This thesis examines three images associated with the manuscripts and early printed editions of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde which I have dubbed “Prostrate Troilus,” “Pandarus as Messenger,” and “Criseyde in the Garden.” These images are artifacts of contemporary textual interpretation that “read” Chaucer’s text and the tale of Troilus. They each illustrate the way in which Troilus, Pandarus, and Criseyde “read” images, gestures, symbols, and speeches within the narrative, and they show how these characters are constrained and influenced by their individual primary modes of perception. Troilus reads but does not analyze. Pandarus actively reads his own meanings into messages. Criseyde’s reading is reflective. Ultimately, the different interpretive strategies that Chaucer explores in Troilus mirror those of Chaucer’s readers.

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This thesis defines and traces female community across Elizabeth Gaskell's novels Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters. Gaskell utilizes the fictionality of these communities to explore different ways of being for women. Here women control not only the plot, but their own lives.

<p>This dissertation examines the forms of cultural labour performed by devotional rhetoric in the writings of Robert Southwell, Richard Crashaw, John Donne, and Thomas Traherne. The general hypothesis here is that devotional forms of expression provided seventeenth-century individuals with much more than a means of expressing praise; they offered an imaginative space in which to articulate and mitigate the psychological effects of the de-animation of the sacramental cosmos. More specifically, the dissertation explores how these four writers record and seek to negotiate processes of de-sacramentalization (the separating of divine from mundane orders) by internalizing such processes, by registering them, that is, as an experience that occurs within the self. This staging of political and theological conflict as a division within the self provides devotional writers with a certain symbolic leverage. By situating external forms of conflict as inwardly experienced dramas, seventeenth-century devotional writers presume that the process of individual self-transformation or metanoia , which is the general aim of religious discipline in both Reformation and Counter-Reformation traditions, is also the means for achieving social harmony. In this thesis, I am primarily concerned with how devotional writers use particular rhetorical strategies in an effort to fashion an ideal religious subject, a subject that confronts social and cosmological disorder through acts of devotion and self-discipline. At bottom, then, this thesis examines how the rhetoric of subjection functions in early modern devotional contexts as a means of articulating and mitigating the psychological effects of social and theological crises.</p> <p>In order to address the forms of cultural work at stake in Counter-Reformational and Anglican acts of praise, particularly the forms of self-transformation towards which devotional practices aim, I situate early modern texts alongside contemporary psychoanalysis. The primary goal of this juxtaposition is to illuminate the way that early modern devotional writers seek to transform readers in and through verbal acts of praise. Cognizant of the potential for anachronism in such an approach, I place devotional writers and psychoanalytic theory in dialogue with one another, rather than applying psychoanalysis to early modern works as such. In particular, I examine how both devotional discourses and psychoanalytic theory are concerned with understanding and transforming processes of subjection.</p> <p>Through a series of historically and theoretically informed close readings, this thesis addresses the question of why devotion matters both culturally and psychologically. What is at stake in seventeenth-century Anglican and Catholic forms of devotional writing is nothing less than the most intimate dimensions of sacramental life. What is at stake, in other words, is how individuals articulate and experience themselves as images of God. By examining the way that devotional writers structure the experience of subjection to God, the way they give divine subjection concrete form through fantasy, we will better understand the psychic life of power at a moment in Reformation history when traditional forms of devotional and liturgical expression began to lose their authority.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Jane Austen’s Anglicanism shaped her works, especially her novels Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park. Austen is didactic regarding the future of the clergy of the Church of England through the clergymen in these novels (Henry Tilney, Edward Ferrars, and Edmund Bertram, respectively), but her didacticism is clearest through these characters’ wives, Catherine Morland, Elinor Dashwood, and Fanny Price. Mansfield Park and the marriage of Edmund and Fanny are the most explicit exploration of Austen’s view of what was necessary for the future of the Church as it continued changing in the nineteenth century.

