No description available.

Thesis--Yale. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 264-272). Also issued in print.

Thesis--Yale. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 264-272).

No description available.

No description available.

It is now almost thirty years since puritan apocalyptic thought was first subject to academic analysis, and twenty years have passed since the last flowering of texts on this subject. Since then our understanding of the puritan movement has progressed, and theoretical trends within historiographical and literary thinking now require new approaches to the investigation of puritan ideology. The approach of our own millennium and the recent devolution of barriers between academic disciplines make timely an investigation of the theological, historical and literary developments within puritan apocalyptic thought. Writing at the edge of the promises: negotiating the puritan apocalypse offers a reading of texts and contexts from the Marian exile, in the 1550s, to the Glorious Revolution one hundred and thirty years later. Canonical texts (like the works of John Milton and John Bunyan) are situated alongside titles representing individuals and groups which have achieved less prominence in recent literary-critical narratives (John Foxe, the Geneva Bible, James Ussher, George Gillespie, and John Rogers). This juxtaposition highlights the variety of eschatologies within the 'puritan apocalypse' and illustrates the many uses to which these eschatologies were put. Underpinning the variety of the puritan apocalyptic enterprise, however, is a basic exploration of the Calvinist aesthetic maxim: finitum non est capax infiniti. This unity of aesthetic thought represents a new angle on the 'Calvin and the Calvinists' debate, and argues for a basic continuity in the reformed theologies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Similarly, the interplay of ideas and values across the boundaries of each of the 'three kingdoms' offers hope for discovering the value of Scottish writing in the notoriously silent seventeenth century. Far from dampening artistic exploration, as the received orthodoxy of Scottish studies argues, Calvinistic eschatological thought is presented as the catalyst for some of the most intriguing of post-Renaissance literary strategies.

The manner in which Billings’s music contrasts with the Puritan musical ideal clearly demonstrates his role in the transition from ritual to art in the music of eighteenth-century New England. The tenets of Puritan worship included the restriction that music should serve primarily as a form of communal prayer for the congregation and in a secondary capacity to assist in biblical instruction. Billings’s stylistic independence from Puritan orthodoxy began with a differing ideology concerning the purpose of music: whereas Calvin believed music merely provided a means for the communal deliverance of biblical text, Billings recognized music for its inherent aesthetic worth. Billings’s shift away from the Puritan musical heritage occurred simultaneously with considerable change in New England in the last three decades of the eighteenth century. A number of Billings’s works depict the events of the Revolutionary War, frequently adapting scriptural texts for nationalistic purposes. The composition of occasional works to commemorate religious and civic events reflects both the increase in society’s approval of choral music beyond its nominal use in worship, both in singing schools and in choirs. With his newfound independence from Puritan ritual, Billings seems to have declared himself one of the United States of America’s first musical artists.

Thesis (M.A.) in English--University of Maine, 2001. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-93).

No description available.

Thesis--University of Zürich. / "Curriculum vitae": leaf at end. Includes bibliographical references (p. [110]-112).