Recent histories of cultural encounters in colonial America emphasize how interactions between native Americans and Europeans altered both cultures. In order to facilitate such an investigation, scholars employ ethno history-a multidisciplinary approach that uses methods and sources from anthropology, archeology, and history. While it remains the dominant methodology for studying cultural encounters, others are critical of such studies pointing to the dangers of using European sources in order to understand native American culture. Some literary scholars argue that the only information that historians can gain from European texts and images are representations of the indigenous population. Using cultural encounters between English missionaries and Wampanoag Indians on Martha's Vineyard between 1642 and 1727 as my case study, I combine these seemingly incompatible methodologies to analyze relations in three cultural arenas: religion, gender, and literacy. I argue that through their resistance to English power, the Indians were able to continually adjust to life in their ever-changing new world. Even though their culture changed dramatically during this period, there were also able to resist full acculturation by maintaining a distinct Wampanoag identity. / Department of History

In this study, historically informed performance practice (HIP) is investigated as an approach to the performance or vocal ornamentation, with special emphasis on the operas of George Frideric Handel. The study aims to use information about this approach to performance practice in order to show forth its significant role in the performance of Handel arias. Through musicological viewpoints that have arisen out of the historical performance debate since the late 20th century, the study investigates the development and attributes of the HIP movement in order to identify its essential characteristics. Following this process, the author is able to define the HIP approach subjectively. Once a clearer knowledge of HIP is obtained, its influence on the performance of ornamentation is studied. Because Handel's operas were composed in the Italian style, the Italian vocal method is explored. Historical information is gathered through the use of an aria, embellished by Handel, Affanni del pensier, from his opera Ottone. With this information, the author attempts to freely embellish an aria, Da tempeste if legno infranto, from Handel's opera, Giulio Cesare. This example of the performance style is practised with the historical information in mind, without inhibiting the creativity of the author. / Thesis (M.Mus.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.

In this study, historically informed performance practice (HIP) is investigated as an approach to the performance or vocal ornamentation, with special emphasis on the operas of George Frideric Handel. The study aims to use information about this approach to performance practice in order to show forth its significant role in the performance of Handel arias. Through musicological viewpoints that have arisen out of the historical performance debate since the late 20th century, the study investigates the development and attributes of the HIP movement in order to identify its essential characteristics. Following this process, the author is able to define the HIP approach subjectively. Once a clearer knowledge of HIP is obtained, its influence on the performance of ornamentation is studied. Because Handel's operas were composed in the Italian style, the Italian vocal method is explored. Historical information is gathered through the use of an aria, embellished by Handel, Affanni del pensier, from his opera Ottone. With this information, the author attempts to freely embellish an aria, Da tempeste if legno infranto, from Handel's opera, Giulio Cesare. This example of the performance style is practised with the historical information in mind, without inhibiting the creativity of the author. / Thesis (M.Mus.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.

The present project sets out to discover what the Xingshi yinyuan zhuan ('A Tale of Marriage Destinies that will Bring Society to its Senses'), an anonymous novel of manners from seventeenth-century China, can tell us about life in the world out of which it emerged. Seventeenth-century records depict China on the verge of modernity as a world torn between the traditional agricultural society and the new challenges of urban life, commerce and a money economy. The shifts from conventional norms and values gave rise to concepts of Utopia and anti-utopia: to nostalgia for the lost paradise of the past and to apocalyptic satire on present conditions. Scholars have noted the prominence of utopianism in seventeenthcentury fiction but no detailed study has been undertaken so far. Utopianism is here explored in terms of the indigenous Chinese traditions. The text of the Xingshi yinyuan zhuan is analysed to see how it perceives and reflects the seventeenth century Chinese world. Utopia serves as an analytical construct to recreate a glimpse of society and the moral evaluation of the world through the eyes of a contemporary observer. The body of the thesis analyses three major motifs in the Xingshi yinyuan zhuan: the healers, the elite and the mother. Critical comparison with other contemporary literary and historical sources attempts to place the novel into its context. The visions of Utopia and anti-utopia provide insight into the dreams and nightmares as seventeenth-century Chinese minds may have perceived them, shedding light on the vernacular culture as opposed to the officially recognised and imperially ordained culture of China.

