Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'English 17th century History and criticism'
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1
Henderson, Felicity 1973. "Erudite satire in seventeenth-century England." Monash University, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2002. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/7999.
2
Jackson, Simon John. "The literary and musical activities of the Herbert family." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/283892.
3
Miyoshi, Riki. "Thomas Killigrew and Carolean stage rivalry in London, 1660-1682." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0cf4bd8a-041c-47a9-b82f-bb38ce159dd7.
Abstract:
This thesis has two aims: to make an original contribution to knowledge by demonstrating the importance of theatrical rivalry to the development of drama in the Carolean period (the reign of Charles II), and to re-evaluate the managerial career of Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683). This is the first detailed survey of the circumstances in which the King's Company and the Duke's Company competed and an analysis of the troupes' devices of plotting and counter-plotting during their twenty-two years of stage rivalry from 1660 to 1682. As well as charting the stage rivalry between the two companies, my dissertation argues that Killigrew was a competent but unscrupulous and devious playhouse-manager. A close analysis of his managerial career will show how Thomas Killigrew was the central figure in the Carolean stage rivalry in London and how he helped to shape the future of English theatre. The survey starts from Killigrew's beginnings as the manager of the King's Company from 1660 and concludes in 1682 when the King's Company was effectively taken over by its rival, the Duke's Company, to make one United Company, thus ending the span of theatrical competition in the Carolean period. Each chapter is divided in accordance with the beginning and end of significant events of rivalry and are organised chronologically at different phases of the competition. The first chapter provides the historical background of the establishment of the patent grants and the gradual consolidation of the monopoly over dramatic entertainment in London. In charting the initial stages of the development of the King's Company and the Duke's Company from 1660 to 1663, this chapter argues that it was largely due to Thomas Killigrew's underhandedness that the King's Company began the competition in an advantageous position. The second chapter focuses on the theatrical competition from 1663 to 1668. Until 1663 both companies were busy consolidating their duopoly and the competition between the two managers ended abruptly with William Davenant's death in 1668. In the survey of the Killigrew-Davenant rivalry, this chapter's overall aim is to argue for narrowing of the wide chasm often described between the managerial skills of the two managers. Chapter three explores the period from when Mary Davenant, Thomas Betterton and Henry Harris took over the management of the Duke's Company to the burning of the King's Company's playhouse in 1672. It argues that the competition in this period was evenly matched. This chapter also revises the perceived style of management adopted by both Betterton and Killigrew. The chapter argues that Betterton was perhaps less involved in the most audacious project of the Duke's Company during these years: the building of three theatres including the Dorset Garden Theatre. In the case of the latter, this chapter argues that Killigrew continually took risks at other people's expense and was little concerned with the well being of his staff and shareholders as long as the company gained notoriety and retained its success. The penultimate chapter of the dissertation covers the time span from the Bridges Street Theatre's fire to the ousting of Killigrew as the manager by his own son, Charles Killigrew. It argues that this was the crucial period in which the Duke's Company began clearly to surpass its rival. This chapter qualifies the orthodox view that the King's Company simply lost its battle against the Duke's Company by demonstrating that the two companies also had to contend with a large number of foreign troupes and the rising popularity of music concerts. The final chapter explores the period from when Charles Killigrew took over the management of the King's Company to the amalgamation of the two acting troupes in 1682. It demonstrates the negative effects of the political turbulence of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis on both the troupes' plays and players. The chapter also argues that Charles Killigrew was not as charismatic or manipulative as his father, and that he greatly contributed to the demise of the King's Company. In conclusion, this is strictly a study of theatre history that looks at the importance of management and company rivalry to the development of Carolean drama. At its peak in the 1670s, the Carolean period produced on average twenty new plays per season. The highly competitive nature of the rivalry between the King's Company and the Duke's Company and how the respective managements responded to the success or the failure of the other theatre is the background against which one must read the plays of the Carolean period. Thomas Killigrew, whose managerial career spanned the longest in the Carolean years, was an influential figure in the period and whose innovations and difficulties as a manager had a direct effect not only on theatre history but also on the dramatic traditions of the seventeenth century.
4
Boguszak, Jakub. "Actors' parts in the plays of Ben Jonson." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7732f887-5a9d-4fc6-afce-9bc4242265f9.
Abstract:
The thesis continues the work undertaken in recent years by (in alphabetical order) James J. Marino, Scott McMillin, Paul Menzer, Simon Palfrey, Tiffany Stern, Evelyn Tribble, and others to put to use what is now known about the purpose, distribution, and usage of early modern actors' parts. The thesis applies the new methodology of reading 'in parts', or reconstituting early modern plays 'in parts', to the body of plays written by Ben Jonson. The aim of the project is to offer a reconsideration of Jonson as a man of theatre, interested not only in the presentation of his works in print, but also in their production at the Globe and at Blackfriars. By reconstructing and examining the parts through which the actors performing in Jonson's plays accessed their characters, the thesis proposes answers to the questions: how can we read and analyse Jonson's plays differently when looking at them in terms of actors' parts; did Jonson write with parts in mind; what did Jonsonian parts have to offer actors by way of challenge and guidance; what can we learn from parts about Jonson's assumptions and demands with regard to the actors; and how did actors themselves respond to those demands. These questions are significant because they engage critically with the tradition of seeing Jonson as a playwright dismissive of actors and distrustful of the theatre; they seek to establish a perspective that allows us to assess Jonson's abilities to instruct and challenge his actors through staging documents. More generally, the research contributes to the studies of the early modern rehearsal and staging practices and invites consideration of Shakespeare's part-writing techniques in contrast with those of his major rival. With no surviving early modern parts from Jonson's plays (indeed with only a handful of surviving parts from the period), the first task is to determine the level of accuracy with which the parts can be reconstructed from Jonson's printed plays. Stephen Orgel was by no means the first critic who used the example of Sejanus to assert that Jonson habitually doctored his plays before they were published, but his view has become a critical commonplace. This thesis re-examines the case of Jonson's revisions and concludes that, far from being representative, the 1605 Sejanus quarto is an anomaly which Jonson himself needed to account for in his address to the reader. It is true that Jonson cultivated a distinct style of presentation of printed material, but the evidence that he extensively tampered with the texts themselves after they were performed is scarce (again, the revisions found in the Folio versions of Every Man in His Humour and Cynthia's Revels are addressed and found to be exceptional, rather than typical), while the evidence of his pride in the original compositions and performances is much stronger. Since such