Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Appendices in Spanish. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 242-252). Also available on the Internet.

From preface: This study seeks to give a perspective on Wordsworth's achievement in sonnet, taking into account all the sonnets he wrote, from the outburst of sonneteering in 1802 to the final decade (1840-1850). My chief concern has been to trace Wordsworth's handling of form and theme throughout his poetic career. A subordinate but related concern has been to try to show that Wordsworth's powers do not diminish after 1815, a date which is sometimes regarded as marking the beginning of the poet's "decline" ~ Wordsworth’s skill in blank verse and in other types of lyric is widely acknowledged; his dexterity in the sonnet form is less well recognized or thought to be limited to fewer poems (usually those of the earlier years) than there actually are. As a result, his performance in sonnet is sometimes underestimated, there being more sonnet concerns and structural patterns than the well-known few reflect. It is possible that Wordsworth's own ambiguous attitude to the genre as expressed in his prose writings, together with his insistence that his sonnets were not amongst the best of his poems, has helped to foster such a view. His practice in sonnet, however, proves that his genius is as evident in some of these poems as it is elsewhere, whether he esteemed them less or not.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The aims of the present study are to establish the relationships among the sources of Constable's sonnets to Penelope Devereux and to offer a critical edition of these sonnets. Sonnets to Penelope Devereux appear in the Marsh manuscript in Trinity College Library, Dublin; the Dyce manuscript 44 in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington; the Arundel Harington manuscrit in Arundel Castle; the Diana of 1592; the so-called Diana of 1594; A Poetical Rhapsody of 1602, 1608, 1611, and 1621; and the Ashmole manuscript 38 in the Bodleian Library [TRUNCATED] / 2999-01-01

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1903.

This thesis undertakes a study of Shakespeare's sonnets that seeks to locate them in the determinate historical circumstances of the moment of their production. Subjectivity in the sonnets is read as the location of a series of conflicts which are ultimately socio-historical in nature. Contemporaries identified the sonnet form as a discourse of the aristocracy, especially in its manifestation of courtly love. Shakespeare's sonnets attempt to manage the pressures that the history of the late sixteenth century impose upon this discursive formation from within the genre itself. The first and second chapters of the thesis set out the historical framework within which the generic requirements of the sonnet were played out, and discuss the tensions which result. Chapter three reads the first seventeen sonnets in the light of this work, arguing against a view of these particular poems as a homogeneous group of marriage sonnets. These sonnets set out the homosocial considerations that underpin the relationship between the addressor and the young nobleman in a way that foreshadows the conflicts that are played out in later poems. Chapter four traces these conflicts in terms of the subjectivity of the young man, noting that the historical crisis in the ideology of the aristocracy renders his subject-position unstable. Chapter five relates this result to the related subjectivity of the adressor, the poetic persona of the poems, and reads his position as noting the disjunctions in the dominant ideology, while nevertheless being unable to move away from its interpellation of his position. Chapter six notes the consequent disruption of gendered identity, both for the "dark lady" and the poetic persona himself. The conclusion argues for a materialist perspective on the sonnets' problematising of subjectivity in the Renaissance.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1903.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 12-13). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 12-13). Also available on the Internet.

For a long time Mannerism has been a critical term peculiar to the Fine Arts. In the last twenty years it has attracted the attention of literary critics who have sought to clarify its relation to literature in both theory and practice. This thesis draws on the conclusions of such writers and applies them to the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne in an attempt to understand him within the Mannerist context—that is, as a poet expressing characteristics of style, sensibility and culture that are originally typified by a group of sixteenth-century Italian artists. The mode of criticism proceeds on the basis that it is possible to abstract distinctive features from a given style in one art form and apply them, by analogy, to another: thus, discontinuous lines in painting may be seen as analogous to broken sentences in language, or the effect of distorted perspective may be likened to the effect of structural irregularity in a poem. The process may be further supported by reference to cultural, personal or theoretical circumstances that are common to the artist/poets concerned. In this thesis, the views of certain scholars as to the nature of Mannerism have been applied to Donne. Thus his wit, his dramatic techniques, his use of convention and his ambiguity have all been examined in the light of Mannerist principles, and have been further exemplified by reference to the fine and plastic arts. The conclusions reached are that, first, it is possible to approach Donne from a Mannerist viewpoint, that in so doing insights into the nature and organisation of the poetry follow, and that by setting Donne in a European artistic context, something of the insularity and arbitrariness of 'metaphysical' may yield to the broader frame of reference that Mannerism provides. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate