Essays on a wide range of topics including the role of early modern chess in upholding Aristotelian virtue; readings of Sidney, Wroth, Spenser, and Shakespeare; and several topics involving the New World.

Essays on a wide range of topics including the role of early modern chess in upholding Aristotelian virtue; readings of Sidney, Wroth, Spenser, and Shakespeare; and several topics involving the New World.

Renaissance Papers collects the best scholarly essays submitted each year to the Southeastern Renaissance Conference. The present volume opens with an essay on early modern chess, arguing that it covertly upheld an Aristotelian concept of virtue against the destabilizing ethical views of writers such as Machiavelli. This provocative opening is followed by iconoclastic discussions of Sidney'sAstrophil and Stella, Wroth'sUrania, and Spenser'sFairie Queen. The next essay investigates the mystery surrounding editorship of the 1571 printing ofThe Mirror for Magistrates. The essays then pivot into the exotic world of Hermetic "statue magic" in Shakespeare'sWinter's Tale and the even more exotic worlds of alchemy, Aztec war gods, and conversion in sixteenth-century Mexico. Two further essays remain in the New World, the first examining the representational connections between the twelve Caesars and the twelve Inca kings, the second taking stock of Thomas Harriot's contribution to the understanding of Amerindian languages. The penultimate essay looks at Holbein's depiction of Henry VIII's ailing body, and the volume concludes with a complex analysis of guilt and shame in Molière'sL'École des Femmes.
Contributors: Jean Marie Christensen, William Coulter, Christopher Crosbie, Shepherd Aaron Ellis, Scott Lucas, Fernando Martinez-Periset, Timothy Pyles, Rachel Roberts, Jesse Russell, Janet Stephens, Weiao Xing.
The journal is edited by Jim Pearce of North Carolina Central University and Ward Risvold of Georgia College and State University.

"Strange Serious Wantoning:": Early Modern Chess Manuals and the Ethics of Virtuous Subterfuge
Christopher Crosbie
"Both Use and Art:" Motifs and Method inAstrophil andStella
William A. Coulter
Embodied Love(rs): Injury and Comedy in Mary Wroth'sUrania
Rachel M. De Smith Roberts
Edmund Spenser's Automaton Alchemy: The Case of False Florimell
Jesse Russell
Who Edited the 1571Mirror for Magistrates?
Scott C. Lucas
Statues Living and Conscious: Hermetic Statue-Magic in The Winter's Tale
Timothy Pyles
Transmutation and Refinement: The Metaphysics of Conversion and Alchemy in Renaissance Spain
Shepherd Aaron Ellis
The Twelve Inka and the Twelve Caesars: Reflections on an Early Modern Visual Theme in the Art of Colonial Peru
Janet G. Stephens
Linguistics and Epistemology in Thomas Harriot's North Atlantic World
Weiao Xing
Assembling the King's Body: Examining Holbein's Portrait Techniques and the Fashioning of Henry VIII's Image in the English Renaissance
Jean Marie Christensen
Molière'sL'École des Femmes between Shame and Guilt
Fernando Martinez-Periset