This thesis examines the connections between Calvinism and early modern subjectivity as expressed in the drama produced during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. By looking at a range of theological, medical, popular, legal and polemical writings, the thesis aims to provide a new historical and theoretical reading of Calvinist subjectivity that both develops and departs from previous scholarship in the field. Chapter one examines the critical question of 'authority' in early modern Europe. I trace the various classical and medieval antecedents that reinscribed Christ with political authority during the period, and show how the Reformers' conception of conscience arises out of this movement. In chapter two, I offer a parallel reading of Reformed semiotics in relation to the individual's response to two specific loci of power, the Church and the stage. Chapter three brings the first two chapters together by outlining the development of Calvinist doctrine in early modem England. Chapter four offers a theoretical reading of the early modern 'unconscious' in relation to the construction of England as a Protestant nation state against the threat of Catholicism. In the next four chapters, I show how the stage provided the arena for the exploration of Calvinist subjectivities through readings of four early modern plays. Chapter five deals with Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and in particular the Calvinist conception of Christ interrogated throughout the play. Chapter six looks at The Revenger's Tragedy in relation to the question of masculine lineage and the Name-of-the-(Calvinist)-Father. Finally, in chapters seven and eight, I examine two of William Shakespeare's plays, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. In the first, I demonstrate how the play's concern with witchcraft brings about a parody of providential discourse that is crucial to an understanding of Macbeth's subjectivity. And in the second, I excavate the use of the biblical book of Revelation in Antony and Cleopatra in order to show how an understanding of the text's 'religious' concerns problematises more mainstream readings of the drama.

Artemisia Gentileschi's self-portrait, Allegory of Painting, painted in 1630, has activated a complex discussion of female artistic identity in which performance is tied to concerns with status. This thesis addresses an earlier history of development in allegorical self-portraiture in the work of the sixteenth-century Bolognese artist, Lavinia Fontana, and her seventeenth-century successor, Elisabetta Sirani. I argue that the female artist's negotiation for status was played out in the transformation from a more official mode of self presentation, such as Fontana's Self-Portrait at the Keyboard , to a deliberate performative shift of embodied personification in her self-portrait as Judith with the head of Holofernes and her later self portraits as St. Barbara in the Apparition of the Madonna and Child to the Five Saints. This negotiation of artistic status continues with Sirani's self-portraits in Judith and the Allegory of Painting, and as what I suggest are more ambiguous and ambitious representations of anti-heroines, Cleopatra and Circe. I also discuss the important role that the emerging genre of biography plays in the female artist's struggle for status. The thesis explores the shift in visual conventions in relation to discourses of artistic identity, gender and genre---such as the donnesca mano---that circulated in Renaissance historiography in Italy, and more specifically, in the cultural milieu of Bologna.

The outbreak and continued progress of the Irish rebellion of 1641 played a significant role in the birth and development of domestic newsbooks in England between 1641--49. This thesis examines the manner in which these periodicals reported the insurrection to their readers. As relations between king and parliament deteriorated during the winter of 1641--42, the attention awarded to this uprising by these publications helped to ensure that Ireland became a popular concern. Weekly chronicles of Irish affairs continued unabated after the onset of civil war in England. Amid fears that Ireland could be utilized by Charles I in his struggle with Westminster, pro-parliamentary, and subsequently pro-royalist editors employed the rebellion as part of a propaganda war that accompanied armed conflict in all three Stuart kingdoms. Accordingly, this study suggests that a principle stratagem of the newsbooks was not necessarily to communicate news of Irish matters, but more often than not, their motivation lay in manipulating accounts relating to the rebellion in order to wage political combat in England.

The interpretation of the letter to the Hebrews made a distinctive contribution to doctrinal construction, polemical controversy, and evolution of scripture-critical technique in the early modern period. This was because many of its themes and passages were considered significant to contemporary theological debates. Hebrews therefore offers an important case study for biblical reception history. This thesis adopts a diachronic approach, highlighting the priorities and worries of English Hebrews exegetes between the reigns of Edward VI and Charles II, and asks how these shifts catalysed hermeneutical advances towards higher biblical criticism. Calvin interpreted Hebrews' theology of sacrifice as an antidote to Catholic christology, soteriology, and beliefs about the mass. His thinking was adopted by Elizabethan Protestant readers, popularised through public documents like the Reformation Bibles (chapter one), and analysed in detail by sermons and lectures (chapter two). The reception of Hebrews also illustrates established historiography about the break-down of Reformed hegemony in England. Chapter three demonstrates how the use of the epistle by anti-puritans clashed with the censored Reformed exegete William Jones. Scholars of the seventeenth century have largely ignored how Hebrews' latent supersessionism promoted innovation in Church and society. Chapter four explores the way in which civil war Socinians expounded Christ's priesthood in terms of heavenly expiation, while radicals seized on the epistle's potential to support their vision of politico-religious liberation. Initially the Reformed countered by defending the trinity and Chalcedonian christology, as shown from mid-century exegesis in chapter five. However, two writers realised the underlying challenge of supersessionism and wrote Hebrews commentaries which served as systematic rebuttals. William Gouge deployed typology and Ramism to rebind the two dispensations (chapter six), and John Owen revised received expressions of the covenant in order to permit more development within God's plan while retaining unity of purpose before and after Jesus (chapter seven).

