Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Eric Walker, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Oct. 7, 2003). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 403-410).

The Romantic period coincides with a fundamental shift in Western attitudes toward death and dying. This dissertation examines how Romantic poets engage this shift. It argues that "Romantic mortal consciousness" - a form of mortal reflection characteristic of English Romantic poetry - is fundamentally social and political in its outlook and strikingly similar to what one might now call a liberal social consciousness. During the Romantic period, mortally conscious individuals, less able or willing to depend on old spiritual consolations, began to regard Death not as the Great Leveler of society but rather as a force that sealed social inequality into the records of history. Intimations of mortality forced one to look beyond the self and, to quote Keats, "think of the Earth." This dissertation considersthe development of Romantic mortal consciousness. Death’s transformation from the Great Leveler of social inequality into its crystallizing agent is evident in the Romantic response to Graveyard School poetry. This is the subject of my first chapter, which focuses on Gray’s "Elegy" and Wordsworth’s "The Ruined Cottage." Chapter Two examines Lord Byron’s Cain, where mortal consciousness transforms Cain’s personal lament about mortality into a protest on behalf of a doomed race. Cain anticipates death studies by dramatizing the shift from what Ariès calls the "death of the self" to the "death of the other" and by recognizing that mortality is essentially a cultural construct. However, the other idea of mortality as a solitary reckoning with death does not disappear entirely. Poems by Hemans and Keats, the subjects of my third and fourth chapters, show how the "death of the self" flourishes as the other side of Romantic mortal consciousness. Romantic mortal consciousness has centripetal and centrifugal aspects. It exhorts the ruminative soul to engage sympathetically with the suffering of others. At the same time, it turns the soul inwards, bringing the fate of the self into focus. One aim of this dissertation is to unify these aspects through an analysis of the sublime. In Chapter Five, which focuses on Byron and Smith, I illustrate the connection between mortal consciousnesses, social or political consciousness, and aesthetic awareness.

Spontaneous feeling has been a cornerstone of Romantic aesthetics since Wordsworth wrote his Preface to Lyrical Ballads. This dissertation unsettles the link between Romantic poetry and the overflow of emotion by arguing that writers from Wordsworth to Emerson persistently turned to Stoicism in reconsidering the role of the passions in both literature and the conduct of life. Drawing on poetry and a broad range of journals, letters, and intellectual prose, I argue that the Romantics were attuned to the way diffuse Stoic attitudes informed the politics and moral psychology of their age. More than a prompt for resignation or acquiescence, Stoicism was a radical and controversial term in a revolutionary age; philosophers like Kant, Spinoza, and Godwin drew on Stoic accounts of the passions in articulating their new ethical systems. In chapters on Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Emerson, I argue that the period most polemically invested in emotion as the mainspring of art was also captivated by the idea that aesthetic and ethical judgment demanded a transcendence of emotion. In their poetic search for "confirmed tranquillity," the writers in my transatlantic study transformed Stoicism's austerities as they confronted the limitations of sympathy and redefined their own relations to a cosmopolitan and war-torn world.

published_or_final_version / Literary Studies / Master / Master of Arts

The purpose of this study was to examine a thesis stating that the fundamental concepts of Romanticism form the basic components of the Objectivist philosophy demonstrated in the works of Ayn Rand. The study reviewed some of the scholarship on the topic of Romanticism, notably that of Morse Peckham and Henry Remak. Analogies were drawn between European and American Romanticism; the nature of romanticism as a developmental morality in relation to principles established by Lawrence Kohlberg was discussed. This study adopted a definition of Romanticism as a state of mind which begins in the individual and involves an entire society in a moral development that renounces the static, embraces the dynamic, and holds humanity at its center.Next examined was the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. A review of that ethic indicated that Objectivism also is a developmental ethic that holds humanism as its primary tenet. The characteristics of diversity, the creative imagination, growth and change, pride/self-worth/self-knowledge/love, leadership of the mind, and autonomy were found evident in both Objectivism and Romanticism, leading into a blending of the systems into an ethic of objective Romanticism. Such an ethic was examined in the context of Ayn Rand's works and found consistent in its appearance as an epistemology consequent to the progression of an individual or a community toward a level of self-actualization as defined by Abraham Maslow.A review of Rand's aesthetic ethic as presented in The Romantic Manifesto provided support for the romantic roots in Rand's writing. Rand's own premises for the evaluation of a romantic work were found evident in her own writings. It was therefore determined that Ayn Rand's works do indeed blend the components of Romanticism and Objectivism into a moral ethic that relies heavily upon the development of the individual state of mind toward a level of self-actualization in which the "I" becomes the axiom of human existence. / Department of English

Opera is about people in conflict, sung, played and performed in non-realistic fashion; it does not faithfully imitate real life. I claim that nevertheless, opera can enliven the characters and their state of mind, causing the listener-spectator experience a sensation unequalled by other genres. My aim is to show the musical means by which Berlioz achieved characterization. To do this I select three of his dramatic works, created at different periods of his career, and follow some key figures through the action, analyzing their role. Part One deals with a theoretical approach to characterization and the multiple components of opera. My investigations use the libretto's role only as a basis for the musical events, and exclude the visual element. I present nineteenth-century's aesthetic principles and match them with Berlioz's own credo. I compare some aspects of the novel and poetry with opera. From these readings one can sense Berlioz's urge to express inner feelings, their `psychological essence'. I consider contemporaries' reception of his operas that shows that he was appreciated mainly by a few but first-rank artists. Criticism over the last century is also reviewed, and an assessments made of the composer's own aesthetic position. Part Two provides the Case Studies of characters and deals with the operas Benvenuto Cellini, La Damnation de Faust, and Les Troyens. I also demonstrate the characterization of different atmospheres and of whole operas. In Benvenuto Cellini I concentrate on the role of Teresa, which shows imaginative use of a motive that represents the essence of her character. This method comes close to a 'Leitmotif. In La Damnation de Faust there is a focus on the supernatural, relating to Mephisto. Music is Margarita's natural way of expression and personifies her chaste character. Her music contrasts starkly with Mephisto's. In this unstaged opera music plays a special dramaturgical role. In the opera Les Troyens Aeneas is characterized as a fully rounded and complex person. Music takes an active part in the unfolding of Aeneas's development, as he assumes leadership; in each phase of his development, in intimate situations or in authoritative ones, Berlioz found the adequate musical idiom to deepen our comprehension of his motivations. In conclusion: Characters achieve a `psychological essence' because they appear as human beings with weaknesses and virtues. Berlioz applied no single method, but a deep understanding both of human nature and of the language of music. It is possible to follow the composer's intentions by listening attentively to the symbolic language in which they are offered.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Princeton University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-189).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1907. / "This study forms part l of a larger work which will treat of the same subject."--Prefatory note. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--Cologne. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 7-11). Also issued in print.