Gemlike objects are a nearly ubiquitous phenomenon in the medium of glass, although culturally specific studies remain scarce. This dissertation considers the production of such works in the early medieval period, primarily in association with Abbasid rule. The first half attends to several accessory issues, including glass-related terminology, glass-coloring treatises, the lives of glassworkers, gemstone connoisseurship, and the legal status of such products. These demonstrate a range of coexisting attitudes, including the desirability of such works for their own sake rather than as surreptitious substitutes for “true” gemstones. The second half focuses on an exemplary object, an opaque turquoise glass bowl from the Treasury of San Marco in Venice, which I propose was produced in Baghdad for the caliph al-Mutawakkil just after the year 850. I then consider this work’s changing reception from late medieval Venice to modern scholarship, including ways in which “correct” interpretations of its material and/or origin have been repeatedly supplanted by false leads. The fundamental argument is that gemlike vessels like the San Marco turquoise were not deceptive stand-ins but rather intended to exercise complex discursive practices, both political and connoisseurial in nature, a function that ultimately remains in effect today.

Tomás Segovia and Angelina Muñiz Huberman belong to a group of writers known as «Hispanomexicanos». Most approaches to this generation have been towards the role that exile plays in their early work, paying almost no attention to its role after that initial stage. These approaches have been limited to the first years of their work, in the belief that those writers subsequently moved on to deal with issues which are different from those in which their experience of exile is clearly the central topic. However, through an analysis of the poetry of Muñiz and Segovia, this thesis aims to show that exile continues to play a central role beyond that first stage. It argues that their exile is transformed into a series of symbols that come to constitute a shared style and, more importantly, it proposes that their experience of exile is transformed into a feeling of existential displacement which impels a search for meaning and belonging to the world. Consequently, the conclusion presented in this thesis is that exile plays a central role in their poetry, in the sense that it expresses the ways in which these two writers search and transmit meaning and attempt to feel part of the world. Ultimately, this thesis aims to set an example of approach which could be productively taken to study the work of other writers from this generation.