In this year devoted to celebrating Luther's invitation to debate Indulgences in 1517, which led to the establishment of the Lutheran faith, it is timely to reassess the Fastnachtspiele of Hans Sachs, whose reputation varies from unskilled cobbler poet to 'Verfechter der Reformation'. Previous research devoted to Hans Sachs and satire concentrates on his ability to produce amusing moral tales for the Carnival season, whereas this thesis searches for critical satire of contemporary political, religious and social issues within the chosen Fastnachtspiele. This is achieved by analysing the plays in the context of contemporary events, personalities and circumstances in Nuremberg during a turbulent period in the city's history, when it faced internal religious conflict, invasion, declining influence as an imperial city and loss of wealth as an early industrial society. The results of the analysis suggest that Sachs's Fastnachtspiele, which are celebrated for their didactic nature along with his religious Meistergesang and Reformation dialogues, contribute to a corpus of pro-Lutheran works which helped to shape Nuremberg's Lutheran cultural memories and a cultural identity for its citizens. Scrutiny of Sachs's personal library also informs us, contrary to his previous reputation, that Sachs was an educated and sophisticated author, who used classical literature and early German works on various subjects - history, politics and religion amongst others - not only as a basis for some of his plots, but also as a source for his desired type of critical satire, in order to write plays intended to reverse the decline he saw in Nuremberg. This thesis concludes that Sachs stopped writing Fastnachtspiele in December 1560 because of his personal quandary about his role as an author and because it had become dangerous to express his views on what he perceived as Nuremberg's social, moral, political, economic and religious decline.

This thesis addresses the traumata associated with Poland’s frontier changes in 1945, within a collective memory paradigm. These events include expulsions from German territories incorporated into Poland, and population transfers between Poland and the USSR. The thesis addresses two components: a central trauma complex, and the resulting collective memory discourse. Being a matter of historical record, the statistical details and chronology of these events are seldom contested, although they have often been instrumentalised by various stakeholders. Instead, the relevant collective memory discourse has focused on the production of broad, often exculpatory, narrative frameworks designed to explain a set of largely accepted facts. Accordingly, my thesis is primarily focused on this collective memory discourse. As an active phase, dominated by stakeholders with a high level of emotional investment in the narration and memorialisation of the relevant events, this collective memory discourse is currently undergoing a transition to the domain of History as a scholarly pursuit. This transition is best symbolised by the fact that, as of 2016, for the first time since 1945, all restrictions on the acquisition of agricultural land and forests in Poland’s former German territories, by Germans, will be lifted. Thus, for surviving expellees, the right of return, in conjunction with the potential to purchase any formerly held real estate and landholdings, will become a de jure reality, marking the end of the region’s long postwar period. Arguably, therefore, one can now engage, at a retrospective, analytical level, with the relevant collective memory discourse without being drawn into it. In order to navigate this complex discourse, I have developed a number of analytical and conceptual tools, which I hope may prove useful beyond this project. In this sense, this thesis can be viewed as a proof of concept. Chief among these tools are a novel working definition of collective memory as a discrete phase in the historification and mythologizing of traumatic events, and a three-level model designed for the consistent analysis of narrative texts, artefacts and cultural productions. By tracing the relevant collective memory discourse through a number of 4 disparate fields, including political myth-making, historiography, toponymic practice, cartography and literature, I have been able to test these analytical and conceptual tools to breaking point, often benefiting from the resulting heuristic gain wherever lived complexity defies simplistic analytic idealisation. To ensure a focused exposition of the theoretical framework and the sources analysed, this thesis is primarily centred upon Lower Silesia and the following broad research questions: what geo-socio-political power dynamics resulted in Poland’s postwar frontier changes and the associated traumata, and how were they justified at the time? How have historians reacted over time to Poland’s postwar frontier changes, and the humanitarian consequences, as well as to contemporary framework narratives relating to these events? How has the toponymic re-inscription of Poland’s former German territories influenced the relevant collective memory discourse, and to what extent have cartographic representations of postwar Poland been influenced by changing geo-political configurations? How have the prevailing socio-political conditions in postwar Germany and Poland constrained literary contributions to the relevant collective memory discourse? And, finally, in what ways, has literature contributed in turn, to the relevant collective memory discourse and the establishment of hegemonic historical narratives? This thesis presents a number of specific findings, the most significant of which is that political contingencies can result in a surprising deflection of collective memory discourse into seemingly unrelated fields, and can trigger a ripple effect, which has the ability to globalise collective memory discourse under certain circumstances. Similarly, my analysis of shared topoi in the works of German and Polish historians and literary authors demonstrates that, far from generating its own framework of reference based on specific traumatic events, collective memory discourse is exquisitely sensitive to broader socio-political narratives. In addition, I contend that mainstream historical narratives tend to simplify, for example, through the imposition of a chronology on multidirectional memories, and by focusing on homogenizing accounts of the collective at the expense of 5 individual narratives. In contrast, literature and local cultural performances often resist such simplification, thus preserving complexity. Viewed in this light, the pursuit of Cultural and Literary Studies addresses a clear problem within, and usefully augments, traditional historical scholarship. By carefully analysing a subset of Polish and German literature, historiography and cultural artefacts produced in response to the traumatic events in question, my thesis seeks to trace the transition from highly localised stakeholder-led collective memory discourses to hegemonic historical narratives developed and maintained in the service of broader geo-political agendas.

