Papers by John V . Fleming
The Princeton University Library Chronicle, 2010
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Notes and Queries, 1967
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Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 2015
Your generous invitation to address this august audience, for which I am sincerely grateful, was ... more Your generous invitation to address this august audience, for which I am sincerely grateful, was perhaps peculiar in one respect. At least one-half of it was taken up with the admonition, tactful but no less emphatic, that although I could talk about whatever might enter my mind, I'd better do it in 19 minutes and 59 seconds, max. Thus must I rush, in medias res, to an obscure corner of rural County Wexford, in the south of Ireland, in the year 1660. For there it was that a pious farmer named Valentine Greatrakes awoke one morning with the odd notion that God had granted him the power to heal, with the touch of his hand, the common and unpleasant disease called scrofula, an often hideous inflammation and swelling of the lymph nodes in the face, neck, and shoulders.Scrofula was commonly called the "King's Evil" in English because of the belief that the British monarch had the power to cure it by touch. The doctrine of royal thaumaturgy was a medieval relic in both France and England. There were indeed special liturgical ceremonies of royal touching. Queen Elizabeth the Great had briefly discontinued them in what one contemporary called a "fit of Puritanism," but they were brought back by popular demand-and for the same political usefulness that encouraged the restored monarch, Charles II, to adopt the practice.That an Irish squire should claim the same gift may seem a political and spiritual overreach. More remarkable yet, Greatrakes pursued his newfound medical mission with startling success. Many sufferers claimed to have been healed by his ministrations. He came to be called "the Stroker" on account of his unusual therapeutic method of literally rubbing out the bodily suffering of the damaged areas presented for his attention.Several features of the man's personality argued against obvious fraud. His local reputation prior to his medical fame was unsullied. He was a man of overt rectitude and piety but not a fanatic-as that term was then used to describe radical Protestant dissenters, the ancestors of some of today's charismatic evangelicals. From the political point of view, it was very important that he was in fact a conformist-that is, a member of the established Anglican Church. He claimed to be only an intermediary of the healing power of Jesus Christ, a power he "felt" rather than understood. And although his healing efforts succeeded so frequently that he soon gained the reputation of a wonder-worker, they also failed frequently. He made no attempt to deny, disguise, or rationalize his failures. He would simply apologize with a humble sympathy to the disappointed patient for his inability to help. Most conspicuously, he rebuffed all offers, which were numerous, to exploit his gift for financial gain.So long as Greatrakes was curing Irish cottagers and ploughboys, he was no more than a local wonder or a dubious distant rumor, but in 1665, he found himself suddenly translated to the inner sanctum of the early British Enlightenment. It happened like this. The wife of Lord Edward Conway, whose estate at Ragley Hall in Warwickshire housed one of the greatest private libraries in the land and was the unofficial weekend retreat of half the members of the nascent Royal Society, suffered terribly from migraines. This remarkable woman, Lady Anne Conway (nee Finch), was an intellectual phenomenon. Some scholars have argued that she was the most impressive woman philosopher to appear in Britain to this very day. In an age when no woman could matriculate at any university, she was the prized pupil (by correspondence, of course) of the major philosopher Henry More of King's College, generally regarded as the chief of the "Cambridge Platonists."Greatrakes attempted to stroke away Lady Anne's headaches. He failed once, then a few more times. He apologized, as was his wont in such instances, and was prepared to pack up and go home. That should have been the end of it. But news of the presence of the "miraculous conformist" at Ragley raced through the countryside. …
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Roman de la Rose, 1969
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Rethinking the "Romance of the Rose", 1992
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The Cambridge Companion to Autobiography
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Speculum, 2003
... ": Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and RA... more ... ": Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and RAB Mynors (Oxford, 1969), 4.24, pp. 418-19. Page 6. ... Ilona Opelt, "Der z?rnende Christus im Cento der Proba," Jahrbuch f?r Antike und Christentum 7 (1964), 106. ...
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Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1973
essay I want to appeal to historians to treat literature seriously. My argument will be that lite... more essay I want to appeal to historians to treat literature seriously. My argument will be that literary texts offer important and sometimes unique kinds of historical evidence, and that, by and large, the historical discipline has been curiously diffident about exploiting this evidence with vigor and confidence. Yet to take up such a theme, even in general terms, requires a formal apologia of sorts. The literature-and-history question is an old one, especially for literary scholars. The increasingly introspective mood of literary scholarship in recent decades has undermined the ebullient self-confidence about the "autonomy" of our undertakings and sent us scurrying across campus in search not merely of historians, but sociologists, psychologists, and even biologists. A recent compilation of essays published by the Modern Language Association, including a fine essay on "Literature and History" by the late Rosalie Colie, an eminent scholar with formal credentials in both history and English, gives some idea of the scope of the search as well as some suggestions of its promise.' There is a substantial "bibliography" on the literature-and-history question; and it is significant, even if entirely explicable, that practically all of it comes from the pens of literary scholars rather than those of historians.2 The literature-and-history question has maintained a certain urgency in the agenda of literary studies, and it has often been debated in a polemical context which has hardly been welcoming to outsiders. The burden of past debate inevitably weighs heavily upon any literary scholar who approaches the literature-and-history question, but it is
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Aesthetic Theology in the Franciscan Tradition, 2019
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Notes and Queries, 1967
Publikationsansicht. 49195042. CHAUCER'S SQUIRE, THE "ROMAN DE LA ROSE", AND THE &... more Publikationsansicht. 49195042. CHAUCER'S SQUIRE, THE "ROMAN DE LA ROSE", AND THE "ROMAUNT" (1967). FLEMING, JOHN V. Details der Publikation. ...
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Oxford Art Online, 2012
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Christianity & Literature, 1992
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Christianity & Literature, 1979
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Christianity & Literature, 1996
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Traditio, 1966
The earliest text of The Dream of the Rood consists of a few lines of runic inscriptions carved a... more The earliest text of The Dream of the Rood consists of a few lines of runic inscriptions carved around the edges of a North English high cross now at Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire. It represents no more than a fragment of the text as we find it in the Vercelli MS, a short passage describing the Crucifixion and the ordeal of the Cross. The precise relationship between the Ruthwell runes and the Vercelli poem is a matter of conjecture and dispute. To some critics the Ruthwell inscriptions represent an ‘earlier poem,’ of which the Vercelli text is an expansion or a later revision or both. It is a question to which I shall wish to devote some attention in due course. For the present, I would suggest that the runic inscriptions provide a valuable clue to the interpretation of the Vercelli poem along lines so far left unexplored; for the runes form a part of a rich iconographic program, developing a unified meaning closely connected with the figurative meaning of The Dream of the Rood.
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Speculum, Oct 1, 1972
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The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature
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The Art Bulletin, 1986
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Italica, 1971
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Papers by John V . Fleming