Duke Of Guise Research Articles

Мотив Голгофы в chapelle ardente Лотарингских принцев (1589 год)

This article dwells on the memorial services for Henry I, Duke of Guise, and Louis II, Cardinal of Guise, who were assassinated in Blois at the order of King Henry III of France. These services were special due to the arrangement of symbolic chapelles ardentes (‘burning chapels’) in the churches. The decoration of these chapels reflected not only the religious and political ideas of adherents of the Guise brothers, but also changes in religious art unrelated to the particular event. For instance, the prevalent motif of Calvary, which by the late 16th century had become common in the interiors of French churches following the decisions of the Council of Trent, as well as triumphal motifs that had been used to depict the ruling class throughout the 16th century and had fundamental importance in terms of the development of the ideas of the Renaissance and Gallicanism. The main visual sources used in the paper are engravings, both separate works (by Catholic engravers, primarily Jacques Lalouette’s work depicting in detail the Parisian chapelle ardente) and book illustrations, as well as descriptions of similar chapels whose images have not survived to the present day (e.g., Pierre Matthieu’s text describing the ceremony and the chapel in Lyon). Among other key motifs, besides Cavalry, we can name the imitation of Christ, as well as triumphal motifs in an antique manner, which are characteristic both of the court art during the period of the French religious wars in general, and of the House of Guise in particular.

Renewing the Auld Alliance: Marie Stuart’s poetics and the Catholic League’s politics☆

AbstractFew historical sovereigns’ political fate and posthumous image have been as influenced by creative literature as those of Marie, Queen of Scots, yet comparatively little attention has been paid to how she depicted herself in her own poetry. Most research devoted to her verse over the past two decades has been undertaken by scholars of English literature, despite the fact that Marie Stuart was neither English, nor did she write poetry in that language. Acknowledging that Marie considered France her homeland and French her mother tongue, this article examines the poems contained in Oxford MS. Add C.92, fol.22 as works of Francophone literature and situates them within a transnational historical context that has also been understudied: the intersection of the English Catholic exile cause in Paris with the politics and propaganda of France’s Catholic League, led by Marie’s cousin, Henri, Duke of Guise. It seeks to clarify not only the language and meaning of the poems themselves, but also to highlight how they draw from and contribute to a larger pool of French poetic and political discourse during the French Wars of Religion.

«ЧЕСТОЛЮБИВЫЕ ВИДЫ НА ВЛАСТЬ В ГОСУДАРСТВЕ»: ОБРАЗ ГЕНРИХА ДЕ ГИЗА В РОССИЙСКИХ И ФРАНЦУЗСКИХ ШКОЛЬНЫХ УЧЕБНИКАХ XIX – НАЧАЛА XX В.

The following article is an attempt at a comparative analysis of the images of a key character in the epoch of the Civil (religious) wars in France, Henry, Duke of Guise in schoolbooks of the 19th – early 20th century. The research is based on several schoolbooks for different levels of education published in France and Russia at that time. It is concluded that the “black legend” about the Duke of Guise consolidated in the collective consciousness as a contribution of educational literature. He was portrayed not only as an antagonist to not only the last Valois, but also to the future monarch Henry IV, the one traditionally standing for tolerance and progress in European historical culture. However, in the liberal-republican discourse Henry of Guise’s image was always rather ambiguous. The schoolbooks reflect the controversial char - acter of his figure, as it was constructed by historians. The ever-changing politi- cal context and the development of historical research defined the evolution of his image in France as well as in Russia and the aiming for further objectiveness in 19–20th century schoolbooks. Nevertheless, the main features of his image haven’t changed.

