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1
Nielson, James. "Elizabethan realisms : reading prose from the end of the century." Thesis, McGill University, 1990. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=74597.
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This thesis basically has a twofold aim: on the one hand, to make a somewhat neglected body of Renaissance prose more readable, by adding, in a punctual and miscellaneous manner, to our historical, philological and thematic understanding of it and by examining it in the light of some of our current theoretical preoccupations; and, on the other hand, to problematize the "realistic" rubric assigned to these works and to do so by cultivating a more thoroughgoing textual realism on the part of readers.These works, traditionally grouped together because of the interaction of their authors at the end of the 16th century, include Robert Greene's "cony-catching" and "confessional" pamphlets, the texts of the controversy between Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey, and Harvey's manuscript drafts, as well as more familiar works such as Nashe's Unfortunate Traveller.
The theoretical issue of "the real" as a textual effect has been divided up according to the three nominal categories of persons, places and things, but the thesis falls methodologically into two halves. The opening chapters aim at reintroducing the figures of Greene, Nashe and Harvey, and exploring the quasi-genres of confession, invective and rough draft as exemplary models of the textual construction of a realistic person. They also attempt an alternative form of reading which is an amalgam of cento, summary, close reading, theoretical aside, and running commentary. In the second half, microreadings of the Marprelate Tracts, the cony-catching pamphlets, and texts by Nashe are used to shed light on theoretical issues of textual "place" such as the rhetorical construction of "presence" and metaphorical "movement." Once the relationship between premodern and postmodern textuality has been sketched, the final chapter offers a critique of the unreflexive academic practice of doing "readings," and argues for a new literalism and the self-subversion of the figurative in an "extrarhetorical" reading of Nashe's Lenten Stuffe.
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Bradbury, Jonathan David. "Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa and the Spanish miscellany of the Golden Age." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610074.
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Bider, Noreen Jane. "Tudor metrical psalmody and the English Reformations." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape11/PQDD_0026/NQ50115.pdf.
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Wong, Alexander Tsiong. "Aspects of the kiss-poem 1450-1700 : the neo-Latin basium genre and its influence on early modern British verse." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708782.
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Hammerton, Rachel Joan. "English impressions of Venice up to the early seventeenth century : a documentary study." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/2792.
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The first Englishmen to write about the city-state of Venice were the pilgrims passing through on their way to the Holy Land. Their impressions are recorded in the travel diaries and collections of advice for prospective fellow pilgrims between the early fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the most substantial being those of William Wey, Sir Richard Guylforde and Sir Richard Torkington, who visited Venice in 1458 and '62, 1506, and 1517 respectively. In the 1540s arrived the men who saw Venice as part of the new Europe--Andrew Borde and William Thomas. Thomas's study of the Venetian state emphasized the efficiency of its administration, seeing it as an example of constructive government, where effective organisation for the common good led directly to national stability and prosperity. The mid-sixteenth century saw the beginnings of Venice as a tourist centre; the visitors who came between 1550 and the end of the century described the sights and the people, the traditions and way of life. Fynes Moryson's extensive account details what could be seen and learned in the city by an observant and enquiring visitor. In addition to information available in first-hand accounts of Venice, much could be learned from the work of the late sixteenth-century English translators. Linguistic, cultural, geographical, historical and literary translations yielded further knowledge and, more importantly, new perspectives, Venice being seen through the eyes of Italians and, through Lewkenor's comprehensive work, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, of Venetians themselves. Finally, to assess the general impressions of Venice and the Venetians, we consider the literature of the turn of the sixteenth-seventeenth century; what, and how much, of the three-hundred year accumulation of knowledge of the city and people of Venice had most caught the attention and imagination of the English mind, and how close was the relationship between the popular impression and the documentary information from which it had largely developed.
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Murray, Kylie Marie. "Dream and vision in Scotland, c.1375-1500." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669934.
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Gardner, Corinna. "The just figure shape, harmony and proportion in a selection of Andrew Marvell's lyrics." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002273.
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The phrase "the just Figure" - a quotation from Upon Appleton House - is the central theme of this thesis as it aptly describes Marvell's repeated use of shape, harmony and proportion to suggest morality and virtue. The poet's concern with geometrical imagery is conveyed by the word "figure", which also is another term for a metaphor or conceit. The word "just" suggests not only moral appropriateness, but also mathematical exactness or fit. The thesis consists of five chapters, each dealing with an aspect of the imagery of shape and form which pervades so many of Marvell's lyrics. The first chapter, "Moral Geometry", deals with the way in which Marvell uses the imagery of lines, angles and curves. In some poems the lines are curved, as in Upon the Hill and Grove at Bill-borrow, where the graceful downward curved line of the hill conveys Fairfacian humility. Symmetry and circularity are discussed in the second chapter. The poet uses the perfect shape of the circle to depict objects which convey a moral significance. Similarly, several of the lyrics are themselves quasi-circular with their closing lines echoing their openings. Chapter Three deals with liquid spheres. Marvell explores the nature, shape and texture of tears in poems such as Eyes and Tears and Mourning; and in On a Drop of Dew uses the shape of the dew drop to suggest the perfection of the heavenly realm from which it has been parted. In several of the lyrics, Marvell places a frame around his poems to create an enclosed world in which his poetic creations exist. These enclosed, or framed, worlds are discussed in Chapter Four. The final chapter, "Beyond The Frame", describes how some of the lyrics suggest a move from the world within to the world beyond the frame of the poem.This can either be a movement from confinement to release, or from the seen world to worlds unseen. Shape, harmony and proportion are the qualities which Marvell uses to convey morality and humility and a vision of the world based on what is, in the various senses of the word, "just".
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Montanari, Anna Maria. "'A heart in Egypt' : Cleopatra on the Renaissance stage in Italy and England." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.709112.
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Bellis, Joanna Ruth. "Language, literature, and the Hundred Years War, 1337-1600." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.609852.
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Mapstone, Sally. "The advice to princes tradition in Scottish literature, 1450-1500." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1986. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a93e3e2d-89ce-4d4a-bcbf-47aa24f93e5c.
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The regions of James II, III, and IV in the second half of the fifteenth century in Scotland saw a distinctive flowering of advice to princes literature. This is the first account of its kind to examine in detail the sources, arguments, and extent of political comment of each individual work. In particular it employs both literary and historical sources to reveal the largely unrecognized impact of continental, especially French, political thought, on a number of writers. The study opens with a consideration of the poem De Regimine Principum, a politically very forthright advice work, influential for a century or so after its composition. Chapter 2 deals with the writings of Sir Gilbert Hay, whose work shows clear influences from the continent, particularly in the Buik of King Alexander, which is also seen to have interesting links with De Regimine Principum. Chapter 3 discusses the romance Lancelot of the Laik, a poem less precise in its allusions, but clearly indicative of a number of recurrent preoccupations in Scottish advisory literature in the areas of justice and kingly minorities. The two following chapters examine The Talis of the Fyve Bestes, which gives a markedly nationalistic evocation of good kingship, and The Buke of the Chess, where Scottish advice to princes is seen at its least politically aware. In Chapter 6 advice appears in yet another genre, the devotional poem The Contemplacioun of Synnaris, where the wider associations of `kingship' with the nosce te ipsum tradition are apparent. Chapters 7 and 8 concern The Thre Prestis of Peblis and John Ireland's Meroure of Wyssdome, possibly produced around the same time, but presenting their advice in very different manners: the Thre Prestis adroitly worked and entertaining, the Meroure, highly theological and drawing strongly on continental writers, notably the sermons of Jean Gerson. In conclusion it is shown that through this context we can best appreciate the purpose and formidable execution of Robert Henryson's advice to princes fable lq The Lion and the Mouse.
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Grange, Huw Robert. "Sublime and abject bodies : saints and monsters in late medieval French and Occitan hagiography." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.607654.
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May, Simon. "Marlowe and monarchy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:84716f56-e527-4a6b-820c-d2204c87cfe2.
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Focusing on the works of Christopher Marlowe (1564-93), this thesis explores the complex engagement of popular drama with the political and religious writing of the Elizabethan fin de siècle. It focuses on the five plays by Marlowe that feature royal protagonists: 1-2 Tamburlaine (1587), Dido, Queen of Carthage (1588), Edward II (1592), and The Massacre at Paris (1593). By interpreting each play in its immediate political context, it shows that Marlowe did not deal with monarchy in the abstract but responded to current affairs - from the incursions of the Ottoman Empire to the threat of the Spanish Armada, from the conspiracy claims of Catholic polemic to the debate surrounding England's involvement in continental warfare. The introduction situates the thesis in the critical and historiographical context relating to Marlowe and to the relationship between literature and politics in the early modern period; it provides the justification for reading Marlowe's plays as topical statements. Chapter One looks at 1-2 Tamburlaine in the light of contemporary attitudes to the Ottoman-Safavid War. Chapter Two shows that Dido, Queen of Carthage adapted the stories and tropes of polemic to reflect fears of Catholic conspiracy and Spanish invasion. Chapter Three reads Edward II as a creative response to the print war of 1591-2, which centred on the moral character of the queen's closest counsellors. Chapter Four proposes that Marlowe's final play, The Massacre at Paris, employed arguments drawn from Reason of State to influence decisions at the 1593 Parliament. The thesis concludes by suggesting that despite Marlowe's reputation as a radical overreacher, his drama displays considerable sympathy for the monarchs who must rule precariously and without the option of private happiness.
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Chiu, Remi. "Motet settings of the Song of Songs ca. 1500-1520." Thesis, McGill University, 2006. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=99361.
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This thesis investigates early sixteenth-century motet settings of texts taken from the Song of Songs. By way of contextualization, I will explore the Christian history of Song of Songs exegesis from the third century to the twelfth. I will also consider generic properties of the renaissance motet---contemporary definitions of the genre, performance context, types of texts used, and repertory dissemination---and make a case that both the Song of Songs and the motet occupy a sort of "intermediate" position between the secular and the sacred world, participating in both the earthly and the spiritual.Several motets---Tota pulchra es by Ludwig Senfl, Tota pulchra es by Nicolaus Craen, Nigra sum sed formosa by Johannis Lheritier, and the anonymous Vulnerasti cor meum from Petrucci's Motetti de la Corona I print---will be analyzed through the lens of the historical Christian exegesis and generic considerations of the motet. I interpret diverse musical parameters---among them, texture, quotation of pre-existent material, motivic structuring, cadential manipulation, mode and modal commixture---as some of the ways in which the composers responded to their Song of Songs texts.
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Farley, Stuart. "Copious voices in early modern English writing." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11904.
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This thesis takes as its object of study a certain strand of Early Modern English writing characterised by its cornucopian invention, immethodical structure, and creatively exuberant, often chaotic, means of expression. It takes as its point of departure the Erasmian theory of ‘copia' (rhetorical abundance), expanding upon it freely in order to formulate new and independent notions of copious vernacular writing as it is practised in 16th- and 17th-century contexts. Throughout I argue for the continuity and pervasiveness of the pursuit of linguistic plenitude, in contrast to a prevailing belief that the outpouring of 'words' and 'things' started to dissipate in the transition from one century (16th) to the next (17th). The writers to be discussed are Thomas Nashe, Robert Burton, John Taylor the ‘Water-Poet', and Sir Thomas Urquhart. Each of the genres in which these writers operate–prose-poetry, the essay, the pamphlet, and the universal language–emerge either toward the end of the 16th century or during the course of the 17th century, and so can be said to take copious writing in new and experimental directions not fully accounted for in the current scholarship. My contribution to the literature lies principally in its focus on the emergence of these literary forms in an Early Modern English context, with an emphasis on the role played by copiousness of expression in their stylistic development and how they in turn develop the practice of copia.
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Desrochers, Arnald. "Los cruces genéricos en las cantigas gallego-portuguesas medievales." Thesis, McGill University, 1990. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=59627.
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The cantigas de amor, de amigo, de escarnio, and de maldecir are poetic compositions written between 1200 and 1350 which form a literary school commonly referred to as Galician-Portuguese. The troubadours who refine these compositions do not limit themselves to composing cantigas of only one genre. They write cantigas of all types. For thematic and formal purposes, the common practice is to divide the cantigas into four genres. These divisions are not always very clear.Because they were in touch with all sorts of cantigas, the poets included in their poems characteristics which blended from one genre to another. This may or may not have been done intentionally. Critics later studied these cantigas. They found that cantigas of one genre shared peculiarities common to cantigas of other genres, but they did not explore further into this trait. This study analyzes characteristics found commonly in one genre of cantiga and, as well, by placing together those cantigas with related attributes, it establishes the overlapping that takes place between the cantigas of different genres.
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Leskinen, Saara. "Reliable knowledge of exotic marvels of nature in sixteenth-century French and English texts." Thesis, Warburg Institute, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.564418.
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D'Ermo-Tenaglia, Doria. "Calandro, un personaggio nella storia della critica, 1788-1980 : saggio di bibliografia critica." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=65467.
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Wolpert, Friederike J. M. "Writing the Orient : Johannes Schiltberger's Reisebuch (1394-1427)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f9b99a1d-e7c1-446f-82bd-6c9b17607024.
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This thesis is the first book-length study of Johannes Schiltberger's Reisebuch, the German-language account of the Bavarian crusader's approximately 30-year captivity and enforced travels in the Middle East under the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I (r. 1389-1403), the Turko-Mongolian warlord Timūr (r. 1370-1405) and his successors. It investigates the Reisebuch's representation of the Orient. My reexamination of the manuscript and print transmission from c. 1450 to 1600 has shown that there were various versions of the Reisebuch in circulation, and I base my reading of the work on this basic multiplicity and variety. This variance is pertinent for a literary interpretation of the Reisebuch because the manifest narrative and material transformations go hand in hand with differing thematic foci, narratological and representational strategies, so that one can confidently contend each version of the Reisebuch negotiates a distinct relationship with the eastern 'other'. I argue that the transmission diverges into three strands as (1) an abridged chronicle that emphasises the complexity of political and military relations in the East; (2) a proto-ethnographic account with a focus on religious diversity; and (3) six paratextual reconceptualisations of the Reisebuch as Turcica in early print. In short, my study engages with the transmission and transformation of material, on the one hand, and with the consequences of this creative process for cultural ideas, on the other: it asks what role 'rewriting' - deliberate and inventive adaptation - plays in the Reisebuch's portrayals of the East. My thesis therefore provides not only the first in-depth reading of Schiltberger's Reisebuch as a 'medieval multi-text' (a term coined by Iain Macleod Higgins to indicate the inter-textuality and intra-textuality common to the medieval travel account) but highlights its representational process as multiple, polyvocal and dynamic.
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Collins, Margo. "Wayward Women, Virtuous Violence: Feminine Violence in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature by Women." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2000. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2474/.
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This dissertation examines the role of "acceptable" feminine violence in Restoration and eighteenth-century drama and fiction. Scenes such as Lady Davers's physical assault on Pamela in Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) have understandably troubled recent scholars of gender and literature. But critics, for the most part, have been more inclined to discuss women as victims of violence than as agents of violence. I argue that women in the Restoration and eighteenth century often used violence in order to maintain social boundaries, particularly sexual and economic ones, and that writers of the period drew upon this tradition of acceptable feminine violence in order to create the figure of the violent woman as a necessary agent of social control. One such figure is Violenta, the heroine of Delarivier Manley's novella The Wife's Resentment (1720), who murders and dismembers her bigamous husband. At her trial, Violenta is condemned to death "notwithstanding the Pity of the People" and "the Intercession of the Ladies," who believe that although the "unexampled Cruelty [Violenta] committed afterwards on the dead Body" was excessive, the murder itself is not inexcusable given her husband's bigamy. My research draws upon diverse archival materials, such as conduct manuals, criminal biographies, and legal records, in order to provide a contextual grounding for the interpretation of literary works by women. Moving between contemporary accounts of feminine violence and discussions of pertinent literary works by Eliza Haywood, Susanna Centlivre, Delarivier Manley, Aphra Behn, Mary Pix, and Jane Wiseman, the dissertation examines issues of interpersonal violence and communal violence committed by women.
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Hanan, Rachel Ann 1978. "Words in the world: The place of literature in Early Modern England." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/11156.
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ix, 268 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number."Words in the World" details the ways that the place of rhetoric and literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries changes in response to the transition from natural philosophy to Cartesian mechanism. In so doing, it also offers a constructive challenge to today's environmental literary criticism, challenging environmental literary critics' preoccupation with themes of nature and, by extension, with representational language. Reading authors from Thomas More to Philip Sidney and Ben Jonson through changes in physics, cartography, botany, and zoology, "Words in the World" argues that literature occupies an increasingly separate place from the real world. "Place" in this context refers to spatiotemporal dimensions, taxonomic affiliations, and the relationships between literature and the physical world. George Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie (1589), for instance, limits the way that rhetoric is part of the world to the ways that it can be numbered (meter, rhyme scheme, and so forth); metaphor and other tropes, however, are duplicitous. In contrast, for an earlier era of natural philosophers, tropes were the grammar of the universe. "Words in the World" culminates with Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621/1651), in which the product of literature's split from the physical world is literary melancholy. Turning to today's environmental literary criticism, the dissertation thus historicizes ecocriticism's nostalgic melancholy for the extratextual physical world. Indeed, Early Modern authors' inquiries into the place of literature and the relationships between that place and the physical world in terms of literary forms and structures, suggests the importance of ecoformalism to Early Modern scholarship. In particular, this dissertation argues that Early Modern authors treat literary structures as types of performative language. This dissertation revises the standard histories of Early Modern developments in rhetoric and of the literary text, and it provides new insight into the materiality of literary form.
Committee in charge: Lisa Freinkel, Chairperson, English; William Rossi, Member, English; George Rowe, Member, English; Ted Toadvine, Outside Member, Philosophy
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Sawyer, Daniel. "Codicological evidence of reading in late medieval England, with particular reference to practical pastoral verse." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8c21053f-e347-4349-9cc4-b1fa0229e95a.
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This study advances and adds detail to our history of the reading of verse in England c.1350-1500. Scholarship has established major twelfth- and thirteenth-century changes in reading, and linked these changes to manuscripts containing the modern Middle English verse canon. Historians of early modern reading have also argued for distinctive changes in their own period. But the examination of reading between these two clusters of change has been limited. This study therefore asks how later medieval Middle English verse was read. The surviving copies of The Prick of Conscience and Speculum Vitae, two hugely successful religious instructional poems, form the primary body of evidence. This body is augmented by reference to hundreds of other manuscripts containing Middle English verse. Together, these can reveal much about what was normal and abnormal in reading. They are also an important part of the context for the reading of more canonical Middle English verse. Manuscript studies often proceeds through case studies of individual books and unusual evidence such as marginalia. This thesis turns to codicology to understand more widespread evidence for reading, combining qualitative case studies with quantitative techniques borrowed and developed from continental scholarship. The first chapter examines evidence of provenance, revealing that both The Prick of Conscience and Speculum Vitae were read by an impressive range of people and remained current into the sixteenth century. The second chapter considers the navigational aids used in copies of both poems. Reading in this period has been characterised as 'discontinuous', but it could be discontinuous in diverse ways, and readers also read continuously. The third chapter is a large-scale study of books' size and shape, showing how these features can reveal books' reading histories, sometimes in counterintuitive ways. The fourth chapter contends that readers in this period attended closely to rhyme and probably read for balanced rhyme structures. The fifth chapter uncovers the ways in which these poems were rewritten for new readers and investigates the composition of the Southern Recension of The Prick of Conscience, arguing that this new text was partly a formalist intervention. The conclusion summarises the new 'baseline' history of the reading of Middle English verse which is offered here, and gestures towards implications for our reading of the Middle English poems which are canonical today.
