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The present study constitutes one of the first attempts to establish the extent to which Russian military thought became westernized by the end of the eighteenth century. The task is an important one in light of Soviet and Russian scholarship that maintains that Russia developed a unique, different, and, some argue, superior way of war to the West. This work argues that Russian military thought was greatly influenced by the ‘military enlightenment’ of Europe, and that the ideas proposed by Russia’s foremost military theoreticians were not as novel as previously claimed. Therefore, the final intellectual product was more a continuation of, rather than a break with, Western practices and traditions of warfare. In this respect, the underlying theme of this thesis clashes with traditional Russian national military historical scholarship. The second major theme of this study is to challenge the pervasive but flawed and often simplified interpretation of the Russian army and its soldiers as undisciplined and uneducated barbarians. Contrary to these misleading views, the writings of Russian theorists bring to light the concerns about discipline and education for the officers, personal hygiene and hospital care for the soldiers and Russian awareness of complex strategic theoretical issues. The humanitarianism and sophistication of early-modern Russian military thought thus becomes abundantly clear. The scope of this work is inescapably restrictive, and the period that it examines, roughly from 1757 to 1800, has been consciously chosen to reflect the ideas of Russia’s two most important and influential military statesmen: Peter Rumyantsev and Alexander Suvorov.

During the creation or invention of literary canon some texts are excluded with respect to the aims of the historians. This thesis analyses the process of exclusion in a historical context and tries to show how those texts are related to literary canon or socalled traditional-classical literature by means of intertextuality. It focuses on the burlesque pieces of literature of the 18th century and how they are composed with regard to the genres and forms they are transforming.

This thesis examines the everyday resistance, and its interaction with cultural hybridity, of the Saami population in the administrative unit of Torne lappmark during the period 1639–1732. To do this, the thesis uses theoretical concept of everday resistance as it has been described by JamesC. Scott and the theories of cultural hybridity as they have been described by Peter Burke. Primary source material used in this thesis consists of the court records from Torne lappmark, specifically from the courts at Jukkasjärvi and Enontekis.The results of this thesis present a picture of the everyday resistance in early modern Torne lappmark. The states control was most prominent at the annual markets and court proceedings. The everyday resistance of the Saamis became more subtle when the supervision by the Swedish state became more significant, for example by cutting off pieces from the reindeer hides that they sold or taxed with. Further away from the courts the Saamis could use more drastic options, for example fleeing to Norway. The Swedish state did not want to implement hard punishments on the Saamis because the mining operations in the lappmarks were dependent on Saamis and reindeers to carry ore, wood and food in order to keep the mines operational. This is used by the Saamis as an argument against material domination. The insults and rumours concerning state officials that can be found in the source material often concern abuse of power. The lack of control outside the yearly court proceedings also led to harassments of state and church officials.The Swedish state had political reasons to present the Saamis as chris- tian subjects while trying to exterminate the Saami religion. The Saamis therefore learned a sufficient amount of christianity to make interaction with the state easier and to use as a tool in court proceedings to avoid punishment. This normalised and legitimised the states use of power. The fact that Saamis carried christian ideas and could reproduce them when they needed also led to a cultural hybridisation. They also adapted these ideas in accordance to their own worldview. Some Saamis also hybridised the two religions in different religious practises.The use of these theoretical models offers a new perspective on the interaction between the Swedish state and the Saamis. It also gives a new perspective on the power relationships in Torne lappmark during the early modern period. Keywords: Saami history, everyday resistance, cultural hybridity, 17th century, 18th century

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published_or_final_version / History / Master / Master of Philosophy

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What did William Blake mean when he threatened the world with a “Bible of Hell” in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)? A critical survey of the history of scholarship on the topic reveals a variety of unsupported Bible of Hell canon theories among 180 critics. The most plausible theory (though not the most popular) among them is that the Bible of Hell comprises Blake’s eight core 1790-95 Illuminated Books—The Marriage, the Continental Prophecies (1793-95), and the Urizen Books (1794-95). My thesis supports this theory from several angles. Part I examines how The Marriage establishes a Bible of Hell program with four inclusion criteria by which the works of 1793-95 abide: (1) a rhetoric of diabolical revision, which reclaims the Devil as a Christological redeemer and exposes Yahweh as the Antichrist; (2) organization by contraries; (3) mock-biblical revision; and (4) illumination. Chapters 3-6 examine these criteria in their literary-historical contexts, first by tracing the genealogy of diabolical revision in satirical diabologies and mundus inversus literature and art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Chapters 4-5 examine aspects of biblical revision in the context of early Christian heresies, modern sects, Enlightenment biblical scholarship, speculative mythography, and biblical parodies. Chapter 6 considers Blake’s Bible of Hell in the context of the illustrated Bible market of the 1790s. Part II (Chs. 7-10) assesses Blake's works of 1788-95 according to these criteria, showing that the works of 1788-89 develop Bible of Hell features that culminate in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and continue in the 1793-95 mock-biblical prophecies. Here the dissertation’s focus shifts to the conceptual evolution of the Bible of Hell in response to the failure of the French Revolution and its authoritarian backlash in England. Whereas The Marriage prophesied apocalypse as the righting of the upside-down world by a revolutionary, antinomian Christ, its 1793-95 sequels lose faith in revolution but critique biblical monotheism as the basis of historical tyranny. The final chapter examines conceptual tensions within the works of 1793-95 to hypothesize why Blake abandoned the Bible of Hell. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2012-07-31 12:36:56.964

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