enhancements as dedicatory poems, arguments (i.e. plot summaries), character sketches, or marginalia have no bearing on the shapes of actor's parts, they do not in any way compromise the reliability of the printed texts as sources from which Jonson's parts can, argues the thesis, be reconstructed with reasonable accuracy. Jonson, himself an actor and apparently a friend and admirer of a number of great actors of his age (Edward Alleyn, Nathan Field, Richard Robinson, Salomon Pavy, Richard Burbage), knew from personal experience how much depended on actors mastering, or, in their terminology, being 'perfect' in, their parts. By granting the actor access only to select portions of the complete play-text (i.e. his own lines and cues), the part effectively regulated the performance in cases when the actor had only limited knowledge of the rest of the play. Such cases seem to have been very common: documentary evidence suggests that actors had to learn their parts on their own over the course of a few weeks, and only then attended group rehearsals, most of which were concerned with 'business', not text which had already been learned. While some might have attended a reading of the play (if one was arranged for the benefit of the sharers, for instance), or gained more information about the play from their fellow actors, the parts remained their chief means of internalising their text and acquiring a sense of the play they were in. Jonson, who was not a resident playwright with any company performing in London and thus probably did not always have easy and regular access to the actors, could sometimes have taken advantage of the actors' dependence on their parts and crafted the parts as a means of exercising control over the performances of his plays. Building on this premise, the thesis examines various features of actors' parts that would have made a difference to an actor's performance. It draws on recent advancements in the studies of textual cohesion (linguistic features such as reference, substitution, ellipsis, etc.) to point out how the high and low frequency of cohesive ties (pairs of cohesively related words or phrases) in various sections of the part would have given an actor a good idea of how prominent his part was at any given moment. It examines Jonson's use of cues and patterns of cueing: like Shakespeare, Jonson was fond of using repeated cues to open up a space for improvisation, and he seems to have been aware of the need to provide the apprentices in the company with parts cued by a limited number of actors so as to allow for easier private rehearsals with their masters. The thesis also examines the common feature of Jonson's 'split jokes' - jokes that are divided across multiple parts - and asks whether any kind of comic effect can be achieved by excluding the punch line of a joke from the part that contains its setup, and the setup from the part that delivers the punch line, offering a fresh look at the nature of early modern comedy. In structural terms, the thesis considers how a narrative constituted solely by the lines present on an actor's part can diverge from the narrative of the play as a whole and how an understanding of a play as a text composed of actors' parts, as well as of acts and scenes, can help to refine arguments about Jonson's assumptions about the strengths of the companies for which he wrote. What emerges is an image of Jonson who, far from concerned only with readership, consciously developed a brand of comedy that was uniquely suited to, perhaps even relying on, the solipsistic manner in which the actors received and learned their parts.
5
Kwong, Jessica Mun-Ling. "Playing the whore : representations of whoredom in early modern English comedy." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.707984.
6
Laverick, Jane A. "A world for the subject and a world of witnesses for the evidence : developments in geographical literature and the travel narrative in seventeenth-century England." Thesis, University of Stirling, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/2250.
Abstract:
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the first-person overseas voyage narrative enjoyed an unprecedented degree of popularity in England. This thesis is concerned with texts written by travellers and the increasing perception that such information might be useful to those engaged in newly-developing scientific specialisms. It draws upon a wide range of texts including geographiae, physico-theological texts, first-person voyage narratives and imaginary voyage prose fictions. The main focus of the thesis is on the movement away from traditional encyclopaedic geographical textbooks whose treatment of non-European countries comprised an amalgam of unattributed information and a mass of traditional and erudite beliefs, towards a priontising of eyewitness accounts by named observers. Following an introductory survey of the production of an indigenous body of geographical literature in England, the first chapter traces the decline in popularity of traditional geographiae and the separation of regional description from general theories of the earth. The second chapter shows how in the Restoration period the concerted efforts of Fellows of the newly-established Royal Society resulted in a significant increase in the number of overseas travel narratives being published. The third chapter looks at the way in which the Royal Society's campaign developed from its initiation in 1666 to the close of the century, focusing on the response of travellers to the Society's requests for information. The fourth chapter considers the way in which earlier accounts were advertised as fulfilling contemporary expectations of this type of discourse. The fifth and sixth chapters concern fictitious voyage narratives. Imitative of a genre the value of which was increasingly seen as residing in its veracity, these fictions adapted in accordance with the changes being introduced to real voyage accounts whilst continuing to perpetuate the archaic myths and traditional beliefs which had been ehminated from factual geographical description. Appended to the thesis is a list of accounts of voyages and travels outside Europe, printed in the Philosophical Transactions (1665-1700). Also listed are reviews and abstracts of geographical texts, inquiries concerning specific locations and directions and instructions aimed at seamen, with brief biographical information about the authors to indicate the range of contributors to that journal.
7
Jones, Suzanne Barbara. "French imports : English translations of Molière, 1663-1732." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8d86ee12-54ab-48b3-9c47-e946e1c7851f.
Abstract:
This thesis explores the first English translations of Molière's works published between 1663 and 1732 by writers that include John Dryden, Edward Ravenscroft, Aphra Behn, and Henry Fielding. It challenges the idea that the translators straightforwardly plagiarized the French plays and instead argues that their work demonstrates engagement with the dramatic impact and satirical drive of the source texts. It asks how far the process of anglicization required careful examination of the plays' initial French national context. The first part of the thesis presents three fundamental angles of interrogation addressing how the translators dealt with the form of the dramatic works according to theoretical and practical principles. It considers translators' responses to conventions of plot formation, translation methods, and prosody. The chapters are underpinned by comparative assessments of contextual theoretical writings in French and English in order to examine the plays in the light of the evolving theatrical tastes and literary practices occasioned by cross-Channel communication. The second part takes an alternative approach to assessing the earliest translations of Molière. Its four chapters are based on close analysis of culturally significant lexical terms which evoke comically contentious social themes. This enquiry charts the changes in translation-choices over the decades covered by the thesis corpus. The themes addressed, however, were relevant throughout the period in both France and England: marital discord caused by anxieties surrounding cuckoldry and gallantry, the problems of zealous religious ostentation, the dubious professional standing of medical practitioners, and bourgeois social pretension. This part assesses how the key terms in translation were chosen to resonate within the new semantic fields in English, a target language which was coming into close contact with new French terms.
8
Hirsch, Brett Daniel. "Werewolves and women with whiskers : figures of estrangement in early modern English drama and culture." University of Western Australia. English and Cultural Studies Discipline Group, 2009. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2009.0175.
Abstract:
Each chapter of Werewolves and Women with Whiskers: Figures of Estrangement in Early Modern English Drama and Culture explores a particular figure of fascination and fear in the early modern English imagination: in one it is owls, in another bearded women, in a third werewolves, and in yet another Jews. Drawing on instances from drama and other cultural forms, this thesis seeks to examine each of these phenomena in terms of their estrangement. There is a symbolic appositeness in each of these figures, whether in estranged and estranging minority groups, such as Catholics, Jesuits, Jews, Puritans, Italians, the Irish, and the Scots; or in transgressive behaviours, such as cross-dressing and gender trouble, infidelity and apostasy, intemperate passion and unnatural desire. Essentially unfixed and unstable, these emblematic figures are indicative of cultural uncertainty and therefore are easily adapted to suit changing political, religious, and social climates. However, adaptability and fluidity come at a price, since figures of difference have an uncomfortable way of transforming themselves into figures of resemblance. Thus, this thesis argues, each of these figuresowls, bearded women, werewolves, Jewsoccupies an undefined and undefinable space on the precarious boundary between the usual and the unusual, between the strange and the strangely familiar, and, most strangely and paradoxically of all, between us and them.
9
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.
Abstract:
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.
10
Brammall, Sheldon. "Translating the Prince of Poets : the politics of the English translations of the Aeneid, 1558-1632." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/283905.
11
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.
Abstract:
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.
12
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.
13
Bender, Ashley Brookner. "Personal Properties: Stage Props and Self-Expression in British Drama, 1600-1707." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2009. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc12081/.
Abstract:
This dissertation examines the role of stage properties-props, slangily-in the construction and expression of characters' identities. Through readings of both canonical and non-canonical drama written between 1600 and 1707-for example, Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy (1607), Edward Ravenscroft's adaptation of Titus Andronicus (1678), Aphra Behn's The Rover (1677), and William Wycherley's The Plain Dealer (1677)-I demonstrate how props mediate relationships between people. The control of a character's props often accords a person control of the character to whom the props belong. Props consequently make visual the relationships of power and subjugation that exist among characters. The severed body parts, bodies, miniature portraits, and containers of these plays are the mechanisms by which characters attempt to differentiate themselves from others. The characters deploy objects as proof of their identities-for example, when the women in Behn's Rover circulate miniatures of themselves-yet other characters must also interpret these objects. The props, and therefore the characters' identities, are at all times vulnerable to misinterpretation. Much as the props' meanings are often disputed, so too are characters' private identities often at odds with their public personae. The boundaries of selfhood that the characters wish to protect are made vulnerable by the objects that they use to shore up those boundaries. When read in relation to the characters who move them, props reveal the negotiated process of individuation. In doing so, they emphasize the correlation between extrinsic and intrinsic worth. They are a measure of how well characters perform gender and class rolls, thereby demonstrating the importance of external signifiers in the legitimation of England's subjects, even as they expose "legitimacy" as a social construction.
14
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.
Abstract:
[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.”
15
Oh, Seiwoong. "The Scholarly Trickster in Jacobean Drama: Characterology and Culture." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1993. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278216/.
Abstract:
Whereas scholarly malcontents and naifs in late Renaissance drama represent the actual notion of university graduates during the time period, scholarly tricksters have an obscure social origin. Moreover, their lack of motive in participating in the plays' events, their ambivalent value structures, and their conflicting dramatic roles as tricksters, reformers, justices, and heroes pose a serious diffculty to literary critics who attempt to define them. By examining the Western dramatic tradition, this study first proposes that the scholarly tricksters have their origins in both the Vice in early Tudor plays and the witty slave in classical comedy. By incorporating historical, cultural, anthropological, and psychological studies, this essay also demonstrates that the scholarly tricksters are each a Jacobean version of the archetypal trickster, who is usually associated with solitary habits, motiveless intrusion, and a double function as selfish buffoon and cultural hero. Finally, this study shows that their ambivalent value structures reflect the nature of rhetorical training in Renaissance schools.
16
Reynolds, Paige Martin. "Reforming Ritual: Protestantism, Women, and Ritual on the Renaissance Stage." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2006. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5439/.
Abstract:
My dissertation focuses on representations of women and ritual on the Renaissance stage, situating such examples within the context of the Protestant Reformation. The renegotiation of the value, place, and power of ritual is a central characteristic of the Protestant Reformation in early modern England. The effort to eliminate or redirect ritual was a crucial point of interest for reformers, for most of whom the corruption of religion seemed bound to its ostentatious and idolatrous outer trappings. Despite the opinions of theologians, however, receptivity toward the structure, routine, and familiarity of traditional Catholicism did not disappear with the advent of Protestantism. Reformers worked to modify those rituals that were especially difficult to eradicate, maintaining some sense of meaning without portraying confidence in ceremony itself. I am interested in how early Protestantism dealt with the presence of elements (in worship, daily practice, literary or dramatic representation) that it derogatorily dubbed popish, and how women had a particular place of importance in this dialogue. Through the drama of Shakespeare, Webster, and Middleton, along with contemporary religious and popular sources, I explore how theatrical representations of ritual involving women create specific sites of cultural and theological negotiation. These representations both reflect and resist emerging attitudes toward women and ritual fashioned by Reformation thought, granting women a particular authority in the spiritual realm.
17
Tanner, Jane Hinkle. "Sharing the Light: Feminine Power in Tudor and Stuart Comedy." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1994. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278551/.
Abstract:
Studies of the English Renaissance reveal a patriarchal structure that informed its politics and its literature; and the drama especially demonstrates a patriarchal response to what society perceived to be the problem of women's efforts to grow beyond the traditional medieval view of "good" women as chaste, silent, and obedient. Thirteen comedies, whose creation spans roughly the same time frame as the pamphlet wars of the so-called "woman controversy," from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, feature women who have no public power, but who find opportunities for varying degrees of power in the private or domestic setting.