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Fedorenko, Gregory. "The texts, manuscripts and historical significance of the prose Chronique de Normandie and Geste de France (c.1180-c.1230)." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610656.
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Knox, Philip. "The Romance of the Rose in fourteenth-century England." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d55e2158-a9ee-4bf2-b8e4-98d7e0c6a598.
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This thesis traces the afterlife of the Romance of the Rose in fourteenth-century England. Whether it was closely imitated or only faintly recalled, I argue that the Rose exercised its influence on fourteenth-century English literature in two principal ways. Firstly, in the development of a self-reflexive focus on how meaning is produced and transmitted. Secondly, in a concern with how far the author's intentions can be recovered from a work, and to what extent the author must claim some responsibility for the meaning of a text after its release into the world of readers. In the Rose, many of these issues are presented through the lens of a disordered erotic desire, and questions of licit and illicit textual and sexual pleasures loom large in the later responses. My investigation focuses on four English writers: William Langland, John Gower, the Gawain-Poet, and Geoffrey Chaucer. In my final chapter I suggest that the Rose ceased to be a generative force in English literature in the fifteenth century, and I try to offer some explanations as to why. In examining the influence of the Rose in England I am not trying to suggest a linear transmission of cultural dominance, but rather a complex and plural process of interaction that expands to include texts that both antedate and post-date the Rose - especially Neoplatonic allegories and Ovid, on the one hand, and, on the other, Deguileville and Machaut. The individual English writers I look at are not seen as having a single and stable attitude towards the Rose; instead, I argue, the Rose emerges as a way of thinking about the interaction between texts, how meaning is produced, and how authorial ownership is claimed or refused. Using not only literary evidence but also detailed archival research into the manuscript circulation of the Rose, I question the usefulness of 'English' and 'French' as critical categories for the study of late-medieval literature, and attempt to show that, for a certain kind of literary activity, the Rose occupied a central position in England: not a stable foundation of cultural authority, but a realm of self-questioning subversion and instability.
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Faull, Lionel Peter. "Robert Herrick's self-presentation in Hesperides and his Noble numbers." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002250.
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Literature has tended to be cut from the moorings of its authorial origins under the influential literary criticism of the past forty years. This thesis is an attempt to re-moor a work of literature to its authorial origins; particularly a work of literature in which the author-poet‘s self-referential markers are so overtly and persistently present as is the case in Hesperides and His Noble Numbers. Although there is a significant overlap between the real-life Herrick and the Hesperidean Herrick, the two figures cannot be regarded as identical. Instead, Herrick‘s deployment of specific genres and not of others, his chosen conventions for ordering a collection of miscellaneous poems, and his adoption of certain conventional poetic stances provide him with a semi-fictionalised way of declaring who he understands himself to be and how he wants himself to be understood. At the same time, the rich classical mythological associations of Herrick‘s title, Hesperides, declare his status as an inheritor of the classical literary tradition, whose hallmark during the Renaissance was the melding of classical, Christian and secular associations into new and complexly polyvalent literary works. For example, Herrick‘s appropriation of the classical mythological figure of Hercules provides him with both a narrative way and an allegorical way of reconciling the so-called secular, or profane poetry of Hesperides with the so-called religious, or divine poetry of Noble Numbers. In Noble Numbers, Herrick reveals new facets of his self-presentation to the reader, whilst also making explicit the theological congruencies between the two works. Herrick‘s religious self-presentation demonstrates his expansive scholarly interests, as well his instinct to include, rather than to exclude, the religious beliefs of others within his syncretistic sense-of-self. Finally, the placement of Noble Numbers after Hesperides is not a signal that Herrick privileged the former, or took his religion less seriously than he did his love for classical poetry, but rather that in Herrick‘s understanding of his world, man‘s fleeting glimpses of God in the secular sphere give way to a fuller comprehension of Him in the divine sphere.
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Bulman, Helen Lois. "Concepts of folly in English Renaissance literature : with particular reference to Shakespeare and Jonson." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3475.
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Chapter 1 considers Barclay's 'Ship of Fools' in relation to other folly literature in English, particularly Lydgate's 'Order of Fools', Skelton's 'Bowge of Courte', and 'Cocke Lorrel's Bote'. Motifs, allegories and the woodcuts of the text are discussed and some are included in an Illustrations section. Chapter 2 discusses Erasmian folly looking back to the Neoplatonic writings of Nicholas of Cusa, and to the debt Erasmian exegeses owe to Origen. Erasmus' own philosophical and theological views are examined, particularly as they are found in his 'Enchiridion', and in the influence of Thomas à Kempis' 'Imitation of Christ'. A close textual analysis of the 'Moriae Encomium' is undertaken in this light. Chapter 3 defines the lateral boundaries of folly, where it blends into madness. In the context of Renaissance psychology sixteenth century medical works are analysed, including Boorde's 'Breviary of Healthe', Barrough's 'Method of Physicke' and Elyot's 'Castel of Helth'. Blurring between madness and sin, the negative judgments on the mad as demon-possessed, and the biblical models from which such judgments largely arose give alternative perspectives on madness and its relation to folly. Chapters 4-6 look at three Shakespearean comedies showing the development of a primarily Erasmian view of folly. This moves from overt references in 'Love's Labour's Lost' to natural folly, the folly of love and theological folly, through carnivalesque aspects of folly and madness in 'Twelfth Night', to an embedded notion of folly which influences and affects the darker comedy of 'Measure for Measure'. Chapter 7 considers satires of Hall, Marston and Guilpin, and looks at Jonson's Humour plays in this context. 'Volpone' and 'Epicoene', and 'The Alchemist' and 'Bartholomew Fair' are discussed in pairs, showing the softening of Jonson's attitude to folly, and his increasing representation of Erasmian folly reaching its full expression in 'Bartholomew Fair'.
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Dearnley, Elizabeth Claire. "French-English translation 1189-c.1450, with special reference to translators and their prologues." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.609530.
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Kershaw, Alison. "The poetic of the Cosmic Christ in Thomas Traherne's 'The Kingdom of God'." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2006. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2006.0085.