Religious Reform, the House of Guise and the Council of Fontainebleau: The French Memorial Service for Marie de Guise, August 1560

During the summer of 1560 the power of the Guise family was under attack in France and Scotland alike. In Scotland, Marie de Guise, mother of Mary, queen of Scots, who had acted as Regent for her daughter from 1554 onwards, had recently been defeated by religious rebels and died shortly thereafter. In France, the influence of her two younger brothers, Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, and Francois, duke of Guise, over Francois II provoked criticism whilst the government was also under pressure to make concessions to Protestants. On 12 August 1560 a memorial service was held in Notre Dame de Paris. This is entirely passed over in accounts of French politics in the period, and appears as a mere epilogue to studies of Marie de Guise herself. This article offers the first analysis of the organisation of, attendance at, and contents of the service, focusing in particular on the funeral sermon. Coming eight days before the Council of Fontainebleau the memorial service, witnessed by a large and influential audience, provided an excellent opportunity for Marie de Guise’s family not only to celebrate her life but to tell a positive narrative about the House of Guise as a counter to widely circulating criticisms.

What’s in a Date? Alberico Gentili and the Genesis of De legationibus libri tres

It may not be all that much of an exaggeration to suggest that the birth of modern international law was expedited by a happenstance. In November 1583 Francis Throckmorton was arrested on suspicion of participating in a plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth and to place on the throne in her stead the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots—a stratagem to be implemented by an invasion of a mercenary army led by the Duke of Guise. The Spanish ambassador to England, Bernardino de Mendoza, was intimately involved, too, which raised the delicate matter of ambassadorial privileges. Twelve years earlier, a panel of five English civil lawyers had determined in the analogous case of the Scottish ambassador to England, John Lesley, Bishop of Ross—who had been implicated in the Ridolfi Plot—that a scheming legate forfeited his...

Portraits from the French Renaissance and the Wars of Religion (review)

Portraits from the French Renaissance and the Wars of Religion. By Andre Theve t. Translated by Edward Benson; edited with introduction and notes by Roger Schlesinger. [Early Modern Studies, 3] (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2010. Pp. xxxiv, 214. $39.95 paperback. ISBN 9781-931-11298-7.) This book is an annotated translation of thirteen selections from Andre Thevet's Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres (Paris, 1 584). Most of the individuals featured in this edition were Theve t's contemporaries: kings (Francois I, Henri II, Charles IX), aristocrats and warriors (including Francois de Lorraine, duke of Guise; Constable Anne de Montmorency; and Chancellor Michel de L'Hospital), and scholars (Guillaume Bude and Guillaume Postel). This gallery of portraits contains little that is new. Thevet's eulogies of powerful political figures often are trite and at times redundant. As Frank Lestringant wrote in his biography of Theve t, a certain realism, if not opportunism, dictated the cosmographer's writing. As a protege of Cardinal Jean de Lorraine, who funded his first voyage to the Levant in 1549,Thevet celebrated de Lorraine (the cardinal's nephew) as a martyr during the first Wars of Religion. According to Lestringant, Theve t reconfigured his political position from 1563 to support the policy of conciliation led by Catherine de Medici and advocated by L'Hospital. After the St. Bartholomew Day's massacre in 1572, Thevet justified persecution of seditious Huguenots. He increasingly veered toward the Catholic Ligue and, before his death in 1590, received protection and favors from Charles, duke of Mayenne and son of de Lorraine. This rapidly shifting political stance may explain why Thevet, a laicized Franciscan and the queen mother's chaplain, largely avoided thorny issues of confessional conflict. The overall absence of ideological steadfastness in Les vrais pourtraits may reflect his career as a quintessential courtier - he managed to serve as royal cosmographer under four successive kings. The introduction in this English edition provides a balanced picture of the events and developments surrounding the Wars of Religion, but it rarely mentions Thevet's political opinions, paying perhaps too much attention to his earlier travel accounts. One wonders whether it would have been more helpful if the editor had attempted to discuss Thevet in the context of political patronage and power politics of the time. …

The massacre of St Bartholomew on the English stage: Chapman, Marlowe, and the Duke of Guise

