During the period between 1640 and 1700, over forty works were produced by authors identifying themselves as “T. S.” In the field of early modern literary studies, one T. S. has been particularly important to scholars because of this author’s imitative version of John Bunyan’s popular allegory titled The Second Part of the Pilgrim’s Progress (1682). This work by T. S., who has become known as Thomas Sherman, achieves minor success and prompts Bunyan to write his own authentic sequel. My research has uncovered an attribution history that identifies four additional texts—Divine Breathings (circa 1671); Youth’s Tragedy (1671); Youth’s Comedy (1680); Divine Breathings, the Second Part (1680)—and credits all of them to a Thomas Sherman. Of the five works attributed to this author, the most impressive printing history belongs to the earliest offering, Divine Breathings, or a Pious Soul Thirsting after Christ in a Hundred Pathetical Meditations, which appears in over 60 printings from 1671 to 1883 in England, Scotland, and North America. My research scrutinizes this attribution history and raises questions about identifying this T. S. as Thomas Sherman. Based on internal and external evidence, I argue that T. S. is not the author of Divine Breathings but establishes his authorial identity as an imitative writer who actively participates in the genre of Protestant meditational literature by providing sequels (i.e., Divine Breathings …the Second Part and Second Part of the Pilgrim’s Progress).

Academisch proefschrift -- Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

This thesis outlines two distinct modes of early sixteenth-century devotional practice (image-based and text-oriented), which in the context of the English reformation are increasingly represented as antithetical to one another, as Protestants champion the vernacular Bible and creed-based Christianity, while suppressing "idolatrous" images and traditional practices. Women readers, who tend to be vernacular readers, figure prominently in the religious controversy, and come to represent both the distinctives of Protestantism and anxieties around vernacular readership and hermeneutic agency. The vernacular woman reader stands in direct opposition to the priestly authority of masculine, Latin clerical culture; accordingly she is both rhetorically useful to the Protestant cause and a locus of cultural instability. I then turn to consider female Tudor translators as reading women, and translation itself (rather than a type of "feminine" writing) as a form of meditative or proclamatory reading. While translation has a traditional association with the meditative devotional reader, the religious controversy makes possible a more public and polemically motivated sort of translation by women, which, however, remains framed largely in terms of personal devotional activity. As the number of literate women grows throughout the century, translation (with reading) is also increasingly represented as a means of keeping women out of trouble, a development which reflects the growing acceptance of the Protestant contention that a good woman is a reading woman. The epistolary culture of the persecuted Marian Protestant community illustrates the construction of a community of readers in the Protestant language of spiritual family, and the role of the reading woman in sustaining that community. My concluding chapter outlines the continuing construction of a textual community of exemplary foremothers, a tradition of "godly, learned women," in which the virtuous woman reader is expected to participate. This distinctly Protestant pattern of literate female piety, alongside a growing number of women readers in Elizabethan England, increasingly shapes cultural ideals of female virtue.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2002. / Advisor: Sylvia Bowerbank. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 337-353). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2002. / Advisor: Sylvia Bowerbank. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 337-353). Also available via World Wide Web.

Academisch proefschrift -- Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2005. / Thesis directed by Maura Nolan for the Department of English. "July 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 344-368).

This thesis outlines two distinct modes of early sixteenth-century devotional practice (image-based and text-oriented), which in the context of the English reformation are increasingly represented as antithetical to one another, as Protestants champion the vernacular Bible and creed-based Christianity, while suppressing "idolatrous" images and traditional practices. Women readers, who tend to be vernacular readers, figure prominently in the religious controversy, and come to represent both the distinctives of Protestantism and anxieties around vernacular readership and hermeneutic agency. The vernacular woman reader stands in direct opposition to the priestly authority of masculine, Latin clerical culture; accordingly she is both rhetorically useful to the Protestant cause and a locus of cultural instability. I then turn to consider female Tudor translators as reading women, and translation itself (rather than a type of "feminine" writing) as a form of meditative or proclamatory reading. While translation has a traditional association with the meditative devotional reader, the religious controversy makes possible a more public and polemically motivated sort of translation by women, which, however, remains framed largely in terms of personal devotional activity. As the number of literate women grows throughout the century, translation (with reading) is also increasingly represented as a means of keeping women out of trouble, a development which reflects the growing acceptance of the Protestant contention that a good woman is a reading woman. The epistolary culture of the persecuted Marian Protestant community illustrates the construction of a community of readers in the Protestant language of spiritual family, and the role of the reading woman in sustaining that community. My concluding chapter outlines the continuing construction of a textual community of exemplary foremothers, a tradition of "godly, learned women," in which the virtuous woman reader is expected to participate. This distinctly Protestant pattern of literate female piety, alongside a growing number of women readers in Elizabethan England, increasingly shapes cultural ideals of female virtue. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation is a critical analysis of identity in literature within the historical context of the theopolitical climate in England between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. The narratives under consideration are the Lais of Marie de France, The Canterbury Tales, and The Book of Margery Kempe. A focus on the business of theology and the Church’s political influence on identity will highlight these lay writers’ artistic shaping of theopolitical ideas into literature. Conducting a literary analysis on the application of theopolitical ideas by these lay writers encourages movement beyond the traditional exegetical interpretation of their narratives and furthers our determination of lay intellectual attitudes toward theology and its political purposes in the development of identity and society.

Dissertation : Evangelische Theologie : Bochum, Ruhr-Universität : 1985. / En appendice, choix de documents. Sources et bibliogr. p. [135]-153. Index.