18
Treacy, Susan. "English Devotional Song of the Seventeenth Century in Printed Collections from 1638 to 1693: A Study of Music and Culture." Thesis, North Texas State University, 1986. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc331253/.
Abstract:
Seventeenth-century England witnessed profound historical, theological, and musical changes. A king was overthrown and executed; religion was practiced fervently and disputed hotly; and English musicians fell under the influence of the Italian stile nuovo. Many devotional songs were printed, among them those which reveal influences of this style. These English-texted sacred songs for one to three solo voices with continuo--not based upon a previously- composed hymn or psalm tune—are emphasized in this dissertation. Chapter One treats definitions, past neglect of the genre by scholars, and the problem of ambiguous terminology. Chapter Two is an examination of how religion and politics affected musical life, the hiatus from liturgical music from 1644 to 1660 causing composers to contribute to the flourishing of devotional music for home worship and recreation. Different modes of seventeenth-century devotional life are discussed in Chapter Three. Chapter Four provides documentation for use of devotional music, diaries and memoirs of the period revealing the use of several publications considered in this study. Baroque musical aesthetics applied to devotional song and its raising of the affections towards God are discussed in Chapter Five. Chapter Six traces the influence of Italian monody and sacred concerto on English devotional song. The earliest compositions by an Englishman working in the stile nuovo are Henry Lawes' 1638 hymn tunes with continuo. Collections of two- and three-voice compositions by Child, the Lawes brothers, Wilson, and Porter, published from 1639 to 1657, comprise Chapter Seven, as well as early devotional works of Locke. Chapter Eight treats Restoration devotional song-- compositions for one to three voices and continuo, mostly of a more secular and dramatic style than works discussed in earlier. The outstanding English Baroque composers--Locke, Humfrey, Blow, and Purcell--are represented, and the apex of this style is found in the latest seventeenth-century publication of devotional song, Henry Playford's Harmonia sacra, (1688, 1693).
19
Roth, Jenny. "Law, gender and culture : representations of the female legal subject in selected Jacobean texts." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14658.
Abstract:
This thesis addresses some of the extant gaps in law and literature criticism using an historical cultural criticism of law and literature that focuses on the Jacobean female legal subject in cases of divorce and adultery. It examines the intellectual milieu that constructs law and literature in this period to contribute to research on female subject formation, and looks specifically at how literature and law work to construct identity. This thesis asks what views Jacobean literature presents of the female legal subject, and what do those views reveal about identity and gender construction? Chapter one offers some essential historical contexts. It establishes the jurisprudential conditions of the period, defines the ideal female legal subject, touches on recent historical scholarship regarding women and law, explores how literature reveals law's artificiality, and links the Inns of Court to the theatres. Chapter two focuses on women and divorce. The first sections discuss the theology and ideology which impacted on divorce law. The latter sections examine Elizabeth Cary's Tragedy of Mariam, ca. 1609, and two manuscript accounts of Frances Howard's 1613 divorce trial, William Terracae's poem, A Plenarie Satisfaction, ca. 1613, and The True Tragi-Comedie Formarly Acted at Court, a play by Francis Osborne, 1635. These texts reveal the legal construction and frustrations of married women, and illustrate a gendered divide in attitudes towards women's legal position. Chapter three examines women and adultery law. It then juxtaposes representations of women justly accused of adultery, like the real-life Alice Clarke, and the fictional Isabella in John Marston's The Insatiate Countess, 1613, and unjustly accused, like the virtuous wives in Marston's play. This chapter reveals how male anxiety creates the stereotypes that constrain the female legal subject within systems of patrilineal inheritance. As a whole, this thesis uses literature to explore the Jacobean female legal subject's relationship to her husband and to the law, and, in some cases, it challenges the assumption that women were effectively constrained by legal dictates which would keep them chaste, silent and submissive. Literature, in some cases, works alongside law to sustain constructed identities, but radical literature can undermine law by challenging the stereotypes and identities law works to maintain.
20
Streete, Adrian George Thomas. "Calvinism, subjectivity and early modern drama." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/12800.
Abstract:
This thesis examines the connections between Calvinism and early modern subjectivity as expressed in the drama produced during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. By looking at a range of theological, medical, popular, legal and polemical writings, the thesis aims to provide a new historical and theoretical reading of Calvinist subjectivity that both develops and departs from previous scholarship in the field. Chapter one examines the critical question of 'authority' in early modern Europe. I trace the various classical and medieval antecedents that reinscribed Christ with political authority during the period, and show how the Reformers' conception of conscience arises out of this movement. In chapter two, I offer a parallel reading of Reformed semiotics in relation to the individual's response to two specific loci of power, the Church and the stage. Chapter three brings the first two chapters together by outlining the development of Calvinist doctrine in early modem England. Chapter four offers a theoretical reading of the early modern 'unconscious' in relation to the construction of England as a Protestant nation state against the threat of Catholicism. In the next four chapters, I show how the stage provided the arena for the exploration of Calvinist subjectivities through readings of four early modern plays. Chapter five deals with Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and in particular the Calvinist conception of Christ interrogated throughout the play. Chapter six looks at The Revenger's Tragedy in relation to the question of masculine lineage and the Name-of-the-(Calvinist)-Father. Finally, in chapters seven and eight, I examine two of William Shakespeare's plays, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. In the first, I demonstrate how the play's concern with witchcraft brings about a parody of providential discourse that is crucial to an understanding of Macbeth's subjectivity. And in the second, I excavate the use of the biblical book of Revelation in Antony and Cleopatra in order to show how an understanding of the text's 'religious' concerns problematises more mainstream readings of the drama.
21
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.
Abstract:
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.
22
Chan, Tzu-Ying. "John Playford's The Division Violin: Improvisation and Variation Practice in English Violin Music of the Seventeenth Century." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2017. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1011780/.
Abstract:
English publisher John Playford (1623-1686/1687) first published his "The Division Violin: Containing a Collection of Divisions Upon Several Grounds for the Treble-Violin" in 1684. The first edition of this violin collection contains 26 written-out examples of improvisation, serving as a living snapshot of the performance practice of the time. This research is based on the second edition, which Playford had expanded into 30 pieces for the violin, published in 1685. The purpose of this study is to investigate the art of improvisation in England during the late 17th century, focusing on Playford's "The Division Violin." The dissertation first surveys the development of English violin music in the 17th century. Then, the dissertation traces eight selected 16th-century Italian diminution manuals. This will help readers understand the progression of the Italian diminution and improvisation practice in the 16th century and how it relates to the English division of the 17th century. Finally, based on a thorough research of the 17th-century improvisatory style and rhetorical approach, the author of this study provides performance suggestions on "Mr. Farinell's Ground," No. 5 from "The Division Violin."