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[Truncated abstract] In this thesis I examine the poetics of Thomas Traherne’s often over-looked Christology through a reading of The Kingdom of God. This work, probably written in the early 1670s, was not discovered until 1997, and not published until 2005. To date, no extended studies of the work have been published. It is my argument that Traherne develops an expansive and energetic poetic expressive of the theme of the ‘Cosmic Christ’ in which Christ is understood to be the source, the sustaining life, cohesive bond, and redemptive goal, of the universe, and his body to encompass all things. While the term ‘Cosmic Christ’ is largely of 20th century origin, its application to Traherne is defended on the grounds that it describes not so much a modern theology, as an ancient theology rediscovered in the context of an expanding cosmology. Cosmic Christology lies, according to Joseph Sittler,“tightly enfolded in the Church’s innermost heart and memory,” and its unfolding in Traherne’s Kingdom of God is accomplished through the knitting together of an essentially Patristic and Pauline Christology with the discoveries and speculations of seventeenth century science: from the infinity of the universe to the workings of atoms. … The thesis concludes with a distillation of Traherne’s Christic poetic The Word Incarnate. The terms put forward by Cosmic Christology are used to explicate Traherne’s intrepid poetic. In his most remarkable passages, Traherne employs language not only as a rhetorical tool at the service of theological reasoning, but to directly body forth his sense of Christ at the centre of world and self. He promises to “rend the Vail” and to reveal “the secrets of the most holy place.” Scorning more “Timorous Spirits,” he undertakes to communicate and “consider it all.”
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Brooks, Kathryn L. "Anticlerical Sentiment in Castilian and Galician-Portuguese Medieval Literature." PDXScholar, 1996. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/5084.
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Clerical sexual incontinence was a prevalent satirical theme during the Middle Ages manifested by anticlerical sentiment towards reprobate clergymen and the laws that they disobeyed. This satirical genre of literature targeted not only the cleric of a small town, but bishops and cardinals who were also abusers of canon law. The anticlerical theme originated in Western Europe in the time of Constantine when early Christianity was competing with many religions for dominance. In the fourth century, Constantine, through the Edict of Milan, granted religious tolerance to all, thus allowing Christianity to become a major religion. Clerical celibacy originated from the writings of early church fathers such as Augustine of Hippo, Origen, and Tertullian, who determined that celibacy provided greater spiritual access to God. Early patristic church fathers supported the ideal of sexual celibacy for Christians in order to spiritually overcome the other religions. In the fourth century A.D., the church demanded that the clerics remain celibate even though they were married. By the twelfth century, canonical laws demanded that clerics not marry and remain celibate. These laws initiated an extreme sexual repression of clerics who began to sexually seek women, refusing them absolution for their sins if they refused the clerics' sexual advances. The purpose of this thesis is to establish that the corrupt clerics victimized the laity, who, although fearing for their salvation, produced satirical poetry expressing their anticlerical sentiment. This thesis also will present literature that discusses the pros and cons of clerical concubinage. There are three different forms of articulation in this thesis. The first is didactic and teaches the reader by demonstrating literature that encouraged clerical celibacy. The second illustration is satirical poems with the seven deadly sins as a recurrent theme. These poems are divided into two groups: the first is the poems written by the nobility, and the second is the popular anonymous poems, sung to music for peasant entertainment. The third articulation is the proponents of clerical concubinage. This poetry reflects the human side of companionship and need during a tumultuous time when people banded together in order to survive.
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Basabe, Omar. "La muerte en la lírica castellana de los siglos XIV y XV /." Thesis, McGill University, 1985. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=63122.
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Bolding, Sharon Lynn Dunkel. "When worlds collide : structure and fantastic in selected 12th- and 13th- century French narratives." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0002/NQ27109.pdf.
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Feldman, Linda Ellen. "The good Hausvater : patriarchal elements and the depiction of women in three works by Grimmelshausen." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=73974.
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Philo, John-Mark. "An ocean untouched and untried : translating Livy in the sixteenth century." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:72584fcd-42d6-42b6-9186-18b01b95af85.
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This is a study of the translation and reception of the Roman historian Livy in the sixteenth century in the British Isles. The thesis examines five major translations of Livy's history of Rome, the Ab Urbe Condita, into the English and Scottish vernaculars. The texts considered here span from the earliest extant translation of around 1533 to the first, full-scale translation published in 1600. By taking a broad view across the century, the thesis uncovers the multiple and versatile uses to which Livy was being put and maps out the major trends surrounding his reception. The first chapter examines Livy's initial reception into print in Europe, outlining the attempts of his earliest editors to impose a critical order onto his enormous work. The subsequent chapters consider the respective translations undertaken by John Bellenden, Anthony Cope, William Thomas, William Painter, and Philemon Holland. Each translation is treated as a case study and compared in detail with the Latin original, thereby revealing the changes Livy's history experienced through the process of translation. By locating these translations in the cultural and political contexts from which they emerged, this study reveals how Livy was exploited in some of the most pressing debates of the period, from arguments over women's apparel to questions of faith. The thesis also considers how these translations responded to the most recent developments in European scholarship on the Ab Urbe Condita and on classical history more generally. Livy's contribution to the development of Scottish historiography is also considered, both as a stylistic model and as a rich source of narrative material. Ultimately this thesis demonstrates that Livy played a fundamental though hitherto underexplored role in the development of vernacular literature and historiography in the British Isles.
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Madrinkian, Michael Alex. "Producing 'Piers Plowman' to 1475 : author, scribe, and reader." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:1d0f9bd5-04d8-4edd-bccb-2f95b403165e.
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My doctoral thesis, "Producing Piers Plowman to 1475: Author, Scribe, and Reader," charts a new material history of William Langland's fourteenth-century dream vision, Piers Plowman, from its earliest composition to the onset of print in England. The study is divided into three sections, which examine the production of Piers from three perspectives: textual history, manuscript circulation, and medieval reception. The first section of the thesis conducts a study of Langland's revisionary process, presenting a new theory of authorial revision from the A to B version that has important implications for our understanding of authorship in Piers Plowman and for the future editing of the poem. The second section transitions into an examination of the early circulation of the Piers manuscripts in various geographical and social milieux. It examines two case studies of manuscript circulation in the Southwest Midlands and East Anglia, linking them to regionalized networks of scribes and patrons. Finally, Section III moves into a discussion of the literary contexts in which Piers circulates, particularly in multi-text manuscripts, examining how the poem's reception by a medieval audience affected its development as a literary text. This section treats production from a more theoretical standpoint, investigating the relationship between the poem's audience and the "production" of meaning in a social and historical context. As I will argue, each of these sections acts as an important frame of reference for understanding the multifaceted formation of Piers Plowman as a literary text and cultural landmark. In particular, the thesis emphasizes the importance of Piers's various contexts, from its textual genesis in the author's composition and revision to its circulation and reception in an unstable manuscript culture. It suggests that the people and the places that surrounded Piers Plowman in its early development fundamentally shaped the poem we have today.
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Higgins, Benjamin David Robert. "We have a constant will to publish : the publishers of Shakespeare's First Folio." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ab876515-5984-46a5-8bf0-8346165fb583.
