Dans le cadre de la littérature européenne, il existe un lien important entre la femme et la mer qui a au centre une polarité essentielle : femme créatrice ou monstre marin. Cette dualité d’image féminine transcende les limites géographiques et linguistiques pour s’insérer dans le corpus littéraire de la France, l’Italie et ’Espagne. Les mythes Gréco-romains mettent en vedette les éléments du vaisseau, l’orage, la mer turbulente, le naufrage. Une thématique riche entoure les éléments marins présentés dans les mythes et est au fondement des métaphores créées par les auteurs de la Renaissance. L’image du navire balayé par la mer est au centre d’une image d’orage féminin qui se présente dans Il Canzionière de Pétrarque, Les Amours de Ronsard et Cants d’amor d’Ausias March. Le bateau est symbole du poète et la mer turbulente son amour envahissant. Les poètes modèlent cette métaphore grâce à des éléments communs. Les attributs qui ont une parure de beauté chez la femme se métamorphosent en agent nocif qui s’assimile à l’image du navire, tel que les cheveux d’or. Il faut aussi remarquer là où une fissure existe entre la tradition et l’innovation, les nuances au niveau des images et des métaphores où s’ouvre une nouvelle voie littéraire.

Dans le cadre de la littérature européenne, il existe un lien important entre la femme et la mer qui a au centre une polarité essentielle : femme créatrice ou monstre marin. Cette dualité d’image féminine transcende les limites géographiques et linguistiques pour s’insérer dans le corpus littéraire de la France, l’Italie et ’Espagne. Les mythes Gréco-romains mettent en vedette les éléments du vaisseau, l’orage, la mer turbulente, le naufrage. Une thématique riche entoure les éléments marins présentés dans les mythes et est au fondement des métaphores créées par les auteurs de la Renaissance. L’image du navire balayé par la mer est au centre d’une image d’orage féminin qui se présente dans Il Canzionière de Pétrarque, Les Amours de Ronsard et Cants d’amor d’Ausias March. Le bateau est symbole du poète et la mer turbulente son amour envahissant. Les poètes modèlent cette métaphore grâce à des éléments communs. Les attributs qui ont une parure de beauté chez la femme se métamorphosent en agent nocif qui s’assimile à l’image du navire, tel que les cheveux d’or. Il faut aussi remarquer là où une fissure existe entre la tradition et l’innovation, les nuances au niveau des images et des métaphores où s’ouvre une nouvelle voie littéraire.

This thesis argues that the popularity of the clandestine marriage plot in English and Spanish drama following the Reformation corresponds closely to developments and emerging conflicts in European matrimonial law. My title, ‘casos de honra,' or ‘honour cases', unites law and drama in a way that captures this argument. Taken from the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega's El arte nuevo (1609), a treatise on his dramatic practice, the phrase has been understood as a description of the honour plots so common in Spanish Golden Age drama, but ‘casos' [cases] has a further, and related, legal meaning. Casos de honra are cases touching honour, whether portrayed on stage or at law, a European rather than a strictly Spanish phenomenon, and clandestine marriages are one such example. I trace the genealogy of three casos de honra from their recognisable origins in Italian novelle, through Italian, French, Spanish, and English adaptations, until their final early modern manifestations on the English and Spanish stage. Their seeming differences, and often radical divergences in plot can be explained with reference to their distinct, but related, legal concerns.

The role of women changed constantly during the Renaissance era. Especially notable was the evolution of the role of women within the arts, in which the female gender was becoming particularly sought after. One woman deserving of attention is poetess, philosopher, and musician Tarquinia Molza (1542-1617) who enjoyed notable success at the court of Ferrara. Molza by-passed gender conventions of the day by engaging in traditionally “masculine” activities like philosophy and “feminine” ones such as singing. While there is plentiful scholarship about Molza, no current scholarship has specifically considered how questions regarding the ambivalence of her gender affected Molza’s relationship with her contemporaries. This thesis explores how the notion of masculinity and femininity impacted Molza’s reception among her peers. In order to do so, I examine Molza’s philosophical, poetic, and musical output, before looking at a similarly diverse output from her contemporaries. Though this study does not encompass all of the poetry and musical settings dedicated to Molza, it helps us gain a sense of poetic and musical style, providing the basis for further study. My thesis seeks to further our understanding of the role of women in the northern Italian courts during the second half of the sixteenth century, and strives to examine the links between the gender ambivalence surrounding Tarquinia Molza and her reception among her contemporaries. Moreover, this study sheds light on the importance of gendered rhetoric in late sixteenth-century culture, a consideration that can be further developed and applied to the study of other notable figures.

This project looks at two members of Florence’s Medici family, Cosimo il Vecchio (1389-1464) and Duke Cosimo I (1519-1574), in an attempt to assess how they used the patronage of art to facilitate their rule. By looking at their individual political representations through art, the specifics of their propagandist works and what form these pieces of art came, it is possible to analyze their respective rules. This analysis allows for a clearer understanding of how these two men, each in very different positions, found art as an ally for their political endeavors. While they were in power only one hundred years apart, they present uniquely different strategies for the purpose of creating and maintaining their power through the patronage of art.

