Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. / The purpose of this study is to examine the imagery and relationships between imagery and structure in the eight comedies that George Chapman wrote without collaboration. In the first chapter several underlying assumptions are set forth. These concern the appropriateness of formal criticism, the critical neglect of Chapman's adherence in comedy to philosophical as well as artistic decorum, and the significance of his expressed intention of creating ethical "coherents" for his age. The functions of dramatic imagery are classified, and Chapman's awareness of irony and decorum ls indicated by his commentaries on Homeric translations and his early non-dramatic poems. Finally, the usefulness of the commonplace symbolism of Fortune as an index to Chapman's ethical thought and comic structure is advanced in connection with his intellectual inheritance and moral predispositions. The Blind Beggar of Alexandria is shown to belie its apparent merely farcical content by Chapman's consistently ironic manipulation of imagery of the process of"knowing. [truncated]

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1926. / Without thesis note. Bibliography: p. 161-170.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1956. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-211).

Akademisk avhandling--Engelsk litteratur--Lund, 1982. / Bibliogr. p. 260-265.

À partir de définitions empruntées à la philosophie antique (Platon, Aristote), à la littérature païenne (Ovide), à la théologie chrétienne (Augustin, Thomas d’Aquin), ou encore à la médecine (de Galien à Robert Burton), cette thèse étudie les représentations du désir dans la poésie narrative élisabéthaine des années 1590, en particulier chez Shakespeare (Venus and Adonis), Marlowe et Chapman (Hero and Leander) et Spenser (The Faerie Queene, II et III). Le postulat de départ est que le désir détermine les conditions de sa représentation : il est ainsi à la fois objet poétique et principe de création littéraire. L’approche rhétorique cible les figures de style associées au mouvement : la métaphore et la métonymie, mais aussi les figures de construction qui jouent sur l’ordre des mots et les figures de pensée qui se dévoilent progressivement, comme l’allégorie. Si le désir fonctionne comme un lieu commun dans les textes de la Renaissance anglaise, le recours à une rhétorique commune et le partage d’un même lieu physique ne garantissent pas nécessairement le rapprochement des corps. C’est face à face que sont envisagés le corps désiré, caractérisé par sa fermeture et considéré comme une œuvre d’art intouchable, et le corps désirant, organisme vivant exposé à la contamination. La perméabilité gagne le poème lui-même, dans son rapport à son environnement politique et social, dans son utilisation de ses sources et dans sa composition. Parce qu’il joue un rôle en tant que mécanisme de progression du récit, notamment dans la relation entre description et narration, le désir invite à envisager la mimésis comme un processus réversible. / Starting from definitions of desire borrowed from ancient philosophers (Plato, Aristotle), classical poets (Ovid), Christian theologians (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas), and physicians (from Galen to Robert Burton), this dissertation studies the representations of desire in Elizabethan narrative poetry from the 1590s, and more particularly in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, Marlowe and Chapman’s Hero and Leander, and Spenser’s Faerie Queene (II and III). The guiding hypothesis is that desire determines the terms and images in which it is represented; it is therefore both a poetical object and a principle of literary creation. Using a rhetorical approach, I focus on stylistic devices linked with motion: metaphor and metonymy, but also figures of construction which play on word order, and figures such as allegory, which progressively unravel thought. Although desire does act as a commonplace in Early Modern texts, sharing the same language and the same locus does not necessarily entail physical communion for the bodies involved. The body of the beloved, enclosed upon itself and depicted as an untouchable work of art, is pitted against the lover’s organism, alive and exposed to contamination. The poem itself becomes permeable in relation to its social and political environment, in its use of sources, and in its compositional procedures. Desire articulates description and narration, leading the narrative forward but also backward, which suggests that mimesis can be a reversible process.

xiv, 234 p. : ill. / The twentieth-century project of American rhetorician Kenneth Burke, grounded in a magic-based theory of language, reveals a path to the origins of what I am going to call occult invention. The occult, which I define as a symbol set of natural terms derived from supernatural terms, employs a method of heuresis based on a metaphor-like process I call analogic extension. Traditional invention fell from use shortly after the Liberal Arts reforms of Peter Ramus, around 1550. Occult invention emerged nearly simultaneously, when Early Modern British authors began using occult symbols as tropes in what I refer to as the Occult Mode. I use six of these authors--George Chapman, William Shakespeare, John Donne, Abraham Cowley, John Dryden, and Jonathan Swift--as examples of how occult invention arises. In appropriating occult symbolism, authors in the Occult Mode began using the invention methods of the occult arts of magic, alchemy, astrology, and cabala to derive new meanings, transform language, develop characters and plots, and reorient social perspectives. As we learn in tracking Burke's project, occult invention combines the principles of Aristotle's rhetoric and metaphysics with the techniques and principles of the occult arts. Occult invention fell from use around the end of the eighteenth century, but its rhetorical influence reemerged through the work of Burke. In this study I seek to contextualize and explicate some of the literary sources and rhetorical implications of occult invention as an emergent field for further research. / Committee in charge: Dianne Dugaw， Co-Chairperson； John T. Gage， Co-Chairperson； Kenneth Calhoon， Member； Steven Shankman， Member； Jeffrey Librett，Outside Member