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This thesis is a cultural history of the publishing businesses that financed Shakespeare's First Folio. The thesis argues that by 1623 each of the four businesses that formed the Folio syndicate had developed an influential reputation in the book trade, and that these reputations were crucial to the cultural positioning of the Folio on publication. Taking its lead from a dynamic new field of study that has been called 'cultural bibliography', the thesis investigates the histories and publishing strategies of the business owned by the stationers William and Isaac Jaggard, who are usually thought of as the leading members of the Folio project, as well as those owned by William Aspley, John Smethwick, and Edward Blount. Through detailed analysis of the publishing strategies of each stationer, the thesis puts forward new theories about how these men influenced the reception of the Folio by transferring onto it their brands, and the expectations of their readerships. The business of each Folio stationer was like a stage with an audience assembled around it, waiting for the next production to emerge. This thesis identifies the publishing activities that attracted the audiences of the Jaggards, Blount, Smethwick, and Aspley, and ultimately suggests the Folio was granted significant legitimacy through the collaboration of these men. After an introductory chapter that locates the thesis in its scholarly field, the first chapter tells the history of syndicated book publishing in England, and reviews what we know of the pre-production process of the First Folio, taking a particular interest in how the publishing syndicate formed. The following chapters then form a series of case studies of the four publishing businesses, reviewing the apprenticeships and careers of each stationer before suggesting how those careers created a context of meaning for the Folio. These case studies focus on the authoritative reference publishing of the Jaggards, the religious publishing of William Aspley, the geographical location of John Smethwick's publishing business beside the Inns of Court, and the cultural achievements of Edward Blount. In conclusion the thesis explores the idea that it was the unique partnership of these businesses that consecrated the Folio as an emblem of literary taste.
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Koenig, Gregory R. (Gregory Robert). "The Relationship of Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe, 1588-1590: An Episode in the Development of English Prose Fiction." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1988. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc500802/.
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Robert Greene began collaborating with Thomas Nashe as English prose was turning away from the style and subject matter of Lyly's Euphues (1578) and Sidney's Arcadia (1590). When Greene and Nashe came together in London, the two writers appear to have set the tone for the pamphleteers who would establish the realistic tradition that contributed to the development of the novel. Greene's Menaphon (1589) may be a satire representing his abandonment of courtly fiction. The influence of the Marprelate controversy is reflected in Greene's appeals to the pragmatic character of the emerging literate middle class. Greene's Vision (1592) appears to be Greene's affirmation of his critical philosophy at a point of stress in the authors' relationship.
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Chrysanthou, Chrysanthos Stelios. "Narrative, interpretation, and moral judgement in Plutarch's 'Lives'." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d7647c1c-22c9-4c4e-95e2-c93209592990.
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In the Parallel Lives Plutarch does not absolve his readers of the need for moral reflection by offering any sort of hard and fact rules for their moral judgement. Rather, he uses strategies for eliciting from readers an active engagement with the act of judging. This study, building upon and verifying further recent research on the challenging and exploratory, rather than affirmative, moral impact that the Lives are designed to have on their readers, offers the first systematic analysis of the representation of 'experimental' moralism of Plutarch's Parallel Lives. It seeks to describe and analyse the range of narrative techniques that Plutarch employs to draw his readers into the process of moral evaluation and expose them to the complexities and difficulties involved in making moral judgements. Through illustrating Plutarch's narrative techniques, it also sheds significant light on Plutarch's sensibility to the artistic qualities of historical narrative as well as to the challenges and dangers inherent in recounting, reading, and evaluating history. Chapter 1 considers the interrogatory nature of the moralism of the Lives and their narrative sophistication, which the insights of recent literary theories can help us to unfold and analyse. Chapter 2 is concerned with Plutarch's projection of himself and his readers, and, more specifically, with the devices that Plutarch exploits to build his authority with his readers, establish their complicity, and draw them into engaging all the more actively with the subjects of his Lives. Chapter 3 examines how Plutarch's delving into the minds of the in-text characters generates in readers empathy that keeps them alert up to the end of the Life to the complex and provisional character of a clear-cut moralising judgement. Chapter 4 reflects especially upon Plutarch's tendency to refrain from offering an overall moral conclusion in the closing chapters of the biographies. It examines several closural devices (such as anecdotes, the aftermath of cities, literary allusions, and generalised moral statements) that are effective in drawing readers to review in retrospect moral themes and questions which matter to the book as a whole, and (in the case of the endings of the second Lives) help a neat transition to the final comparative epilogue (Synkrisis) - whenever this follows. Chapter 5 explores how the Synkriseis expose readers to the particular challenges involved in deciding an overarching concluding judgement. It also closely examines the books that (as they now stand) do not have a Synkrisis and makes the case that no 'terminal irregularity' can justify and explain any deliberate omission of their comparative epilogues. Finally, Chapter 6 focuses on Plutarch's essay On the malice of Herodotus and explores how far Plutarch's techniques in the Lives escape and how far they are vulnerable to the criticisms that Plutarch makes of Herodotus. This analysis brings together the main strands of the earlier chapters so as to illuminate further Plutarch's narrative strategies; it also discusses the possibility that Plutarch exploits the rhetorical agonistic framework of the essay in order to elicit a similar sort of attentive and acute reader response to historical narrative, as in the Lives, and to arouse awareness of the precarious act of exercising moral judgement.
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Jennings, Emily. "Prophetic rhetoric in the early Stuart period." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:13643178-0544-4b2b-9ca3-55d6c73a5d26.
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This is a study of the political prophecy in England in a period delimited by the accession of King James I (1603) and the end of the Interregnum (1660). It combines the analysis of hitherto obscure manuscript texts with that of printed works to provide a nuanced account of the uses and reception of prophecies in this period. Chapter One (which focuses on the first decade of James's reign) and Chapter Two (which covers the period 1613-19) approach the analysis of dramatic treatments of political prophecy through the study of prophecy both as a rhetorical buttress to the Jacobean state and as a protest genre. Attentive to the elite bias of the legal documents wherein allegedly oppositionist uses of prophecy are recorded, these chapters heed the counsel of historians who have found literary scholars insufficiently suspicious of the rhetoric of these materials. A focus on dramatic texts, neglected by the historians, reveals that Jacobean playgoers were encouraged to regard both official prophetic rhetoric and official rhetoric about prophecy with scepticism. Chapter Three considers how native and continental prophetic traditions were expanded and repurposed in England around the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, when belief in the purportedly inspired status of prophecies was rare but recognition of their utility as a vehicle for political discussion was nonetheless widespread. Chapter Four explores the adaptation and tendentious exposition of medieval, sixteenth-century, and Jacobean manuscript prophecies in printed propaganda for both the royalist and parliamentarian causes in the mid-seventeenth century. This study of literary and archival sources finds that previous scholarship has overestimated the extent of popular faith in the authenticity of allegedly ancient and inspired prophecies in the early Stuart period. The longevity of purported prophecies, it concludes, was ensured through the recognition, appreciation, and exploitation of their rhetorical affordances.
