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This dissertation presents data to support the continuity of warfare throughout the Maya lowlands, and adjacent regions. I discuss the current problems with the archaeology of warfare, the continuity of conflict beginning with the Late Preclassic through the Terminal Classic. Additionally, I emphasize the influence that Teotihuacan had during the Early Classic throughout Mesoamerica, while in some areas there is evidence of diplomatic and economic relations, there is also clear evidence of forced relations at other sites. Conflict is identified on the archaeological record through the heterarchical analysis of a variety of data encompassing defensive features, settlement patterns, epigraphy, iconography, and forensic data. I examine data from San Jose Mogote, Monte Alban, Montana, Izapa, Kaminaljuyu, and sites located within the northern, central, and southern lowlands. The primary goal is to present a cohesive series of war-related events per lowland zone, and chronological time period. Some of the primary questions deal with how land use, and economic trade relations transform political relations and alliances throughout time. Additionally, how do changes in political alliances affect trade routes? By recognizing the important role warfare played in the lowlands, we also recognize how these events affected the elites and their interaction with other polities, and most importantly how these events affected the commoner populace. In the process of investigating conflict throughout the Preclassic and the Classic periods, we can attempt to pinpoint continuities, political and economic changes, and the sociopolitical responses undertaken by polities in a time of war. / text

Nicht völlig zu unrecht wird die 1498 ersterwähnte Ratsschulbibliothek Zwickau mit ihren rund 80.000 Drucken des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts vor allem als reicher Fundus für die Forschung zur frühen europäischen Neuzeit wahrgenommen. Weit weniger bekannt hingegen ist, dass sie über den eigentlichen historischen, praktisch alle Wissensgebiete der Frühen Neuzeit umfassenden Buchbestand hinaus auch über eine stattliche Sammlung älterer Notenhandschriften und -drucke verfügt, die seit dem 16. Jahrhundert zum universalwissenschaftlichen Ansehen der Ratsschulbibliothek beiträgt.

This study advances and adds detail to our history of the reading of verse in England c.1350-1500. Scholarship has established major twelfth- and thirteenth-century changes in reading, and linked these changes to manuscripts containing the modern Middle English verse canon. Historians of early modern reading have also argued for distinctive changes in their own period. But the examination of reading between these two clusters of change has been limited. This study therefore asks how later medieval Middle English verse was read. The surviving copies of The Prick of Conscience and Speculum Vitae, two hugely successful religious instructional poems, form the primary body of evidence. This body is augmented by reference to hundreds of other manuscripts containing Middle English verse. Together, these can reveal much about what was normal and abnormal in reading. They are also an important part of the context for the reading of more canonical Middle English verse. Manuscript studies often proceeds through case studies of individual books and unusual evidence such as marginalia. This thesis turns to codicology to understand more widespread evidence for reading, combining qualitative case studies with quantitative techniques borrowed and developed from continental scholarship. The first chapter examines evidence of provenance, revealing that both The Prick of Conscience and Speculum Vitae were read by an impressive range of people and remained current into the sixteenth century. The second chapter considers the navigational aids used in copies of both poems. Reading in this period has been characterised as 'discontinuous', but it could be discontinuous in diverse ways, and readers also read continuously. The third chapter is a large-scale study of books' size and shape, showing how these features can reveal books' reading histories, sometimes in counterintuitive ways. The fourth chapter contends that readers in this period attended closely to rhyme and probably read for balanced rhyme structures. The fifth chapter uncovers the ways in which these poems were rewritten for new readers and investigates the composition of the Southern Recension of The Prick of Conscience, arguing that this new text was partly a formalist intervention. The conclusion summarises the new 'baseline' history of the reading of Middle English verse which is offered here, and gestures towards implications for our reading of the Middle English poems which are canonical today.

Throughout the course a long life in which he served as a cleric, a Cluniac monk, and an archbishop, Hugh of Amiens (c. 1085-1164) wrote a number of works including poems, biblical exegesis, anti-heretical polemics, and one of the early collections of systematic theology. This dissertation aims to provide an intellectual biography of Hugh which grants a better understanding not only of his motivations and ideals, but also some of those of the wider clerical and monastic world of the twelfth century. It examines each of Hugh's theological and literary compositions with their manuscript distribution, chronology, and contemporary setting, giving an in-depth exegesis of the texts including their concerns, sources of material, and their meaning within the context of their day. So too does it compare him with contemporaries who were writing similar works, from the compilers of sentences to biblical versifiers. Many themes surface in this work. One of these is the influence that both the scholastic and the monastic worlds had on Hugh. His writings show that he, along with many of his contemporaries, was secure in drawing inspiration from the contemplative spirit of the cloister as well as the methodical and disputatious endeavours of the schools. Another key theme is the extensive influence of St. Augustine, not just upon Hugh's thought, but also upon the thought of most of Hugh's contemporaries. The role of Hugh's works in the origin of systematic theology also emerges, as does their relation to events in the larger religious, social, and political scene, such as the rise of popular heresies and new religious movements, the condemnation of Gilbert de la Porree (c. 1076-1154), and the schism under Pope Alexander III (c. 1100-81). It concludes that Hugh was not only an intriguing individual, but also a representative of many of the important and widespread trends of his day.

