This study was made to trace the stage history of The Alchemist and to see what effect theatrical productions can have in developing critical awareness of Jonson's dramatic skill in this popular play. Therefore an attempt has been made to record all performances by major companies between 1610 and 1970 with cast lists and other pertinent information about scenery/ stage action and properties. The second part of the thesis provides a detailed analysis of four specific productions considered in light of their prompt books, details of acting and production, and overall critical reception. Garrick's adaption, which dominated the stage during the eighteenth century, reflected the genius of its producer but also demonstrated the skill with which Jonson balanced the plot. Garrick featured the part of Drugger, one of the minor gulls, but Jonson's plot structure remained intact as the ridiculing of human greed and stupidity continued to be the dominant characteristic. William Poel's production, on the other hand, emphasized the rapid plot development by use of a pseudo-Elizabethan stage, and he laid heavy stress on the elocution proving that the alchemical jargon was an essential element of the play and should not be cut because audiences could not understand it. The Ashland production (1961) also demonstrated the effectiveness of the pseudo-Elizabethan stage in presenting the fast moving comic action. It emphasized the farcical nature of the play and the repertory casting revealed the skill with which Jonson balanced his characters. The Old Vic production (1962), directed by Tyrone Guthrie, assumed that Jonson had to be modernized to be understood by contempory audiences, but his tampering with the text distorted and weakened the play in a number of ways. Finally, in the concluding chapter, an attempt has been made to provide an analysis of The Alchemist based on insights provided by the preceding material in an effort to show that literary criticism of a play is often closely linked with theatrical experience. The complex interweaving of subplot with subplot, the finely etched characters, the colourful language, the important themes—all are as theatrically effective today as they were in 1610. The stage history of The Alchemist demonstrates that it is one of Ben Jonson's most popular plays, and the reasons are visibly evident upon investigation of some of the theatrical productions / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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While many of Shakespeare's alchemical allusions are noted for their language of positive regeneration and healing, the playwright's departures from these conventional uses of alchemy deserve further attention. This essay presents an examination of inversions in the redemptive alchemical paradigm of Othello, a play whose connections to alchemy are not announced by obvious references to gold making, the philosopher's stone, or other key terms relating to the discourse of the opus that a modern audience is likely to recognize. I argue that in Othello, alchemical allusions are more subtly deployed in the language that describes Othello and Desdemona's marriage, in the metaphorical speech of Othello's self-doubt, in Desdemona's characterization, and in Iago's references to medicine. My reading of the alchemical context of the play shows the following: Othello and Desdemona's marriage, a figurative manifestation of the hermaphroditic union in which man and woman consistently appear as equals, counters representations of patriarchal dominance in the early modern period; Othello's capacity for rhetorically gifted expression remains intact instead of disintegrating, as evidenced by the alchemical metaphors in his lamentations of the "loss" of Desdemona's purity; Desdemona's role in the tragedy is illuminated by her characterization which is reminiscent of dual Mercury; and Iago's own alchemical language offers insight into his role as the instigator of tragic events. Taken together, these alchemical associations suggest that Shakespeare found in alchemy a fitting framework in which to present the drama of destabilization.