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Varnam, Laura. "The howse of God on Erthe : constructions of sacred space in late Middle English religious literature." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.670140.
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Hone, Joseph. "The end of the line : literature and party politics at the accession of Queen Anne." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d847a561-130a-42f0-b78f-2463e9e65535.
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This thesis provides the first full-length account of the political and cultural significance of the accession of Queen Anne. It offers a critical reassessment of the politics of the royal image across a spectrum of texts, events, and artefacts - from panegyrics, newspapers, sermons, royal progresses, and processions to medals, coins, and playing cards. Recent scholarship has emphasized the importance of party politics to the literature and culture of the early eighteenth century. This thesis nuances that assumption by arguing: (1) that the principal focus of partisan texts was competing representations of monarchy; and (2) that the explosion of partisanship at the start of the eighteenth century was triggered by unrest about the royal succession. Anne was the last protestant Stuart. She had no surviving children. This thesis explores how authors such as Daniel Defoe, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, and a great many lesser known and anonymous writers and propagandists conceptualized the end of the Stuart dynasty. Anne's accession forced writers to conjecture on the future succession. There were two rival claimants to the throne after Anne's death: the protestant Electress Sophia of Hanover and Anne's Catholic half-brother, James Francis Edward. Sophia's claim was statutory, James's hereditary. Factions emerged in support of both claimants. Almost all topical writing took a stance on the issue. Many sided with the government, supporting Hanover. Yet some writers favoured the illegal but hereditary claim of James Francis Edward; they had to express support in covert ways. This succession crisis triggered not only printed polemic, but also swathes of clandestine manuscript literature circulating in the Jacobite underground. The government took a hard line on Jacobite writers and printers; this thesis documents both their persecution and the techniques they used to evade the law. The thesis concludes by suggesting that this oppositional literary culture only disintegrated after the defeat of the Jacobite rebellion, and the consequent settlement of the Hanoverian succession, in late 1716. After this point, royal succession ceased to be a major source of political discontent.
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Rogers, Janine. "The woman's voice in Middle English love lyrics /." Thesis, McGill University, 1993. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=69671.
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Courtly love lyrics, like other courtly genres, are dominated by male-voiced texts that privilege male perspectives. In conventional courtly love lyrics, women are silenced and objectified by the male speaker. Still, a handful of women-voiced lyrics--"women's songs"--exist in the courtly love lyrical tradition. This thesis studies women's songs in Middle English and their role in the androcentric courtly love tradition.In the first chapter, I discuss critical perspectives on conventional courtly representations of women. In the second chapter, I locate Middle English women's songs in literary contexts other than courtly love: the Middle English lyrical tradition, the cross-cultural phenomenon of medieval women's songs, and the manuscript contexts of Middle English women's songs. In Chapter Three, I discuss the individual songs themselves and examine the range of perspectives found in woman-voiced lyrics.
My discussion of Middle English women's songs includes texts not previously admitted to the genre. This expanded collection of women's songs creates an alternative courtly discourse privileging female perspectives. Middle English women's songs create a space for women's voices in courtly love.
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Djordjevic, Ivana. "Mapping medieval translation : methodological problems and a case study." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=82856.
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The extent to which translation moulded Middle English romance as an emerging genre remains largely unexamined. In this dissertation I identify the principal methodological difficulties that have prevented scholars from giving due attention to this problem, and offer a case study in which I look at how translational procedures shaped the romance of Sir Beves of Hampton, a translation of the Anglo-Norman Boeve de Haumtone .Having outlined the practical difficulties posed by the intricate textual tradition of Boeve and Beves, the multilingualism of medieval England, and the scarcity of concrete evidence regarding the audience for Middle English romance, I focus on methodological issues: the inability of equivalence-based definitions of translation to accommodate medieval translation practice, the futility of attempts to demarcate translation from adaptation, and the difficulty of integrating different textual levels in the study of translations.
In the first two analytical chapters of the dissertation I concentrate on those aspects of Beves that can best highlight the importance of translation processes in the constitution of the genre. I begin by examining the way in which the translator dealt with the most important translational constraints, some of which, like language, were beyond his control, while others, such as versification, were partly self-imposed. I then proceed to study the workings of the so-called laws of translation (explicitation, simplification, and repertorization) in the process whereby Boeve became Beves. The analyses carried out in these two chapters allow me to contest the received opinion according to which the author of Beves treated his original very freely. I show that, on the contrary, the distinctive features of the Middle English text result from a constant productive tension between source and target.
My study ends with an analysis of what happens when the translator's impulse to be faithful to his source is frustrated by the inaccessibility of the socio-historical context of the original. I examine the most closely translated sections of the poem to show how unrecognized topical references are flattened into literary cliches, which bring into the text their own generic connotations and disassemble some of the carefully constructed thematic parallels and analogies of the Anglo-Norman romance.
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Simon, Mary. ""...wurze und aller crûte craft und arzâtlîche meisterschaft..." : zur Darstellung der heilkundigen Frauen in den mittelhochdeutschen hüfischen Epen." Thesis, McGill University, 1994. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26328.
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Women have been healers since the dawn of humankind. They had learned their medical skills in a natural way since, as child bearers, they were also the first midwives, nurses, health carers, apothecaries and physicians.That women were skilled in the practice of medicine and that female healers were an accepted part in medieval medical practice is evident from the numerous references describing medical treatment as found in the courtly Middle High German romances. In this study, I will first offer an overview of the medical knowledge and practice of the Middle Ages. Then I will present literary examples and incidences portraying women as healers as described in the German courtly romances of Tristan by Gottfried von Stra$ beta$burg, Erec and Iwein by Hartmann von Aue, and Parzival and Willehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach, in order to elucidate and complete the image of the medieval female healer.
At the time when these romances were created, medical knowledge and practice were greatly influenced by the transmission and reception of Greek & Arabic medical works which formed the basis of a new Latin medical learning. This in turn provided the basis for a growing vernacular European medical literature. On the one hand, medical practice was still based on traditional folk medicine with the female healers preparing and using simple herbal remedies; on the other hand, they resorted to exotic compound medicines, such as theriac, which was closer to the learned book medicine.
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Clout, Karen. "Mi suete leuedi, her mi béne : the power and patronage of the heroine in Middle English romance." Thesis, McGill University, 1998. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=21202.