23
Brooks, Scott A. "To move, to please, and to teach : the new poetry and the new music, and the works of Edmund Spenser and John Milton, 1579-1674." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/5034.
Abstract:
By examining Renaissance criticism both literary and musical, framed in the context of the contemporaneous obsession with the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Horace, among others, this thesis identifies the parallels in poetic and musical practices of the time that coalesce to form a unified idea about the poet-as-singer, and his role in society. Edmund Spenser and John Milton, who both, in various ways, lived in periods of upheaval, identified themselves as the poet-singer, and comprehending their poetry in the context of this idea is essential to a fuller appreciation thereof. The first chapter addresses the role that the study of rhetoric and the power of oratory played in shaping attitudes about poetry, and how the importance of sound, of an innate musicality to poetry, was pivotal in the turn from quantitative to accentual-syllabic verse. In addition, the philosophical idea of music, inherited from antiquity, is explained in order elucidate the significance of “artifice” and “proportion”. With this as a backdrop, the chapters following examine first the work of Spenser, and then of Milton, demonstrating the central role that music played in the composition of their verse. Also significant, in the case of Milton, is the revolution undertaken by the Florentine Camerata around the turn of the seventeenth century, which culminated in the birth of opera. The sources employed by this group of scholars and artists are identical to those which shaped the idea of the poet-as-singer, and analysing their works in tandem yields new insights into those poems which are considered among the finest achievements in English literature.
24
Abunasser, Rima Jamil. "Corporate Christians and Terrible Turks: Economics, Aesthetics, and the Representation of Empire in the Early British Travel Narrative, 1630 - 1780." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2003. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4444/.
Abstract:
This dissertation examines the evolution of the early English travel narrative as it relates to the development and application of mercantilist economic practices, theories of aesthetic representation, and discourses of gender and narrative authority. I attempt to redress an imbalance in critical work on pre-colonialism and colonialism, which has tended to focus either on the Renaissance, as exemplified by the works of critics such as Stephen Greenblatt and John Gillies, or on the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as in the work of scholars such as Srinivas Aravamudan and Edward Said. This critical gap has left early travel narratives by Sir Francis Moore, Jonathan Harris, Penelope Aubin, and others largely neglected. These early writers, I argue, adapted the conventions of the travel narrative while relying on the authority of contemporary commercial practices. The early English travelers modified contemporary conventions of aesthetic representation by formulating their descriptions of non-European cultures in terms of the economic and political conventions and rivalries of the early eighteenth century. Early English travel literature, I demonstrate, functioned as a politically motivated medium that served both as a marker of authenticity, justifying the colonial and imperial ventures that would flourish in the nineteenth century, and as a forum for experimentation with English notions of gender and narrative authority.
25
Sutton, Peter David. "'The trade of application' : political and social appropriations of Ben Jonson, 1660-1776." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/16547.
Abstract:
This thesis is an analysis of the manner in which the persona and works of Ben Jonson were appropriated – between the Restoration, in 1660, and the retirement of David Garrick, in 1776 – to reflect the political and social concerns of the age. Unlike previous studies, rather than primarily focusing on the stage history of Jonson, I analyse a wide range of sources – produced both within and outwith the theatre – in order to explore, across a variety of media, a breadth of material which appropriates the playwright and his works. I shall consider in my first main chapter the appropriations of Jonson within the Restoration court, in particular noting the assimilation of the playwright's work to what might be styled a proto-Tory ideology, as well as the way in which his plays could mirror the destabilising effects of the king's romantic liaisons. In my second chapter, I explore the moral reformation at the turn of the eighteenth century, in which we can see appropriations of Jonson which cast his works as being primarily didactic. The third chapter moves the narrative of the thesis into the years of the premiership of Sir Robert Walpole. I shall consider the way in which the playwright's works – especially The Alchemist and Eastward Ho! – were seen as being especially relevant to an age of speculation and mercantile endeavour, as well as examining the manner in which the figures of Sejanus and Volpone were appropriated to mock the increasingly unpopular premier. In the final chapter, I shall offer an analysis of Garrick's seminal portrayal of Drugger in the contexts of the political philosophy of the mid-eighteenth century, considering the manner in which it was interpreted alongside the character's further appropriations by Francis Gentleman. The thesis concludes by exploring political appropriations of Jonson up to the present day.
26
Jeffrey, Anthony Cole. "The Aesthetics of Sin: Beauty and Depravity in Early Modern English Literature." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2017. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1062818/.
Abstract:
This dissertation argues that early modern writers such as William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, George Herbert, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell played a critical role in the transition from the Neoplatonic philosophy of beauty to Enlightenment aesthetics. I demonstrate how the Protestant Reformation, with its special emphasis on the depravity of human nature, prompted writers to critique models of aesthetic judgment and experience that depended on high faith in human goodness and rationality. These writers in turn used their literary works to popularize skepticism about the human mind's ability to perceive and appreciate beauty accurately. In doing so, early modern writers helped create an intellectual culture in which aesthetics would emerge as a distinct branch of philosophy.
27
Hjul, Lauren Martha. "The family in Shakespeare's plays: a study of South African revisions." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001832.