Denna uppsats behandlar översättning av sångtext från japanska till svenska. Denna typ avöversättningsuppdrag befinner sig någonstans i gränslandet mellan översättning för scen och film, ochöversättning av populärmusik. Författaren har översatt samtliga intro- och slutlåtar till den japanskaanimerade serien Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) och därtill skrivit en översättningskommentar. I arbetet har jaganvänt mig av Peter Lows s.k. pentatlon-princip (2017:80), Johan Franzons tre översättningsmatchningar(2008:390) samt Annjo Greenall med fleras olika översättningsnivåer (2021:30). Ansatsen är till största delav egenintresse, med hänseende till uppdragets ovanlighet. Jag visar med denna uppsats också att de flestatittare i och med denna ovanlighet går miste om en hel narrativ kanal in i originalverket, och propagerar föratt fler uppdragsgivare borde ta sångöversättning i beaktande vid lokalisering av anime till svenska. / This paper discusses song translation from Japanese into Swedish. This kind of translation assignment issomewhere between translation for performance and film, and translating popular music. The author hastranslated all of the opening and ending themes for the animated series Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) andthereto provided a commentary. The thesis uses the pentathlon principle of Peter Low (2017:80), the threetranslational matches of Johan Franzon (2008:390) as well as the translational levels of Annjo Greenall et.al.(2021:30). The onset of this thesis is largely out of self-interest, with regards to the rarity of the type ofassignment. This paper also highlights that viewers because of this rarity are deprived of a narrative channelinto the source text, and thus I propagate for commissioners to take song translation more into considerationwhen localizing anime into Swedish.

Student Number : 8701228T - PhD thesis - School of Literature and Language Studies - Faculty of Humanities / The argument that unfolds throughout this thesis represents the development of my own understanding of the Renaissance conception and application of alchemical theories and philosophies, especially as it applies to my appreciation of the works of two of the crucial figures of the period – Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. These men were far more than entertainers. They were committed to their art as an essential component in the shaping and maintenance of the societal conscience. As dramatist-philosophers, they not only treated issues of topical interest and debate around the individual in relation to individual, and the individual in relation to the larger worlds of nature and politics, but also provided learned and insightful comment on the possible nature and function of the individual soul/mind in relation to itself. My deepening sensitivity to and comprehension of early modern alchemical philosophies and practices as apt analogies for psychological development led me to believe that Jonson and Shakespeare, separately though similarly, externalized, or dramatized, the inner trajectory of self-knowledge. This thesis, then, represents my own exploratory expedition into Renaissance epistemological thought as embodied in various alchemical texts. The correlations between alchemy and early modern psychologies become more apparent with each chapter. In the opening chapters, the historical and intellectual context for an hypothesis of a Renaissance psychology is set out. Chapter Three focuses on Renaissance conceptions of self-knowledge. The classical dictum of nosce teipsum is explored in relation to a range of contemporary alchemical arguments about the nature of philosophy and knowledge. In Chapter Four, I present a proposal of a Renaissance ‘model’ of psychological development, which may be seen to be analogous to the alchemical process as widely understood and depicted in the literature of the time. The fifth chapter is a ‘bridge’ between the foregoing thesis and the expository analysis of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist and Shakespeare’s The Tempest: it particularizes the foregoing argument and attempts to come to some apprehension of Jonson’s individual conception of self-knowledge and psychological development. The sixth chapter demonstrates this apprehension in relation to Jonson’s The Alchemist. Shakespeare’s The Tempest is thus seen as being in direct conversation with both Jonson’s The Alchemist, and with the philosophical and artistic trends of the period. In Chapter Seven, I explore the evidence that Shakespeare was drawing from a ‘common pool’ of intellectual material with Jonson. However, I also suggest that Shakespeare presents a differing, though in some ways complementary, view of self-knowledge. Both Shakespeare and Jonson, I propose, are drawing on alchemical language and imagery to present contrasting characterizations of human potential and evolution. In effect, the respective dramatic texts present two distinct conceptualizations of the ‘philosopher’s stone’, which, in turn, suggests two models of human perfectibility that seem to be poles apart. These two works, however, are undeniably related and mutually effective within the Renaissance crucible of alchemy.

