Charles Ross | Purdue University (original) (raw)
Papers by Charles Ross
Modern Philology, 2012
The thesis of Michael Ward's Planet Narnia is that Lewis used images of the planets to order his ... more The thesis of Michael Ward's Planet Narnia is that Lewis used images of the planets to order his Narnia chronicles and give them each what might be called a ''Christological'' flavor. Lewis's leading character, Aslan the lion, does not directly mirror the Jesus of the annunciation, nativity, boyhood, and ascension as told in the Gospels. Rather, he incorporates various aspects that medieval lore associated with the seven planets, not unlike the way Hamlet describes his father: ''the front of Jove himself, / An eye like Mars, to threaten and command, / A station like the herald Mercury / Newlighted on a heaven-kissing hill, / A combination and a form indeed, / Where every god did seem to set his seal'' (Hamlet 3.4.55-60, quoted in Ward, Planet Narnia, 239). Thus Ward argues that Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950) is a Jovial king. There is a Martian commander in Prince Caspian (1951).
... In a related study," The Visualization of Metaphor in Two Chinese Versions of Macbeth,&q... more ... In a related study," The Visualization of Metaphor in Two Chinese Versions of Macbeth," AlexanderHuang establishes the central importance of Shakespeare's language as the basis for the stage's audio-visual idiom, as it is for visualization in films and as it will be for whatever ...
... Shakespeare and Chopin resonate in recent Chinese fiction too. The image of a woman in a well... more ... Shakespeare and Chopin resonate in recent Chinese fiction too. The image of a woman in a well is common in Chinese literature, with the obvious sense that it symbolizes her powerlessness. More horrifying is the torture of a child bride in Xiao Hong's Tales of the Hulan River ...
Indiana International & Comparative Law Review, 1994
Journal of General Education, 1981
Philological Quarterly, 1994
Italian humanism and interpretive anthropology alike make an issue of how to respond to local cus... more Italian humanism and interpretive anthropology alike make an issue of how to respond to local customs, the subject of Castle Cruel in Matteo Maria Boiardo's romantic epic, Orlando Innamorato (1482). The humanism Boiardo derived from Cicero grounds moral feeling not in experience or custom but on right reason founded on universal justice. Justice is not tested by the standard of utility, nor is it "conformity to written laws and national customs" (obtemperatio scriptis legibus institutisque populorum), since then anyone who thinks it profitable would disregard the laws: But the most foolish notion of all is the belief that everything is just which is found in the customs or laws of nations. Would that be true, even if these laws had been enacted by tyrants?(1) Iam vero illud stultissimum, existimare omnia iusta esse, quae sita sint in populorum institutis aut legibus. etiamne si que leges sint tyrannorum? According to Cicero's De Legibus, "virtue" (the proper excellence of anything) "is reason completely developed, and this is certainly natural; therefore everything honourable is likewise natural" (est enim virtus perfecta ratio, quod certe in natura est; igitur omnis honestas eodem modo, 1.16.45). Nature distinguishes justice and injustice, honor and dishonor (1.16.44). "But if it is a penalty, the fear of punishment, and not the wickedness itself, that is to keep men from a life of wrongdoing and crime, then no one can be called unjust, and wicked men ought rather to be regarded as imprudent" (quodsi poena, si metus supplici, non ipsa turpitudo deterret ab iniuriosa facinerosaque vita, nemo est iniustus, aut incauti potius habendi sunt inprobi, 1.14.40). Against this background of moral certainty, the story of Castle Cruel represents what Clifford Geertz, in an important essay on cultural relativity, calls "the strange construed."