Abstract:
This thesis provides a detailed consideration of the family in Shakespeare’s canon and the engagement therewith in three South African novels: Hill of Fools (1976) by R. L. Peteni, My Son’s Story (1990) by Nadine Gordimer, and Disgrace (1999) by J. M. Coetzee. The study is divided into an introduction, three chapters each addressing one of the South African novels and its relationship with a Shakespeare text or texts, and a conclusion. The introductory chapter provides an analysis of the two strands of criticism in which the thesis is situated – studies of the family in Shakespeare and studies of appropriations of Shakespeare – and discusses the ways in which these two strands may be combined through a detailed discussion of the presence of power dynamics in the relationship between parent and child in all of the texts considered. The three chapters each contextualise the South African text and provide detailed discussions of the family dynamics within the relevant texts, with particular reference to questions of authority and autonomy. The focus in each chapter is determined by the nature of the intertextual relationship between the South African novel and the Shakespearean text being discussed. Thus, the first chapter, “The Dissolution of Familial Structures in Hill of Fools” considers power dynamics in the family as an inherent part of the Romeo and Juliet genre, of which William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is but a part. Similarly, the impact of a socio-political identity, and the secrecy it necessitates, is the focus of the second chapter, “Fathers, Sons and Legacy in My Son’s Story” as is the role of Shakespeare and literature within South Africa. These concerns are connected to the novel’s use of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, King Lear, and Hamlet. In the third chapter, “Reclaiming Agency through the Daughter in Disgrace and The Tempest”, I expand on Laurence Wright’s argument that Disgrace is an engagement with The Tempest and consider ways in which the altered power dynamic between father and daughter results in the reconciliation of the father figure with society. The thesis thus addresses the tension between parental bonds and parental bondage
28
Edelman, Charles. "The theatrical and dramatic form of the swordfight in the chronicle plays of Shakespeare." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1988. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phe21.pdf.
29
Lobban, Paul. "Inhabited space : writing as a practice in early modern England; Margaret Hoby, Eleanor Davies, Katherine Philips." Title page, contents and abstract only, 2001. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phl796.pdf.
30
Sabbadini, Lorenzo. "Property, liberty and self-ownership in the English Revolution." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2013. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/8678.
Abstract:
This thesis seeks to develop our understanding of ideas about political liberty in the English Revolution by way of focusing on the issue of property, a topic unduly neglected in the secondary literature. Most writers of the period conceived of liberty as absence of dependence, but what has been little examined is the extent to which it was believed that the attainment of this condition required not only a particular kind of constitution but a particular distribution of property as well. Here the central ideal became that of self-ownership, and the thesis is largely devoted to tracing the rise, eclipse and re-emergence of this way of thinking about the connections between property and liberty. Chapter 1 considers the emergence, in the ‘paper war’ of the early 1640s, of the radical Parliamentarian view that all property ultimately resided in Parliament. It was to oppose this stance, Chapter 2 argues, that the Levellers began to speak of ‘selfe propriety’, transforming the Parliamentarian notion of popular sovereignty into an individualist doctrine designed to protect subjects and their property from not only the king but also Parliament. Elements of both the Parliamentarian and Leveller discussions of property were taken up by John Milton and Marchamont Nedham (Chapter 3), while James Harrington offered an alternative theory that eschewed the notion of self-ownership (Chapter 4). After a chapter considering the relationship between property and freedom in Henry Neville and Algernon Sidney, the final chapter focuses on John Locke’s revival of self-ownership in his attempt to ground property rights in the individual’s ownership of his ‘person’. Although Locke is shown to offer a theory of private property, the Locke that emerges is not a proto-liberal defender of individual rights but a theorist of neo-Roman freedom whose aim was to explain the connection between property and non-dependence.
31
Strahle, Graham. "Fantasy and music in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1987. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phs896.pdf.
32
Rushing-Raynes, Laura. "A history of the Venetian sacred solo motet (c. 1610--1720)." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185473.
Abstract:
In 17th century Italy, the trend toward small sacred concertato forms precipitated the publication of a number of volumes devoted exclusively to sacred solo vocal music. Several of these, including the Ghirlanda sacra (Gardano, 1625) and Motetti a voce sola (Gardano, 1645) contain sacred solo motets by some of the best Italian composers of the period. Venetian composers were at the forefront of the move toward the smaller concertato forms and, to fulfill various needs of church musicians, wrote in an increasingly virtuoso style intended to highlight the solo voice. This study traces the development of the solo motet in the sacred works of Venetian composers from the time of Monteverdi to Vivaldi. It revolves around sacred solo motets composed at Saint Marks and the Venetian ospedali (orphanages). It includes works of Alessandro Grandi, Claudio Monteverdi, Francesco Cavalli, and Antonio Vivaldi. It also deals with solo motets of lesser composers whose works are available in modern critical and performing editions or in recently published facsimiles. In addition to providing a more detailed survey of the genre than has been previously available, this study provides an overview of highly performable (but largely neglected) repertoire.
33
Michel, Robert 1944. "English marriage and morals 1640-1700 : issues and alternatives." Thesis, McGill University, 1985. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=76581.
34
Howson, Barry. "The question of orthodoxy in the theology of Hanserd Knollys (c. 1599-1691) : a seventeenth-century English Calvinistic Baptist." Thesis, McGill University, 1999. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36607.
Abstract:
Mid-seventeenth-century England saw numerous religious sects come into existence, one of which was the Calvinistic Baptist group. During the upheaveal of the revolutionary years this group was often accused of heresy by their orthodox/reformed contemporaries. At that time Hanserd Knollys, one of their London pastors, was personally charged with holding heterodox beliefs, in particular, Antinomianism, Anabaptism and Fifth Monarchism. In addition, Knollys has been accused of hyper-Calvinism. This version of Calvinism was held by some eighteenth-century English Calvinistic Baptists. Some Baptist historians have suspected Knollys of holding this teaching in the seventeenth-century, or at least they have felt it necessary to defend him against it. All of these charges are serious, and consequently bring into question Knollys' orthodoxy. This thesis will systematically examine each charge made against Knollys in its context, and comprehensively from Knollys' writings seek to determine if they were valid. Furthermore, this thesis will elucidate Knollys theology, particularly his soteriology, ecclesiology and eschatology.
35
Saunders, Austen Grant. "Marked books in early modern English society (c.1550-1700)." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.648630.
36
Williams, Laura. "Rus in urbe : greening the English town, 1660-1760." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683367.
37
Botelho, Lynn Ann. "English housewives in theory and practice, 1500-1640." PDXScholar, 1991. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4293.
Abstract:
Women in early modem England were expected to marry, and then to become housewives. Despite the fact that nearly fifty percent of the population was in this position, little is known of the expectations and realities of these English housewives. This thesis examines both the expectations and actual lives of middling sort and gentry women in England between 1500 and 1640.
38
Xu, Sufeng. "Lotus flowers rising from the dark mud : late Ming courtesans and their poetry." Thesis, McGill University, 2007. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=102831.