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Early modern neighbours were ubiquitous audiences to — and performers in — each other’s lives. Social historians have suggested that neighbours tended to possess surprisingly intimate information about each other, and they could use these insights to invade, encroach upon, and undermine those around them. To date, however, the relationships between neighbours (which are here termed ‘neighbourship’) have been narrowly located in the interactions between people living near to each other in domestic contexts. This dissertation proposes a significantly more capacious understanding of neighbourly dynamics by turning to a different archive: early modern plays that use particular theatrical devices — spectatorship, clothing, dialect, and stage properties — to work out the threats, obligations, and opportunities that come with sharing space and neighbourly knowledge. This dissertation draws on canonical and non-canonical plays from a range of genres and playwrights between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, including Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Coriolanus, Jonson’s The Alchemist, Heywood’s little-known Jupiter and Io, Dekker’s Shoemaker’s Holiday, and George Peele’s Edward I. Neighbourship was not defined by its domestic context, but by dynamics and internal structures, such as interchangeability and temporal iteration, that shaped early modern expectations about how this relationship manifested. The approaches in this dissertation build on social historical work by Lena Orlin, Catherine Richardson, B.S. Capp, and others, as well as theatre scholarship from Peter Womack, Jeremy Lopez, and Jennifer A. Low. There are two major interventions here: first, in the idea that the dynamics of neighbourship do not apply only between proximate humans, but also between ‘atypical’ neighbours — fairies, animals, languages, and nations — who offer focal points in respective chapters. These atypical entities challenge the normative understanding of neighbourship by taking its dynamics to an extreme, pushing theatrical audiences to the limits of their sympathetic identifications. The second intervention is in the argument that theatrical devices uniquely express and amplify the stakes of neighbourly dynamics. The temporal and spatial compression of the stage pushes unusual neighbours into greater proximity with each other, and the stage made manifest the complicated negotiations of similarity and difference that neighbourship entailed. Overall, this dissertation highlights the capacity of the early modern stage to transpose the dynamics of neighbourship across apparently disparate realms, drawing attention to theatrical manifestations of similarity and difference, belonging and alienation, and the transgression of borders.

This by-practice project is the first to provide an extensive investigation of the marginalisation of era appropriate science (EAS) and professional investigators by detective and historical detective fiction authors. The purpose of the thesis is to analyse specific detective fiction authors from the earliest formats of the nineteenth century through to the 1990s and contemporary, selected historical detective fiction authors. Its aim is to examine the creation, development and perpetuation of the marginalisation tradition. This generic trend can be read as the authors privileging their detective’s innate skillset, metonymic connectivity and deductive abilities, while underplaying and belittling EAS and professional investigators. Chapter One establishes the project’s critique of the generic trend by considering parental authors, E. T. A Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, Émile Gaboriau and Wilkie Collins. Reading how these authors instigated and purposed the downplaying demonstrates its founding within detective fiction at the earliest point. By comparing how the authors sidelined and omitted specific EAS and professional investigators, alongside science available at the time, this thesis provides a framework for examining how it continued in detective fiction. In following chapters, the framework established in Chapter One and the theoretical views of Charles Rzepka, Lee Horsley, Stephen Knight and Martin Priestman, are used to discuss how minimising EAS and professional investigators developed into a tradition; and became a generic trend in the recognised detective fiction formula that was used by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Freeman Wills Crofts, H. C. Bailey, R. Austin Freeman, Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell and P. D. James. I then examine how the device transferred to historical detective fiction, using the framework to consider Ellis Peters, Umberto Eco and other selected contemporary authors of historical detective fiction. Throughout, the critical aspect considers how the trivialisation developed and perpetuated through a generic trend. The research concludes that there is a trend embedded within detective and historical detective fiction. One that was created, developed and perpetuated by authors to augment their fictional detective’s innate skillset and to help produce narratives using it is a creative process. It further concludes that the trend can be reimagined to plausibly use EAS and professional investigators in detective and historical detective fiction. The aim of the creative aspect of the project is to employ the research and demonstrate how the tradition can be successfully reinterpreted. To do so, the historical detective fiction novel A Hidden Life uses traditional features of the detective fiction formula to support and strengthen plausible EAS and professional investigators within the narrative. The end result is a historical detective fiction novel. One that proves the thesis conclusion and is fundamentally crafted by the critical research.