(2) Geertz defines humanism as a belief that there are "similarities between ourselves and others removed in place or period." As a result, distant "imaginative products can be put at the service of our moral life." Humanism typically looks to the past "as a source of remedial wisdom, a prosthetic corrective for a damaged spiritual life." However, traditional humanism fails to comprehend the moral imagination because it does not recognize the unstable nature of moral images and because it pays inadequate attention to the present position of the moral observer. The resulting instability of the moral imagination calls into question the kind of humanist understanding of history that informs the imaginative world of the Innamorato. The subject of the moral imagination may as easily be fiction as ethnography. Both are confused, "groping representations." For Boiardo, the custom of the castle, an image from chivalric romance that serves as an allegory of the Other, corresponds to the moral confusion of Geertz's scene of suttee. The collision of beauty and cruelty, when female sacrifice takes place in the lush island world of Bali, produces an unstable aesthetic experience. "High artistry" is confused with "high cruelty." Not only is the imaginative construction unstable, but the observer questions the morality of what he observes. Boiardo's text similarly decenters a humanist perspective, without denying it. At first Ranaldo's method for eliminating foul customs seems simple enough. Arm yourself, smash the foul local custom, and thank God for putting you on the right side. Yet Boiardo's thick text resists any easy imposition of meaning. The obvious implication that Castle Cruel allegorically mirrors Ranaldo's cruel rejection of Angelica's love, the way Marchino's savagery almost justifies the measures taken by his jealous wife, and the violence of Ranaldo's assault on the local population undercut the success of the hero.(3) The story of Castle Cruel occurs quickly in the poem, occupying little more than a canto. Almost every line, however, contributes to a moral maze. …
Renaissance Quarterly, 2015
Allen Mandelbaum used to say that Dante had read his Hegel. I am not certain what he meant. But a... more Allen Mandelbaum used to say that Dante had read his Hegel. I am not certain what he meant. But after finishing, in almost one sitting, Justin Steinberg's eminently readable Dante and the Limits of the Law, I am pretty sure that Dante had not read Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Although Dante's failure to do his homework in American jurisprudence raises questions about a law and literature approach to the Commedia, Steinberg cleverly and clearly roots through various topics of medieval law to find fresh explanations for a variety of conundrums faced by Dante's readers. The problematic issues include the highly regulated structure of the Commedia, the difficulties of crossing borders, the spirits' constant worry about their reputations in the world of the living, the relationship between sovereignty and justice, the jurisprudence and purpose of punishment, and the problem of verisimilitude in Dante's poetry. As a guide to such issues the book divides Dante's legal world into four topics, or chapters. The first focuses on how medieval law could produce or ratify social disgrace. For example, the contrapasso, or creatively responsive punishment, responds to the limits of the law (the book's main theme) by creatively expressing shame in various ways. The second chapter finds the limits of the law in discretionary judgment, a version of the standard problem of fitting broad laws to narrow fact patterns. Here Dante's solution to the search for truth again produces forms of highly individual poetics that for Steinberg finds its culmination in the earthly paradise. Chapter 3 takes up the issue of how legal privileges or immunities play against the conception of a community of justice, another form of limitation. Chapter 4 begins with the observation that medieval contracts depended on forms, not consent, in order to be enforceable. Dante the pilgrim's knowledge of this limitation allows him to make promises he does not keep to some of the souls in the lower portions of hell. These four chapters create a frame that Steinberg characterizes as beneath, beyond, above, and beside the law. Within this totalizing organization, the book brings fresh perspectives to traditional topics, often taking the form of a rehearsal of what other critics have said and then a rebuttal. Ascoli, Freccero, Baranski, Hollander, even Auerbachping, ping, ping, down they go. Steinberg's legal understanding, grounded in an astonishingly productive reading of primary and secondary writings, offers a fresh and almost always satisfying perspective. A central concern is Dante's encounter with his ancestor Cacciaguida in the Paradiso. There are too many passages for me to rehearse in a short review.
