The standard works on Renaissance literary criticism in Italy devote little space to the period before 1530; and though they recognise the importance of the imitation of literary models in Quattrocento literature, they concentrate on the statements on imitation by Petrarch and Poliziano, and consider only theory. This thesis challenges that traditional view by examining the substantial contributions to imitation theory made by humanists between Petrarch and Poliziano and by adopting a comprehensive approach which embraces both theory and practice, both Latin and vernacular works. The main objective of this research is to demonstrate that imitation is the key to literary theory and practice in the period, and to suggest that literary criticism in the Quattrocento is worthy of more detailed attention. After an initial chapter on the Trecento, Chapters Two to Four consider the role of imitation in the first half of the Quattrocento, examining the works of Bruni; the contributions of educators such as Vergerio, Barzizza, Antonio da Rho (whose De Imitationibus Eloquentie is studied here for the first time in its full version) and Guarino; and the polemic between Poggio and Valla, which marks a crucial stage in the development of Ciceronianism. Chapters Five and Six are devoted to the rise of vernacular humanism between 1430 and 1480, dealing with imitation in the works of Alberti and Landino, who outline a programme of development for the volgare based on the imitation of both the content and the stylistic techniques of Latin authors. Chapters Seven to Nine study the three major literary disputes between 1480 and 1530, showing that the two polemics on imitation between Poliziano and Cortese and between G.F.Pico and Bembo are linked with the quarrel between Barbaro and G.Pico on eloquence and philosophy. An analysis of each dispute both in relation to the other polemics and in the context of the other works of each participant permits a modification of the received view of Cortese as the first Ciceronian; illustrates the proximity rather than the divergence of the views of Pico and Barbaro; and by examining a little-known letter of G.F.Pico demonstrates that his views on imitation are developed about a decade before his exchange with Bembo. Finally, after illustrating Bembo's application of Ciceronianism to his vernacular works and to his Historia Veneta, the thesis concludes by suggesting that with Bembo one stage of the imitation debate comes to a close.

This thesis presents an overview of imitation of models as a literacy pedagogy. Through comprehensive analysis of various perspectives both past and present, this thesis argues that imitation has been an effective literacy pedagogy throughout the history of rhetoric and composition and further, that it remains a feasible pedagogy for modern writing classrooms. The study finds that, by imitating models of excellence, students can not only learn a range of essential writing components, which include subject matter, style, genre, detail, creativity, and writing process, but also they can learn some nontechnical aspects, such as morality, from the model. The thesis also discusses how imitation pedagogy should be implemented. Key issues, including major steps involved in an imitation exercise, caution and judgment in model selection, and the conflict between imitation and plagiarism, are discussed in considerable detail. / Department of English

Thesis (M.A.)--Oregon State University, 2009. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-70). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Inaug.-Diss.--Würzburg. / Vita. Bibliography: p. iii-xxi.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College Dept. of Classics, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--University of Florida. / Description based on print version record. Manuscript copy. Vita. Bibliography: leaves 216-218.

