Search

The article offers poetry criticism of the unfinished poem "The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream," by John Keats, focusing on his use of the term wild Indian leaf. It is said that tree leaves were used as paper in India and that Keats would likely have used the word savage to refer to East Indians rather than to Native Americans.

This article discusses a series of broadside ballads which report and interpret news arriving in London during the Northern Rising and its aftershocks (1569–70). The ballads share a distinctive motif (heraldic allegory) which allows the evolution of their representational tactics to be traced with some accuracy. Close parallels to the language and chronology of the ballads can also be found in publications linked directly to the Privy Council and in the State Papers—in royal proclamations and a letter to the Queen from Leicester. The evidence adduced is used to provide further detail for our evolving understanding of how a prototype of the public sphere developed in post-Reformation England, and how literary techniques for attracting readers and for apostrophizing the popular voice were used by authors sympathetic to Privy Council directives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross, which forms part of what has come to be called "The Ruthwell Crucifixion Poem," which was the subject of research by scholar John M. Kemble. The similarities between this poem and "The Dream of the Rood." It is noted that in a paper written in 1840, Kemble failed to identify the speaker of the Ruthwell poem as the Cross. Scholar Pamela O'Neill and her rejection of the idea that the Cross speaks to the dreamer in the Ruthwell poem is discussed.