I will argue in this thesis that in the comedia the Jew was often but covertly portrayed with sympathy. In the Introduction some complex terms of reference, such as 'Jew', will be clarified. Chapter 1 describes the development, from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, of the converso perspective, characterized by a critical attitude to the ruling ideology, based on individualism, heterodoxy and double language. This chapter also describes how the ideas of Christian Humanism were incorporated into the already existing, if limited, converso perspective to form part of the more ample intellectual equipment of Golden-Age dramatists. Chapter 2 deals with' a form of subversive irony, as an expression of the converso perspective, which appears first in the double language of La Celestina; this is later enriched by incorporating Erasmian dissimulatio, theorized as 'enganar con la verdad' in the Arte nuevo de hacer comedias and put in practice in Lope's comedias. It is this technique that will facilitate the presentation, albeit covertly, of a positive image of the Jew, Chapter 3 contains the theory of transposition as a form of engano in comedias de honra and the first appearance in these comedias of the positive image of the Jew. Chapter 4 traces the transposition of the 'bad' converso into the 'good' biblical Jew. Chapter 5 presents the positive image of the Jew created by mocking his stereotypical negative image. The last chapter contains a discussion of six comedias by Lope that present positive images of the Jew in their converso protagonists; as some of these characters in many ways resemble Lope, for example in their problems with limpieza de sangre, this chapter begins with a discussion of Lope's origin. In all the foregoing I have tried to demonstrate that, contrary to general critical opinion, the Jew in the comedia was often delineated with sympathy.

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This thesis brings a fresh engagement with the writings and career of Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) and with recent Italian scholarship to a reading of the Petrarchan sonnet sequence in England and Scotland. Rather than focusing on questions of influence, it borrows from Harold Bloom's notion of postfiguration to argue that certain preoccupations of the early modern sonnet sequence are anticipated by the Canzoniere. In particular, it examines how Petrarch's wranglings with a series of imbricated dyads—withdrawal and revelation, introspection and celebrity, public and private—are played out again in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It offers new interpretations of not only individual sonnets and sequences, but also the longer narrative of the lyric's changing relationship to both its public audience and its private reader. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part one examines the relations between poet, individual reader, the poem and its publics that Petrarch's Canzoniere establishes. Chapter one explores Petrarch’s insistence upon the importance of the affective response of the individual reader in the establishment of a transhistorical audience. Chapter two argues that while Petrarch’s lyric practice has its origins in epistolary exchange, it enacts an always ambivalent turn away from its embeddedness in the social circumstances of its composition, both inwards into the recesses of selfhood and outwards to a wider envisioned audience. This turn has profound implications for the politics of lyric practice, which are explored in relation to how the early Tudor sonneteers negotiate with political power, social embeddedness and the epistolary. Part two consists of three readings of individual sonnet sequences. Chapter three looks at William Drummond’s Petrarchan negotiation of conflicted local and national sentiments in the wake of the Union of the Crowns of 1603. Chapter four examines the Petrarchan rupturings of the public/private dichotomy in Lady Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia, to Amphilanthus. It then investigates Pamphilia’s concern with thought’s (in)constancy. Finally, chapter five reads Shakespeare’s sonnets as performing an uncanny return to Petrarchan origins in their obsessive preoccupation with death and oblivion. It is ultimately a shared fear of oblivion, this chapter concludes, that most forcefully shapes the peculiar sense of time, the ferocious introspection, and the pursuit of fame we find in both poets’ works.

This thesis examines the notion of 'truth-telling' in the work of Dante, understood jointly as a process of building narrative credibility and the communication of moral and/or spiritual 'truths'. The notion will be explored in relation to the themes of prophecy, vision, and memory, particularly in COlnll1edia. While these aspects of the poem have, individually, generated much scholarship, there has not been a sustained treatment of them taken together, in their relationship to Dante's 'truth-telling'. However, they appear closely linked both in Dante's work and in the broader medieval context, which means that they can fruitfully be considered together. Analysing the Commed;a in relation to Dante's other writings, in particular, the Epistles, the Vita Nova, and the Convivio, this thesis highlights the interconnectedness of truth-telling with prophecy, vision, and memory in Dante's thought. The thesis begins by addressing the question of what constitutes truth-telling in the Commedia, including examining Dante's use of, and views on allegory, in order to envisage what truth-value Dante might have intended the reader to assign to the poem. In subsequent chapters, through a close reading of selected episodes, the ways in which prophecy, vision, and memory, respectively, are used in the service of Dante's 'truth-telling', are analysed. As well as increasing the credibility of Dante's narrative, by presenting the pilgrim's journey as a 'real' experience, the themes of prophecy, vision, and memory are also used as a pretext for Dante to communicate moral and spiritual 'truths' from his own perspective. Thus, in bringing these themes together and analysing their place in the Commedia in the context of their role in Dante's truth-telling, this thesis makes an original contribution to scholarly debate.