My project offers a set of comparative close readings of texts by E.T.A. Hoffmann and Honoré de Balzac. Balzac’s early fiction, I contend, grapples with questions relating to the representational practice of mimesis through an explicit engagement with Hoffmann’s work. Hoffmann’s fiction, in turn, proves itself repeatedly to contain the traces of a proto-realist tendency, through its playful interventions into the staging of narrative creation. The contribution of my project to scholarship is twofold. First, it offers comparative readings of texts that have not yet been drawn together, hoping to re-adjust the common ascriptions of ‘Romanticism’ and ‘Realism’ to Hoffmann and Balzac respectively, and to identify a new complication in the relationship of those generic categories. Second, it articulates a new account of mimesis. By drawing on the work of twentieth-century theorists such as Erich Auerbach, Walter Benjamin and Merleau-Ponty, it shows that ‘mimesis’ refers not merely to the imitation of an object, but rather to the reproduction of a particular sensory experience of that object. This perspective on mimesis allows me to unfold new readings of the two authors. How is life compromised in the name of fiction, of the artwork? This question recurs compulsively in Hoffmann’s tales, figured in repeated and near-repeated scenarios in which the everyday is pitted against an ideal or delusional alternative. When Balzac imitates or repeats this mimetic question in the works I consider, it is invariably figured in the image of Hoffmann, called upon as a fictional co-author or authorial double, or as a para-textual element, often in highly visual terms. The thesis thus addresses what I have come to term the ‘stakes of mimesis’. If a particular compromise, or particular stakes, are involved in the creation of fictions, for Balzac those stakes are drawn in distinctly Hoffmannesque terms. The thesis is structured according to the conviction that the relationship between the two writers is not simply a linear one of filiation or influence, but one led by a more complicated sense of imitation. To this end, I take to task the conventional figure of the narrative ‘line’ and follow it through various Romantic and modernist complications. My first chapter, ‘Chiasm’, works as a conceptual introduction to the readings, tracing a particular account of literary mimesis from Plato to Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The four subsequent chapters each read a pair of texts by Hoffmann and Balzac alongside one another. Chapter Two, ‘Line’, focuses on the arabesque lines of Der goldne Topf and La Peau de chagrin. Chapter Three, under the emblem ‘Trope’, examines the paper identities of characters in Die Abenteuer der Sylvester-Nacht and Le Colonel Chabert. Chapter Four, ‘Figure’, considers the delusional artist figures and ekphrastic narrative frameworks of Der Artushof and Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu. Finally, Chapter Five, ‘Cross’, examines questions of inheritance between Die Elixiere des Teufels and L’Élixir de longue vie. In unfolding these emblematic figures as models of reading, I seek new ways of thinking about the relationship between these two authors, and about the act of comparative reading.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Translation. Johannesburg, 2016 / There are eleven official languages in South Africa. However, only two of these languages – English and Afrikaans – are dominant. It is often argued that this is because the other 9 official languages do not have enough terminology to be used in institutions of higher learning and in technical fields. I argue that the adaptation of literary texts helps in improving the status of African languages. For this purpose this research involves an analysis of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet which has been adapted into an English novel Hill of Fools by Peteni (1976) and later translated into isiXhosa as Kwazidenge (Peteni 1980). The analysis consists of a comparison between extracts from Romeo and Juliet and Kwazidenge via Hill of Fools using Lambert and van Gorp’s (1985) practical model for textual analysis. I argue that as much as Romeo and Juliet can be seen as a difficult text because of Shakespeare’s English, Peteni was successful in adapting the play into isiXhosa. / MT2017

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 276-292). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

The reception of the Huguenot poet Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas' Semaines (1578, 1584 et seq.) is an important episode in early modern literary history for understanding relations between Scottish, English and French literature, interactions between contemporary reading and writing practices, and developments in divine poetry. This thesis surveys translations (Part I), allusions and quotations in prose (Part II) and verse imitations (Part III) from the period when English translations of the Semaines were being printed in order to identify historical trends in how readers absorbed and adapted the poems. Early translations show that the Semaines quickly acquired political and diplomatic affiliations, particularly at the Jacobean Scottish Court, which persisted in subsequent decades (Chapter 1). William Scott's treatise The Model of Poesy (c. 1599) and translations indicate how attractive the Semaines' combination of humanist learning and sacred rhetoric was, but the poems' potential appeal was only realized once Josuah Sylvester's Devine Weeks (1605 et seq.) finally made the complete work available in English (Chapter 2). Different communities of readers developed in early modern England and Scotland once this edition became available (Chapter 3), and we can observe how individuals marked, copied out, quoted and appropriated passages from their copies of the poems in ways dependent on textual and authorial circumstances (Chapter 4). The Semaines, both in French and in Sylvester's translation, were used as a stylistic model in late-Elizabethan playtexts and Zachary Boyd's Zions Flowers (Chapter 5), and inspired Jacobean poems that help us to assess Du Bartas' influence on early modern poetry (Chapter 6). The great variety of responses to the Semaines demonstrates new ways that intertextuality was a constituent feature of vernacular religious literature that was being read and written in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain.