The author's "original work was presented to London University in 1954 as a doctoral thesis, on part of which the present volume is based." / "A publication of the History of Exeter and South West Research Group." Bibliography: p. 183-197.

The author's "original work was presented to London University in 1954 as a doctoral thesis, on part of which the present volume is based." / "A publication of the History of Exeter and South West Research Group." Bibliography: p. 183-197.

Nineteenth-century scholars generally felt that the Exeter Book riddle collection was a unified whole under the authorship of Cynewulf, or that it was made up of two major parts, Riddles "1" (now known as "Wul'f and Eadwacer") to 59 and 61-95. Most scholars since the first decade of this century, however, have viewed the riddles as a miscellany, with a few individual riddles perhaps sharing common authorship, but with no overall unity or organization in the collection as a whole. If the riddles are examined in terms of their point of view (I am..., I saw..., There is...), a distinct pattern emerges which demonstrates Riddles 61-95 to be separate from the rest, and which also divides Riddles 1-59 into two more or less equal groups. The distribution of point of view does not indicate the exact point of division between the first two groups, but if the groups originally comprised 60 riddles (like the collection of Eusebius), and if the two groups are assumed to have been equal collections of 30, then deduction based on the amount of missing material due to the loss of folios between fols. 105 and 106, and between 111 and 112, would locate the break between Riddles 29 and 30. Riddle 30b, then, could have been simply a mis-start of the second group at a point later in the MS. Examination of the distribution of opening and closing formulas arid of the adverbs hwilum, oft and nu over the collection supports the three-part theory. Stylistic diversity in the third group, from crude riddles like Nos. 75 and 76 to the fine 'horn' and 'water' riddles suggests that this group is a miscellany containing the work of a number of authors. Connections between riddles of this group and the two earlier ones appear to indicate some sort of dependence of these on riddles of the first two groups. The relationship in several of the cases can be explained as imitation or modelling of the later riddles on earlier ones. Such a suggestion is not inconsistent with practice at the time, as other riddles of the period appear to have been used as exercises in grammar. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2008. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-179).

This thesis challenges the notion that little light can be shed on Exeter’s ‘middling’ and ‘poorer’ sorts in the period 1550-1610, defined as ‘the chorus’ by Wallace MacCaffrey in his book Exeter 1540-1640. It selects data from mid- to late- sixteenth and early seventeenth century urban archives, defines the strengths and weaknesses of that data and captures it in a digitised database. It uses this data to test which of the methodologies of prosopography, collective and individual biography, social network analysis and occupied topography are most appropriate for analysis of the city’s social structure and individuals’ lived experiences. It subsequently selects collective and individual biography for use with the randomly incomplete data set presented by the archives. Using the database to create group and individual biographies, it then introduces elementary quantitative analyses of the city’s social structure, starting by describing broadly the distinguishing characteristics of the leading actors and the chorus. Following on from this, it describes several groups who form part of the chorus, including the more civically active, alongside those with less data against their names. It investigates family and household dynamics and reveals how these are reflected through the occupation of baker. It continues by examining the post-mortem intentions of those who bequeathed goods and explores the lives of a selection of craftsmen, merchants, tailors and widows viewed through in-depth biographies created from the comparatively rich data associated with death. It also makes explicit that the lack of a particular document type compromises the degree of success in connecting the chorus to the cityscape using occupied topography methodologies. It reveals the challenges of recreating the notion of neighbourhood in the city’s west quarter around St Nicholas Priory, then the town house of the wealthy Hurst family. It concludes that it is possible to outline a new model, that of the ‘categorised, connected citizen’, which challenges the validity of MacCaffrey’s construct of a bi-partite society, one side of which is a murky unknown quantity about whom no ‘striking assertions’ can be made. This new model acknowledges the dynamism, individuality and interactivity of Exeter’s inhabitants, and contents that it is a better one for enabling historians to treat respectfully people they cannot yet fully understand.