History and Journalism in Silvia Galvis’s Novels explores the relationship between Galvis’s novels and the influence of two distinctive phenomena in the Spanish American literary tradition: history and journalism. The thesis analyses Galvis’s novels from historical and journalistic perspectives. It explores the main characteristics of the historical novel in order to relate this genre to Galvis’s novels and to assess the extent to which they are historical or not. It draws on Galvis’s historical research on Colombian history and politics to illustrate its relevance in her novels. From a journalistic perspective, the thesis analyses the role of journalism in Spanish America and Colombia in particular, to show the interrelation of this profession with literary writing and the close link between the two professions in Galvis’s novels and columns in El Espectador. The thesis emphasises the constant interrelation between the political history of Colombia and the political function of journalism in the country. It links therefore Galvis’s historical research on politics and journalism with the themes and style of her novels in order to demonstrate this special characteristic of her literary production. It studies the formal mechanisms in Galvis’s novels employed to narrate different periods and places in the history of Colombia and how her columns provide an insight in to her fictional narrative. The thesis also explores on how Galvis’s novels keep alive historical memory in Colombia through the process of writing. Therefore it pays special attention to the role of her characters and narrators as historians, journalists or chroniclers of their own political places and events.

This thesis is concerned with the stimulus and influence of studies of the historical Jesus on literary depictions of Christ. It examines imaginative reconstructions of the Gospels, alongside significant works of Biblical scholarship, and seeks to establish the role played by fiction in promulgating ideas of the Higher Criticism in Britain. At the same time, it considers how far the demands of working with a sacred source encouraged or restricted literary innovation. The contextual aspects of the study underline how advances in disciplines such as psychology, anatomy, and archaeology informed writers’ conceptions of the New Testament. The Introduction traces changing perceptions of the relationship between fiction and faith in the light of contemporary developments in Biblical interpretation. Chapter One examines a representative selection of Lives of Jesus, looking specifically at their affinities with fiction. The following chapter explores the kind of prose-fiction writing that developed in response to these Lives and to theological revisionism generally. The second part of the thesis focuses on two Anglo-Irish writers: Oscar Wilde and George Moore. Their transformations of the Gospels are analysed in the context of some of their other literary works, their attitudes to Christianity, and their engagement with theology. Chapter Three considers Wilde’s New Testament oral tales, looking especially at their treatment of current theological debates. Chapter Four considers the reappearance of these tales in the writings of Wilde’s contemporaries, and links the study’s two major authors through its discussion of Frank Harris, an acquaintance of them both. The final two chapters deal with Moore’s abiding interest in the religious temperament, following through the development of his drama, The Apostle, into the novel, The Brook Kerith. The Conclusion considers the aesthetics of Biblical fiction and its contribution to the religious discourses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Al-Sirr al-Maktūm is one of the most compelling theoretical and practical accounts of astral magic written in the post-classical period of Islamic thought. Of central concern to its reader is to understand why the great philosopher-theologian, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d.606/1210) should have written it. The occult practices described therein are attributed to the Sabians, a historical group who lived in Harrān in Upper Mesopotamia. Representing the last vestiges of Ancient Mesopotamian paganism during the early Islamic period, their religion involved the veneration of the seven planets, which they believed were ensouled celestial beings and the proximate causes of all sublunary change. By means of such astrolatry they were able, remotely, to change reality in ways which defied the customary pattern of causation in this world. The main focus of al-Rāzī‘s treatment of their practice is a long ritual during which the aspirant successively brings under his will each of the seven planets. On completion of the ritual, the aspirant would have transcended the limitations of his human existence and his soul would have attained complete perfection. This thesis will argue that for al-Rāzī, the Sabians constituted a heresiological category, representative of a soteriological system which dispensed with the need for the Islamic institution of prophethood. It relied instead on the individual‘s ability, by means of spiritual discipline and intellectual rigour, to attain noetic connection with the celestial souls. In so doing, the Sabian adept not only gains occult knowledge and power, but more importantly he realizes the ultimate aim of perfecting his soul. Al-Rāzī constructs this soteriology as a synthesis of cosmological and psychological doctrines gleaned from Avicenna, and Abū‘l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī. In this way, al-Rāzī hoped to state as succinctly as possible the intellectual challenges to which any systematic theological defence of the Islamic faith must answer if it is to triumph over rival systems of thought.