The Stammbueh or album of Johann Stobaeus, MS Sloane 1021 in the British Library, is dated January 8, 1640. Stobaeus, its owner, was Kapellmeister in Konigsberg, East Prussia. The album contains 164 pieces for ten- or eleven-course lute, including dances, secular pieces with generic titles, and settings of chorale tunes. Other major material includes two short sets of lute instructions; instructions for singers of liturgical music; poems by members of the Komgsberger Diahterkre's; and short rhymes and epigrams, many of which concern the lute. The dissertation presents a complete modern edition of the lute music and lute instructions, with commentary; biographical data concerning Stobaeus, with background material about Konigsberg and East Prussia; a selection of poems and epigrams, featuring all poems concerning the lute; and commentary on the literary material, especially the evidence it provides that the manuscript might have been compiled in its entirety around the written date of 1640, even though the music is old-fashioned.

Les récits des voyageurs, réputés pour leur caractère authentique, se présentent comme une source d’information véritable et de première main. Pourtant, l’étude littéraire de ces textes fait apparaître un ensemble de problématiques liées à l’écriture de cet ailleurs lointain mais déjà connu grâce aux témoignages des prédecesseurs antiques et médiévaux. Les interférences des différents genres littéraires réactualisent l’imaginaire d’une Inde des merveilles, pour une littérature à sensations fortes. La première partie interroge la mise en récit théâtralisée d’une des premières tentatives de classification humaine. Le voyageur apparaît alors comme soignant son auto-représentation, par rapport à laquelle se dessine le peuple indien, réparti selon les différentes castes perçues. La seconde partie s’intéresse à l’écriture d’une cartographie imaginaire construite à partir de trois pôles : ces derniers sont incarnés par trois figures prototypiques. Les mises en récit de ces personnages héroïques, en plus de s’inscrire dans une forme réaménagée du récit historique et/ou d’aventures, proposent une écriture du pouvoir en mettant au jour les intrigues de cour et autres histoires secrètes. La troisième partie confronte l’écriture de l’imaginaire avec sa mise en image. Il s’agit ici d’étudier la recréation d’une Inde comprise à travers le prisme chrétien mais aussi en réaction contre celui-ci. Ainsi l’élaboration d’un bestiaire indien, principalement contruit autour de grandes figures du panthéon hindou, donne aux voyageurs l’occasion d’interroger à la fois le rapport des indigènes avec leur religion et avec la nature. / The stories of travellers, known for their authenticity, they are a source of first-hand and authentic information. However, the literary study of these texts reveals a series of problems linked to the writing of this distant elsewhere but already known thanks to the testimonies of the ancient and medieval predecessors. The interferences of the different literary genres update the imaginary of an India of wonders, to offer a literature with strong sensations. The first part questions the theatrical narrative presentation of one of the first attempts at human classification. The traveller then appears as a healer of his self-representation, in contrast to which the Indian people are drawn up, divided according to the different castes perceived. The second part is concerned with the writing of an imaginary cartography constructed from three poles. The latter are embodied by three prototypical figures. The narration of these heroic characters, in addition to being part of a revamped form of the historical narrative and/or adventures, proposes a writing of power by bringing to light court intrigues and other secret stories. The third part confronts the writing of the imaginary with its image setting. The aim here is to study the recreation of an India understood through the Christian prism, but also in reaction to it. Thus, the elaboration of an Indian bestiary, mainly built around large figures of the Hindu pantheon, gives travellers the opportunity to question both the relationship of the natives with their religion and with nature.