O. B. Hardison Jr. – författare

This volume is the first of a series of books sponsored by the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Although no attempt was made in advance to limit or direct approaches to subject matter, the individual papers show a common interest in the history of ideas and in the meaning, history, and varieties of humanism.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

The essays and their authors are: Medieval Borrowings from Further Asia"" by Lynn White, Jr.; ""Twelfth-Century Spirituality and the Late Middle Ages"" by Giles Constable; ""On Editing Shakespeare: Annus Mirabilis by George Walton Williams; ""The Revival of Antiquity in Early Renaissance Sculpture"" by H. W. Janson; ""Chaucer's Fifteenth-Century Successors"" by Norman E. Eliason; and ""Cinquecento Mannerism and the Uses of Petrarch"" by Aldo Scaglione.""A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Originally published in 1965. The European dramatic tradition rests on a group of religious dramas that appeared between the tenth and twelfth centuries. These dramas, of interest in themselves, are also important for the light they shed on three historical and critical problems: the relation of drama to ritual, the nature of dramatic form, and the development of representational techniques. Hardison's approach is based on the history of the Christian liturgy, on critical theories concerning the kinship of ritual and drama, and on close analysis of the chronology and content of the texts themselves. Beginning with liturgical commentaries of the ninth century, Hardison shows that writers of the period consciously interpreted the Mass and cycle of the church year in dramatic terms. By reconstructing the services themselves, he shows that they had an emphatic dramatic structure that reached its climax with the celebration of the Resurrection. Turning to the history of the Latin Resurrection play, Hardison suggests that the famous Quem quaeritis—the earliest of all medieval dramas—is best understood in relation to the baptismal rites of the Easter Vigil service. He sets forth a theory of the original form and function of the play based on the content of the earliest manuscripts as well as on vestigial ceremonial elements that survive in the later ones. Three texts from the eleventh and twelfth centuries are analyzed with emphasis on the change from ritual to representational modes. Hardison discusses why the form inherited from ritual remained unchanged, while the technique became increasingly representational. In studying the earliest vernacular dramas, Hardison examines the use of nonritual materials as sources of dramatic form, the influence of representational concepts of space and time on staging, and the development of nonceremonial techniques for composition of dialogue. The sudden appearance of these elements in vernacular drama suggests the existence of a hitherto unsuspected vernacular tradition considerably older than the earliest surviving vernacular plays.

Originally published in 1973. Toward Freedom and Dignity is a humanist's view of the humanities in an age of burgeoning technology. O. B. Hardison Jr. deals with the status of the humanities and their future—how they are regarded and how they may come to contribute to a genuinely humane society. He argues that humanistic studies are not a luxury in either education or society. They are central to the preparation of human beings for the kind of society that is possible if we manage to avoid an Orwellian technocracy. Social goals and priorities must be set in terms of the ideal of a culture truly adjusted to human needs and human limitations. In framing his argument, Hardison draws on ideas of the humanities since the Renaissance, especially on the philosophical humanities that emerged in Europe in the works of authors like Kant, Schiller, and Coleridge. He is untroubled by anti-humanistic trends in college curricula and the surrounding culture, and he contends that we have only one practical option: to ensure that culture evolves toward a more humane society, toward freedom and dignity.

Originally published in 1989. In Prosody and Purpose in the English Renaissance the eminent scholar O. B. Hardison Jr. sets out "to recover the special kinds of music inherent in English Renaissance poetry." The book begins with a thorough and wide-ranging survey of the development of prosodic theory from the ancient ars metrica tradition to the sixteenth century, with special emphasis on such issues as the relation of verse form and genre, the relation of syntax to prosody, and the role of language reform in shaping Renaissance prosody. The second part of the book considers the impact of prosodic traditions on specific literary works and verse forms, among them Surrey's Aeneid, Heywood's translation of Seneca's Thyestes, Sackville and Norton's Gorboduc, and the dramatic and epic verse of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton. Throughout, Hardison examines not only how poets crafted their verse but why. He explores authorial purposes ranging from technical attempts to match sound and genre to the lofty aims of improving the vernacular or ennobling culture, from the dramatist's practical search for verse forms suited to the stage to Milton's quest for a meter fit to convey divine relation.