Guillén de Castro's play La fuerza de la costumbre (1625) depicts the process of re-teaching gender to Hipólita and Félix, a sister and brother who have grown up performing the gender opposite to their physical sex. This dissertation provides the first edition of the play since 1927, and the first ever critical edition, which contains notes, critical apparatus and essays, and compiles information from all extant sources, including the manuscripts (not used in the 1927 edition). The 1625 print edition serves as the base text, with variants from the four manuscript witnesses compiled in an index. The critical apparatus includes a biography of the author, textual history, editorial methodology, metrical analysis, bibliography and notes on the text. / Romance Languages and Literatures

Until the time of Lope de Vega and the Golden Age of Spanish literature, women had always had secondary roles in the Spanish drama. There were two reasons for this: 1) Women were not fully appreciated in the society of the times. 2) Women were prohibited from appearing on the stage for many years, and boys usually took their parts. With the advent of Lope de Vega and his arte nuevo de hacer comedies, the situation was changed. The great genius, Lope de Vega, set the pattern for the drama of the Golden Age.

Throughout her two collections of novelas, Novelas amorosas y ejemplares and Desengaños amorosos, María de Zayas, as a noble woman writing in Golden Age Spain, strategically holds onto aspects of the patriarchal society under which she lives, and from which she benefits, while simultaneously deviating slightly from some of these aspects. This adherence to and deviation from the norms characterizes her style and allows her to support some of the expected codes of conduct in her society while, at the same time, pointing out flaws and questioning these codes to show how they should be altered to make life better for both the men and women of that society. Through various narrative voices and characters, Zayas creates a type of guidebook, or manual, for both the men and women of her society. Through cross dressing she establishes an essential equality between the abilities of the sexes and establishes that the actions of men and women are chosen activities, and are not related to innate ability or disability to perform a certain way. How individuals position themselves in regard to accepted or expected behavioral codes of conduct is a choice and, as individuals, men and women can choose to perform either negative or positive practices associated with their sex. This dissertation looks closely at the guide that is created and the practices which are highlighted as good and bad, thus identifying which manners of being should be emulated and which should be avoided, and therefore altered as societal expectations or norms, by men and women. Through negative and positive portrayals, Zayas shows men and women how they should and should not act in order to create a more ideal and, consequently, more equal society that differs in some ways from their present society while still retaining the overall structure and values of the patriarchy under which they already exist. It is not the creation of an entirely new society that the resulting guidebook suggests, rather it suggests an alteration to the perspectives and behavior, toward the positive, of both men and women as they exist in their current society.

The aim of this study is to demonstrate the destructive effects of infidelity in the old-aged husband-the young wife marriages which end up with tragedy. In John Ford&rsquo / s Love&rsquo / s Sacrifice (1633) and Lope de Vega&rsquo / s Punishment Without Revenge (1631), tragedy turns out to be the inevitable consequence of the plays since the motives of jealousy, honour, revenge and love converge and lead people to commit sinful crimes. Within this scope, the first chapter of the thesis is devoted to the historical information about the state of English and Spanish theatres together with the biographies of the playwrights. In the second chapter, the tripartite relationship between jealousy, revenge, and honour is dealt with based upon examples from the primary sources in a historical framework. The reasons and results of these themes are studied through the characters in the plays. The third chapter covers the theme of love, its history and its influence on characters. In this chapter, the nature of love between the characters and its consequences are examined. The conclusion asserts that the old-aged husband and the young wife create a mismatched union and accompanied with the motives of honour, jealousy and revenge, the institution of marriage breeds tragic consequences. The analysis of the above mentioned themes is based on a historical context and it is also concluded that although Love&rsquo / s Sacrifice (1633) and Punishment Without Revenge (1631) belong to the Renaissance age, both plays bear the influences of the Greco-Roman drama tradition. Thus, the similarities and differences between classical and Renaissance tragedy are demonstrated.

