This dissertation argues that insects provided a crucial lens through which Enlightenment thinkers could reimagine and represent their societies. It demomstrates that the understanding of the functioning of their individual bodies, the close observation of their collective behaviour, and its manipulation and management, helped eighteenth-century scholars to conceptualise, and root in nature, their social orders and the changes that they wished to see in them. While insect collectives such as bee swarms or ant colonies that had long been used to metaphorically model human societies, in the eighteenth century, these metaphors were reformulated and given an empirical basis. Investigating writings on insects on the part of natural historians, agronomists, philosophes and physicians, the thesis contributes to the growing literature on the role of animals in human history in general and in the Enlightenment in particular. It builds on two scholarly traditions: French studies and the cultural history of scientific, economic and political knowledge (mainly written after the 1980s). I take from French studies methods for the close reading of texts and more recent ideas on how ‘to bridge’ different fields of knowledge; the latter discipline will be useful in providing ideas about the history of observation and experimentation, theories of the animal and human body as well as eighteenth-century understanding of political economy. As this dissertation demonstrates, insects helped conceptualise new ideas of the human individual and his or her passions (chapters 1 and 2), of how human collectives are formed (chapter 3) and how governments can manipulate and regulate them in the most profitable ways possible (chapters 4 and 5). By investigating Enlightenment writings on insects, this thesis shows, we can recover part of the rich history of our modern understanding of our own ways of living together.

This thesis examines the Italian version of the Book of John Mandeville and its reception in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Although the Book has been the subject of much critical investigation, the Italian redaction of the text has been largely ignored. Similarly, previous research into the reception of the Book has focused largely on its circulation in northern Europe. This study therefore aims both to bridge a gap in Mandeville studies and to make a valuable contribution to scholarly understanding of the circulation of vernacular literature in the Italian Renaissance. Research has been conducted along two principal lines. A close material analysis of surviving manuscript and printed copies of the Book has allowed the influence of individual actors on the text’s highly mutable content and form to be charted, revealing their specific attitudes and concerns. In addition to this, a broader survey of the Book’s influence on vernacular and Latin literary production in a number of genres has provided further evidence of Mandeville’s cultural impact. Following an Introduction that gives a more detailed analysis of the study’s scope, methodology and structure, Chapter 1 offers a broad overview of the Italian text and its manuscript and print circulation. The four following chapters each address a key theme in the Book’s reception, combining analysis of surviving manuscript and printed copies of the Book with a survey of its cultural impact. A Conclusion draws together these individual themes, offering some general considerations of the Book’s impact on Italian Renaissance culture and the place of the Italian version within the broader Mandeville tradition.

This thesis sets out to analyse the image of the city in the writings of Giovanni Raboni, in both his own poetry and his translations of Baudelaire. Raboni makes frequent references to Manzoni, not as the author of I promessi sposi, but of Storia della colonna infame, showing particular interest in the plague and the Lazzaretto. While Raboni’s writing looked to the future, it was firmly rooted in every aspect of post-war Milan, which he compared to the Milan of the preceding generation. The thesis investigates the theme of cityscape in three different ways, focusing on the cross-fertilisation seen in Raboni the critic, Raboni the poet and Raboni the translator of poetry. It explores Raboni’s poetry and the evolution of the cityscape, drawing on the interaction of translation and urban studies and approaching the poetry through the lens of Russian formalism. Chapter 1 provides the context for a detailed analysis establishing Raboni as a Milanese poet and highlighting the importance of the urban setting and architecture through the framework of critics including Benjamin, Certeau, and Augé. Chapter 2 looks at the motif of walking through Porta Venezia, Raboni’s favourite area of Milan, closely analysing the use of space and time in his poèmes en prose ‘Piccola passeggiata trionfale’ and ‘Nell’ora, ormai, della cenere’ and drawing on insights provided by two of his essays. Chapter 3, through a close reading of a selection of Raboni’s poems, investigates the urban space in domestic and public areas including such typical elements of cityscape as houses, streets, cinemas, and squares. Finally, Chapter 4 considers Raboni’s work as a translator of Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal and looks closely at the interaction between Raboni the poet and Raboni the translator. Thus, the thesis shifts from a focus on Raboni’s own city of Milan to Baudelaire’s city, Paris.

The Swedish school system rests on the same democratic values as the Swedish society. It is also known that the school shall reflect the society and mediate the same values to the student. This means that Swedish schools has an important mission to mediate democratic values through the education. The aim of this study was to analyse if the literary work Niceville by Kathryn Stockett can be discussed in relation to this democratic mission, and if the book’s theme and motifs can be used in the Swedish education to mediate democratic values. Two questions were developed to answer the aim of the study: • What theme and motifs does the literary work Niceville contain and how do they relate to the school’s mission to mediate democratic values? • What didactic inputs are suitable in the aim to, through the literary work, mediate the democratic values to the students? The method I used to answer these questions was close reading. This means that I did a close reading of the literary work to analyse what theme and motifs it contained. I also used the theory intersectional to more easily find out the theme and motifs. My results show that the literary work Niceville can be used in Swedish education to mediate the democratic values of Swedish society. The work gives the student examples of how nondemocratic values affect individuals in a negative way which indicate that democratic values are preferable. Earlier studies show that reading fiction also trains the human in democratic thinking which means that it trains the reader to empathize and understand other people. This however needs to be problematized since teachers serve a significant role in making sure that every student understand the book´s message by its theme and motif. Also, the students motivation can affect the aim to mediate democratic values.

This essay is a comparative analysis of stylistics in Iron Maiden’s adaptation of Samuel T. Coleridge’s Rime of the ancient mariner. The essay employs the following concepts: the poetic function of language, the referential function of language, parallelism, and meter to investigate stylistic differences and conformity between the two texts. Furthermore, the essay also discusses how the stylistic elements affect meaning, especially regarding the theme of sin and redemption, and the extent to which the meaning of Iron Maiden’s text conforms to, differs from, or is informed by Coleridge’s poem.

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