This dissertation concerns the reception of the myth of Alexander the Great in Italian art during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In particular, I discuss the turning-point in the tradition which took place in Renaissance Italy around the middle of the fifteenth century: the transition from the medieval imagery of Alexander as a legendary, almost fairy-tale, figure to the historical portrait of him as an exemplum of moral virtue and military prowess. On the basis of the corpus known as the Alexander Romance, during the Middle Ages Alexander was depicted as a fabled explorer and knight, whose marvellous adventures enjoyed huge popularity both in the literary tradition and in the visual arts. Around the mid-fifteenth century, with the changing cultural atmosphere associated with the rise of humanism, this medieval conception was superseded by a different image of Alexander, drawing on the newly discovered ancient historical accounts of Plutarch, Curtius Rufus, Arrian and Diodorus Siculus. There are five chapters, all illustrated, plus an introduction and conclusion. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the literary and iconographic tradition of Alexander in Italy from 1100 to 1400, exploring the most popular episodes from the legend. In Chapter 2, I present examples of the persistence of the legendary tradition in the Quattrocento (especially, some fresco cycles of the Nine Worthies). Chapter 3 is concerned with the humanist recovery of ancient sources and its impact on the received view of Alexander; the important contribution of Petrarch and Boccaccio is also examined. Chapter 4 deals with the emergence of a new Renaissance portrait of Alexander around 1450, notably in paintings on marriage chests. In Chapter 5 I discuss the development of this new image of Alexander in the sixteenth century, with the establishment of an iconographic repertoire, centring on novel episodes taken from ancient historical sources.

My dissertation is an investigation of how early Renaissance paintings from Venice and Florence were discussed and appraised by authors and collectors writing in these cities between 1550 and 1800. The variety of source material I have consulted has enabled me to assess and to compare the different paths pursued by Venetian and Florentine writers, the type of question they addressed in their analyses of early works of art and, most importantly, their approaches to the re-evaluation of the art of the past. Among the types of writing on art I explore are guidebooks, biographies of artists, didactic poems, artistic dialogues, dictionaries and letters, paying particular attention in these different genres to passages about artists from Guariento to Giorgione in Venice and from Cimabue to Raphael in Florence. By focusing, within this framework, on primary sources and documents, as well as on the influence of art historical literature on the activity of collecting illustrated by the cases of the Venetian Giovanni Maria Sasso and the Florentine Francesco Maria Niccolò Gabburri, I show that two principal approaches to writing about the past emerged during this period: the first, adopted by many Venetian authors, involved the aesthetic evaluation of early Renaissance works of art, often in comparison to later developments; the second, more frequent among Florentine writers, tended to document these works and place them in their historical context, without necessarily making artistic judgements about them. A parallel analysis of these two approaches offers a twofold perspective on how writers and collectors engaged with early Renaissance art from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.

