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In examining the relationships between space, text and history in the early modern period, this thesis reads sixteenth and seventeenth century texts in the context of the new geographies and the shifts in spatial awareness that accompany the arrival of the early modern period. In doing so, it also employs a 'spatialised' mode of criticism that, rather than privilege any one kind of text, seeks to view all texts alongside one another, within what Foucault calls the 'space of a dispersion'. This situates the thesis within a developing interest, in renaissance studies, both in early modern spatialities, as exemplified by the work of Richard Helgerson, John Gillies and others, and in postmodern approaches to the renaissance. It is the starting point of this thesis that space is produced, rather than a vacuum waiting to be filled by the actions and actors of history. It is also a contention of this thesis that this production of space takes place on a variety of fronts. It is neither limited to the visual or plastic arts, nor the result, solely, of changing economic and political situations. The texts covered include, therefore, plays as well as political pamphlets, poetry as well as maps, scientific treatises as well as portraits. It is organised around three successive 'moments' in sixteenth and seventeenth century England - Elizabethan imperialism reign following the defeat of the Armada, the union project of James VI and I, and the immediate aftermath of the English civil wars. Rather than being seen in a chronological narrative of cause and effect, these moments 'haunt' each other, living on beyond themselves, structuring the representation of space in new contexts. Understood as anachronism, this kind of effect is one result of using 'space' alongside 'history' as the horizon against which textual analysis is performed.

The most popular cantos from the Orlando Furioso in Elizabethan England center on the (in)fi delity of women. Cantos 5, 28, and 43 were appropriated, translated, or adapted in the following works: Peter Beverly’s Historie of Ariodanto and Jenevra, Sir John Harington’s Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse, Thomas Lodge’s Catharos, “The Squire of Dames’s Tale” in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Robert Greene’s The Historie of Orlando Furioso, Robert Tofte’s Two Tales, translated out of Ariosto, and William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. No other cantos from the Orlando Furioso received this amount of literary attention in England, and this paper will explore why these writers were fi xated on these particular episodes, and how they transferred the embedded gender dynamics of these tales from the context of the Este court to their target culture.

This thesis explores the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the executions of London Separatist leaders Henry Barrow and John Greenwood on 6 April, 1593. Occurring after a lengthy prison term punctuated by official examinations conducted by authorities, the executions took place only after the men had been twice reprieved, performed so early as to avoid a crowd yet still in the appointed place of public execution. Focusing on Henry Barrow and the London Separatists, this thesis explores how a national climate of fear and violence led to a greater crackdown on religious dissidents, and argues that the strange circumstances of Barrow’s execution might be attributed to a reluctance to punish a fellow Protestant in the same manner as a Catholic recusant, and the great differences of opinion among both ecclesiastical and temporal state officials regarding the punishment of religious dissent. Though Conformist officials and authoritarianism would ultimately triumph over Puritan efforts to speed reform in the Church of England, the case of Henry Barrow illustrates the fractured state of opinion which was present even among the highest reaches of government.

Before the reformation and the schism of the Catholic Church, it had always been the duty of the Church and not of the state, to undertake the seven corporal works of mercy; feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick, visit the prisoner, and bury the dead.¹ By dissolving these institutions, Henry had unwittingly created what would become a social disaster of biblical proportions. In essence, this act was rendering thousands of the poor and elderly without a home or shelter, it denied the country of much of the medical aid that has been offered by the church, it denied future generations of thousands of volumes of books and scriptures from the monastic libraries, as well as denied many an education who would have otherwise never received one without the help of the Church. The ultimate goal of my thesis is to prove my hypothesis that the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII was not merely a contributory factor in the need for the creation of poor laws, but the deciding factor (in a myriad of societal issues) for their creation. Footnote 1: Matthew 25 vv. 32-46.