This interdisciplinary thesis examines rare poetic, didactic, fictional, and musical texts written by women in latter eighteenth-century Britain for instances of and resistance to contemporary perceptions of music as a form of social control. The opening chapter defines and historicizes the term "social harmony," by discussing neoclassical views of musical affect as productive of beneficial social behaviours and gender definition. By delineating canonical aesthetic theorists' influence upon women writers and musicians and assessing music's place in women's moral education, this chapter complicates the idea of separate public and private spheres of cultural achievement and introduces expanded views of women's agency as composers and performers. Next, the thesis appraises women's engagement with charity, musically enacted, through formal musical and textual analysis of hymns, songs, and benefit performances and publications. It marks the productive intersection of patronage and charity for women, who could articulate divergent responses to such idealized or stereotyped objects of pity as prostitutes and madwomen and benefit materially from so doing. The third chapter considers women composers and writers' employment of imitative and associative aesthetic practices in nature's musical representation, including neoclassical and realist pastorals, the picturesque, and the sublime. It traces development of a hybrid aesthetic of natural representation that enables performative and compositional separation of femininity from nature in forms including the novel, song, and pastoral drama. The final chapter identifies contemporary anxieties concerning the depiction of political, moral and gender-role stability within an increasingly international musical discourse. It analyzes women's musical conceptions of cultural difference and national identity in ballad operas and pastiches in light of these conflicts. By crafting works consonant with societal ideals of charitable, natural, and national order-or by re-imagining their participation in these musical aids to social harmony-women composers, lyricists and performers contributed significantly to the formation of British cultural identity. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The intention of this study is to examine the use of non-realistic materials in the fiction of Thomas Hardy. Although on the surface Hardy's work appears to be in the realistic tradition, several of his prose fictions are really closer to romance, and all of them will, on examination, be found to contain at least some romance elements. In this study the term "romance" denotes a type of prose fiction which draws on non-realistic materials and which introduces situations that depart from the ordinary rules of probability. Closely connected to Hardy's predilection for romance is his use of myth, folklore, ballad motifs, symbolic episodes and evocative settings. These very diverse techniques do not necessarily originate in romance. Some of them are more commonly associated with poetry than with prose fiction. But they do blend easily into the romance atmosphere. They help to make a unity, create a mood and establish a world which is unique in the nineteenth-century novel. To read Hardy properly, it is therefore necessary to suspend disbelief in a way we are not normally expected to do in a realistic novel, and to approach his work more as we would that of a poet. Hardy was strongly influenced by the great Romantics, particularly by the Gothic aspects of their work. But he was also concerned with the attitudes of the nature poets --especially Wordsworth's --to man, God and nature. As an heir to the Romantics, Hardy grew up assuming nature to be the reflection of a divine order. The loss of faith that overcame him as a young man eroded this assumption, but, as happens with many of us, the emotional side of Hardy could not easily be reconciled to what his intellect ascertained to be the truth. This ambivalence gives rise to the characteristic tension in his work between reason and emotion, between the real and the unreal, between man-made codes of behaviour and the more natural physical urges of human beings. Hardy's intuitiveness is nowhere more evident than in his handling of the relations of the sexes. Hence his interest in the process of courtship. Above all, Hardy was impressed by the tremendous power of sexual desire and its tendency to deceive people and trap them in situations which thwart their ambitions and often doom them to unhappiness. I have chosen to examine the foregoing motifs in detail, as they appear in a limited number of Hardy's works, rather than to skim superficially over the bulk of the fiction and poetry in what would inevitably become a tedious survey. The introductory chapter briefly considers Hardy's upbringing and interests; it then examines the nonrealistic materials, particularly those from romance literature and from Romantic poetry, that appealed to Hardy's imagination. The next three chapters deal consecutively with Hardy's first three published novels --DesEerate Remedies, Under the Greenwood Tree and A Pair of Blue Eyes --minor fictions, but indicative of Hardy's characteristic themes and techniques. Chapters V and VI discuss two neglected works of Hardy's middle period --A Laodicean and Two on a Tower. Chapter VII considers two shorter fictions --"The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid" and "The Fiddler of the Reels". In an effort to show how the techniques derived from romance and Romanticism reached fruition in the Wessex novels, The l\'oodlanders has been chosen to complete the study. Critics usually condemn Hardy's minor fictions; nevertheless it can be shown that they are entirely characteristic of the man, that they contain episodes that are worthy of our attention and that their relative neglect is unfortunate. This study is therefore an attempt, on a modest scale, to right a certain imbalance in Hardy studies and to reveal the major themes and techniques of a popular though, in regard to part of his achievement, a slighted writer. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The purpose of this study is to determine the perception of women revealed in the writing of Philo of Alexandria. Although Richard Baer approached the subject in Philo's Use of the Categories Male and Female, no comprehensive examination has been made of the role Philo accorded women. I set Philo's writing on the subject of women within the context of two intellectual traditions, the Jewish and the Greek, in order to determine whether he accepts, rejects or alters inherited attitudes. I study it also in the context of the multifarious ways Philo uses "male" and "female" to express comparisons. There emerges a coherent pattern, which indicates that Philo's statements about women are not isolated from his overall understanding of the meaning of "female." After establishing these two larger contexts, I narrow the scope of the study, by demonstrating that Philo's perception of women cannot be determined from his statements about "man." I do this by studying the context in which he uses both Greek terms translated by the English term "man," anthropos and aner, as well as looking into the use of the two terms in the Septuagint and in some earlier Greek writing. In the body of the work I study Philo's material on Biblical women and contemporary women, subdividing the first group according to Philo's terms, "women" and "virgins." The conclusion of the work is that Philo intensifies the subordination of women which he draws from both traditions. He views woman as a danger to man unless she is under his strict control. Since his first concern is the survival of the community through the religious strength of its men, he believes that woman ought to play an auxiliary role, and to be prevented from any behaviour which would deter men from their religious quest. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (D. Min.)--Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-103).

Originally published as the author's Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington University, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [189]-205).

Originally published as the author's Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington University, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [189]-205).

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-55).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1994. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [340]-358).

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