The view of black Africans that emerges from Renaissance drama is shaped entirely by stereotypes, and is overwhelmingly negative. There is a general reluctance in the scholarly community to challenge the stereotype as a major organising principle in shaping negative images of African dramatic characters. My argument is that the stereotype is a powerful tool in the hands of self-interested parties, and must be recognised as capable of maiming and distorting the experiences of those it sets out to construct, as the one-sided, eurocentric representations of African characters in Renaissance drama reveal. Chapter One reviews the history of European attitudes to black skin colour, focusing briefly on England's public displays of other nations, cultures, and people, on the visual art tradition, and mainly on English Renaissance travel literature which, I believe, was the largest single influence on dramatists' imaginations. The chapter establishes that English anti-black polemics and the stereotyping of black Africans was heightened during the Renaissance, mainly because constructions of otherness were a large part of England's national self-fashioning. Chapter Two explores traditional meanings of blackness as well as the aesthetic and moral aspects of otherness, and attempts to show how the stereotypical assumptions and value judgments encoded in the rhetoric of blackness are allegorically manipulated to suit the needs of Christian England while Africa suffers erasure. Chapters Three and Four foreground the idea that the physical presence of black African characters on the stage becomes a sign of an entire set of actual and imagined differences by which England constructs her view of Africans as prime, visible signifiers of cultural difference. Chapter Four goes a step further and looks at those dramatic texts in which seemingly fixed categories are revealed as unstable, especially when overlaps in race, gender, and social rank come into play. The representation of black African characters on the English Renaissance stage thus reveals a definite correlation between the dominant culture's fears and anxieties over the perceived threat posed by the black African other, its insistence on a self-representation as a distinctly superior culture, and its subsequent and systematic production of Africa and Africans as indelibly other. For the dominant culture to be able to define, produce, and maintain itself as superior, it must, of necessity, strive to keep the other in a position of chronic inferiority, hence the persistent appeal to stereotypes.

One of the most salient characteristics of Cervantes's literary production is his fascination, one might even say his obsession, with the human capacity for transformation. Nearly all of his plays, novellas, and novels feature characters that adopt alternative identities and disguise or dissimulate their true, original selves. The Novelas ejemplares (1613) encompass a veritable cornucopia of characters that pass themselves off as another. There are women who pass as men, Christians as Turks, Catholics as Protestants, and noblemen as gypsies, among many others. Identity, or at least its appearance, is represented as fluid and malleable. By creatively controlling the signs that they project in public, the characters of the novellas demonstrate a remarkable ability to adapt to innumerable contingencies. Similarly, subjects of the Spanish empire, driven particularly by ethno-religious and socio-economic motives, utilized craft and guile to conceal their identity or simulate another. On a theoretical level, both in Spain and throughout Europe, intellectuals explored the human capacity for transformation, and there emerged a new sense of interiority. As Stephen Greenblatt observes, in the Renaissance, "there appears to be an increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process" (2). In this study I examine the abundance of deceit and disguise in Cervantes's collection of twelve novellas within the work's sociohistorical context. Specifically, I analyze how the novellas are embedded in two particular threads of cultural discourse on human identity: Spanish social history and early modern European intellectual history. / text

This Master’s Thesis investigates the 1637-39 Teixeira’s expedition and how it transformed the Amazon region at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It assumes that this expedition was a key historical event to challenge the balance of power in the area. It shows through historical documents how ethno-geographic knowledge was an essential tool in the discursive construction of the Amazon Natives, undermining their cultural landscapes and initiating the process by which geographical knowledge enabled European territorial power. Foucault’s framework to approach and expound on the relationship between knowledge and power is the theoretical system of analysis that helps to understand the meaning embedded in the historical documents under scrutiny. / text

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In the summer of 1611, Sir George Carew, the Irish Elizabethan military commander and former president of Munster, was commissioned by the king and his royal council in London to conduct an enquiry into all aspects of the Castle administration. Included in that wide mandate was an investigation into the existing practices and procedures of the Irish exchequer and judiciary, the two most important divisions of the Dublin government. This thesis is concerned with these two aspects of the commission of Sir George Carew. Since it is requisite for an understanding of the terms of reference handed to Sir George Carew in 1611, the study includes an analysis of the exchequer and judiciary between 1603 and 1611. In addition, there is an examination of the fiscal and judicial reforms that the king and his councillors commanded Irish officials to implement between 1613 and 1616. As is shown, these reformist measures were a direct outgrowth of recommendations submitted by Sir George Carew to the English privy council following the conclusion of his commission in 1611.

This dissertation explores the interaction between literati and various social forces in east China in the mid-seventeenth century by focusing on their military performance. Based on a wide range of sources, the study focuses on about twenty literati, most of whom have never been previously researched from a military history perspective. It examines the diversity and complexity of Chinese literati as they pursued power over and within local society, paying special attention to the interrelation between them (literati and society). It argues that Chinese literati in this time period had much less aptitude in changing China than has been previously thought. Both individual and group case studies show that they mainly focused on the realization of an ideal goal, but were unwilling or ill-equipped to adapt themselves to changing conditions as well as environments. This study also indicates that the local military forces as well as ordinary peasants generally played a more crucial role than the literati; the latter's superior position could only be realized in times of peace. That civil and military officials affected each other in fact is an expression of a larger relationship between the central government and its own military forces or with certain local forces. Finally, this study concludes that Chinese literati as a whole had no idea how to integrate and lead the other social forces to reach an ideal goal in that specific time period.