Homometries : Representations of Homosexual Desire in Spanish Golden Age Literature traces literary representations of homosexuality during this period. Traditional criticism is written from a perspective that reflects the heteronormative idiosyncrasy that permeates this literature. In my study, I interpret the authors' textual imaginings and how they manipulate hegemonic ideals of identity and sexuality to highlight overt or encoded attempts to subvert the concept of transhistorical heterosexuality. My study valorizes "anachronistic" queer literature. It differs from those in the 1990s by averting from the consideration of homosexuality as a recent "invention". I revisit Spanish Golden Age texts to illustrate how human relations in this era can provide the spaces where alternative sexual identities can take hold. I propose five imperatives, one, it is necessary to admit that these texts incorporate not only hegemonic ideals but all the intensities of human desire; two, when these intensities have to do with homosexuality they are registered in three levels: codified, embedded in a homophobic concept, or silenced; three, when the codification appears in a positive context it can be identified through the rhetoric of homoeroticism or masculine love (homosociality would be the asexual variation and feminine love its lesbian counterpart); four, homophobia can be recognized in condemnatory, moralistic, or mockery situations; and five, the language of the closet exists in textual suggestions, in what is not pronounced but can be identified. Each chapter deals with and elaborates on each of these imperatives, with Chapter 1 acting as the theoretical platform. Chapter 2 focuses on homoeroticism through the poetry of don Juan de Arguijo. Chapter 3 studies a feminine man in the episode of Leandra and Vicente in Don Quijote, here, I propose the term, "homoscapes" (homo-relieves) as the identifiable characteristics of hegemonic gender transgressions. In Chapter 4, I revise Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's homosociality to show how homosexual relationships between men could have been maintained in La boda entre dos maridos, a Lope de Vega play. Chapter 5 analyzes homophobia and its representations in Celos con celos se curan, a play by Tirso de Molina. And, Chapter 6 deals with the interpretation of the language of the closet in El castillo de Lindabridis, a play by Calderón de la Barca. / text

In the Metamorphoses, Ovid brings together Golden Age imagery with contrasting scenes of destruction, making this paradoxical amalgam a motif within his epic. This study connects Ovid’s use of Golden Age language to his portrayal of artistry in the poem, discovering that both within the stories of the epic and in Ovid’s poetic style, artistic creation is emphasised in the context of this motif. Both natural fecundity and artistic creation emerge after the flood through the principle of discors concordia (Met. 1.433), which involves the unity of divine harmony and chaos; this principle is central to Ovid’s use of Golden Age language. The discussion takes up the influence of Virgil and Lucretius on this motif, discovering that Ovid’s synthesis of harmony and chaos draws on both forerunners. By uniting the Golden Age and its antithesis, Ovid reveals the conditions necessary for art, and thus for poetry itself.

This thesis uses the popular genre of detective fiction to explore the context of the heyday of the crime genre: the Golden Age. This sub-genre, best known for producing Agatha Christie, spanned the complicated history of Britain involving the Great Depression, two World Wars and huge changes to class structure. It is for these reasons that the Golden Age is such a pivotal period for changing notions of British identity. Through the very British Christie and the less well known New Zealander, Ngaio Marsh, expressions of national identity are explored as well as how the colonial fits in. Focusing heavily on the authors and their own personal experiences and views, this thesis is divided into four chapters to further break down how the Golden Age period affected its citizens and why this detective fiction held such a wide appeal. Chapter one explores gender roles and how Golden Age authors both conformed to them through their choice in detectives, yet also how they naturally resisted some through their own public image. Chapter two then examines the issue of class and how Golden Age detective fiction portrayed the changes. Contrary to popular criticism, Christie and Marsh were surprisingly progressive and forward thinking on this subject. Chapter three considers how both authors employed setting to emphasise these changes. Both Christie and Marsh used foreign settings to highlight British society and its flaws, and Marsh used her New Zealand settings to consider the relationship between Britain and her home. The final chapter will consider why Golden Age detective fiction was so popular: what was the appeal? For a period of violence and uncertainty, why were people drawn to crime fiction involving sometimes gruesome death? The appeal lay, and still does, in the puzzle: the game that diverted readers from their own problems. Golden Age fiction may have been highly formulaic and predictable, but it was also highly artificial and self-referential. This was a clever and diverting fiction that has been constantly underestimated by critics and deserves further study.

