In the Metamorphoses, Ovid brings together Golden Age imagery with contrasting scenes of destruction, making this paradoxical amalgam a motif within his epic. This study connects Ovid’s use of Golden Age language to his portrayal of artistry in the poem, discovering that both within the stories of the epic and in Ovid’s poetic style, artistic creation is emphasised in the context of this motif. Both natural fecundity and artistic creation emerge after the flood through the principle of discors concordia (Met. 1.433), which involves the unity of divine harmony and chaos; this principle is central to Ovid’s use of Golden Age language. The discussion takes up the influence of Virgil and Lucretius on this motif, discovering that Ovid’s synthesis of harmony and chaos draws on both forerunners. By uniting the Golden Age and its antithesis, Ovid reveals the conditions necessary for art, and thus for poetry itself.

This thesis uses the popular genre of detective fiction to explore the context of the heyday of the crime genre: the Golden Age. This sub-genre, best known for producing Agatha Christie, spanned the complicated history of Britain involving the Great Depression, two World Wars and huge changes to class structure. It is for these reasons that the Golden Age is such a pivotal period for changing notions of British identity. Through the very British Christie and the less well known New Zealander, Ngaio Marsh, expressions of national identity are explored as well as how the colonial fits in. Focusing heavily on the authors and their own personal experiences and views, this thesis is divided into four chapters to further break down how the Golden Age period affected its citizens and why this detective fiction held such a wide appeal. Chapter one explores gender roles and how Golden Age authors both conformed to them through their choice in detectives, yet also how they naturally resisted some through their own public image. Chapter two then examines the issue of class and how Golden Age detective fiction portrayed the changes. Contrary to popular criticism, Christie and Marsh were surprisingly progressive and forward thinking on this subject. Chapter three considers how both authors employed setting to emphasise these changes. Both Christie and Marsh used foreign settings to highlight British society and its flaws, and Marsh used her New Zealand settings to consider the relationship between Britain and her home. The final chapter will consider why Golden Age detective fiction was so popular: what was the appeal? For a period of violence and uncertainty, why were people drawn to crime fiction involving sometimes gruesome death? The appeal lay, and still does, in the puzzle: the game that diverted readers from their own problems. Golden Age fiction may have been highly formulaic and predictable, but it was also highly artificial and self-referential. This was a clever and diverting fiction that has been constantly underestimated by critics and deserves further study.

This thesis presents the first sustained analysis of the reception of the Aristotelian golden mean in early modern Spanish literature. It argues that the critically-neglected ethical credo of moderation was an important part of the classical inheritance on which Golden-Age authors frequently drew, and that despite its famous origins in moral philosophy rather than literature, it was subject to just the same kind of imitative reworking as has long been acknowledged for literary predecessors. The analysis is divided into two sections. The first takes a synoptic view of the period, assessing the transmission of Aristotle's doctrine to the Renaissance and exploring what it meant to the Golden-Age mind. That includes identifying a particular early modern reformulation of the mean, which I argue was an important factor in the popularity of the Icarus and Phaethon myths, as analogues for Aristotle's moral. The body of the thesis then comprises three case studies of the role of moderation in works which span the period's chronological and generic range: the poetry of Garcilaso; Calderón's 'El médico de su honra'; and Gracián's 'Criticón'. These studies explore three important general trends in the reception of the mean: the association of excess and moderation with particular literary models; the incorporation of the mean into Christian thought; and its parallel existence as non-technical, commonplace wisdom. However, each chapter also constitutes an innovation within its own field, offering a reassessment of Garcilaso's relationship to literary tradition; a re-reading of the characters and plot structure of 'El médico', including the controversial King Pedro; and an analysis of the elusive moral approach behind Gracián's allegorical novel. The mean is thus remarkable for both the breadth and depth of its incorporation into literature, and a focus on its treatment offers substantial new insights into some of the canonical works of the age.