This article considers a passage in George Chapman's The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois in which the hero of the play defends his patron, the Duke of Guise, for his participation in the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Investigating why Chapman would have his protagonist make such a controversial utterance, it argues that he was responding to earlier reports of the same period in news‐books, pamphlets, Marlowe's Massacre at Paris and his own earlier tragedy Bussy D'Ambois. It is suggested that the faction of Clermont and the Guise consistently voices opinions that might be understood in light of Andrew Hadfield's description of literary republicanism. Therefore, Chapman's reminder to the audience is part of an ongoing attempt to construct a double vision of the Guise: from one perspective he is an admirable character who virtuously resists a tyrannical monarch, but on the other hand echoes of his villainous reputation remain, as a defensive strategy on Chapman's part, to prevent him clashing with censors over the political opinions expressed by this character. Finally, the article suggests that this play constitutes a cautionary warning to Prince Henry not to heed the pro‐war voices urging him to attack Catholic Europe.

Marlowe’s Knifework: Threat, Caution, and Reaction in the Theatre

This paper investigates a particular kinesthetic experience with special emphasis on physicality of knives. On stage, cutting and stabbing instruments assert meanings beyond mere stage property to elicit neuro-sensory muscular reactions audience; actions of fear and distress that occur prior to intellectual perception and that produce radical tensions beyond moral pedagogy, analogues of Artaud or Seneca, or even post-reformation humanist debate. For heroic villains, a knife--in hand, imagined, or action--represents a desperate, even deadly, adjunct to making character happen onstage and thereby heightening psychological effects of violence and fear. Hereby Marlowe persistently, literally and figuratively, inserts knife (or sword, or other stabbing instrument) as special prop, agent, and symbol for emergence of terror as a new and devastating instrument of culture theatre--the sort of effect created by Guise Massacre at Paris when he stabs to death a pair of unarmed academics, guilty only of being Protestants, with chilling line I'll whip you to death with my poniard's point (9.79). Onstage, it's true but it's not real. Such horror produces complex reactive effects. In his still-authoritative study titled Weapons Theatre (1968), Arthur Wise counsels, the purpose of an authentic weapon is to kill, purpose of a theatrical weapon is to appear to do so (sic 19). More recently, Eli Rozik describes semiotics of objects onstage--for purposes especially a knife--dropping their practical function and assuming a communicative function. Thus, a knife plays a knife onstage. becomes a knife in quotation marks for other purposes. Or rather, as I will argue, it becomes a knife italics--for emphasis. As will be seen, Edward II, a red-hot poker emphatically plays role of a murder weapon, a horrific stabbing instrument of torture, and an unusual, but historically reported, means of assassinating a king. Such use onstage does not produce an alienation effect but an intensification effect that is especially Marlovian its moment of performance. Years ago, Dynamics of Drama (1970), Bernard Beckerman put it clearly, stating that theatre, our bodies are already reacting to texture and structure of action before we recognize that they are doing so (151). More recently, Janet Clare opened an article titled Marlowe's 'Theatre of Cruelty' as follows: It is a commonplace of understanding of Marlowe that he produced a theatre of consistently violent techniques and effects. Confronted with a combination of Renaissance eloquence and extreme acts of aggression, it can be difficult (unless undue emphasis is placed on fascinating details of life) to find an appropriate critical vocabulary for dramaturgy (74). Consequently, Clare appropriates Artaud's manifestos of violence theatre as guide to her inquiry into destabilizing rhetorical effects of verbal and visual onstage violence. But I would argue that critical vocabulary and governing aesthetics of violence inheres physicality of theatre itself. violence, especially knife violence, asserts something new, sensational and immediate, something more visceral, dangerous, and specific than can be handled by usual critical vocabularies. In an essay titled Three Uses of Knife, contemporary playwright David Mamet asserts excruciating theatricality of knife violence as follows: The appearance of knife is attempt of orderly, affronted mind to confront awesome; to discover hidden structure of word. In this endeavor rational mind will not be of help. This is province of theater and (67). In Massacre at Paris, Marlowe effectively combines theatre and religion within Duke of Guise who, as pan-European terrorist and homicidal maniac, cannot do anything without physically drawing a knife or sword or imagining himself or someone else as doing so. …

Passion et néostoïcisme dans The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois (1613) de George Chapman (1559 ?-1634)

Written in a period when Chapman was engrossed in stoic philosophy, The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois stages a paradoxical hero who has received from his late brother Bussy the mission to revenge his murder on Montsurry. A strict follower of Epictetus’s doctrine, Clermont D’Ambois has managed to strike a friendship with his brother’s former enemy, the duke of Guise, whose party he vaguely supports. Torn between the demands of the revenge and those of his philosophy, Clermont is first unable to dismiss the control of his passions, which is the core of the stoic doctrine, to execute the task that justice towards Bussy requires. Besides, the purpose Guise and Clermont have set themselves (to be wise) is at odds with the moral corruption of the Court of Henry III, depicted by Chapman as a Machiavellian tyrant. Virtue, in these conditions, seem very difficult to achieve, all the more so as Clermont refuses to compromise, as his passionate sister Charlotte would like him to. In line with his doctrine, he also prefers masculine friendship to feminine love, which he associates with lust, and thus dismisses as alien to virtue. It is no wonder then that the duel between Montsurry and Clermont should be delayed until act V. Meanwhile, Chapman shows the virtue, moral and physical, of his character in the scenes which stage his arrest, organised by the sinister traitor Baligny. Clermont proves his nobleness in this episode, and when finally Montsurry accepts his challenge, Clermont is able to fight - and eventually kill - him as a noble Christian gentleman. Alas, dreaded by Henry since the beginning, Guise is assassinated by the king’s guards. When Clermont is informed of his friend’s death, and thus understands the little hope there is for virtue to triumph in such circumstances, he prefers to commit suicide rather than to accept the rule of the tyrant. But the wording of his last lines leaves a doubt as to his real motives, since it seems clear that he kills himself as much because he cannot bear the loss of his friend as to escape tyrannous political power. The playwright finally points out his character’s imperfect stoicism.

Missions Impossible: Pomponne de Bellièvre and the Policies of Henry III

For more than four centuries the reign of Henry III, king of France (1574-89), was characterized by historians as one of bad government. Recently several students of the king and his reign have claimed that Henry was unjustly maligned and blamed for misfortunes attributable not to his failings as ruler but to the condition of France, which was torn asunder by the Wars of Religion. We argue that Henry lacked the requisites for effective political leadership. This can be demonstrated by analysing an aspect of his reign not hitherto studied in detail, namely the diplomatic missions undertaken by Henry’s emissary Pomponne de Bellièvre. In the conduct of these missions, which the king personally directed, Henry and Bellièvre exchanged scores of letters. Examination of Henry’s instructions and follow-up directives to his minister, and of Bellièvrexs’s replies and his comments to his colleagues allow one to see how Henry made policy. Analysis of four of the best-documented examples refutes the sunnier conclusions of recent revisionist historians who concur with the diarist L’Estolle’s opinion that Henry III would have been a good prince in a better century. Whether dealing through Bellièvre with Jean Casimir of the Palatinate (1575-76), Henry of Navarre (1583-84), Elizabeth of England (1586-87), or Henry, duke of Guise (1588), the king made serious errors of political judgement. Bellièvre, a sensitive and skilled negotiator, was acutely aware of his royal master’s shortcomings. Their exchange of correspondence shows how Bellièvre strove to persuade Henry to modify his bargaining position so as to offer some possibility of a negotiated solution to the problem at hand. Henry III is revealed as a ruler whose fundamental grasp of political reality was shaky at best, and whose policy decisions constrained Bellièvre to conduct what were truly Missions Impossible.

