Thesis--Wisconsin. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 180-184).

Art has very littlo to do with the dead. Death alone is the negation of creation, ,while art is a vital force, a deeply instinctive, everlasting, continual revitalisation. Art is life and nature and it lives in the realms of imagination, magic and mystery. Its language is the language of myth, and its aim is Truth. Art is action and reaction and is reached in silence by the artist alone and individually - its climate is solitude and its paths are as devious and labyrinthine as any the soul can follow in search of self-knowledge and the divine. Chap. 1, p. 1.

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for the degree of master of Arts. / This thesis examines a medieval text which forms part of Italian chevalric literature i.e. The story of Ugone d'Alvernia. Its original name was Huon d'Auvergne. Firstly the text will be examined from the historic angle and then from a more scientific point of view. It shows how the original "chanson de geste", written in French was brought by the French "jongleurs" into Italy and became initialized, producing a unique phenomenon, a linguistic mixture known as franco-venetian. This literature played a decisive part in the diffusion of the stories surrounding Charlemagne. Huon d'Auvergne was elaborated and extended by Andrea da Barberino (c. 1370-1432) and called La Storia di Ugone d' Alvernia (The story of Ugone Of Alvernia). Various descents into Hell are then examined , from both the classic and the Christian point of view. This examination leads on to the comparison of the two "Inferni" described by Andrea da Barberino in his two works La Storia di Ugone d' Alvernia and in Guerino il Meschino with the descent described by Dante in his Inferno. A morphological analysis of the text is then undertaken. It applies the theory propounded and used by Propp in his morphological analysis of some Russian fairy tales. According to the theory there are thirty-one "functions" which can be applied in such an analysis / Andrew Chakane 2018

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, May 2008.

No description available.

This doctoral dissertation analyses depictions of hell in sanctions, i.e. threats of punishments in Anglo-Saxon charters. I am arguing that an innovative use of sanctions as pastoral and ideological instruments effected the peak of infernal imagery in the sanctions of tenth-century royal diplomas. Belonging to the genre of ritual curses, Anglo-Saxon sanctions contain the three standard ecclesiastical curses (excommunication, anathema and damnation). It cannot be established if other requirements of ritual cursing (authoritative personnel, setting and gestures) were fulfilled. A lack of evidence, together with indications of more secular punishments, suggests that sanctions were not used as legal instruments. Their pastoral function is proposed by frightening depictions of hell and the devil, as fear is an important means of achieving salvation in biblical, homiletic and theological writings available or produced in Anglo-Saxon England. The use of the infernal motifs of Hell as a Kitchen, Satan as the Mouth of Hell and winged demons in sanctions are discussed in detail. Sanctions frequently contain the overtly didactic and pastoral device of the exemplum. Notorious sinners believed to be damned in hell (e.g. Judas) are presented as negative exempla in sanctions to deter people from transgressing against charters. The repeated use of terms from classical mythology for depicting hell in Anglo-Saxon sanctions appears to correlate with the preference for hermeneutic Latin by tenth-century monastic reformers. The reasons for employing classical mythological terminology seem to agree with those suggested for the use of hermeneutic Latin (intellectual snobbery and raising the stylistic register), and glossaries constitute the main source of both types of Latinity. The sanctions of the Refoundation Charter of New Minster, Winchester, which is known to display the ‘ruler theology’ propagated by the monastic reform, are examined in their textual contexts with regard to the observations made in the earlier parts of this dissertation.