Nicolas Poussin's two Self-Portraits, painted in 1649 and 1650, have been the subject of countless art-historical investigations, but remain only incompletely understood. This study attempts to draw the meanings of the self-images into clearer focus. To this end, the relationships between Poussin and the eventual recipients of the two portraits, Jean Pointel and Paul Freart, Sieur de Chantelou, are examined more probingly and are positioned centrally in the analysis of the works. A careful exploration of the web of associations among the three men reveals that Poussin's caution in dealing with Chantelou, his often jealous and emotional patron, was a factor of great consequence to the development of the Self-Portraits. Bearing this in mind, both Poussin's letters and the scholarly accounts which accept his written statements at face value, may be approached with a more critical eye. This practice, in turn, leads to a broadened range of possibilities for the interpretation of the two Self-Portraits, and to a greater appreciation of the extent to which Poussin's creations were affected by human dynamics.

The philosophical and scientific teaching in the universities of 17th century Scotland has frequently been dismissed as Aristotelian and reactionary. However, there must surely have been some development during the century for the universities to have achieved as much as they did in the 18th century. It is the purpose of this study to investigate the contant of the courses in philosophy and science given at the Scottish Universities in the 17th century with a view to answering the following quesions: Was Aristotle really taught so exclusively throughout the century? Or, given that the universities did concentrate on Aristotle to a great extent, was this Aristotleianism so monolithic and unifrom as is sometimes made out? Did Scottish university teachers make any acknowledgement of the philosophical and scientific revolutions which were taking place in the 17th century? How were the universities affected by the political and religeous struggles of the century? Was the teaching the same at Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and St. Andrews, or were some of the universities in advance of the others? The main sources for our knowledge of 17th century Scottish university teaching are student lecture notes or dictates and the graduate theses produced by the masters or regents for the students to defend at the annual laureation ceremony. the dictates and theses are supplemented by library lists, university and faculty minutes, and the reports of the numerous commissions appointed by church and state to visit the universities during the 17th century, together with papers relating to these commissions. Throughout the century the curriculum at all universities remained the same in outline, viz. 1st year: Greek; 2nd years: Logic/ metaphysics; 3rd year: Metaphysics/ Ethics; 4th year: physics. Until the 1660s the teaching in the 2nd, 3rd and fourth years consisted of commentaries on Aristotle, but the authorities cited by the regents show that they were acquainted with more 'modern' Aristotalians, e.g. Zabarella and the Coimbra commentators. Frequently the works of such authors were praised, and the library lists show that they were bought extensively. From the 1660s onwards Cartesianism entered the courses. At first the regents distrusted this new philosophy, and indeed as long as Descartes was taught in the Scottish Universities, many of the regents and visiting commissioners feared the atheistic implications of Cartesian mechanism. However, descartes was accorded warm praise in the theses and dictates for Edinburgh, St. Andrews and Aberdeen during the 1670s and 1680s. by the 1690s the enthusiasm for Descartes was beginning to decline, although some of the regents continued to teach Cartesianism into the 18th century. In Logic and Metaphysics the teaching of Locke was often adopted, and in Physics Newtonian ideas were expounded. The teaching was perhaps most conservative in Logic, where Aristotelian ideas continued to be taught by the scholastic method of debate until the beginning of the 18th century. Despite the praises of Descartes's method, and later Locke, the scheme for Logic teaching was probably based on scholastic textbooks such as those of Keckermann and Burgersdijk. In Metaphysics too scolasticism tended to predominate, but because of Scotland's religeous allegiance there are numerous quotations from and references to the works of Protestant theologians. Once commentaries on Aristotle ceased, metaphysics was divided into Metaphysics proper and Pneumatology, the two subjects frequently being separated and taught in different years of the course. the Scottis regents saw Ethics as a strictly practical science, aimed at teaching their students how to live as godly citizens. Accordingly in their Ethics teaching they tended to cite authorities less frequently than in their teaching of other subjects; instead they gave rules of conduct for their students. After the 1660s many of the regents based their teaching on Henry More, and Descartes's theory of the passions was widely accepted. Discussion of different types of justice and of natural law formed a great part of the Ethics dictates and theses, and Grotius, Cumberland and Puffendorf were all referred to. In Physics the experiments of many contempory or recent scientists were described. Robert Boyle and the Royal Society were universally praised by the regents. the work of English, French and Dutch scientists featured prominently in the lectures from the 1660s onwards, and were bought for the libraries. Cartesian physics and cosmology were taught in the last quarter of the 17th century, but by the beginning of the 18th century many of the regents had gone over to Newtonianism.the politicl and religeous upheavals in 17th century Scotland affected staff appointments in the universities. many of the regents lost their posts in 1638 and during the Civil Wars, at the Restoration, and at the revolutioanry Settlement in 1689. Unorthodoxy in their dictates and theses was frowned on, and sometimes led to dismissal. Various commissioners tried to regulate what was taught in the universities, and in the 1690s a project for a uniform course made considerable headway. however, despite this interference on part of state and church, the universities managed to preserve a fair degree of autonomy, and both their statements in answer to the commission's proposals in the 1690s and the actual content of their dictates and theses show a concern to uphold their academic integrity. The courses in the Scottish universities were sufficiently similar to enable one to talk of 17th century Scottish university education in general terms, but the universities did not always agree amongst themselves, as their comments on each other's contributions to the uniform course show. Edinburgh seems generally to have been the most advanced of the universities in its teaching, Glasgow the least. the conclusion of this survey is that university education in the 17th century was by no means as consistently uninspired as is sometimes proposed. It is true that neither the system of regenting nor the troubled stare of the country in the 17th century were conductive to a high educational standard. Nevertheless, there is some evidence of new ideas in the dictates and theses from 1600 to the 1660s, and after that date many of the regents showed themselves to be conversant with new devlopments in all fields of philosophy. By the beginning of the 18th century the way had been paved for the intellectual achievements of that century in the universities.

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