Describes a theory of gaming inspired primarily by Jean Baudrillard’s claim that gaming is characterized by a “passion for rules.” Key elements of the theory include that games are an attempt to create a new reality, that games create a space for individuality even in an otherwise homogenized world, and that pain and happiness are not diametrically opposed concepts to the gamer. The theory also emphasizes the importance of the player’s meeting with the “superplayer,” the player’s own constructed ideal that he tries to imitate within the game world. This theory of gaming is then applied to the 14th century British poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight both as a demonstration of the theory and to offer a new perspective on the poem. Gawain’s character in the poem is argued as being the archetype of the modern gamer, escaping from an oppressive hegemony by daring to follow the superplayer’s seduction into the passionate world of gaming.

Ihomas Hardy believed that each man should make his own philosophy, and he formulated his own system of thought under the influence of the Bible, the classics, certain of the philosophers, and the Wessex environment. The elements of his thought include religious and philosophical convictions, man's relationship to nature, social institutions, and Victorian limitations. The male characters of his novels set forth his thought just as his female characters reveal his emotions. They show the transition from his early traditional beliefs to his conclusion that the Immanent Will is the governing; force in the universe and that man's ultimate hope is in his own increased awareness.

This study examines the influence of William Morris (1834-1896) upon J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973). It concentrates specifically upon the impact of Morris’s romance, The Roots of the Mountains, upon Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. After surveying the scholarly literature pertaining to this topic, it proceeds to discuss their work within the context of the nineteenth-century revival of interest in the medieval period and in folkloric and mythological narratives. It then analyzes numerous parallels between the two works in characterization; plot motifs; archaic diction, syntax, and semantics; and topographical description and reanimation are then analyzed. These parallels demonstrate that Morris’s work had a profound influence upon The Lord of the Rings. Significant differences that do occur between the two texts are evaluated within the context of the Romantic tradition and the divergent ways the two authors interpret the paradigm of the Fall. The study concludes that, while Tolkien’s work surpasses Morris’s in many respects, its achievements would not have been possible without the example of The Roots of the Mountains to build upon. It closes with possibilities for future directions of research pertaining to this topic.

The detailed examination of two of Shakespeare's female leads, Lady Macbeth and Gertrude, is designed to determine whether or not these particular characters were free from the confines of their society, or if they were content within its oppressive grasp. A combination of Feminist Criticism and New Historicism reveals that Lady Macbeth and Gertrude did not overstep the bounds of their gender, but in fact were suppressed within them. The limited rights and freedoms of a woman during the Renaissance is heavily discussed, and aids in giving the reader a vivid impression of Lady Macbeth's and Gertrude's subjugation. As Renaissance women were considered and treated inferior to their husbands in all respects, so are these two characters. Once the supposed driving force behind her husband's actions, Lady Macbeth makes a swift but devastating departure after Macbeth expels her from both his personal and political matters. No longer needing his wife to appease his conscience, Macbeth finds his own aptitude for evil. Torn between her roles as a wife and mother, Gertrude forfeits her happiness to please her overemotional son. Long before her actual death, Gertrude sacrifices a part of her identity to meet Hamlet's expectations. Both women relinquish their hopes and dreams to fulfill those of the men around them. Their blinded selflessness and misplaced devotion result in their ultimate undoing. Though the typical reader of Macbeth and Hamlet sometimes considers these particular female characters to be strong, bold, and selfish, the values of Shakespeare's era and his actual text suggest otherwise. The playwright's time was marked by a bitter gender struggle that pervaded all areas of Renaissance life, including his own work. Upon first glance, Lady Macbeth and Gertrude might come across as women who were strikingly independent. Throughout the progression of the plays, however, both women take a backseat to more important matters, such as politics and war. Even their deaths do not truly belong to them, as they seem to serve as mere asides to the inevitable "manly" action. Striving to meet the expectations of the men they loved, Lady Macbeth and Gertrude lose themselves in the process.

By means of contemporary diagnostic criteria, Prince Hamlet may be demonstrated to be a Bi-Polar I Manic Depressive. Because current genetic research suggests that this disease is inherited, it is logical to ask if Claudius also suffers from this disorder. It can be demonstrated that he does. We may conclude that Claudius murdered the late King of Denmark during a manic episode similar to the one in which Hamlet kills Polonius.