This thesis explores the generic interaction between Virgilian pastoral and Ovidian epic. My primary goal is to bring pastoral, substantially enriched by important critical work thereupon in recent decades, more energetically into the scholarly discussion of the Metamorphoses, whose multifaceted generic interplay is often limited to the study of its interaction with elegy. Secondarily, I hope to show how the Metamorphoses plays a pivotal role in the re-reading of the Eclogues. The fact that both epic and pastoral are written in hexameters facilitates the interaction between the two and enables the Metamorphoses’ repeated short-term transformations into pastoral poetry, which often end abruptly. I will try to show that although the engagement with pastoral occasionally appears to threaten the epic code of the poem, pastoral is ultimately integrated in the Metamorphoses’ generic self-definition as epic and partakes in Ovid’s dynamic recreation of the genre. My primary method is that of intertextuality, resting on the premise that all readings of textual relationships, as the one suggested here, are acts of interpretation. I also explore pastoral in the Metamorphoses intratextually by joining together various pastoral episodes of the Metamorphoses and arguing how similar thematics are replayed and rewritten throughout the poem. The main perspectives from which I examine pastoral in the Ovidian epic are those of fiction and the development of the thematics of the Golden Age. In the first part, I explore instances of song performances in the Metamorphoses, i) musical contests, ii) solo performances and iii) laments, in which I argue that pastoral is extensively at work. I suggest that the Metamorphoses employs pastoral’s overriding generic self-obsession and its tendency to create its own fiction internally, significantly through the means of singing performance and repetition. I argue that the mythopoetic means of pastoral are applied and reworked in the Metamorphoses for the creation of its epic world and heroes. In the second part, I explore the repeated occurrences of the Golden Age theme in the Metamorphoses and suggest that the remarkable engagement with pastoral is employed both to invite a political reading of the Golden Age, as set by Eclogue 4 and its post-Eclogues occurrences, and to recap the introversion of the pastoral enclosure and its seclusion from politics.

This thesis document is a presentation and exploration of the process involving the costume design for The Boys from Syracuse (music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, book by George Abbott) in the McLeod Theatre at Southern Illinois University Carbondale during February 2018. This light-hearted, farcical musical reminds us that life doesn’t have to be so serious. It explores our ability to be consumed by our own responsibilities, which causes us to escape to the theater and just enjoy a show. Chapter 1 contains the research, background information, and script analysis that was conducted to further enhance and inform the design of the costumes. This chapter also contains the goals that I wanted to achieve within my design and personal growth. Chapter 2 focuses on the design process and how each costume evolved through collaboration and discussion. Chapter 3 documents the build process of the design and how it was realized. An examination of the dress rehearsals and the production’s four performances are also contained within this chapter. Chapter 4 documents an analysis of the entire design and its evolution through outside critiques and commentary supported by personal self-reflection.

My dissertation focuses on the poetic production of three criollas —the offspring of Spaniards in the Americas— in dialogic relation with prominent male writers across the Atlantic. The works studied, Clarinda’s Discurso en loor de la Poesía (1608); Epístola a Belardo (1621) by Amarilis; and Sor Juana’s Primero sueño (1692) and La Respuesta (1691), span the entirety of the 17th century, in both the Viceroyalty of Perú and New Spain. Important interventions in Latin American colonial culture have noted criollos’ ambivalence towards the culture inherited from Spain as well as the need to assert their cultural agency through writing. The poets at the center of my study participate in this preoccupation with the added complication of being women, whose works are habitually read in isolation, as exceptions. My dissertation defines a feminine criolla poetics dialogically negotiated with western tradition, be it Spanish gongorismo or Italian humanism, while highlighting the tension between inserting themselves in the canon and critiquing it. In place of readings that emphasize the transfer of discourse and knowledge from the center to the periphery, from the metropole to the colonies, I demonstrate that the writings of these women challenge, or even reverse, this logic. My study analyzes rhetorical and intertextual strategies by which criollas, twice removed from power due to their birthplace and gender, negotiated a space in the canon. My analysis reveals the acute consciousness of gender that informs each woman’s writing; however, I also participate in recent movements in criticism and theory that interrogate conventional notions of power, space and the directionality of colonial exchange. This dissertation examines the processes of cultural appropriation as it defines a feminine criolla poetics dialogically negotiated with western tradition, one that also opens up a space to critique this tradition through parody, irony and textual transformation. This dissertation is written in Spanish.