Abstract:
The dissertation examines the close but overlooked relationship between male poetry societies and the sharp rise of literary courtesans in the late Ming. I attempt to identify a particular group of men who devoted exclusive efforts to the promotion of courtesan culture, that is, urban dwellers of prosperous Jiangnan, who fashioned themselves as retired literati, devoting themselves to art, recreation, and self-invention, instead of government office. I also offer a new interpretation for the decline of courtesan culture after the Ming-Qing transition.Chapter 1 provides an overview of the social-cultural context in which late Ming courtesans flourished. I emphasize office-holding as losing its appeal for late Ming nonconformists who sought other alternative means of self-realization. Chapter 2 examines the importance of poetry by courtesans in literati culture as demonstrated by their visible inclusion in late Ming and early Qing anthologies of women's writings. Chapter 3 examines the life and poetry of individual courtesans through three case studies. Together, these three chapters illustrate the strong identification between nonconformist literati and the courtesans they extolled at both collective and individual levels.
In Chapter 4, by focusing on the context and texts of the poetry collection of the courtesan Chen Susu and on writings about her, I illustrate the efforts by both male and female literati in the early Qing to reproduce the cultural glory of late Ming courtesans. However, despite their cooperative efforts, courtesans became inevitably marginalized in literati culture as talented women of the gentry flourished.
This dissertation as a whole explores how male literati and courtesans responded to the social and literary milieu of late Ming Jiangnan to shed light on aspects of the intersection of self and society in this floating world. This courtesan culture was a counterculture in that: (1) it was deep-rooted in male poetry societies, a cultural space that was formed in opposition to government office; (2) in valuing romantic relationship and friendship, the promoters of this culture deliberately deemphasized the most primary human relations as defined in the Confucian tradition; (3) this culture conditioned, motivated, and promoted serious relationships between literati and courtesans, which fundamentally undermined orthodox values.
39
Le, Cocq Jonathan. "French lute-song, 1529-1643." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1997. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:1a712369-836c-45e4-9f84-91045f297b3f.
Abstract:
A study of French-texted solo songs and duets with lute or guitar accompaniment notated in tablature, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Connected repertoires include the Parisian chanson, psalm, voix de ville, dialogue, and air de cour. Sources are examined in terms of their background, composers represented in them, relationship to concordant and other musical sources, repertoire, and musical conception. Foreign and manuscript sources are included. Literary references indicating the status of sixteenth-century lute-song, its importance to humanists (including its role in the Académie de Poésie et de Musique), and its position in theatrical works, are considered. Issues of notation, musical and poetic form, prosody, rhythm, ornamentation, lute pitch and tuning, relationship to polyphonic versions, to the ballet de cour, to dance forms, and to solo instrumental styles such as stile brisé are examined. Early references to continuo practice and to the theorbo are noted. Several arguments are developed, including 1. that the sixteenth-century Le Roy publications were conceived primarily as solo lute music, 2. that from the late sixteenth-century onwards lute-songs were initially conceived as melody-bass outlines, and may to an extent be regarded as continuo realisations, and 3. that rhythmic features of the air de cour commonly related to the influence of musique mesurée may also be explained with reference to earlier attempts to adapt the voix de ville to humanist goals, and also to the influence of the Italian villanella. Includes tables and bibliographies. Musical examples, facsimiles, and transcriptions are included in a separate volume.
40
Corens, Liesbeth. "Confessional mobility, English Catholics, and the southern Netherlands, c.1660-1720." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.709379.
41
Vendrix, Philippe Pierre 1964. "Quelques aspects de l'historiographie musicale en France a l'epoque baroque (French text)." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/276706.
Abstract:
L'historiographie musicale trouve dans la France de l'epoque baroque un champ ideal de developpement. Ce phenomene est lie a la conjonction de differents facteurs: le modele fourni par l'histoire generale, l'heritage humaniste, les mouvements polemiques, les tentatives de refonte de l'histoire de l'Eglise. Les musicographes, de Salomon de Caus (1615) a Jacques Bonnet-Bourdelot (1715), etablissent les fondements d'une critique historique et l'appliquent dans des ouvrages qui annoncent l'expansion de la musicologie a l'age des Lumieres.
42
Oliver, Ryan. "Aliens and atheists: The Plurality of Worlds and Natural Theology in Seventeenth-Century England." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2007. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5134/.
Abstract:
The plurality of worlds has had a long history in England, which has not gone unnoticed by scholars. Historians have tended to view this English pluralist tradition as similar to those found on the continent, and in doing so have failed to fully understand the religious significance that the plurality of worlds had on English thought and society. This religious significance is discovered through a thorough investigation of plurality as presented by English natural philosophers and theologians, and in so doing reveals much about England in the seventeenth century. As natural philosophers incorporated plurality within the larger framework of natural theology, it became a weapon of science and reason to be used against the unreasonable atheists of late seventeenth-century England.
43
Taylor, Helena. "The lives of Ovid : secrets, exile and galanterie in writing of the ‘Grand Siècle’." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4571c071-a499-44e7-a870-ed747d69bdc5.
Abstract:
This study examines the constructions and uses of the figure of Ovid in French writing of the second half of the seventeenth century, and explores how they were modulated by contemporary aesthetic and cultural concerns. As the influence of Ovid’s poetry made itself felt in various ways – in the mythopoeia of the Sun-King and the fashionable galant salons – interest in the story of Ovid’s life blossomed. This, I argue, was facilitated by new forms of ‘life-writing’, the nouvelle historique and histoire galante, and fuelled in unexpected ways by the escalating querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. Research has been done on the reception and influence of Ovid’s poetry in this period, but little attention has been paid to the figure of Ovid. This thesis offers a new perspective and, informed by recent renewed interest in life-writing, argues that analysis of biographical depictions is vital for establishing a coherent picture of the uses of Ovid in the ‘Grand Siècle’. I explore a diverse range of textual descriptions of Ovid (Vies; prefatory material attached to translations and editions of his work; correspondence; dialogues des morts; biographical dictionaries and historical novels), organized according to their different, though intersecting, ways of writing about this poet. He was constructed as a historical figure, an author, a fictional character and a ‘parallèle’ – a point of identification or contrast for contemporary writers. Through close analysis of a multi-authored corpus, this thesis identifies and examines two instances of paradox: though an ancient poet, Ovid became emblematic of 'Moderne' movements and was used to explore aspects of galanterie; and, though his creative work was mobilized in the service of royal propaganda, Ovid, as a figure for the exiled poet, was also used to express anxieties about the sway of power and the machinations and pitfalls of the world of the court.