This thesis locates Dante's Divine Comedy (1307-1318), Boccaccio's Teseida (c.1340-1), and Petrarch's Africa (c. 1338-9) within a developing tradition of epic poetry. The works are usually treated separately, and are classed as epic to a varying degree, but I show that a reading of them as epic in light of each other enhances understanding of each, and illuminates more generally a history of the epic genre. I explore the extent to which the authors considered epic to be a distinct literary form, and counteract the notion that there was no conception of the genre in the Middle Ages. I show that similar responses to key areas of epic writing underlie surface differences between the poems. Where critics have tended to explore classical influences, I emphasise the importance of medieval epic texts for the formation of all three poems. I argue that in important respects the Comedy constitutes a new epic model for Petrarch and Boccaccio. I focus on Dante's development of the classical warrior hero into the contemporary Christian poet-hero, exploring his development of themes from 12^th century Latin epics including the Anticlaudianus and Alexandreis. I suggest that the resulting emphasis on the theme of poetry is echoed in the Teseida and Africa. I argue that the Teseida revolves around issues of genre that are played out through the poems' gods and heroes, and that ultimately it resolves itself as a Dantean epic, through the hero Arcita. I show that the focus on poetry in the Africa, achieved both through the inclusion of poets as characters (including Petrarch himself) and by the explicit discussion of poetry within Book IX in particular, and the location of a Christian god at the heart of this historical narrative, reflect a treatment of key issues that bears similarity to that of Dante in the Comedy.

This thesis explores the conception and representation of virtu in Dante's Commedia. In order to break the existing limited boundaries of the way virtue is read in the Commedia, and to establish a richer sense of the ideas a fourteenth-century poet might have had in relation to the topic, this thesis begins with two chapters which consider notions of virtue in the intellectual and cultural traditions prior to Dante. Chapter One focuses on the philosophical and theological traditions and considers works by Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Gregory the Great and Thomas Aquinas. Chapter Two turns to look at virtue as a prominent theme in a wide variety of popular cultural forms of the medieval period. These include sermons, devotional literature, visual art and poetry. In the light of these two chapters, the thesis proposes a reading of virtu in the Commedia which acknowledges it as a notion which is at a nexus of being and doing, of metaphysical and physical, of idea and representation. What I have termed the virtu-dynamic in the Commedia, is that through which Dante fundamentally connects ethics and ontology, so that human behaviour becomes an expression of an individual's ontological state. The virtu-dynamic is the interaction which the Commedia traces between the creative action of God and the responsive action of man. The final three chapters of the thesis consider this in relation to different aspects of the poem. Chapter Three considers the role Dante gives to virtu in the process of creation and incarnation in his poem. Chapter Four looks at how Dante stages the interactions between God and man which are underpinned by virtu. The final chapter considers how Dante conceives the role of virtu in relation to the experiences and salvation of his own pilgrim-poet self. This analysis is based on a close focus, not only on the abstract ideas of virtu which the Commedia proposes, but on how those ideas are manifested and vivified by the text.

This thesis presents a list and analysis of the prophecies in the Commedia of Dante Alighieri. The prophecies are then broadly considered under two headings, ante eventum and post eventum, although these elements are frequently mixed together. They are used by Dante for various purposes, including the reinterpretation of the meaning of his own exile, and different programmes of moral and political critique. The foresight shown by the inhabitants of the three parts of the after-life is also examined, and philosophical and literary explanations found. The prophetic ability of the souls in the Inferno especially is found to have an antecedent in classical literature, and in particular in Lucan’s Pharsalia.  The role of the post eventum and ante eventum prophecies in the truth claims of the Commedia is considered, and the meaning of Dante Poeta’s silence on them is examined.

This thesis is concerned with one key aspect of the reception of the vernacular poetry of Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), namely translations and imitations of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Rvf) and Triumphi in English. It aims to provide a more comprehensive survey of the vernacular Petrarch’s legacy to English literature than is currently available, with a particular focus on some hitherto critically neglected texts and authors. It also seeks to ascertain to what degree the socio-historical phenomena of religion, politics, and culture have influenced the translations and imitations in question. The approach has been both chronological and comparative. This strategy will demonstrate with greater clarity the monumental effect of the Elizabethan Reformation on the English reception of Petrarch. It proposes a solution to the problem of the long gap between Geoffrey Chaucer’s re-writing of Rvf 132 and the imitations of Wyatt and Surrey framed in the context of Chaucer’s sophisticated imitative strategy (Chapter I). A fresh reading of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella is offered which highlights the author’s misgivings about the dangers of textual misinterpretation, a concern he shared with Petrarch (Chapter II). The analysis of Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti and Epithalamion in the same chapter reveals a hitherto undetected Ovidian subtext to Petrarch’s Rvf 190. Chapter III deals with two English versions of the Triumphi: I propose a date for Lord Morley’s translation which suggests it may be the first post- Chaucerian English engagement with Petrarch; new evidence is brought to light which identifies the edition of Petrarch used by William Fowler as the source text for his Triumphs of Petrarcke. The fourth chapter constitutes the most extensive investigation to date of J. M. Synge’s engagement with the Rvf, and deals with the question of translation as subversion. On the theoretical front, it demonstrates how Synge’s use of “folk-speech” challenges Venuti’s binary foreignising/domesticating system of translation categorisation.