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Luca Marenzio has long been acknowledged as one of the greatest masters of the Italian madrigal, yet no collected edition of his works exists: in particular relatively few of the six-voiced madrigals are available in published form, and criticism has tended to concentrate on the five-voiced works. This thesis presents an Edition with Commentary of the six-voiced madrigals published in six books between 1581 and 1595. Two polychoral madrigals and a madrigal by Antonio Bicci also found in those books are included in an Appendix, together with two furtner madrigals included by Phalèse in his 1594 edition of Books I-V, which proved a valuable collative source. The Commentary presents a stylistic study of the madrigals in the Edition and a critical survey of their place in Marenzio's output, together with an editorial commentary and extensive bibliographical material. Following an outline of the madrigal's chief characteristics, Chapter One presents a biographical and critical account of Marenzio's work. Each book of madrigals is considered individually and in relation to his stylistic development. Finally the chapter treats briefly of his influence, with contemporary and historical comment. A stylistic analysis of the music in this Edition follows, considering particularly the relationship between music and text, texture, form, tonality and chromaticism. The poets, forms and principal sources of the texts are then considered. Chapter Four discusses the Edition - sources, notation, tempo, pitch and musica ficta - and concludes with a note on performance. Two Critical Commentaries deal respectively with music and text, the latter providing a comparison between musical and literary versions and listing poets (some newly discovered) and literary sources. The Bibliography lists all published appearances of the six-voiced madrigals and provides a complete reference for the literary sources consulted. The complete texts of the madrigals are given in an Appendix.

This thesis is an early modern urban study that focuses both on national trends and events but also acknowledges the distinctive nature of the individual town. It takes a holistic approach to economic, administrative and socio-cultural changes and developments in a small but significant Berkshire town. The years after the dissolution of Abingdon abbey in 1538 were a critical time of losses, problems and opportunities for Abingdon. In the light of the town's successful development later in the century how serious were the challenges that it faced and what factors contributed to its survival? After a historiographical introduction and discussion of sources, two chapters investigate the town's medieval development under monastic lordship. The central chapters explore different aspects of change in Abingdon during the reformation period. In practical administrative terms the town's response was opportunistic and positive, due to a happy convergence of government policy and the continuity of local elite leadership. Economic and social strength and diversity gave stability, and a detailed rental survey demonstrates how the acquisition of public and private property benefited the town's elite. However, cultural and religious changes had some ill effects. Chapters 8 and 9 discuss Abingdon's successful administrative, economic and social development under the new institutions of the borough and Christ's Hospital established in the 1550s. Experienced leading men were supported by a thriving middling group of tradesmen. A brief discussion about the relationship between civic culture, civil discipline and puritanism later in the 1500s follows. The thesis concludes that Abingdon's resilience and survival was based on its diversified economic development and on social and cultural continuities. Abingdon's richly documented experience of reformation change demonstrates the need for continuing research into individual towns and offers an important contribution to our understanding of the age of reformation in English urban history.

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This thesis explores the shifting targets of evil in English Reformation allegory during particularly turbulent social and religious changes, between 1534 and 1575, when the notion of evil was used as a polemical weapon by authors with a progressive reformist agenda. I examine how the concept of evil, as delineated by the philosophy of ‘moral absolutism', and its associated theological theories, although remained static (good and evil are defined in a diametrically opposed construct, and determined by a deity), the nature of evil (whether evil is something we all have within us or is an external force) changed from a pre-Reformation construct to a Reformation configuration, and the targets of that which was considered evil shifted thereafter. I employ a historicist and intertextual approach, where meaning does not reside in the text. Instead, meaning is produced by my own reading in relation both to each text under scruitiny and to the network of texts invoked in the reading process, which is conducted within the context of each of these texts' social, political, theological and cultural history. I draw on biographical, political, and theological accounts, alongside literary texts and analysis, focusing on five specific case studies from 1515 to 1575. Plays by John Skelton, John Bale, Nicolas Udall, Lewis Wager and prose by William Baldwin are analysed in conjunction with contemporary literary works and tracts, which include those by William Tyndale, Bernadino Ochino, John Frith, Robert Crowley, Edmund Dudley, Thomas More, John Knox and Anthony Gilby. I examine texts that have received considerable scholarly attention, with the aim of focusing on their polemical targeting of individuals, groups and institutions via allegorical evil characterisation. I argue that scholarship has neglected to engage with a crucial facet of the texts under scrutiny: one that can provide important additional insights into Reformation allegory, and the particularly fractious and contested instances of Tudor history that produced them.

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