This thesis is a case study illustrating the circulation of scientific knowledge as achieved through translation in the seventeenth century. Providing the foundation of education in the liberal arts, Latin had an enormous influence on written science in the early modern period. This was evident not just on the level of the vocabulary. Latin grammar structured thought, and thereby extended the influence of the language to an epistemological level. However, the authority of Latin was increasingly contested throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. To examine this shift of authority away from Latin to the vernacular languages, and to examine the way this impacted upon both the theory and practice of science, I have focused on the Flemish physician and alchemist Jan Baptista van Helmont (1579-1644). Van Helmont provides a highly revealing case study for multiple reasons: he himself wrote in both Latin and the Dutch vernacular; he had very clear ideas about translation and its relationship to the acquisition of knowledge; finally, his works were translated into English, French and German within forty years after his death. In the first two chapters I examine Van Helmont’s use of language in the two idioms in which he published, Dutch and Latin. I compare his views about language and translation, by closely connecting them to his philosophy of the mind and his practice of (self-)translation, which turns out to deviate markedly from his own theories. Chapter 3 describes how Van Helmont’s son, Francis Mercury (1614-1698), was personally involved with almost all the posthumously printed editions and translations of his father’s works. I argue that Francis Mercury’s influence on the spread of his father’s intellectual heritage is far more extensive than has hitherto been assumed. Chapters 4 and 5 analyse the eight translations of Van Helmont’s works into English, French and German. These translations were written between 1650 and 1683. I examine them with respect to theoretical texts (Chapter 4) and practical texts (Chapter 5) in order to show that there were no clear-cut or standardized methods for translating scientific knowledge and that the translators’ interpretations had therefore a major impact on the way Van Helmont’s ideas were received in different linguistic domains.

Printing had a huge impact on the development of religion and politics in sixteenth-century Europe. Harnessing the printing press is generally regarded as a key factor in the success of the Reformation. The positive role played by printing in Catholic cultural policy, by contrast, has not been sufficiently recognized. While scholars have focused on ecclesiastical censorship, the employment of print by Catholic authorities – especially the Roman curia – has been addressed only sporadically and superficially. The aim of my dissertation is to fill this gap, providing a detailed picture of the papacy’s efforts to exploit the resources of the Roman printing industry after the Sack in 1527 and before the establishment of the Vatican Typography in 1587. After a brief introduction (Chapter 1), I provide an exhaustive account of the papacy’s attempts, over sixty years, to set up a Roman papal press (Chapter 2). I then focus on two main Catholic printing enterprises. Part I is devoted to the editorial activity of Cardinal Marcello Cervini, later Pope Marcellus II. I discuss the extant sources and earlier scholarship on Cervini (Chapter 3), his cultural profile (Chapter 4) and the Greek and Latin presses which he established in the early 1540s (Chapters 5 - 6). Part II concentrates on the projects for a papal press involving the Venetian printer Paolo Manuzio. After an overview of the sources and previous studies (Chapter 7), I analyse Manuzio’s attempts to move to Rome, the establishment of a papal press under his management and the committee of cardinals which supervised it (Chapters 8 - 10). Chapter 11 examines the printing of the first edition of the Tridentine decrees, undertaken in 1564. Chapter 12 contains the overall conclusion to the dissertation. Documentary Appendixes A and B list the publications sponsored by Cervini and the books printed by Manuzio’s Roman press.

This thesis examines the development of Francis Bacon’s (1561-1626) religious views and their impact on his programme for the advancement of learning. It aims to address the largely misguided body of scholarly literature on Bacon’s beliefs by situating his understanding of religion within the complexity of its Elizabethan and Stuart contexts, and to show how Bacon steered his own considered course between the emergent pillars of Puritanism and Conformism. To the latter end, it evinces how he drew upon the Christian humanism of his parents, Nicholas and Anne Bacon, as well as the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli, Francesco Guicciardini, and Justus Lipsius. Guided by the same intellectual commitments, he subsequently came to develop his own ideas about the reform of knowledge and the character of nature within the broader context of Christian humanism, Florentine political thought, and the Magisterial Reformation in England. It argues that, contrary to modern categories of thought, Bacon had no difficulty being both a Reformed Christian and a statesman for whom religion was often little more than a social or political currency. This he achieved through a position he set out early in his career; namely, that religion had two ‘partes’: an eternal and a temporal. Christianity could, in this way, be divided into the mysteries of faith, beyond time and the reach of human reason, and civil religion, temporal, political and, in its subjection to natural reason, entirely fair game. This allowed him to anticipate a number of positions that would become central to the religious climate of the later seventeenth-century, including irenicism, religious toleration, and civil religion. It was also through this division that Bacon came to explain the relationship between God and Nature and, in turn, between religion and natural philosophy. In the 1610s, he would develop a theory of the universe which rested upon the division between the eternal and the temporal, the created and the creating. As a result, this thesis offers an examination and contextualization of the relationship between ‘science’ and ‘religion’ within Bacon’s commitment to a twofold vision of religion.