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In 1541, writing under the pseudonym Hélisenne de Crenne, the French noblewoman Marguerite Briet produced a translation of the first four books of Virgil’s Aeneid that remains largely unknown. As a female author, Hélisenne provides a sixteenth-century woman’s perspective on the Aeneid, an on classical literature more generally, and the uniqueness of her translation in this respect makes her work extremely significant, particularly given the relatively recent interest in women and other marginal voices within the field of classics. This thesis contributes to an understanding of the need for a holistic approach to Classical Reception Studies, through a thorough examination of Hélisenne’s translation not only with regard to her gender but also the social, historical and literary climate in which she writes. Focussing on the mise en livre, as well as the text, my approach also stresses the need to reevaluate the relationship between the author and the text that we often assume in classics is more direct than is actually the case. Through such an examination of her Eneydes, Hélisenne emerges as a serious participant in the humanist tradition who engages with classical literature in such a way as to question masculine textual authority and the notion of an objective truth, whilst deliberately implicating herself through her translation in a web of authorities who are not to be trusted.

This thesis analyzes the corporeal origin of theoretical works in XVI$ sp{ rm th}$ century French architecture. A comparison of Philibert de l'Orme's treatises and Francois Rabelais' work allows for a dynamic awareness of materiality to emerge. During the Renaissance, this awareness was based on analogical relationships and Hermetic texts. However, whether one looks at the theory of the Elements, the concept of Proportion, the microcosm-macrocosm interplay, or even the Cardinal Virtues, it appears that the references were always traced back to the everyday experience of the body. Confronted with the mechanistic and objectifying conceptualizations that dominate today, this thesis supports the crucial role the architect must play in the bringing forth of places that allow for a perception of the body closer to apprenticeship than to domination.

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This thesis presents the first full study of the anonymous illuminator known by the name of convention, the Master of Spencer 6, after his finest work, ms. 6 in the Spencer Collection at the New York Public Library. Active at the turn of the sixteenth century, during the transitional period between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, this artist provides a revealing case study for examining the changing tastes and preoccupations of the patrons, as well as the way in which illuminators were operating in order to secure work and forge a career. The career of the Master of Spencer 6 can be reconstructed from nearly forty surviving books and fragments. He appears to have painted manuscripts for a wide range of clientele, from unknown merchants to figures such as Henry VII of England. The quality of his execution is equally varied, from modest, hastily prepared images, to exquisite paintings invested with verisimilitude and invention that deserve wider acknowledgement. This illuminator, presumably based in Bourges, seems to have travelled as far as Troyes, Paris, Tours, and possibly Lyon, in search of patronage. Although he specialised in devotional images, he also illustrated texts of historical and moral interest. The Master of Spencer 6 was particularly talented in drawing. He appears to have been required to work quickly, in order to respond to the high demand for books; yet, despite the haste, he was able to produce images that were pleasing. A large part of the appeal in his images seems to rely on the quality of line. While his colours were clean and bright, he often applied them hastily or carelessly over the contour lines. Nearly always these shortcomings appear unnoticeable due to the beauty of the lines that define the design. The variety of decorative schemes, layouts, spatial devices, compositions and iconographic motifs utilised by the Master of Spencer 6 demonstrate one of the keys to his success. He was able to diversify his canon to realise any potential order from the vast geographical and social range of his clientele. He also managed to develop his style according to current tastes and fashions. He adapted ideas and techniques from his collaborators, the Colombe workshop and Jacquelin de Montluçon. This thesis provides also the first study of Jacquelin de Montluçon, the painter identified here as the main collaborator of the Master of Spencer 6. Methods of technical art history are used to analyse his sophisticated manner of mixing pigments to produce convincing effects of light. The way in which he applied paint onto a surface, on parchment, panel and stained glass, is used to support attributions and explore the versatile artist that emerges from the analysis. This investigation into these two hitherto little-known artists demonstrates, on one hand, what was required for artists to succeed over others in the profession of manuscript illumination in late fifteenth-century France, and on the other hand, what the concerns of the individuals commissioning images were.

To call something 'inverted' or 'topsy-turvy' in the sixteenth century is, above all, to label it as abnormal, unnatural and going against the natural order of things. The topos of the world upside-down brings to mind a world returned to its initial state of primeval chaos, in which everything is inside-out, topsy-turvy and out of bounds: fish live in trees, children rule over their parents, wives command their husband and rivers flow back to their source. This thesis undertakes a detailed account of the development of the topos of the world upside-down in sixteenth-century French literature and visual culture. By examining different uses of this topos - comic, moralising and polemical - it relates the transformations of the topos to religious, social and political conflicts of the period. To explain the shift of this topos from comic and moralising device to satirical and polemical tool, this thesis argues that troubled times produce troubled texts. In order to demonstrate this hypothesis, two kinds of evidence will be examined: Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 present diachronic evidence of the 'polemicisation' of the topos of the world upside-down in literary genres of the period (adages, paradoxes and emblems) and within François Rabelais's body of work; Chapter 3 and 4 provide synchronic evidence of the polemical use of the topos of the world upside-down during the French religious wars in Huguenot and Catholic polemic and in depictions of socio-political turmoil. Charting the variety of uses of the topos of the world upside-down throughout the sixteenth century, this thesis connects the world upside-down and its historical context; and contributes to the scholarship on religious polemic.