaking areas in
the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries were often not able to gain access to the primary
sources reflecting their own histories. The depletion or destruction of historic libraries
and archives in Central and Eastern Europe during the Second World War exacerbated
the situation in many fields.
From the point of view of early modern scholars the Renaissance and Renascences
conference of East-Central European Mellon Fellows held in July 2003 at the University
6 RENAISSANCE CENTRES AND PERIPHERIES
of Szeged in the Conference Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was a high
point of the programme. Of the thirty Mellon fellows who attended the conference,
eleven had been fellowship-holders at the Herzog August Bibliothek. The conference
was organized by our former fellow, Gyrgy E. Sznyi, holder of a chair in English
Literature at the University of Szeged. The idea for the meeting came up during a visit
he paid to the CAORC offices in Washington and his discussions with Mary Ellen Lane.
Professor Sznyis final programme for Szeged brought together an impressive range
of topics and speakers. The conference also coincided with the 10th anniversary of the
Mellon Fellowship Programme. For those Mellon Fellows with a research interest in
Renaissance studies who may have spent time in London at the Warburg Institute or in
Florence at the Villa I Tatti or at another of the participating institutes this was an
opportunity to meet as a group of alumni and present papers. Even those who had
been fellows at the same institute in the same year had not necessarily overlapped and
met. The welcoming atmosphere of our hosts in Southern Hungary provided an ideal
ambience for exchange and discussion.
The present volume not only documents studies undertaken by Mellon scholars in
the field of early modern studies, it is a tribute to the work of the Mellon Foundation
and above all to the efforts of the administrators of the programme at the CAORC. In
choosing to focus on centres and peripheries the volume takes as its theme a central
aspect of the Mellon programme a revision of the meaning of borders and boundaries,
of geographical and mental mapping and posits the need for experts who can provide
permanent historical contextualisation in the face of changing political realities.
Jill Bepler
Herzog August Bibliothek,
Wolfenbttel
EDITORS NOTE
There is nothing to be proud of if a volume is published nine years after the conference
that had inspired its publication. The editors can only console themselves with the
saying: Better later than never. As Doctor Bepler kindly acknowledges in her Preface,
the 2003 Mellon Fellows Conference indeed was a success in bringing together East-
Central European scholars who had enjoyed the marvellous opportunity of receiving
generous grants at the leading Renaissance and early modern research centres of Europe.
Unfortunately less happy years followed, especially the crisis-ridden turn of the 2010s
and the publication was delayed due to financial and organizational problems. A few
moths ago, however, having heard about the closing of the Mellon East-Central
European Fellows Program, I woke up to the realisation: the almost ready volume
PREFACE 7
cannot go down the sink instead of commemorating and paying tribute to this bene-
volent and extremely inspiring Mellon-CAORC initiative.
To add one more saying: alls well that ends well. By now the volume has been
typeset and JATEPress of Szeged is ready to print it without further delay. It happens
that some of the authors have decided to abstain from publication, others have already
published their papers, but kindly agreed to reissue them in this commemorative
volume. Some authors, including myself, have offered new papers, after all, the purpose
is to erect a small monument to the Program.
I would like to utilize this moment to thank the participants as well as the supporters
of the sunny and cheerful 2003 conference, especially the representatives of three host
research institutions: Dr. Jill Bepler from the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbttel,
Dr. Allen Grieco from the Villa i Tatti, Florence, and Dr. Franois Quiviger from the
London Warburg Institute. The greatest and special thanks are due, of course, to Mary
Ellen Lane, for her continuous encouragement and CAORCs abundant financial
support.
For the present publication I owe a great deal of gratitude to my student and co-
editor, Csaba Maczelka (himself already a Wolfenbttel alumnus), Jill Bepler for the
Preface and Etelka Sznyi of JATEPress, for the production of the volume.
Szeged, June 1, 2012.
Gyrgy E. Sznyi
University of Szeged/
Central European University, Budapest