Bibliography: leaves 560-582 / ixx [i.e. xix] 582 leaves : music ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dept. of Music, University of Adelaide, 1987

My thesis examines Thomas Hobbes's attempt to develop a mathematical account of nature. I argue that Hobbes's conception of how we should think quantitatively about the world was deeply indebted to the ideas of his ancient and medieval predecessors. These ideas were often amenable to Hobbes's vision of a demonstrative, geometrically-based science. However, he was forced to adapt the ancient and medieval models to the demands of his own thoroughgoing materialism. This hybrid resulted in a distinctive, if only partially successful, approach to the problems of the new mechanical philosophy.

The judicial system of seventeenth-century France is often qualified as vitiated and inefficient. Actually, truth and equity are virtually absent from the court. In these conditions, why would one appeal to institutional justice? Montpellier notables use the judicial system to exert pressure on a debtor, to redress the internal familial order, to sidestep customary practices, to take revenge, to cause harm. Indeed, the question of law is rarely something other than a pretext, and it is precisely because it is vitiated that the judicial system can be used in that way. The analysis of the procedural practices and of the judicial system as they are---instead of as they should be---allows us to penetrate the fascinating universe of social, familial and financial practices. Furthermore, the emphasis on the civil procedures reveals an original perspective which goes beyond the points of view of notarial and criminal archives usually preferred by historiography. The petty Montpellier notables studied here are steering a delicate course between customs, laws and procedures. Far from suffering the imperfections of the judicial system, they are adopting them, appropriating and using them as means of meeting their own objectives. The recourse to justice is similar to a game of chess: the judicial system is the chessboard, its defects are the chess pieces and the jousts, always fought inside the same frameworks and with the same weapons, are opposing various opponents displaying different strategies.

This dissertation focuses on the emergence of self-awareness in women of the early 17th century as exemplified by Sibylle Schwarz (1621-1638), a native of Greifswald in North Germany. It analyses the feminist components of her work. Her poetic production, preserved in the anthology Deutsche Poetische Gedichte (1650), consists of 105 poems, four prose introductions and three letters. It is the output of a writer whose short life of 17 years plays itself out against the backdrop of a century shattered by the Thirty Years' War, religious strife, the plague, oppression and social unrest. Topics such as friendship, love, female self-awareness, or the contrasting realities of women and men are the themes through which she explores an androcentric society and establishes herself as an advocate for the acceptance of women as full members of society. With her motto Du solst mich doch nicht unterdrucken ("You shall not suppress me") she insists on her equality as a woman and a writer. The defiance of her "natural" role as a woman expresses itself ambivalently, through observing social conventions while at the same time striving to undermine them. Sibylle Schwarz, unlike any other German bourgeois woman author between 1550 and 1650, has written poetry engaging in social criticism that corroborates and at the same time transcends the inferior status of women within a patriarchal structure. This unique nature of her writings makes them an important milestone in the emergence of female intellectual autonomy. The first two of six major sections state the goals of my research, a survey of the materials used and the methodology to be followed. Part III sets the context of a society in which women were limited to a narrow range of roles. In Part IV the conditions in which women lived, worked, and were brought up, from the institutionalised lack of educational opportunity to social, conventional and legal barriers to their full participation in society are being explored. Part V gives an extensive analysis of Sibylle Schwarz's work, relating it to her personal situation and to the themes already developed, with an accounting of her thoughts and ideas about her culture, her society and her gender. Part VI summarises the work and states its conclusions.

Chapter I is a discussion aimed at providing the reader with a basic understanding of the complex system of social classification that was in a place in ancien regime France for centuries. Chapter II outlines the development of a royal system of justice prior to our period and the royal courts, whose form and hierarchy were the result of years of reform. These chapters represent the judical and social extremes that procedure linked. Chapter III is a thorough and complete discussion of the entire possible process in France during our period. This chapter clearly outlines the order of phases that the French courts followed in a typical prosecution and takes into account that these procedures were the result of years of practice and experience. These three chapters are tied together with a review of the major concepts up to that point and presents a transition from France to a series of chapters devoted to understanding the situation in Massachusetts Bay Colongy. Chapter V offers chronological approach to the development of both laws and courts in the colony. Chapter VI consists of discussion of the procedures used in the colonial courts, and attempts to identify the major English and Puritan influences within the colonial process as they arise. Again, these three chapters are tied together with a review of the major conclusions to be derived from the chapters on Massachusetts. This study concludes with Chapter VII, which offers the reader the comparative analysis of the two systems of procedure. This comparative chapter is structured to reflect the three basic functions we ascribed to criminal procedure at the outset of this discussion. / 268 leaves ; 28 cm.

This study looks broadly at the composition of the Scottish peerage in James VI's reign, and specifically at a subset, of the Scottish aristocracy who bore the titles of viscount or better between the years 1587 and 1625. Eighty-five subjects are identified, and classified according to the age of their titles, their religious leanings and the geographical regions from which their titles and powers were drawn, to form anumber of distinct groups---the established nobility, new peers, Protestants, Catholics (both overt and conforming), peers from the highlands and isles, peers from central Scotland, and peers from the Anglo-Scottish border region. / A social analysis of the total body of these peers and its sub-groupings is undertaken, and focuses on patterns associated with their birth, descent, education, succession, marriage, fertility and death. Where appropriate, the results are compared with data available from studies of the contemporary English aristocracy. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This thesis is an analysis of medical and popular views toward female sexuality in late seventeenth century England (1660-1696), based on the study of learned vernacular medical texts, personal sources and popular literature. In that period, women's subordinate social status to men was largely determined by their 'inferior' biology; "female illnesses" were considered to be a product of women's innate physiological 'weakness' as defined by humoral medical theory, and their reproductive organs were linked to their less restrained (than men's) sexual desires. / This research examines those medical and social ideas that defined the female sex in late seventeenth century England, in conjunction with women's own records of their experiences; it is argued that while their physiology was used to justify their inferior social status, women's degree of self-autonomy in early modern England--particularly in the area of pregnancy and childbirth--was probably far greater than would be thought from an examination of the contemporary printed sources. This thesis also demonstrates how medical and social attitudes toward women mutually reinforced the secondary position of women in that society.

No description available.

One of the central theoretical tenets of linear perspective is that it is based upon the idea of a monocular observer. Our lived perception, also referred to in the Renaissance as perspectiva naturalis, is always rooted in binocular vision, however, the guidelines for perspectiva artificialis often imply a single peeping eye as a starting point. In the early modern period, a number of rare art forms and instruments follow the prescriptive character of linear perspective to ludic ends. By focusing on this special class of what I would call 'monocular art forms', I will analyse the extent to which the perspectival method has been successfully applied in material form beyond the classic two-dimensional paintings. This special class of objects include: anamorphosis, peep-boxes, catoptrics, dioptric perspective tubes, and perspective instruments. It is my intention to draw attention to the different ways traditional perspectival paintings, exceptional cases such as perspective boxes and anamorphoses, and optical devices were encountered in the early modern period. In this thesis I will be examining the specific sites of each case study in depth so as to describe the various contexts - aristocratic, intellectual, religious - in which these items circulated. In Chapter 1 I illustrate a special class of perspective and anamorphic designs that confined their illusions to a peepshow. Chapter 2 examines one of the most consummate applications of the monocular principle of perspective: seventeenth-century Dutch perspective boxes. In Chapter 3, monocular catoptric designs are studied in light of the vogue for mirror cabinets in the seventeenth century. Chapter 4 examines the innovative techniques of drawing machines and their collection in early modern courts through close study of the 'perspectograph'.

No description available.