This dissertation is a biographical and critical study of Dr. Mark Akenside, an important but often overlooked eighteenth century author and editor. The discussion is limited to Akenside's literary career and those details of his life which help a reader understand his poetry and prose. Akenside's writings on medical subjects are excluded, but every effort has been made to update and improve upon Charles Houpt's Mark Akenside (1944), which, until this time, was the most complete and authoritative work on this paradoxical poet-physician.The study begins with a brief biography. Following an account of Akenside's birth and education is a discussion of his relationship with Jeremiah Dyson, his truest friend and greatest benefactor. Some notice of Akenside's successes and failures as a physician is given, and anecdotes which reveal the contradictions in his personality are presented.The argument that Akenside's life and work are paradoxical continues as the second chapter focuses on a consideration of scholarly assessments of Akenside. The study refers to critical opinions expressed in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. A wide difference of opinion about the merits of Akenside is noticed in each century, and the justification for the present study becomes clear as one sees the need to re-evaluate all the primary and secondary sources.A full chapter is devoted to the study of Akenside's contributions to the Gentlemen's Magazine. Compiling credits from Houpt and Pailler, the chapter theorizes that as many as twenty poems in Cave's magazine may be assigned to Akenside's canon. The relative merit of the poems is considered, and copious quotations from them are included.Akenside's work with The Museum is the subject of the next chapter. In The Museum Akenside reveals his talents as an essayist and editor. The chapter discusses four prose essays credited to Akenside, providing observations on their strengths and weaknesses.Chapter five continues the close analysis of Akenside's literary pieces. The poems on Curio, the inscriptions, and "Hymn to the Naiads" are labeled as poems of special notice, not because they are works which earn Akenside great fame, but because they embody characteristics which reappear in his most famous works.A separate chapter is devoted to an analysis of the odes. In addition to providing a close reading of each ode, the chapter calls for recognition of Akenside as an influential lyrical poet. Akenside's correction of Cowley's mistaken imitations of Pindar should earn him the credit often assigned to Gray and Collins.The final chapter treats Akenside's most important work: The Pleasures of Imagination. This chapter analyzes the doctor's theory of psychology by giving a close reading of his description of the powers of the imagination. By using such powers, one discovers pleasures, and Akenside's catalog of the primary and secondary pleasures is discussed. Finally, the chapter considers the reasons for Akenside's preference for poetry rather than prose. The didactic purpose of the poem calls for literature which elevates the mind and the spirit, and poetry is best suited for such a purpose.In forming a final evaluation of Akenside, the dissertation makes no extravagant claims. Akenside is a minor literary figure, but his innovations in lyrical poetry and his successes in blank verse make him significant. Of interest to any reader are the paradoxical qualities of his life and work. Like Janus, Akenside seemingly faces both sides of all issues, and each reader must decide which face reveals the true personality of the doctor.

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Vincenzo Cuoco was one of the first political realists of Italy. Living at Naples at the arrival of the French Army, he became accidently involved with the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799. Although he was a declared Xenophobe and a misogallic he was also an ardent patriot trying to respect the existing political order. Informed of the advance of the reactionary army toward Naples he had the occasion to foil a coup to overthrow the government of the young Republic, for which the fugitive Bourbon King placed him on the list of revolutionaries to be arrested. With the fall of the Republic in June 1799, he was arrested and sentenced to exile, the first period of which he spent at Marselles. With the victory of Marengo in 1800, he followed the Italian exiles to Milan. There, after a brief period of hardship, he published his Saggio on the Revolution of Naples and with it gained fame and the recognition of the Republican government. His fame as a political writer did not derive from his artistic ability, but from his shrewd analysis of people and governments. His mind had been formed at Naples under the influence of the French Enlightenment, but as an admirer of Machievelli and a student of Vico, he retained a detached aversion for transalpine rationalism. So strong was his sense of Italianism that while the Parthenopean was still in power he dared to criticize its democratic government as too French and, therefore, detached from Italian needs. This criticism is found in six letters (Frammenti) which he wrote to his friend V. Russo and included in an appendix to his major essay. In the Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione napoletana del '99 he reviwed "from memory" the circumstances surrounding the Revolution. He gave an objective account of the socio-economic conditions of the Neapolitan Kingdom, the political obtuseness of the Monarchy and the events of the Revolutionise analyzed in great detail the failure of the Republican government which he attributed mainly to its alienation from the people. This want of popular spirit for which he called the Revolution "passive" had doomed the Republic from its inception. The work contained,also, pertinent remarks on legislation, economics,and customs. At Milan (1800-1806) he edited the official newspaper, the Giornale Italiano, composed a brief work on statistics and wrote an epistolary novel, Platone in Italia, (1804-6). In this last work he describes an imaginary voyage of Plato through Southern Italy, presenting Vico's Etruscan thesis of an Italic culture preceding that of the Greeks. His aim, which became almost an obsession, was to instill in his countrymen a renewed pride in the Italian past. In 1806, with the return of the French to Naples he ended his exile and was appointed by the new government to several important posts. His duties were many and varied, ranging from the drafting of economic reforms to framing a new system of education, from the presidency of Molise to the directorship of the Royal Treasury. The fall of Napoleon in 1815 ended his active life. A mental disorder,already foreshadowed earlier, developed into lunacy. He lived on in a state of apathy, and died on December fourteenth 1823,without knowing how much he had contributed to the rising tide of national feeling throughout Italy. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Ding Hongwei. / "October 1999." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [215]-225). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

Diss.--Phil.-Fak.--Bonn--Friedrich-Wilhelms-Univ., 1999. / Bibliogr. p. 421-430. Index.

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James Hogg (1770-1835) was highly regarded as a writer during his lifetime, but after his death his reputation declined. During the nineteenth century Hogg's works were widely available in editions based on collections published shortly after his death by Blackie & Son of Glasgow. These editions were sadly inadequate, in particular with regard to Hogg's prose. They completely omitted several works of great merit for example, The Three Perils of Woman; and they printed thoroughly corrupt texts of a number of Hogg's major works - for example The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. In recent years, more reliable editions of a number of Hogg's works have been published. This has encouraged a revival of interest in Hogg, and his reputation has increased substantially. A just estimate of the full range and depth of Hogg's achievement will only become possible, however, once the many remaining textual and bibliographical problems have been solved. The present thesis seeks to make a contribution to the completion of this task by providing a detailed examination of the textual problems presented by a number of Hogg's more important prose works; and by providing an annotated listing of all the surviving texts of Hogg's prose which are of interest to an editor.

The subject of this dissertation is the conception of the counterpoint by Antonín Rejcha. Rejcha was working on his conception systematically all of his life and he defined it in his two treatises: Ueber das neue Fugensystem and in several parts of Traité de haute composition musicale. In this dissertation, i'm focusing on the second treatise. Besides of detailed commentary of Rejcha's thoughts, i'm trying to put them in the context of his predecessors, contemporaries and succesors, by which i'm reflecting importance of Rejcha's ideas in the field of counterpoint.