Before the Edict of Nantes

The French wars of religion, 1562–1629. By Mack P. Holt. (New Approaches to European History, 8.) Pp. xiv+239 incl. 9 maps and 7 figs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. £30 (cloth), £10.95 (paper). 0 521 35359 9; 0 521 35873 6Reformation in La Rochelle. Tradition and change in early modern Europe, 1500–1568. By Judith Pugh Meyer. (Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 298). Pp. 182 incl. frontispiece, 9 figs and 21 tables. Geneva: Droz, 1996. 2 600 00115 8A city in conflict. Troyes during the French wars of religion. By Penny Roberts. (Studies in Early Modern European History.) Pp. xi+228. Manchester–New York: Manchester University Press, 1996. £40. 0 7190 4694 7One king, one faith. The Parlement of Paris and the religious reformations of the sixteenth century. By Nancy Lyman Roelker. (A Centennial Book.) Pp. xiii+543. Berkeley–Los Angeles–London: University of California Press, 1996. £50 ($65). 0 520 08626 0When the French king Henri III appeared before the Parlement of Paris to enregister the Edict of Nemours on 18 July 1585, he was greeted with a eulogistic harangue from the first president of the parlement, Achille de Harlay. This was, he told the king, a true lit de justice, in which the king was united and reconciled with his people within a godly union around the one, true and Catholic religion. He went on to remind the king that it was twenty-five years ago to the month that the first edict of Catholicity had been promulgated. In the intervening period, the parlement had never accepted the principle behind the adventure of religious pluralism attempted in the various edicts of pacification with the Protestant minority. They had only enregistered them under the duress of ‘the explicit command of the king’ and the ‘urgent necessity of the times’, judging all such measures ‘contrary to the tranquility of your state’, and against the law of God. One observer recorded that the king wept during this speech. But these were not tears of joy, for this edict (which obliged the Protestant minority to abjure or depart the realm within months) had been forced upon him by the duke of Guise and the Catholic League. At a stroke it unwound the painfully slow efforts of the French monarchy to rebuild its authority on the basis of a royally imposed religious pluralism. The king appeared before his parlement to reap what rewards he could from a measure that also advertised his faiblesse. Like the more recent tear for the decommissioning of a royal yacht, these were the ways a monarch used to express the politically impossible. For us they are an important reminder of the passions that gripped French politics during its painful and bloody reformation and how sophisticated we must be in their interpretation. The four works under consideration here are very disparate – a socio-institutional study, an up-to-date, interpretative textbook, and two case-studies in the urban reformation. Their only common thread is that they represent the variety of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ (in the French denomination) scholarship on the wars of religion.

THE NEWHAVEN EXPEDITION, 1562–1563

England's decision to opt for the reformed religion had major repercussions in her foreign relations. Continental and Scottish protestants now looked to their royal co-religionist for protection. An intervention in Scotland on behalf of the reformers was triumphantly successful. When the French protestants took arms in 1562 they turned to Elizabeth for aid. Cecil was hesitant; Robert Dudley, however, backed by Throckmorton, urged armed intervention. The queen agreed but drove a hard bargain. The Huguenots were to hand over Newhaven (Le Havre) to be held by the English until Calais was returned. She in turn loaned money to hire mercenaries. From the beginning the alliance faltered. Elizabeth refused succour to the Huguenots besieged in Rouen. Condé and Coligny opened negotiations with Catherine de Medici, in which English interests were disregarded. In due course the assassination of the duke of Guise, the catholic champion, opened the way for a settlement. The reunited French parties joined in an assault on Newhaven; a humiliating surrender followed. The ill success of this venture was decisive in shaping the future course of English relations with their continental co-religionists. At home it marked the emergence of Robert Dudley as a major player in high politics.