44
LEMP, RICHARD WARREN. "MOLIERE AND MEDICINE: DISSECTING THE KALEIDOSCOPE (FRANCE)." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/183776.
Abstract:
The subject of medicine in the works of Moliere has been traditionally treated as a matter of satire. While it is important to consider this view and while biographical approaches relating Moliere's personal illness to the content of his medical comedy are illuminating, this study proposes that a plurality of views offers a more complete picture. Such analysis discovers that Moliere's medical comedy is much more than satire, that it contains elements of black humor and even approaches the theater of cruelty in its treatment of sickness and death. The metaphor in this approach is in the perception of a composite image of this part of Moliere's theater, much like the pattern that a kaleidoscope discloses. As we may sort out the various elements that compose the kaleidoscopic impression--light and shadow, color, form, change of image through manipulation of the instrument--there is a similarity in the division of elements in Moliere's medical theater. Light and shadow correspond to the opposition of fact and fantasy in seventeenth-century French medicine and constitute the historical view of his work; color corresponds to the notion of Galenic humor theory and suggests that the comedy of character may be analyzed according to humoral temperaments; form corresponds to the language Moliere used in his medical plays; the change of image occurs in Moliere with the passage of time--his medical comedy being farcical at the beginning of his career and much darker towards the end of his life. The purpose of this approach is to identify these separate elements in order to better understand their function as an organic whole. For this reason, the notion of organic unity is also treated. In an effort to relate Moliere's theater to the present day, this study compares Moliere's work with Artaud's notion of the nature and function of theater, with the two meanings of semiology--sign theory and symptomatology, and using an archetypal approach, concludes with the suggestion that sexuality, death, and medicine form a hidden mythology in these plays.
45
Monette, Isabelle. "Récritures de récits criminels en France sous l'Ancien Régime." Thesis, McGill University, 2003. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=79966.
Abstract:
Three original stories are the basis for our study of rewriting during the French Ancien Regime: the story of Thibaud de la Jacquiere, that of the "sorcier Gaufridy" and that of the Marquise de Ganges, which Sade will rewrite as a novel. Having all originated from a "canard", they appear in the 1679 edition of the Histoires tragiques of Francois de Rosset, and two of them can also be found in Francois Gayot de Pitaval's Causes celebres. Each of these stories was rewritten by different authors at least three times. Using Gerard Genette's theory of the narrative, we will analyse the processes of transformation that the rewriting operates in the text, as well as the changes it imposes to its original meaning. The number of rewritings of each text---up to five for the Marquise de Gange---is a testament to the importance of textual reappropriation as much as it shows the relevance of a study which brings to light the role of rewriting in the survival of these stories.
46
McCall, Fiona. ""Our dear mother stripped" : the experiences of ejected clergy and their families during the English Revolution." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.670060.
47
Boone, Clifford. "Puritan evangelism : preaching for conversion in late-seventeenth century English puritanism as seen in the works of John Flavel." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683232.
48
Benson, Fiona. "The Ophelia versions : representations of a dramatic type, 1600-1633." Thesis, St Andrews, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/478.
49
Chaudhuri, Rosinka. "Orientalist themes and English verse in nineteenth-century India." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1996. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:737ba2e1-99f4-4abb-ac87-4e344be4d15c.
Abstract:
This thesis demonstrates how a specific tradition of English poetry written by Indians in the nineteenth-century borrowed its subject matter from Orientalist research into Indian antiquity, and its style and forms from the English poetic tradition. After an examination of the political, historical and social motivations that resulted in the birth of colonial poetry in India, the poets dealt with comprise Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809-31), the first Indian poet writing in English ; Kasiprasad Ghosh (1809-73), the first Bengali Hindu to write English verse; and Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824-73), who converted to Christianity in the hope of reaching England and becoming a great 'English' poet. A subsequent chapter examines the Dutt Family Album (London, 1870) in the changing political context of the latter half of the century. In the Conclusion it is shown how the advent of Modernism in England, and the birth of an active nationalism in India, finally brought about the end of all aspects of what is here called 'Orientalist' verse. This area has not been dealt with comprehensively by critics; only one book, Lotika Basu's Indian Writers of English Verse (1933), exists on this subject to date. This thesis, besides filling the gaps that exist in the knowledge available in this area, also brings an additional insight to bear on the current debate on colonialism and literature. After Said's Orientalism (1978), a spate of theoretical work has been published on literary studies and colonial power in British India. Without restricting the argument to the constraints of the Saidian model, this study addresses the issues raised by these works, showing that a subtler reading is possible, through the medium of this poetry, of the interaction that took place in India between the production of literature and colonialism. In particular, this thesis demonstrates that although Orientalist poetry was in many ways derivative, it also evinces an active and developing response to the imposition of British culture upon India.
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Shannon, Josephine E. "From discourse to the couch : the obscured self in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century epistolary narrative." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=34533.
Abstract:
Although the letter purports to represent fact, it cannot avoid having a partly or potentially fictive status, turning as it does on the complex interplay between the real and the imagined. Consequently, the main critical approach of this paper is to consider the interactions between conflicting modes of expression in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century epistolary fiction. The rhetorical and conceptual contrarieties that I examine are broadly characterized by the contradiction between the implied spontaneity of the familiar letter and the inevitable artifice of its form. Working with familiar letters by four writers between the years 1740 and 1825, I specifically address various narrative patterns by which each turns to the act of communication to draw upon the experience of an isolated self. Against a background which explores the main developments in epistolary fiction and a historical progression of the uses and significance of letter-writing, I investigate epistolary texts by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lord Byron, John Keats, and William Hazlitt. In turning to letters by each author, I explore the literary, theoretical and especially the psychological implications of the tenuous divisions between fact and fiction. In particular, my analysis stresses that letter-writing is an authorial act in which writing about the self can be understood as a literary form of self-portraiture or creative expression.I examine this claim---and the metaphors defining it---in two ways. First, by focusing on selected letters, I foreground each writer's language as an agent of internal conflict. In so doing, I am able to formulate distinctive questions regarding the potential of epistolary narratives to transform emotional or psychological schisms into fictions which become explicitly creative texts. Secondly, I analyze the changing nature of the fictions which emerge through this process. My findings conclude that authors' letters must be read, at least very often, as a constituent part of their literary work and as interpretive models of a shifting dynamic of psychological expression.