The language used in critical readings of Hamlet is rife with implicitly teleological terms: according to many critics, and the ghost of King Hamlet, the story of his father's murder and Claudius' succession requires Hamlet to do something. I ask, why should Hamlet kill his uncle, revenge his father, correct his mother, become king, marry Ophelia, and produce heirs to rule when he is gone? While Hamlet's inaction is often described as delay or paralysis, I suggest that the Danish prince resists teleology through his studied ambivalence towards dynasty: land-owning, child-bearing, wars and marriage. Building on recent theoretical and historical work by scholars like Lee Edelman, Will Fisher, Margreta de Grazia and Madhavi Menon, I suggest that Hamlet, through the interventions of its main character, thwarts the assumption that the relationship between a nobleman and his land is natural, that the desire for possession and rule is inherent. Combining de Grazia's invaluable historicism with Fisher's discussion of prostheses, Ir ead the Renaissance nobleman as a prosthetic creature, physically and politically embodied by his marriage, his children, his land. In delaying the revenge he has been called upon to carry out, in hesitating to take up the crown, Hamlet defers the prostheses of nobility, and opens up a space from which to question the dynastic project.

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This thesis examines expressions of self-identity used by creative men and women in early modern Italy (ca. 1450-1650). Self-fashioning strategies were based upon contested notions of melancholy, genius, virtue and decorum which were profoundly influenced by ancient and medieval intellectual traditions ... . / Graduate / 0377 / 0453

This thesis argues for a full recognition of the significance of Elizabeth Carey and her literary works by offering new theoretical and critical approaches to her life and her two major works, The Tragedy of Mariam and The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward II. The Introduction offers an assessment of the recent critical works on Elizabeth Carey and ultimately rejects the prevalent tendency to interpret her works simply in terms of her life. Chapter 1 constitutes a biographical study of Elizabeth Carey which focuses upon the roles she played: as wife, recusant and writer. Chapter 2 examines Carey's use of two sources of "patriarchal" authority - Seneca and Flavius Josephus - in her composition of The Tragedy of Mariam. It explores the ways in which she manipulates these sources in order to create a text which offers resistance to patriarchal authority. Chapter 3 is a reading of The Tragedy of Mariam which eschews the traditional critical opposition between "virtuous" and "vicious" characters in the text. Rather, the text is viewed as a set of competing discourses which, by their very competition, effect a de construction of patriarchal ideology. Chapter 4 seeks to re-establish Carey's claim to the authorship of The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward II. This issue of authorship has been confused by the existence of the text in a longer, folio form and a shorter, octavo form. Here, I argue against a recent publication to show that Carey is the author of the folio but not the octavo. Chapter 5 focuses upon the historical and literary contexts of The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward II, beginning by exploring the possibility that the text is a criticism of Buckingham's role in the courts of James I and Charles I. The chapter then focuses upon the ways in which Carey rejects the characterisation of Queen Isabel by Drayton and Marlowe and constructs her own version of the history in which Isabel is both powerful and sympathetic.

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No description available.

Within painting, there are numerous possibilities for the ways in which a narrative can be compositionally presented in order to communicate a particular emotion or story. Traditional devices including gesture, facial expression, interaction of figures and symbolism establish foundations within the composition to facilitate a narrative response and formulate questions as to the how, what and why. This formal language may also be considered in addition to other concepts surrounding the term narrative itself. The notion of narrative as something which is fluid also encompasses issues of time, movement, and continuity; idea??s which seemingly contradict the static temperament of painting. How painters have been able to successfully construct elements of narrative in their work, while also capturing a sense of movement or a passage of time is the starting point at which the following research takes shape. When embarking on this project, I realised that there was no definitive text on this subject which specifically analysed the form and composition of pictorial narratives as sole entities. Theoretical discussions surrounding a painting??s formal arrangement have mostly been produced in relation to how they either illustrated or have been adapted from a written source. This paper is intended to examine the structure of narrative paintings from a stand alone visual perspective, and not how they are comparative to a literary source. Over the course of this investigation, I subsequently found that the methodologies of continuous narrative paintings from the Renaissance echoed certain theoretical concerns within contemporary cinematic narratives. While painting and film maintain a relationship to some degree because they are both visual media, (in reference to colour, tone and symbolism), the most interesting parallel is the depiction of time. This correlation between painting and film, where elements of the narrative are compositionally presented in a non-linear way, has had the most important influence over the production of my work for the exhibition, ??Hidden Fractures; A Narrative in Time??. Certain structures within film, such as event ??order?? and sequencing resonate correspondingly to the stylistic approach sustained within recent work. This ??jig-saw?? method, presents individual paintings (or canvases) akin to pieces of a story which have been sliced up, and placed back together out of their ??chronological?? order. These chosen snippets may represent a scene or emotion, and uphold their own position or viewpoint in relation to another image or painting. These unmatched sequences of images, similar to the unmatched sequences in film, can disrupt the perception and flow of space, and sense of narrative order. When sequences are viewed out of order, the perception of events within the narrative change. The viewer strives to construct the meaning of the work dependent upon each image??s relationship to another, in turn forming the underlying narrative. Through such ??story comprehension??, the viewer endeavours to create ??logical connections among data in order to match general categories of schema??. (Brangian 15)

Diss.--Teilw. zugl.: Univ. of Minnesota, 1969.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [240]-248).

Texte remanié de: Tesis doct.--Universidad de Salamanca, 1986.