Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College Dept. of Classics, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references.

Diss.--Heidelberg. / Bibliography: p. [401]-412.

This thesis examines the relationship between Cypress Gardens and the state of Florida. Specifically, it focuses on how the creator of the park, Dick Pope, created his park after his own idealized vision of the state, and how he then promoted both his park and Florida as one and the same. The growth and later decline of Cypress Gardens follows trends in Florida's growth patterns and shifts in tourism. This study primarily uses a combination of newspaper sources and promotional pictures and other media from the park to explain how Pope attempted to make Cypress Gardens synonymous with Florida. In doing so, this paper presents a history of the park during the Pope family ownership (1935-1985), while also looking at the legacy of the park until 2004.

No description available.

Alexander Pope’s 1743 Dunciad in Four Books and its preceding iterations were a reaction to rapidly shifting eighteenth-century culture. With the rise of Grub Street hack writers and undeserving Poet Laureates like Lewis Theobald and Colley Cibber, Pope saw the fall of British civilization. The mock-epic Dunciad portrays this degradation with the progress of the goddess Dulness through London and her eventual and inevitable return of Britain to darkness and chaos. Many of Pope’s contemporaries are depicted as acolytes of Dulness, with a complex footnote system explicating their inclusion on the basis of their works, political alignments, education, patronage, or even disagreements with Pope. These representations of eighteenth-century print culture are not only comedic on an individual level; rather, they participate in and reinforce Pope’s overarching satire. Within this context, the following study closely examines Pope’s satirical construction of the “dunce-head” with a particular focus on the physical aspects of the skulls of the dunces. The facial features of the dunces, whether dull, twisting, or asinine, are the most obvious visual indicators of Dulness. However, the satire is extended by Pope’s conception of the skull as a physical container, in which the brain fluids of the dunces are no better than lead or brass. The mud, owls, poets’ bays, and other materials perched on the dunces’ crowns also contribute to the parody. Finally, Pope’s establishment of the dunce-head as a passive object, with the few notable exceptions such as its propensity for noise-making, concludes the study. These crucial visual signifiers and their combination with Pope’s complex abstract conception of Dulness shifts the dunce-head from mere caricature and mocked object to a satirical symbol. The Dunciad, a brilliant lampoon of eighteenth century print culture, has an archetypal skull at the center of its satire: the dull, braying, filth-covered dunce-head.

Inaug.-diss.--Leipzig. / Lebenslauf. Bibliography: p. [7]-8.

This thesis handles a number of passages in the poems of Dryden and Pope which show that both poets had been deeply impressed by <i>Paradise Lost</i>. These passages are so various and <i>numerous</i> (this is one of the principal claims to novelty of this thesis) that it is no longer possible to maintain that Milton was in different ways an isolated figure. Secondly, the effect on both poets of these passages they admired in <i>Paradise Lost</i> is such as to justify the claim that in important respects Milton <i>made</i> Dryden and Pope. The principal point of this thesis is to provide evidence suggesting that the implied verdict on <i>Paradise Lost</i> which emerges from Dryden's and Pope's manifold uses of the poem in producing their own poetry, is radically unlike any of the verdicts pronounced on <i>Paradise Lost</i> by the most gifted readers of poetry during the years from Wordsworth's death down to the present. In Dryden and Pope there was a common underlying estimate of the permanent worth of <i>Paradise Lost</i>. This finding entails an examination of the nature and development of the <i>divergent</i> tradition, which is traced back to a point in the middle years of the nineteenth century, and has been maintained without substantial addition or modification until recent times. However, the bulk of the thesis is not polemical. God, Man and Nature are the topics which principally stirred the two poets in their reading of <i>Paradise Lost</i>. Nevertheless, neither Dryden nor Pope separated their feelings for Milton's Nature from their feelings for Milton's Man and Milton's God. The nature found by Dryden and Pope was a nature crowned by human nature, but was invisible until they were confronted by the intermingling and interpenetration of the human and the divine. Common to Dryden and Pope was the conviction that <i>Paradise Lost</i> was a unique creation and unique above all because these three elements were so interrelated, and one could never be isolated without involving all the others. The whole question of what constitutes evidence of Dryden's and Pope's contact with <i>Paradise Lost</i> is examined in a separate appendix. Further appendices include lists of all the instances known to me.

No description available.

The life of Pope Alexander VI has been the object of controversy for centuries. He has often been portrayed in terms of moral extremes. Those historians who have been critical of his methods and motives have depicted the Borgia pope as evil incarnate. For them, Alexander VI was the ultimate symbol of papal corruption. Those historians sympathetic with the church have claimed that Alexander was a slandered and misunderstood figure. In reality, Alexander VI could most accurately be described as temporal prince so typical of the Renaissance. In many respects, he was no better or worse than any other pontiff of his age. Of all the so-called secular popes, Alexander VI has been singled out as a figure of exceptional immorality and corruptibility. Unlike some orthodox Roman catholic authors determined to completely whitewash the pontificate Alexander VI and the Renaissance papacy, my aim is to engage in an impartial critique of the existing evidence. We will see that Alexander VI was a typical pope of the Renaissance, obsessed with temporal concerns, sometimes at the expense of his duties as head of the Roman catholic Church. He was also a man completely devoted to the advancement of his family, making sure that every member of the House of Borgia was achieved the highest level of power and influence. In spite of the justified charges of nepotism, many historians have repeated many of the false tales regarding Alexander's personal character. These will be shown to based on little more than unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.