Durement touchée par la guerre de Cent Ans, la Normandie connaît une telle renaissance à partir de la fin du XVe siècle qu’elle devient le premier gisement fiscal du royaume, ce qui conduit le roi à accroître sa tutelle sur elle au cours du siècle suivant. Cette thèse se compose de deux parties distinctes, d’égale importance. La première offre une synthèse sur les demeures campagnardes de la petite et moyenne noblesse dans ce climat hautement favorable à l’activité architecturale. La seconde analyse de manière approfondie près de 80 ensembles manoriaux, qui constituent la base sur laquelle repose les observations synthétiques de la première partie. Si la méthode adoptée privilégie (au-delà des renseignements archivistiques, lorsqu’ils existent) l’analyse archéologique des bâtiments, elle y associe une approche comparative avec les réalisations nationales, les modèles graphiques et les traités « rustiques » contemporains (Androuet Du Cerceau, Estienne, Liébault), qui proposent souvent des usages déjà répandus. L’enquête ainsi menée permet non seulement de comprendre le fonctionnement, les particularismes et l’évolution des manoirs haut-normands entre 1450 et 1600, mais elle révèle aussi une capacité des architectes œuvrant dans la province à innover, avec l’apparition précoce du plan double en profondeur, du vestibule à l’antique ou encore de la fenêtre à meneau en bois, expérimentations qui, en raison des guerres civiles, ne seront pleinement exploitées qu’au siècle suivant. Après l’étude pionnière sur Le Manoir en Bretagne, 1380-1600 (Inventaire général, Paris, 1993), cette thèse offre un nouveau point de comparaison solide pour d’autres études régionales des « maisons aux champs » de la noblesse française. / Seriously affected by the Hundred Years War, Normandy experienced such a renaissance from the end of the XVth century that it became the major source of revenue for the kingdom, causing the king to tighten its control over it during the following century. This thesis offers a study in two distinct parts of equal importance. The first, a synthesis on the country houses of the small and medium nobility in the context of a period highly favourable to the architectural activity. The second, a deeper analysis of about eighty manorial domains, which constitutes the basis upon which rests the larger interpretative account in the first part. If the method adopted stresses archaeological analysis of the buildings, more than archives often missing, it also uses an approach comparing them with structures in other regions of France and with contemporary rural treatises (Estienne, Liébault) and “maisons pour les champs” models (Androuet Du Cerceau), who often suggest forms already widespread. The enquiry conducted in this manner allows us not only to understand the function, the individuality and the evolution of the manors of upper Normandy between 1450 and 1600, but it reveals also the ability of the architects working in the province to innovate, with the early appearance of the compact plan with double rows of rooms, the vestibule “à l’antique” or the window with a wooden mullion, experiments which, because of the civil wars, would not be fully exploited until the next century. Following the pioneering study on Le Manoir en Bretagne, 1380-1600 (Inventaire général, Paris, 1993), this thesis offers an additional firm bench mark for comparison in future regional studies.

Female characters in early-modern drama, even when following the dictates of conscience, appear inextricably bound to patriarchal expectations. This paradoxical situation is explained by two elements that have affected the Renaissance playwright's depiction of woman as moral agent. First, the playwright's education would have included a traditional body of philosophical opinion regarding female intellectual and moral capacities that would have tried to explain rationally the necessity of woman's second-class status. However, by its nature, this body of information is filled with contradiction. Second, the playwright's education would have also included learning to use the rhetorical trope et utramque partem, that is arguing a position from all sides. Learning to use this trope would place the early-modern dramatist in the position of interrogating the contradictory notions of woman contained in the traditional sources. Six dramas covering over a sixty-year period from the mid-sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries suggest that regardless of the type of work, comedy or tragedy, female characters are shown as adults seeking recognition as autonomous moral beings while living in a culture that works to maintain their dependent status. These works include an early comedy Ralph Roister Doister, a domestic tragedy A Woman Killed With Kindness, a closet drama The Tragedy of Mariam: The Fair Queen of Jewry, two romances, Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, and a tragedy The Duchess of Malfi. What these plays suggest is that throughout early-modern drama, the female character is often depicted as resisting patriarchal demands that are inherently irrational, especially when these demands contradict ethical behavior that the culture ostensibly supports. The Renaissance playwright's depiction of woman as moral agent is encouraging in that even though the female character may not be successful within the parameters of the drama, nevertheless, the fact that her moral dilemma is described in ways that question the validity of patriarchal expectations indicates a certain level of dissatisfaction with the status quo.