South Atlantic Review, 1992
Prose Studies, 2007
Ariosto originally wrote I Soppositi, the source for the Bianca plot in Shakespeare's Taming ... more Ariosto originally wrote I Soppositi, the source for the Bianca plot in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, in prose. Some years later he rewrote it in verse. George Gascoigne had both versions before him when he produced his translation, The Supposes. When Shakespeare wrote The Taming of the Shrew mainly in verse, despite Gascoigne's prose model, he was doing what Ariosto himself had done, producing a verse play from a prose model (it is just possible he too read Ariosto's prose). But he also retained something of the prose in ways that enforce the themes of The Taming of the Shrew and which depend on our understanding of the nature and function of prose. This article looks at a couple of the several prose remnants in Shakespeare's plays.
Modern Philology, 1981
... 30-32; and Zabughin, 1:304, n. 17; and their main source, Augusto Live-rani, II XIII Libro de... more ... 30-32; and Zabughin, 1:304, n. 17; and their main source, Augusto Live-rani, II XIII Libro dell'Eneide di Maffeo Vegio (Livorno, 1897 ... serious context for the statement that Vegio wrote a "short Christian work." The prologue opens as Douglas walks beneath the setting sun and the ...
MLN, 1981
... Lewis, The Allegory of Love ... Simbolico nella figura centrale e negli attributi di essa, l&... more ... Lewis, The Allegory of Love ... Simbolico nella figura centrale e negli attributi di essa, l'episodio e per6 romanzesco per tutto il rimanente; sicche anche qui abbiamo una prova, che il poeta non reggeva a lungo su questo tono," wrote Giulio Reichenbach, L'Orlando Innamorato ...
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 2004
Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicat... more Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies.
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 2006
Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicat... more Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact:
Prose Studies, 2010
... DOI: 10.1080/01440357.2010.497292 Charles S. Ross ... voyage, written by John Sparkes (Hakluy... more ... DOI: 10.1080/01440357.2010.497292 Charles S. Ross ... voyage, written by John Sparkes (Hakluyt xlii), lingers over a description of bread from the Indians which they had made of a kind of corn called maize, in bigness of a pease, the ear whereof is much like to teasel, but a ...
Modern Philology, 2012
The thesis of Michael Ward's Planet Narnia is that Lewis used images of the planets to order his ... more The thesis of Michael Ward's Planet Narnia is that Lewis used images of the planets to order his Narnia chronicles and give them each what might be called a ''Christological'' flavor. Lewis's leading character, Aslan the lion, does not directly mirror the Jesus of the annunciation, nativity, boyhood, and ascension as told in the Gospels. Rather, he incorporates various aspects that medieval lore associated with the seven planets, not unlike the way Hamlet describes his father: ''the front of Jove himself, / An eye like Mars, to threaten and command, / A station like the herald Mercury / Newlighted on a heaven-kissing hill, / A combination and a form indeed, / Where every god did seem to set his seal'' (Hamlet 3.4.55-60, quoted in Ward, Planet Narnia, 239). Thus Ward argues that Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950) is a Jovial king. There is a Martian commander in Prince Caspian (1951).
... In a related study," The Visualization of Metaphor in Two Chinese Versions of Macbeth,&q... more ... In a related study," The Visualization of Metaphor in Two Chinese Versions of Macbeth," AlexanderHuang establishes the central importance of Shakespeare's language as the basis for the stage's audio-visual idiom, as it is for visualization in films and as it will be for whatever ...
... Shakespeare and Chopin resonate in recent Chinese fiction too. The image of a woman in a well... more ... Shakespeare and Chopin resonate in recent Chinese fiction too. The image of a woman in a well is common in Chinese literature, with the obvious sense that it symbolizes her powerlessness. More horrifying is the torture of a child bride in Xiao Hong's Tales of the Hulan River ...
