Women’s subjugation to the objectification of men is a traced theme throughout the history of Western culture. In this thesis, the attributes of the male gaze will be explored via the patriarchal pioneers of literature: Dante to Petrarch to Shakespeare. The solidification of the male gaze takes place during the late middle ages as Dante Alighieri writes an infatuated love for Beatrice throughout La Vita Nuova and Inferno, demonstrating the virgin-whore dichotomy with Francesca. Similarly, Francesco Petrarch’s poetry of Rime Sparse describes the objectification and dismantling of woman for erotic pleasure and patriarchal power. The shift from early to late renaissance displays William Shakespeare’s presentation of women in Titus Andronicus, Othello, and Hamlet as a denunciation of women through the male gaze. These themes of patriarchy developed throughout historic literature will help us analyze media advertisements today as women are silenced, dismembered, and exhibited through the male gaze.

Gaius Julius Caesar is not only the most well-known figure in Roman history, but he is also one of the most difficult to understand. Since his assassination, Caesar has played an important role in discussions of political power, imperial government, tyranny, and tyrannicide. While there have been literary treatments of Caesar from William Shakespeare to the present, little has been done to trace the image of Caesar through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. The present work attempts to fill that hole by examining portrayals of Caesar in medieval and early Renaissance texts. An examination of specific authors such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, John of Salisbury, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Petrarch, Salutati, and Bruni, clearly demonstrates that Caesar was consistently portrayed as the first emperor and used to represent the Roman Empire. As the first emperor, representations of Caesar figured significantly in debates about the power of the Church and the Empire, the benefits and downfalls of imperial government, and tyrannicide. Authors were influenced in their portrayals of Caesar by the classical portrayals found in the works of Vergil, Lucan, and Suetonius. Each author's interpretation of Caesar was also impacted by the political and intellectual milieu in which he flourished. Analysis of Caesar's image over this time period serves not only as a part of Caesar historiography, but also provides insight into the ways that scholars write history to understand the world around them.

No description available.

Lire la poésie de Pétrarque sous l'angle de la métamorphose est en soi une approche originale, d’autant plus que la métamorphose s'y présente sous de multiples formes : élément narratif explicite, transformation implicite par la métaphore, allusion à des mythes ovidiens, mutatio extérieure et intérieure des personnages de la fabula lyrique autobiographique, transformation des textes et de la poétique de l'auteur au fil du passage du temps, lui-même métamorphosant. Cette thèse aborde la poétique de Pétrarque en-dehors des sentiers battus, en étudiant d'abord la tradition médiévale des commentaires allégoriques des trois mythes ovidiens, Daphné, Méduse, Narcisse, qui sont fondamentaux dans les Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, afin de déterminer ensuite les points de contact ou de divergence avec les poésies du livre. C’est également par une démarche nouvelle que ces trois mythes principaux, auxquels s'ajoutent des fables secondaires, sont appréhendés d’après la chronologie réelle de l'écriture et ses interférences avec la construction progressive du livre-canzoniere. La thématique métamorphique d’ascendance ovidienne est ainsi confrontée à la problématique de la mutatio animi augustinienne. Enfin, la double présence des mythes métamorphiques et de la métamorphose comme réécriture, autobiographique ou métapoétique, est élargie aux Triomphes et à la poésie latine (Epystole, Africa, Bucolicum Carmen), jamais étudiés dans cette perspective. / Reading Petrarch's poetry from the angle of metamorphosis is in itself an original approach, all the more since metamorphosis takes there many different forms : a narrative explicit component, implicit transformation by metaphor, allusion to ovidian myths, external and internal mutatio of the characters of the lyric and autobiographical fabula, transformation of the texts and the author's poetics with the passing of time, which has itself a metamorphosing action. This thesis approaches Petrarch's poetics geting off the beaten paths, by studying first the medieval tradition of allegorical commentaries, particularly those concerning three ovidian myths, Daphne, Medusa, Narcissus, which are fundamental in the Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, with the purpose to determine then common features and divergences with the poems of the book. These three main myths, completed by secondary fables, are also studied by means of a new method, that is according to the chronology of writing and its implications with the progressive construction of the canzoniere. The metamorphic theme, of ovidian origin, is in this way confronted to the problematic of the augustinian mutatio animi. Lastly, the double presence of metamorphic myths and of metamorphosis as rewriting, autobiographical or metapoetical, is extended to the Triumphs and to latin poetry (Epystole, Africa, Bucolicum Carmen), never analysed from that viewpoint.