Des origines de l'Histoire au lieu commun qu'il est aujourd'hui devenu, le mythe de l'Âge d'Or occupe une place singulière dans l'imaginaire collectif. Sans héros ni intrigue, synonyme d'une existence idéalisée, d'un état de plénitude, tout à la fois ancré dans le passé et l'avenir, il fournit à la littérature, à la poésie, à la philosophie, la possibilité de maintes réflexions sur l'humaine condition. Pourtant, dans le domaine des arts figurés, rares en sont les expressions avant les premiers soubresauts de la pensée moderne. La Renaissance – dont la dénomination même prend alors tout son sens – s'attachera à fixer des codes iconographiques toujours en vigueur. Les représentations d'une humanité insouciante, s'égayant par la nature ou festoyant, n'en recèlent pas moins toute la richesse de leurs pendants littéraires, de Virgile et d'Ovide notamment. Ainsi, l'Âge d'Or mis en images, sous couvert d'apparente simplicité, renvoie à des significations souvent mêlées qui ont trait à la politique, à la religion et à la morale. Considérées dans la sphère européenne, entre le XVème et le XVIIIème siècle, ces interprétations révèlent cependant des approches quelque peu différentes, qui reflètent peut-être des dissensions plus profondes. / From the origins of history to the commonplaces it has become today, the myth of the Golden Age takes up a peculiar place in the collective psyche. Without a hero or a plot ; synonymous with an idealized life and a plenitude state, deep-rooted in the past and the future at the same time, it provides literature, poetry and philosophy with umpteen thoughts about the Human Condition. Yet in the field of the figurative arts, the expressions of the first starts of the modern thought are scarce. The Renaissance – whose very denomination make sense then – will pay a particular attention to set iconographic codes which are still in force. The representations of a cheering up or entertaining careless mankind show all the richness of their literary counterparts, from Virgil to Ovid in particular. Thus, under the cover of a conspicuous easiness, the pictured Golden Age send back to often mixed significations wich refer to politicics, religion and morals. However, if considered in the European sphere between 15th and the 18th century, these interpretations show some slightly different approaches which may reflect some deeper dissentions.

The work focuses on the study of Spanish pastoral novels presenting their two fundamentally different aspects. On the one hand, the thesis describes the idealised world of shephards living in harmony with nature, singing about their unrequited love. On the other, the work points out, that these novels also include some realistic elements, corrupting the mentioned idealism. It aims to answer the question, to what extent these elements appeare in the studied novels, and what is their function. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Among the works of theater of the Spanish Golden Age which feature a mujer varonil, Luis Vélez de Guevara's play, La serrana de la Vera (1613), is particularly provocative. The intensity and ambiguity of the dual nature of its female protagonist, Gila, has been the subject of much recent scholarly investigation. The staging of the play lends itself to a Levinian reading, a new approach to this particular text and theater of the Golden Age in general. Emmanuel Levinas moves beyond metaphysics, phenomenology and intentionality to posit ethics as first philosophy. Levinas explains that the face of the Other is a revelation before which my own presence is an epiphany and summons me into an ethical relationship before I am aware of my own being. A correct ethical relationship is maintained only when the Other is allowed her absolute alterity, otherwise the Other is subsumed into the matrix of the Self and the result is suffering. A Levinian reading of La serrana de la Vera moves beyond exploring systems of class and gender and discovers that the suffering in the play can be traced to face-to-face encounters in which individuals are unable or unwilling to truly see the face of the Other.

This thesis proposes an anachronistic, imagined production of Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla´s Golden Age play, Lo que quería ver el marqués de Villena. Using the story of a mujer varonil, I intend to address a problematic aspect of Brigham Young University´s (BYU) culture—specifically the pressure that women at the university face to choose between a family life and continuing their education. The imagined production utilizes seventeenth-century-style costumes and set contrasted with a General English dialogue to provide the theoretical audience a better emotional, physical and intellectual understanding of the mujer varonil protagonist whose story reflects an issue that many women at BYU face. This thesis begins with an introduction explaining a problematic aspect of BYU´s culture and the reason that this production of Lo que quería ver el marqués de Villena could assist students and faculty at the university in addressing said issue. Following the introduction, each chapter will provide both an analysis of the theatrical element and a description of the theatrical element in the proposed production.