Not much ink has been spilled over John Donne’s relationship to negative, or apophatic, theology. A few scholars have written about apophatic discourse in Donne’s poetry and sermons, but, in general, the subject continues to be overlooked. This thesis seeks to (re)start the conversation by shedding light on Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, a text which has yet to be linked to the negative tradition despite its clear engagement in apophatic discourse. Indeed, throughout Devotions, Donne wields several apophatic strategies when speaking of God including via negativa, predicates of action, linguistic regress, paradox, and a consistent reliance upon metaphorical language. Each of these strategies uphold the two guiding principles of negative theology: the epistemic thesis which asserts that God is incomprehensible, and the semantic thesis which asserts that God is unspeakable therefore can only stand as the subject term in negative propositions. Significantly, my objective is not merely to qualify Devotions as an example of apophatic discourse; I also intend to contemplate the implications of qualifying it as such, namely how Devotions challenges the long-held assumption that apophasis requires the user to relinquish the body. Across the text, Donne’s apophasis does not lead him to un-body; on the contrary, the body gains new importance as Donne imagines the risen body, the interpersonal body, the body that cannot be lost because it is an inextricable facet of selfhood. Again, my hope is that this thesis will (re)start or (re)energize the conversation around Donne’s relationship to negative theology, a relationship that is much richer and more extensive than current scholarship suggests.

Caravaggio was a complicated man, working in a complicated day, in a complicated city. As he ushered in the Baroque movement, playing with contrast, bending light with darkness, the Church was preoccupied with the game of highlighting or suppressing voices to maximize their power and minimize dissent. A well-known product of this is the struggle Galileo had in confirming that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around. Giordano Bruno was publicly burned at the stake for similar reasons. Often excluded from historical narratives of this time is the public execution of Beatrice Cenci and her family for reasons that leaned more towards political power and less towards moral judgement. Many Caravaggio historians point to Cenci’s death as the inspiration behind the common motif of beheadings in his paintings. Able to navigate between both the high and low cultures of Rome, Caravaggio provides a window into the way these societies interacted, one of many things that drew me to him and his story. He was also a person in his own right, with thoughts and feelings that we may never have the complete picture of, though he’s left us clues in his works and actions. Far less has been preserved of Prospero, Anna, Fillide, and Mario. This is my attempt to fill in the blanks.

The first rule of writing is an important one: writers should not plagiarize; what they write should be their own. It is taken for granted. But who made the rule? Why? And how is it enforced? This dissertation traces the history of proprietary authorship from the earliest distinctions between imitation and misappropriation in the humanist schoolroom, through the first recorded uses in English of the Latin legal term plagiary (kidnapper) as a metaphor for literary misappropriation, to an inchoate conception of literary property among a coterie of writers in early modern England. It argues that the recognition of literary misappropriation emerged as a result of the instrumental reading habits of early humanist scholars and that the subsequent distinction between authors and plagiarists depended more upon the maturity of the writer than has been previously recognized. Accusations of plagiarism were a means of discrediting a rival, although in this capacity their import also depended largely upon one’s perspective. In the absence of established trade customs, writers had to subscribe to the proprieties of the institutions with which they were affiliated. They were deemed plagiarists only when their actions were found to be out of place. These proprieties not only informed early modern definitions of plagiarism; they also helped define the perimeters of proprietary authorship. Authors who wished to make a fair profit from labours in print had to conform to the regulations of the Stationer’s Company, just as authors who maintained a proprietary interest in their manuscripts had to draw upon legal rhetoric, such as plagiary, in the absence of a legally recognized notion of authorial property. With new information technologies expanding the boundaries of proprietary authorship everyday, the proprieties according to which these boundaries were first defined should help teachers and researchers not only better to understand the nature of Renaissance authorship but also to equip their students for the future.

The first rule of writing is an important one: writers should not plagiarize; what they write should be their own. It is taken for granted. But who made the rule? Why? And how is it enforced? This dissertation traces the history of proprietary authorship from the earliest distinctions between imitation and misappropriation in the humanist schoolroom, through the first recorded uses in English of the Latin legal term plagiary (kidnapper) as a metaphor for literary misappropriation, to an inchoate conception of literary property among a coterie of writers in early modern England. It argues that the recognition of literary misappropriation emerged as a result of the instrumental reading habits of early humanist scholars and that the subsequent distinction between authors and plagiarists depended more upon the maturity of the writer than has been previously recognized. Accusations of plagiarism were a means of discrediting a rival, although in this capacity their import also depended largely upon one’s perspective. In the absence of established trade customs, writers had to subscribe to the proprieties of the institutions with which they were affiliated. They were deemed plagiarists only when their actions were found to be out of place. These proprieties not only informed early modern definitions of plagiarism; they also helped define the perimeters of proprietary authorship. Authors who wished to make a fair profit from labours in print had to conform to the regulations of the Stationer’s Company, just as authors who maintained a proprietary interest in their manuscripts had to draw upon legal rhetoric, such as plagiary, in the absence of a legally recognized notion of authorial property. With new information technologies expanding the boundaries of proprietary authorship everyday, the proprieties according to which these boundaries were first defined should help teachers and researchers not only better to understand the nature of Renaissance authorship but also to equip their students for the future.

The humanist Biondo wrote three different narratives of the Fourth Crusade aimed at establishing the legitimacy of western claims to lands in the east. Biondo had played an integral part in the ephemeral reunification of the Greek and Latin Churches at the Council of Florence in July 1439. Biondo blamed the Greeks for the failure and thus did not mourn the loss of their empire to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. However, Biondo did urge several states in the Italian Peninsula to set out en mass to fight the Turks. He viewed the fall of Constantinople as an opportunity for the Latin West to reestablish its rightful empire in the east. He explicated this opinion in at least two different treatises dedicated to rulers shortly after the fall of the ancient city. To Alfonso of Aragon, Biondo argued that the King could establish a peaceful and prosperous extension of his maritime holdings to include a fallen empire with no legal ruler. To the Venetians, he presented the Fourth Crusade as a glorious victory that established their legal claim to rule the now-lost remnants of the Byzantine Empire. Biondo shaped his source material of the Fourth Crusade into an historical narrative that made this primary argument and urged powerful rulers in the Italian peninsula to take back what was rightfully theirs.