This thesis examines the role of animal imagery in Petrarch's 'Rerum vulgarium fragmenta' (Rvf) as a means of elucidating his poetics in conversation with his predecessors. To achieve this aim, the present study compares and contrasts Petrarch's poetry with that of the poets quoted in Rvf 70, namely Arnaut Daniel, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri and Cino da Pistoia. My research sheds light on the way in which Petrarch draws on and diverges from his precursors as he establishes his poetic language. The comparison between Petrarch and one or more of his predecessors poses three areas of enquiry central to my research: Petrarch's reuse of traditional animal images, such as those in troubadour poetry; the question of allegory in the Rvf; and the language and communication strategies which characterise Petrarch's poetic exchanges. Chapter 1 introduces a theoretical framework, based on the sources in Petrarch's possession, which discusses and reviews the implications, in medieval culture, of the notion of animality in relation to and in the representation of human passions. Chapter 2 considers Petrarch's potential engagement with the repertoire of animal imagery in the tradition of Occitan poetry. It examines the set of zoological images of bestiary derivation that Petrarch shares with the troubadours, specifically focusing on Petrarch's debt to Arnaut Daniel. Chapter 3 explores the role of allegory in Petrarch's animal imagery as compared with Dante's poetry. Chapter 4 considers how the employment of animal images varies between the poems without apparent correspondents and those with specific recipients. The first part of the chapter is concerned with the lyrics of Guido Cavalcanti and Cino da Pistoia, while the second part analyses animal vocabulary in the Rvf and in the poetic exchanges that Petrarch left uncollected as 'estravaganti'.

This thesis is concerned with one key aspect of the reception of the vernacular poetry of Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), namely translations and imitations of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Rvf) and Triumphi in English. It aims to provide a more comprehensive survey of the vernacular Petrarch’s legacy to English literature than is currently available, with a particular focus on some hitherto critically neglected texts and authors. It also seeks to ascertain to what degree the socio-historical phenomena of religion, politics, and culture have influenced the translations and imitations in question. The approach has been both chronological and comparative. This strategy will demonstrate with greater clarity the monumental effect of the Elizabethan Reformation on the English reception of Petrarch. It proposes a solution to the problem of the long gap between Geoffrey Chaucer’s re-writing of Rvf 132 and the imitations of Wyatt and Surrey framed in the context of Chaucer’s sophisticated imitative strategy (Chapter I). A fresh reading of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella is offered which highlights the author’s misgivings about the dangers of textual misinterpretation, a concern he shared with Petrarch (Chapter II). The analysis of Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti and Epithalamion in the same chapter reveals a hitherto undetected Ovidian subtext to Petrarch’s Rvf 190. Chapter III deals with two English versions of the Triumphi: I propose a date for Lord Morley’s translation which suggests it may be the first post- Chaucerian English engagement with Petrarch; new evidence is brought to light which identifies the edition of Petrarch used by William Fowler as the source text for his Triumphs of Petrarcke. The fourth chapter constitutes the most extensive investigation to date of J. M. Synge’s engagement with the Rvf, and deals with the question of translation as subversion. On the theoretical front, it demonstrates how Synge’s use of “folk-speech” challenges Venuti’s binary foreignising/domesticating system of translation categorisation.