REVIEWS

REVIEWS Get access Pen for a Party: Dryden's Tory Propaganda in its Contexts. By PHILLIP HARTH. Pp xii+342. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. £27.50. The Works of John Dryden. Vol. XIV, Plays: The Kind Keeper, The Spanish Fryar, The Duke of Guise, and The Vindication. Edited by VINTON A DEARING and ALAN ROPERBerkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1992. $75. DAVID HOPKINS DAVID HOPKINS University of Bristol Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XLVI, Issue 184, November 1995, Pages 582–584, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XLVI.184.582 Published: 01 November 1995

From Mascarade to Tragedy: The Rhetoric of Apologia in Jodelle's Recueil des inscriptions*

On Thursday, 17 February 1558, King Henri II was to come to the Paris Hotel de Ville with Francois de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, and have dinner with the municipal council. This was on rather short notice (the king had signified his intention on 8 February); but then, it was not supposed to be a solemn entree, only a banquet. In addition to the hearty pleasures of a Jeudi Gras, there was a lot to celebrate, most notably the recent (8 January) capture of Calais and the fort of Guignes by the duke, which had put an end to over four centuries of English presence on French soil. The banquet in the decorated Grande Salle was supposed to be the main event, but the aldermen wanted more.

Hammer or Anvil: Psychological Patterns in Christopher Marlowe’s Plays by Constance Brown Kuriyama

materials out of which a cohesive picture of Medwall as dramatist can yet emerge. DAVID BEVINGTON University of Chicago 178 Comparative Drama Constance Brown Kuriyama. Hammer or Anvil: Psychological Patterns in Christopher Marlowe’s Plays. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1980. Pp. xvi + 240. $21.00. Professor Kuriyama summarizes and discusses fully and perceptively the current criticism of Marlowe’s plays and finds it confusing, contra­ dictory, and inconclusive. Her purpose seems to be to clear up this confusion and critical perplexity by presenting a psychoanalytical in­ terpretation of the chief characters of the dramas. For example, she believes that Tamburlaine’s “confused and vacillating relationship” to the gods “seems ultimately related to a basic preoccupation with sexual identity.” Uneasiness about one’s relationship with women is as much an uncertainty as one’s relationship with the gods. She concludes therefore that the author of Tamburlaine was “probably” suffering from “an intense conflict of a marked homosexual character.” She finds just such confusion and vacillation common to the chief characters in all the plays. Tamburlaine, for instance, under her examination turns out to be a son unconsciously in rebellion against his father, then as a father unnaturally destroying his son. She also finds Tamburlaine busy with such kind of concerns as “Intense rivalry with father figures, strained efforts to cope with women and sexual objects, pronounced castration anxiety.” Moreover, we shall see that Tamburlaine is central to these concerns, “that he embodies and activates them, and yet remains the play’s primary means of dealing with them.” She then proceeds to analyse such leading characters in the rest of the plays according to the criteria set forth by Irving Bieber and others in Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytical Study of Male Homosexuals. Now, Professor Kuriyama accounts for such characters as these by the character of their creator as she finds it within the plays and in certain evidence she deduces from his biography. Thus the unconscious mind of this vacillating, unstable, brilliant young dramatist driven by primitive sexual urges is responsible for the same states in his leading characters—Tamburlaine, Aeneas, Dido, the Queen Mother Catherine, the Duke of Guise, Barabas, Faustus, and Edward II. In her final chapter (it had been better placed had it been the first chapter) the author takes up the biographical evidence for homosexu­ ality in Marlowe’s character. She maintains that Marlowe’s mother was an aggressive, domineering woman and that Christopher was her favorite, with suppressed incestuous desires; that his father was a braggart, and an indolent failure, derided and despised by Christopher’s mother. Thus the father was resentful of the poet, hostile, and very jealous of him. As a result, the poet must have hated his father and feared him. Out Reviews 179 of this condition one may recognize the Oedipal complex rising, and Christopher was haunted and perplexed and driven by this condition unconsciously. It made him unstable, violent, given to extremes, and ambivalent. It accounts for these same conditions in the characters of his plays. Thus when one looks at Faustus or Tamburlaine or Edward, one will hear varied changes rung on the character of Christopher. Indeed the poet’s violent death provides a summary of the various complexes one finds in his characters and deduces from what we know of his life. Threatened, he responds “with a violent attempt to assert his dominance, manifesting itself as a sudden attack from behind involving provocative seizure and use of the prospective victim’s own weapon (castrating before one is castrated).” But this attack is followed by Marlowe’s inability to do more than inflict a few minor wounds on Frizer “(evidence of his ambivalence toward violence, augmented by guilt).” This gives way to weakness; so Frizer turns the dagger into Marlowe’s brain “with lethal force.” This last indicates “suicidal sub­ mission, talion punishment.” Marlowe’s character, then, according to Professor Kuriyama, follows the very same frustrating and ambivalent scheme in his works “with various permutations” from “Tamburlaine at one extreme (identification with the aggressor) to Edward at the other (identification with the victim.)” His life is the very paradigm of his works. This is ingenious but just too pat. The evidence...

Peers of France and Princes of the Blood

France (the Duke of Guyenne, the Count of Flanders, and the Count of Champagne) were to be represented respectively by the Duke of Guise (Claude of Lorraine), of Nevers (Francis of Cleves), and of Montpensier (Louis II of Bourbon). Since the dukes normally preceded the counts, and since Flanders preceded Champagne, Montpensier found himself in a subordinate position. All three men had the honor of being among France's new peers, but Montpensier claimed that, as a Prince of the Blood (prince du sang), he should have precedence over both Guise and Nevers, who were not Princes of the Blood. On the other hand, the latter two claimed that they ought to take precedence over Montpensier because their new peerages were older than his. On July 25, 1547, the day before his coronation, Henry II published a provisional ordinance temporarily regulating the matter of precedence between Montpensier and his two opponents:

Dryden and History: A Problem in Allegorical Reading

The attempt to understand the relation between history and literature in the seventeenth century encounters the problem of allegory immediately. The more closely we read certain plays and non-dramatic poems, the more they seem to be offering covert advice on contemporary politics, and the greater is the temptation to translate their figures (in both senses) into topical allusions. The process is invited by Absalom and Achitophel or The Duke of Guise, but what are we to make of the stag-hunt in Cooper's Hill, or Dryden's epistle to Dr. Charleton, or the political overtones of heroic tragedy? I shall refer mainly to works by Dryden, but one section of my argument will be illustrated from Denham, Sir Robert Howard, and Thomas Otway. I have already revealed that I am using the word allegory, in a sense that is fast becoming antiquated, to mean the hiding of a specific reference, either conceptual or topical, behind a metaphoric veil. By definition, allegorical poems then possess levels of significance, translatable meaning, and neat analogical equations. Spenserian criticism of the past five years, however, has mounted a concerted attack on the theory implied by such paraphrase, without altogether avoiding paraphrase in practice. The Faerie Queene has been cut loose from its moorings to a rigid conceptual framework outside the text, and has been explored either as a poem of rhetorical process which develops complex psychological reactions in the reader, or as a world of its own that generates subtle meanings within itself. It is becoming harder to distinguish allegory from other kinds of poetic discourse, although Rosemond Tuve has concluded that true allegory is always fundamentally religious and concerned with matters of right belief. The crest of the latest critical wave has not yet hit us, and the next five years are likely to see the rewriting of Northrop Frye's dictum that all commentary is allegorical interpretation so as to read commentary turns all works into

Julius Caesar and the Duke of Guise

Julius Caesar and the Duke of Guise Get access M. Hope Dodds M. Hope Dodds 1Home House, Low Fell, Gateshead Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 180, Issue 16, 19 April 1941, Pages 276–279, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/.180.16.276 Published: 19 April 1941

Francis, Duke of Guise

Francis, Duke of Guise Get access John Radcliffe John Radcliffe Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s9-VIII, Issue 200, 26 October 1901, Page 353, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s9-VIII.200.353c Published: 26 October 1901

Francis, Duke of Guise

Francis, Duke of Guise Get access H. S. V.-W. H. S. V.-W. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s9-VIII, Issue 200, 26 October 1901, Page 353, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s9-VIII.200.353b Published: 26 October 1901