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A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1991 / Although the perception of the design of Michelangelo's Last Judgment as dependent upon a basically circular composition around the figure of Christ has generally been observed in the literature, no sailsfactory explanation of this has been presented. In the following hypothesis, a cosmological interpretation of Michelangelo's Last Judgment proposes new sources for the circular design of the fresco around a central Apollonian Sun-Christ. After. an outline of the basic nature of the problem, an examination of earlier examples of the Last Judgment demonstrates the cosmological associations of the traditional iconography of the subject, primarily related to the hierarchical implications! of the 'flat-earth theory,' which places Heaven above and Hell beneath the earth's surface. Close formal analysis of Michelangelo's own version of the Last Judgment, which emphasizes the innovative aspects of its organisation, is then followed by an assessment of various existing interpretations of the work. In then examining the type of Sources which appear likely to have contributed to the final programme of the work, different areas of religious, literary and philosophical material are brought under consideration. In order to resolve the meaning of the fresco's iconography and composition, the influences upon Michelangelo of the Catholic religion and Reform thought, of the writings of Dante, and of Florentine Neoplatonism have been examined in an entirely new way, from a cosmologicalpoint of view, which brings to light their common emphasis on the Sun as a eymbol of the Deity. A new area of potential source material, that of contemporary scientific cosmology, has also been considered. Prevailing knowledge of Copernicus' theory of the Sun-centred universe, hitherto dismissed as a possible direct influence by renowned writers like Charles de Tolnay, on the grounds of chronology, is specifically discussed and found to be securely documented in Vatican circles at the time of the commission. Thus the sources finally proposed for the overall theme of Sun-symbolism and Cosmologyin the fresco are found to 'be dependent upon the common. ground shared between the Catholic Reformation revival of the traditional Christian analogy between the Deity and the Sun, the Neoplatonic cult of Sun-symholism, literary sources in Dante and the scientific theory of heliocentricity, as developed by Copernicus. Against this background of the History of Ideas in the Renaissance period, consideration of art historical methods leads to the suggestion of a newly proposed Biblical source for the fresco and, finally)l discussion of the deductive method of art historical intterpretation suggests the broader implications of the hypothesls, Ii both for the life and work at Michelangelo himself as well as for the/! sixteenth-century 'context of the fresco's creation. / MT2017

The purpose of this study is to suggest the influence of certain characters in eighteen works by English Renaissance authors upon the Byronic Hero, that composite figure which emerges from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the Oriental Tales, the dramas, and some of the shorter poems.

Dans les psautiers liturgiques médiévaux enluminés, une image se distingue du reste des illustrations qui ornent les psaumes. Il s’agit de l’image a priori négative de l’insensé, de l’insipiens, qui refuse Dieu en son coeur. Cette figure contient des noeuds sémantiques et des tensions vives qui se révèlent à travers l’histoire des psaumes et de leurs manuscrits. L’usage pédagogique et didactique des illustrations des psautiers auxquelles se rattache l’insensé permet de saisir le sens moral de cette figure. L’étude comparative menée dans une quinzaine de manuscrit français, visant à placer l’insensé en relation avec les autres images du psautier, révèle que l’insensé est l’antithèse du roi David, une représentation du vice de la folie et de l’orgueil face à la sagesse. Mais au-delà de cet aspect négatif, l’insensé est surtout une figure composite qui condense des caractéristiques ambivalentes, empruntées pour la plupart à des archétypes de la sagesse ou du vice. L’insensé s’approprie ces attributs afin de célébrer, par inversion métaphorique, l’ordre de la Création. L’émergence de la figure du bouffon, dont les spécificités formelles le placent directement en filiation avec l’insensé, annonce un changement dans le discours porté par cette figure, dont le sens, d’abord clérical, tend à devenir profane. Cette nouvelle figure, issue du monde courtois, partage cependant les mêmes facultés d’inversion que l’insensé, bien que son héritage visuel connaît un succès qui transcende les limites temporelles du Moyen-Âge.