La présente thèse analyse les conditions dans lesquelles les traductions des 'Triumphi' de Pétrarque ont apparu et circulé en France entre les années 1470 et 1550. Ce travail a été structuré selon trois axes de recherche. Cet ouvrage essaye de définir tout d’abord le périmètre de circulation des mises en français du poème allégorique de Pétrarque à partir d’une étude codicologique des témoins connus (contexte de production ; hypothèse de datation ; reconstruction des possibles contextes de circulation ; reconstruction de l’historique plus ou moins récent des manuscrits)afin de reconnaître à l’ensemble de ces traductions l’importance du rôle joué dans la réception de l’oeuvre vulgaire de Pétrarque en France aussi bien que dans le développement du pétrarquisme français. Ensuite, nous avons étudié la question des liens qui relient certaines traductions entre elles. Nous nous sommes occupé tant de l’identification du texte de départ utilisé par chaque traducteur que des relations intertextuelles qui semblent relier certaines mises en français du poème et qui sont apparues au cours du travail d’alignement des textes. La thèse analyse, enfin, la question de la langue de convention de Pétrarque par rapport à sa translation de l’italien en français (assimilation et réutilisation de certains ‘iuncturæ’ typiquement pétrarquiennes) avec le but de vérifier si ces traductions ont pu représenter le premier lieu de codification en français des stylèmes lexicaux les plus typiques du langage littéraire du poète toscan, ainsi que des motifs et de quelques figures de style souvent utilisés par le poète. / This thesis analyses the conditions under which translations of Petrarch’s 'Triumphi' appeared and circulated in France between the years 1470 and 1550. This work has been structured along three research axes. This work first attempts to define the perimeter of the circulation of the French translations of Petrarch’s allegorical poem based on a codicological study of known manuscripts (probable context of production ; hypothesis of dating ; reconstruction of possible contexts of circulation ; reconstruction of the more or less recent history of witnesses) in order to recognize to all of these translations the role played in the reception of Petrarch’s vulgar work in France as well as in the development of French Petrarchism. We were concerned then both with the identification of the source text used by each translator and with the intertextual relations that seem to link certain French translations of the poem and that appeared during the work of aligning the texts. Finally, the thesis analyses the question of the language of Petrarch’s convention in relation to his translation from Italian into French (assimilation and reuse of some typically Petrarchan ‘iuncturæ’) with the aim of verifying whether these translations represented the first place of codification in French of the most typical lexical patterns of the Tuscan poet’s literary language, as well as the motifs and some stylistic figures often used by the poet. / La presente tesi si propone di studiare le condizioni in cui le traduzioni dei Trionfi di Petrarca apparvero e circolarono in Francia tra il 1470 e il 1550. Il lavoro è stato strutturato su tre assi di ricerca. L’opera si propone innanzitutto di definire le reti ove circolarono le diverse traduzioni francesi del poema allegorico del Petrarca sulla base dello studio codicologico dei testimoni noti (probabile contesto di realizzazione ; ipotesi di datazione ; ricostruzione di possibili contesti di circolazione ; ricostruzione della storia più o meno recente dei testimoni), al fine di riconoscere a tutte queste traduzioni il peso giocato nella recezione dell’Opera volgare del Petrarca in Francia e nello sviluppo del petrarchismo francese. Successivamente, è stato svolto uno studio di critica testuale, volto all’identificazione del prototesto italiano utilizzato da ciascun traduttore, esaminando al contempo le relazioni intertestuali che sembrano collegare alcune traduzioni in francese e che sono apparse durante il lavoro di allineamento dei testi. Infine, la tesi analizza la questione della lingua letteraria del Petrarca in relazione alla sua traduzione dall’italiano al francese (assimilazione e riutilizzo di alcune ‘iuncturæ’ tipicamente petrarchesche) al fine di verificare se tali traduzioni abbiano rappresentato, in effetti, il primo luogo di codificazione in francese dei più tipici stilemi lessicali della lingua letteraria del poeta toscano, nonché dei motivi e di alcune figure stilistiche spesso utilizzate dal poeta.

Cette thèse étudie l'emploi d'environ 640 occurrences relatives au champ sémantique des paysages et des saisons (reliefs, rivages, cours d'eau, végétation, pierres, écueils, neiges et "nebula") dans les "Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta". C'est l'environnement textuel dans lequel chacune d'elles s'insère qui la distingue des autres et infléchit son signifié ; et en même temps chacune se complète de façon dynamique, interagissant avec toutes celles qui se trouvent sur le même axe paradigmatique. Le premier chapitre étudie leur morphologie de façon contextuelle et intertextuelle, afin de cerner l'isotopie du chronotope dans le "canzoniere" ; on verra par la diversification et l’enrichissement de leurs emplois métaphoriques que les paysages et les saisons s'imposent comme enjeux diégétiques. La composition du "liber" s’inscrivant dans une temporalité complexe qui, pour chacun de ses "fragmenta", brouille la chronologie relative à sa composition, c’est par la prise en compte, dans le deuxième chapitre, de cette double dimension diachronique, qu’il a été possible de mieux appréhender l'évolution continue qui est à l’œuvre dans et par les métaphores. Elles permettent de partir d'une donnée connue (y compris en tant que topos littéraire) pour explorer une réalité (intérieure) autrement insaisissable, le “réel” du poète-amant. Le dernier chapitre nous permettra d'analyser les processus de métaphorisation mis en œuvre par Pétrarque lorsque les reprises du chronotope acquièrent une portée éthique et métapoétique. / My thesis scrutinizes the use of almost 640 occurrences related to the semantic fields of landscapes and seasons (landforms, shores, rivers, vegetation, rocks, reefs, clouds and "nebula") in the "Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta". It is the textual environment in which each of them fits that distinguishes it from others and bends its signified; and yet they complement one another dynamically, interacting with all those who are on the same paradigmatic axis. The first chapter examines their morphology in a contextual and intertextual way, to identify the chronotope's isotopy in the "canzoniere" ; we will see by the diversification and the enrichment of their metaphorical uses that landscapes and seasons emerge as diegetic issues. The composition of the "liber" partakes of a complex temporality that blurs the chronology of its composition for each of its "fragmenta" ; it is by taking into account, in the second chapter, this double diachronic dimension, that it was possible to better understand the continuing evolution which is at work in and through metaphors. They allow from a known data (including as a literary topos) to explore a reality (indoor) otherwise elusive, the poet-lover's "real". The last chapter will allow us to analyze the metaphorization process implemented by Petrarch when the chronotope's recurrences acquire an ethical and metapoetic scope.

This thesis examines the figure of Medusa in the works of three Victorian women: the poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) and Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), and the artist Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919). For many in an era that sought to categorize women according to rigid social boundaries, Medusa embodied all that is suspicious, dangerous, and alluring about women. But in subtle and unexpected ways, these three women reimagined the Medusa archetype and used it to explore female experience and expression, as well as the challenges and complexities of female authorship. In their works, Medusa, like other hybrid personae such as the mermaid and the lamia, became a figure through which to explore liminal spaces and slippery categories. I argue that these women prefigured the twentieth-century feminist rehabilitation of Medusa. I also suggest that this proto-feminist transformation of the myth draws, directly and indirectly, from the tradition of Ovid, the first poet to suggest that Medusa’s monstrosity resulted from her victimhood and that her power is not merely destructive, but also creative. My analysis contends that, contrary to common understanding, women were revisioning Medusa’s meaning well before the twentieth century.

Le duché de Milan durant le Quattrocento est marqué par le règne des deux familles dominantes de la Lombardie, les Visconti et les Sforza. Pendant une période marquée par les conflits territoriaux et les disputes pour le titre ducal, l’art du gothique international se fait essentiel dans la propagande politique. Parmi les diverses œuvres de cette période qui soulignent le pouvoir et la position hiérarchique de la noblesse, les paquets de tarot le plus anciens qui nous sont parvenus sont les jeux Visconti-Sforza, datés de la première moitié du 15e siècle. Nommés ainsi selon leurs commanditaires présumés, la nomenclature est utilisée pour désigner quinze jeux, dont trois sont analysés dans ce mémoire : le jeu Pierpont Morgan-Bergame (réparti entre l’Accademia Carrara, à Bergame; le Pierpont Morgan Library, à New York; et la collection privée Casa Colleoni, à Bergame), le Brera-Brambilla (Pinacoteca di Brera, à Milan) et le Cary-Yale (Beinecke Library, à New Haven). L’étude de ce corpus nous permet de comprendre l’histoire de pouvoir des Visconti et des Sforza, ainsi que les traditions de la littérature poétique et des processions triomphales de l’époque. Par une analyse iconographique de ces jeux, notre objectif a été de cerner et de comprendre le contexte socioculturel dans lequel ils ont été créés. Cette analyse met également en lumière les importantes questions concernant les attributions aux artistes, les dates de réalisation et l’identification du mécénat de ces jeux de luxe. / The Duchy of Milan in the Quattrocento is marked by the reign of two powerful families in Lombardy, the Visconti and the Sforza. During a time full of territorial conflicts and disputes for the ducal title, art in the International Gothic style became essential to political propaganda. Among the various works of this period that emphasize the power and the hierarchical position of the nobility are the oldest sets of tarot that have survived to the present day: the Visconti-Sforza tarot decks, dating from the first half of the 15th century. Named according to their supposed patrons, the nomenclature is actually used to designate fifteen separate decks, three of which are analyzed in this master’s thesis: the Pierpont Morgan-Bergamo deck (divided between the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, and the private collection Casa Colleoni, in Bergamo), the Brera-Brambilla (Pinacoteca di Brera, in Milan) and the Cary-Yale (Beinecke Library, in New Haven). The study of this corpus enables us to unravel the struggle for power between the Visconti and the Sforza, as well as the traditions of the literature and the triumphal processions of the time. Using an iconographic analysis, our goal is to identify the sociocultural context in which these decks were produced. This work's analysis also highlights questions about the attributions, the dating and the patronage of these luxury playing cards.