This thesis deals with the topics of sex and society in the Laws of Plato with recourse to ancient historical context and modern critical theory. It examines reconstructions of ancient 'sexuality' (e.g. through Dover, Foucault and Davidson) with a view to increased clarification. The text of the Laws is considered, along with many of its literary qualities, its influences and the utopian plan that it entails. Plato's narrator, the Athenian Stranger, has proposed the remarkable theory that sexuality can be controlled through the manipulation of people's thoughts. The thesis is particularly interested in the manner in which sexuality is ideologically constructed. A significant portion of this inquiry deals with education in the hypothetical polis (Magnesia) and the part that this is designed to play specifically in terms of sex-role stereotyping. The Laws spins andreia as the ideal model for the Magnesians to imitate in their mandatory pursuit of arete. The reformulation of the Magnesian oikos and the 'brave new femininity' that this plan entails figure prominently into this examination. Magnesian women must become more like (idealised) men in terms of 'manly' enkrateia. They will combine alleged elements from athenian, Spartan, Kretan, Sauromatian and Amazonian women (plus Platonic philosophy) to attain this new status. Men must become less like women are perceived to be. A law is drafted to ban same-sex activities, considered 'womanish', but there is some uncertainty as to whether or not it will ever be enforced. Psychology and propaganda, religion, education, the family and government will all work together to affect the moral hygiene of Magnesia. The thesis investigates each of these topics, with recourse to material outside the Laws, in considering Plato's social/sexual construction theory.

Nicht völlig zu unrecht wird die 1498 ersterwähnte Ratsschulbibliothek Zwickau mit ihren rund 80.000 Drucken des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts vor allem als reicher Fundus für die Forschung zur frühen europäischen Neuzeit wahrgenommen. Weit weniger bekannt hingegen ist, dass sie über den eigentlichen historischen, praktisch alle Wissensgebiete der Frühen Neuzeit umfassenden Buchbestand hinaus auch über eine stattliche Sammlung älterer Notenhandschriften und -drucke verfügt, die seit dem 16. Jahrhundert zum universalwissenschaftlichen Ansehen der Ratsschulbibliothek beiträgt.

The importance of manuscript sources for certain types of poetry in the 1580s and 1590s has only slowly become apparent. The subject of this thesis is a group of manuscript poetic miscellanies from this period, which preserve an important collection of poems. Although most of these poems were never published, they circulated in manuscript among minor courtiers and students at the Universities and Inns of Court. Six of these miscellanies share a number of poems in common and have texts which are sometimes related; they provide the main focus of these studies. They are MSS Rawl.Poet.85 (in the Bodleian Library), Harl.7392 (in the British Museum), and certain sections of MSS Dd.5-75 (in the University Library, Cambridge), Z3.5.21 (in Archbishop Marsh's Library, Dublin), V.a.89 (in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington) and the Harington MS at Arundel Castle. These six miscellanies (and others that impinge on them from time to time) have been considered from a number of points of view. The importance of manuscript circulation in the literature of the period is discussed, and problems of dealing with manuscript material are examined. The six miscellanies are described in some detail, the compilers being identified where possible and suggestions made about the dates when the poems were copied. The miscellanies preserve a fairly coherent body of Elizabethan lyrics. These have been indexed by first line, attributed where possible and the whereabouts of other texts noted. Some of these poems present complex problems of text, authorship and literary or social history. One of the most complicated textually is "The French Primero", preserved in four versions of varying length and numerous textual differences, which has been taken as a test case for discussing methods of editing a poem preserved only or mainly in manuscript texts. Another poem, "My mind to me a kingdom is", (perhaps by Sir Edward Dyer) has been examined as an illustration of the effects of popularity on the text of a poem. The bulk of the poems which are ascribed in the miscellanies are the works of courtier poets who had no interest in publication. Eight of these writers are examined in some detail for the light the miscellanies throw on problems of text and canon. These manuscripts are the most important sources of texts and ascriptions of poems by Sir Edward Dyer and Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. The canons of both these poets have been re-examined, and edited texts of their poems presented. Certain lyrics which appear in the miscellanies by the Queen, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Ralegh and Sir Arthur Gorges (all well edited in recent editions) are examined for the information they yield about how courtly lyrics circulated in manuscript. Poems from the miscellanies by Nicholas Breton (better known as a professional writer than a courtly lyrist) and Ferdinando Stanley, Earl of Derby (hitherto barely known as a poet) are presented and discussed. Three of the miscellanies (MSS Cambridge Dd.5.75, Rawl Poet.85 and Harl.7392) preserve a number of poems written by their compilers and their friends or charges, and these imitate current poetic fashions of the court, and provide interesting evidence of poems in English being written by young Elizabethans at various stages of their education. These little-known poems have been transcribed and discussed, and the social backgrounds of their authors examined. In brief, the object of these studies has been to describe the six miscellanies, to examine and compare their contents, and to discuss their textual problems. The texts by courtiers and courtly imitators which they preserve are studied, and the poetry placed in its proper social context. Some conclusions have been reached about Elizabethan taste and popularity, which may suggest the significance of these manuscripts in contributing to a better knowledge of the state of English poetry towards the end of the sixteenth century.

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