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This thesis examines the heroines in Middle English romances and argues that, like the noblewomen who lived in England during the Plantagenet period, they are not helpless princesses simply waiting to be rescued by the brave, strong hero. In fact, these heroines show an enormous amount of intelligence, ingenuity, perseverance, and strength of character. Many play a pivotal role in the hero's success in his quest by giving him a token, providing knowledge, or teaching him a lesson. Also, it is the heroines who provide the heroes with rewards after the quests are completed. The present thesis offers a contribution to the study of Medieval English Romances in providing a revision of standard feminist analyses. In many of these studies there seems to be a lack of appreciation for the role of female characters and their relation to the outcome of the hero's quest. Even studies written from a feminist perspective tend to overlook the strength of the heroine's character, the attainment of her goals, and the fact that she is often a powerful figure who is of much higher status than her suitor. In these romances the female characters wield a substantial amount of both private and public power, an aspect of the genre which has often been ignored.
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Archer, Leona Mary. "Gender and space in the Old French Lancelot-Grail cycle." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.648670.
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Harper, April. "Images of adultery in twelfth and thirteenth-century Old French literature." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14654.
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This thesis examines literary images of masculinity and femininity, their function and depiction in marriage roles and homo-social relationships in the context of crisis: wifely adultery. The study is heavily reliant upon vernacular texts, especially Old French works from the twelfth and thirteenth century including works from the genres of romance, lais, fables, and fabliaux. Latin works including historia and prescriptive texts such as customaries, penitentials, etiquette texts and medical and canon law treatises are also used to contextualise themes in the Old French literature. The introduction summarises modern literary and historical criticism concerning sexuality in the Middle Ages. It then discusses the influences of the Church, philosophy, medicine, natural theory and society on medieval definitions of sexuality to contextualise the literature which is focal to this thesis. The following four chapters each consider a single character in the adulterous affair: the adulteress, the husband, the lover and the accuser. The literary images of each character are analysed in detail revealing the diversity of depictions between and also within genres. This enables the identification of medieval sexual constructs, challenging some previous critiques of representations of sexuality in the Middle Ages. The final chapter explores the language by which the sexual act is presented. Furthermore, it shows how language is used and occasionally abused in committing, prosecuting and evading punishment for adultery and how it can be wielded as a weapon of women. Through the focus of a body of literature rich in depictions of sexuality, this thesis questions the misogynist overtones often attributed to medieval literature. The diversity of images shows that the literature illustrates a wide range of opinions and ideas reflective of the complexity of sexuality in medieval society.
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Thomson, David (David Ker). "The language of loss : reading medieval mystical literature." Thesis, McGill University, 1990. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=59912.
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One of the unfortunate corollaries of poststructuralist theorizing about literary texts has been the equation of a skepticism concerning language with a skepticism concerning meaning. The menace of unrestrained relativism has tended to polarize the critical community into proponents of a 'logo-diffuse' onto-epistemology and proponents of a 'logo-centric' one, and critical practice has followed this lead. The critic who attempts to situate literature within the parameters of such a debate is likely to fail unless he or she appeals to a much more extensive discourse, one which antedates the provincial contours of the current discussion. Medieval mysticism is a significant entry in the lineage of influence which comprises the western tradition. This thesis looks at the apophatic or negative strategies of mystical texts in order to locate meaning in the interplay of negation and affirmation with which they are concerned.
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Stuart, Alexander James. "Science and violence : doctors and diviners in French romance, c. 1155-c. 1185." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.608136.
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Chow, Po-fun Wendy, and 周寶芬. "Carnivalization and subversion of order in comic plays, with referenceto Shakespeare's Twelfth night and Herry IV." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1987. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31948996.
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Auger, Peter. "British responses to Du Bartas' Semaines, 1584-1641." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:be0f89c2-c2e4-482d-ac8f-e867985ff72e.
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The reception of the Huguenot poet Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas' Semaines (1578, 1584 et seq.) is an important episode in early modern literary history for understanding relations between Scottish, English and French literature, interactions between contemporary reading and writing practices, and developments in divine poetry. This thesis surveys translations (Part I), allusions and quotations in prose (Part II) and verse imitations (Part III) from the period when English translations of the Semaines were being printed in order to identify historical trends in how readers absorbed and adapted the poems. Early translations show that the Semaines quickly acquired political and diplomatic affiliations, particularly at the Jacobean Scottish Court, which persisted in subsequent decades (Chapter 1). William Scott's treatise The Model of Poesy (c. 1599) and translations indicate how attractive the Semaines' combination of humanist learning and sacred rhetoric was, but the poems' potential appeal was only realized once Josuah Sylvester's Devine Weeks (1605 et seq.) finally made the complete work available in English (Chapter 2). Different communities of readers developed in early modern England and Scotland once this edition became available (Chapter 3), and we can observe how individuals marked, copied out, quoted and appropriated passages from their copies of the poems in ways dependent on textual and authorial circumstances (Chapter 4). The Semaines, both in French and in Sylvester's translation, were used as a stylistic model in late-Elizabethan playtexts and Zachary Boyd's Zions Flowers (Chapter 5), and inspired Jacobean poems that help us to assess Du Bartas' influence on early modern poetry (Chapter 6). The great variety of responses to the Semaines demonstrates new ways that intertextuality was a constituent feature of vernacular religious literature that was being read and written in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain.
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Gow, Andrew Colin. "The Red Jews: Apocalypticism and antisemitism in medieval and early modern Germany." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/186270.
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The Red Jews are a legendary people; this is their history. From the late thirteenth to the late sixteenth century, vernacular German texts depicted the Red Jews, a conflation of the Biblical ten lost tribes of Israel and Gog and Magog, as a savage and unnaturally foul nation, who are enclosed in the 'Caspian Mountains', where they had been walled up by Alexander the Great. At the end of time, they will break out and serve the Antichrist, causing great destruction and suffering in the world. The hostile identification (c. 1165) of Jews with the apocalyptic destroyers of Ezekiel 38-39 and Revelation 20 expresses a new and virulent antisemitism that was integrated into the powerful apocalyptic traditions of Christianity. None of the few scholars who have noticed the Red Jews in medieval and early modern vernacular texts has sought out, collected and examined the complete body of medieval and early-modern sources that feature the Red Jews. This study provides a long-term analysis of the intimate connections between antisemitism and apocalypticism via a forgotten and submerged piece of German 'medievalia', the Red Jews. The legend gradually dissipated. Until the beginning of the seventeenth century it was a medieval lens through which Germans saw events relating to the Turkish threat in the East; after that time, the Red Jews disappeared from European texts.