Indiana International & Comparative Law Review, 1994
Journal of General Education, 1981
Philological Quarterly, 1994
Italian humanism and interpretive anthropology alike make an issue of how to respond to local cus... more Italian humanism and interpretive anthropology alike make an issue of how to respond to local customs, the subject of Castle Cruel in Matteo Maria Boiardo's romantic epic, Orlando Innamorato (1482). The humanism Boiardo derived from Cicero grounds moral feeling not in experience or custom but on right reason founded on universal justice. Justice is not tested by the standard of utility, nor is it "conformity to written laws and national customs" (obtemperatio scriptis legibus institutisque populorum), since then anyone who thinks it profitable would disregard the laws: But the most foolish notion of all is the belief that everything is just which is found in the customs or laws of nations. Would that be true, even if these laws had been enacted by tyrants?(1) Iam vero illud stultissimum, existimare omnia iusta esse, quae sita sint in populorum institutis aut legibus. etiamne si que leges sint tyrannorum? According to Cicero's De Legibus, "virtue" (the proper excellence of anything) "is reason completely developed, and this is certainly natural; therefore everything honourable is likewise natural" (est enim virtus perfecta ratio, quod certe in natura est; igitur omnis honestas eodem modo, 1.16.45). Nature distinguishes justice and injustice, honor and dishonor (1.16.44). "But if it is a penalty, the fear of punishment, and not the wickedness itself, that is to keep men from a life of wrongdoing and crime, then no one can be called unjust, and wicked men ought rather to be regarded as imprudent" (quodsi poena, si metus supplici, non ipsa turpitudo deterret ab iniuriosa facinerosaque vita, nemo est iniustus, aut incauti potius habendi sunt inprobi, 1.14.40). Against this background of moral certainty, the story of Castle Cruel represents what Clifford Geertz, in an important essay on cultural relativity, calls "the strange construed."(2) Geertz defines humanism as a belief that there are "similarities between ourselves and others removed in place or period." As a result, distant "imaginative products can be put at the service of our moral life." Humanism typically looks to the past "as a source of remedial wisdom, a prosthetic corrective for a damaged spiritual life." However, traditional humanism fails to comprehend the moral imagination because it does not recognize the unstable nature of moral images and because it pays inadequate attention to the present position of the moral observer. The resulting instability of the moral imagination calls into question the kind of humanist understanding of history that informs the imaginative world of the Innamorato. The subject of the moral imagination may as easily be fiction as ethnography. Both are confused, "groping representations." For Boiardo, the custom of the castle, an image from chivalric romance that serves as an allegory of the Other, corresponds to the moral confusion of Geertz's scene of suttee. The collision of beauty and cruelty, when female sacrifice takes place in the lush island world of Bali, produces an unstable aesthetic experience. "High artistry" is confused with "high cruelty." Not only is the imaginative construction unstable, but the observer questions the morality of what he observes. Boiardo's text similarly decenters a humanist perspective, without denying it. At first Ranaldo's method for eliminating foul customs seems simple enough. Arm yourself, smash the foul local custom, and thank God for putting you on the right side. Yet Boiardo's thick text resists any easy imposition of meaning. The obvious implication that Castle Cruel allegorically mirrors Ranaldo's cruel rejection of Angelica's love, the way Marchino's savagery almost justifies the measures taken by his jealous wife, and the violence of Ranaldo's assault on the local population undercut the success of the hero.(3) The story of Castle Cruel occurs quickly in the poem, occupying little more than a canto. Almost every line, however, contributes to a moral maze. …
Renaissance Quarterly, 2015
Allen Mandelbaum used to say that Dante had read his Hegel. I am not certain what he meant. But a... more Allen Mandelbaum used to say that Dante had read his Hegel. I am not certain what he meant. But after finishing, in almost one sitting, Justin Steinberg's eminently readable Dante and the Limits of the Law, I am pretty sure that Dante had not read Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Although Dante's failure to do his homework in American jurisprudence raises questions about a law and literature approach to the Commedia, Steinberg cleverly and clearly roots through various topics of medieval law to find fresh explanations for a variety of conundrums faced by Dante's readers. The problematic issues include the highly regulated structure of the Commedia, the difficulties of crossing borders, the spirits' constant worry about their reputations in the world of the living, the relationship between sovereignty and justice, the jurisprudence and purpose of punishment, and the problem of verisimilitude in Dante's poetry. As a guide to such issues the book divides Dante's legal world into four topics, or chapters. The first focuses on how medieval law could produce or ratify social disgrace. For example, the contrapasso, or creatively responsive punishment, responds to the limits of the law (the book's main theme) by creatively expressing shame in various ways. The second chapter finds the limits of the law in discretionary judgment, a version of the standard problem of fitting broad laws to narrow fact patterns. Here Dante's solution to the search for truth again produces forms of highly individual poetics that for Steinberg finds its culmination in the earthly paradise. Chapter 3 takes up the issue of how legal privileges or immunities play against the conception of a community of justice, another form of limitation. Chapter 4 begins with the observation that medieval contracts depended on forms, not consent, in order to be enforceable. Dante the pilgrim's knowledge of this limitation allows him to make promises he does not keep to some of the souls in the lower portions of hell. These four chapters create a frame that Steinberg characterizes as beneath, beyond, above, and beside the law. Within this totalizing organization, the book brings fresh perspectives to traditional topics, often taking the form of a rehearsal of what other critics have said and then a rebuttal. Ascoli, Freccero, Baranski, Hollander, even Auerbachping, ping, ping, down they go. Steinberg's legal understanding, grounded in an astonishingly productive reading of primary and secondary writings, offers a fresh and almost always satisfying perspective. A central concern is Dante's encounter with his ancestor Cacciaguida in the Paradiso. There are too many passages for me to rehearse in a short review.
South Atlantic Review, 1992
Prose Studies, 2007
Ariosto originally wrote I Soppositi, the source for the Bianca plot in Shakespeare's Taming ... more Ariosto originally wrote I Soppositi, the source for the Bianca plot in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, in prose. Some years later he rewrote it in verse. George Gascoigne had both versions before him when he produced his translation, The Supposes. When Shakespeare wrote The Taming of the Shrew mainly in verse, despite Gascoigne's prose model, he was doing what Ariosto himself had done, producing a verse play from a prose model (it is just possible he too read Ariosto's prose). But he also retained something of the prose in ways that enforce the themes of The Taming of the Shrew and which depend on our understanding of the nature and function of prose. This article looks at a couple of the several prose remnants in Shakespeare's plays.
Modern Philology, 1981
... 30-32; and Zabughin, 1:304, n. 17; and their main source, Augusto Live-rani, II XIII Libro de... more ... 30-32; and Zabughin, 1:304, n. 17; and their main source, Augusto Live-rani, II XIII Libro dell'Eneide di Maffeo Vegio (Livorno, 1897 ... serious context for the statement that Vegio wrote a "short Christian work." The prologue opens as Douglas walks beneath the setting sun and the ...
MLN, 1981
... Lewis, The Allegory of Love ... Simbolico nella figura centrale e negli attributi di essa, l&... more ... Lewis, The Allegory of Love ... Simbolico nella figura centrale e negli attributi di essa, l'episodio e per6 romanzesco per tutto il rimanente; sicche anche qui abbiamo una prova, che il poeta non reggeva a lungo su questo tono," wrote Giulio Reichenbach, L'Orlando Innamorato ...
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 2004
Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicat... more Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies.
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 2006
Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicat... more Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact:
Prose Studies, 2010
... DOI: 10.1080/01440357.2010.497292 Charles S. Ross ... voyage, written by John Sparkes (Hakluy... more ... DOI: 10.1080/01440357.2010.497292 Charles S. Ross ... voyage, written by John Sparkes (Hakluyt xlii), lingers over a description of bread from the Indians which they had made of a kind of corn called maize, in bigness of a pease, the ear whereof is much like to teasel, but a ...