This thesis presents the first sustained analysis of the reception of the Aristotelian golden mean in early modern Spanish literature. It argues that the critically-neglected ethical credo of moderation was an important part of the classical inheritance on which Golden-Age authors frequently drew, and that despite its famous origins in moral philosophy rather than literature, it was subject to just the same kind of imitative reworking as has long been acknowledged for literary predecessors. The analysis is divided into two sections. The first takes a synoptic view of the period, assessing the transmission of Aristotle's doctrine to the Renaissance and exploring what it meant to the Golden-Age mind. That includes identifying a particular early modern reformulation of the mean, which I argue was an important factor in the popularity of the Icarus and Phaethon myths, as analogues for Aristotle's moral. The body of the thesis then comprises three case studies of the role of moderation in works which span the period's chronological and generic range: the poetry of Garcilaso; Calderón's 'El médico de su honra'; and Gracián's 'Criticón'. These studies explore three important general trends in the reception of the mean: the association of excess and moderation with particular literary models; the incorporation of the mean into Christian thought; and its parallel existence as non-technical, commonplace wisdom. However, each chapter also constitutes an innovation within its own field, offering a reassessment of Garcilaso's relationship to literary tradition; a re-reading of the characters and plot structure of 'El médico', including the controversial King Pedro; and an analysis of the elusive moral approach behind Gracián's allegorical novel. The mean is thus remarkable for both the breadth and depth of its incorporation into literature, and a focus on its treatment offers substantial new insights into some of the canonical works of the age.

This thesis explores the generic interaction between Virgilian pastoral and Ovidian epic. My primary goal is to bring pastoral, substantially enriched by important critical work thereupon in recent decades, more energetically into the scholarly discussion of the Metamorphoses, whose multifaceted generic interplay is often limited to the study of its interaction with elegy. Secondarily, I hope to show how the Metamorphoses plays a pivotal role in the re-reading of the Eclogues. The fact that both epic and pastoral are written in hexameters facilitates the interaction between the two and enables the Metamorphoses’ repeated short-term transformations into pastoral poetry, which often end abruptly. I will try to show that although the engagement with pastoral occasionally appears to threaten the epic code of the poem, pastoral is ultimately integrated in the Metamorphoses’ generic self-definition as epic and partakes in Ovid’s dynamic recreation of the genre. My primary method is that of intertextuality, resting on the premise that all readings of textual relationships, as the one suggested here, are acts of interpretation. I also explore pastoral in the Metamorphoses intratextually by joining together various pastoral episodes of the Metamorphoses and arguing how similar thematics are replayed and rewritten throughout the poem. The main perspectives from which I examine pastoral in the Ovidian epic are those of fiction and the development of the thematics of the Golden Age. In the first part, I explore instances of song performances in the Metamorphoses, i) musical contests, ii) solo performances and iii) laments, in which I argue that pastoral is extensively at work. I suggest that the Metamorphoses employs pastoral’s overriding generic self-obsession and its tendency to create its own fiction internally, significantly through the means of singing performance and repetition. I argue that the mythopoetic means of pastoral are applied and reworked in the Metamorphoses for the creation of its epic world and heroes. In the second part, I explore the repeated occurrences of the Golden Age theme in the Metamorphoses and suggest that the remarkable engagement with pastoral is employed both to invite a political reading of the Golden Age, as set by Eclogue 4 and its post-Eclogues occurrences, and to recap the introversion of the pastoral enclosure and its seclusion from politics.

This thesis document is a presentation and exploration of the process involving the costume design for The Boys from Syracuse (music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, book by George Abbott) in the McLeod Theatre at Southern Illinois University Carbondale during February 2018. This light-hearted, farcical musical reminds us that life doesn’t have to be so serious. It explores our ability to be consumed by our own responsibilities, which causes us to escape to the theater and just enjoy a show. Chapter 1 contains the research, background information, and script analysis that was conducted to further enhance and inform the design of the costumes. This chapter also contains the goals that I wanted to achieve within my design and personal growth. Chapter 2 focuses on the design process and how each costume evolved through collaboration and discussion. Chapter 3 documents the build process of the design and how it was realized. An examination of the dress rehearsals and the production’s four performances are also contained within this chapter. Chapter 4 documents an analysis of the entire design and its evolution through outside critiques and commentary supported by personal self-reflection.