This is an interdisciplinary study that aims to reassess Dante's use of Franciscan sources in the Divine Comedy. Particularly, I focus on two important, yet marginalized, theologians: the Provençal friar Pietro di Giovanni Olivi, and his disciple, Ubertino da Casale. Both are coeval of Dante Alighieri, and served as lectores in Florence. In particular, I examine the eschatological aspects of their works, in an attempt to understand how they contribute to Dante's own eschatological vision. Ubertino and Olivi were extremely interested in understanding history through the dense symbolism of the Apocalypse. Therefore, I inspected their works, particularly Olivi's Lectura Super Apocalipsim (a commentary on the Apocalypse written in 1298, of which there exist no modern editions), and Ubertino's Arbor Vitae Crucifixae Jesu, "The Tree of the Crucified Life of Jesus," a massive work on the life of Christ, composed in 1305, in which the author incorporates and develops large parts of Olivi's commentary. I attempt to disentangle the crossed references that link these two books with Dante's Divine Comedy. I aim to revise our knowledge of Dante's appropriation of these sources, for I believe that scholars have unjustly dismissed Ubertino as an unoriginal mediator, on the ground of his ideological dependence on Olivi. Therefore I propose an amendment in Ubertino's favor. Upon a redefinition of Dante's ideological genealogy, I hope to improve our comprehension of how Dante incorporates the eschatology debate of his time in the sacred poem.

Seneca's Apocolocyntosis is a sat.ire on the deceased emperor Claudius. probably written in the early months after his death in AD54. Although the authorship and title of the work have been called into question. scholars have now reached a consensus that the sat.ire was written by Seneca and is titled "Apocolocyntosis." Its purpose, characteristic of the Menippean genre, was didactic.

This thesis is a full political biography of Alice Perrers, the mistress of Edward III from the early 1360s until his death in June 1377 and mother to three of his children. It argues on the basis of the progression of her career that after the death of Edward's queen consort Philippa of Hainault in August 1369 Alice was able to extend the scope of her power and influence to the point that she became a ‘quasi' or ‘uncrowned' queen and, consequently, that her contribution to the political crisis of the 1370s can only be fully understood in terms of queenship. More generally, despite the recent increase on work on Alice, this study suggests that her life deserves a more thorough and nuanced appraisal than it has so far received. Various aspects of Alice's life are explored: her birth, family and first marriage; her early years as Edward III's mistress; the change in her status after Philippa of Hainault's death; her commercial activity as a moneylender and businesswoman; her accumulation of a landed estate and moveable goods; what happened to her in the Good Parliament; her trial in 1377; her marriage to William Wyndesore; and her life after Edward III's death. By examining Alice's career in this fashion it is shown that she took a leading role in the court party during the 1370s. Ultimately, by taking the original approach of applying ideas about queenship to a royal mistress this thesis demonstrates that Alice was perceived to have ‘inverted' or undermined the traditional role that the queen played in complementing and upholding the sovereignty and kingship of her husband, something that has implications for the wider study of not only mistresses, but also queens and queenship and even male favourites.

In this work, we study two problems: first is one of the central problem in learning theory of learning sparse parities and the other k-Vector-SUM is an extension of the not oriousk-SUM problem. We first consider the problem of learning k-parities in the on-line mistake-bound model: given a hidden vector ∈ {0,1}nwith|x|=kand a sequence of “questions” a ,a ,12··· ∈{0,1}n, where the algorithm must reply to each question with〈a ,xi〉(mod 2), what is the best trade off between the number of mistakes made by the algorithm and its time complexity? We improve the previous best result of Buhrman et. al. By an exp (k) factor in the timecomplexity. Next, we consider the problem of learning k-parities in the presence of classification noise of rate η∈(0,12). A polynomial time algorithm for this problem (whenη >0 andk=ω(1))is a longstanding challenge in learning theory. Grigorescu et al. Showed an algorithm running in time(no/2)1+4η2+o(1). Note that this algorithm inherently requires time(nk/2)even when the noise rateη is polynomially small. We observe that for sufficiently small noise rate, it ispossible to break the(nk/2)barrier. In particular, if for some function f(n) =ω(logn) andα∈[12,1),k=n/f(n) andη=o(f(n)−α/logn), then there is an algorithm for the problem with running time poly(n)·( )nk1−α·e−k/4.01.Moving on to the k-Vector-SUM problem, where given n vectors〈v ,v ,...,v12n〉over the vector space Fdq, a target vector tand an integer k>1, determine whether there exists k vectors whose sum list, where sum is over the field Fq. We show a parameterized reduction fromk-Clique problem to k-Vector-SUM problem, thus showing the hardness of k-Vector-SUM. In parameterized complexity theory, our reduction shows that the k-Vector-SUM problem is hard for the class W[1], although, Downey and Fellows have shown the W[1]-hardness result for k-Vector-SUM using other techniques. In our next attempt, we try to show connections between k-Vector-SUM and k-LPN. First we prove that, a variant of k-Vector-SUM problem, called k-Noisy-SUM is at least as hard as the k-LPN problem. This implies that any improvements ink-Noisy-SUM would result into improved algorithms fork-LPN. In our next result, we show a reverse reduction from k-Vector-SUM to k-LPN with high noise rate. Providing lower bounds fork-LPN problem is an open challenge and many algorithms in cryptography have been developed assuming its1 2hardness. Our reduction shows that k-LPN with noise rate η=12−12·nk·2−n(k−1k)cannot be solved in time no(k)assuming Exponential Time Hypothesis and, thus providing lower bound for a weaker version of k-LPN

As brass instruments evolved from crude instruments limited to only a few notes into instruments that could play melodic passages within the vocal range, they began to be paired with the voice. The development traced in this paper will focus primarily on the addition of brass instruments with a choral ensemble from the late Renaissance period through the Modern period. Insight into the historical use of brass and the evolution of choral and brass music allows us to better understand the genre and how subject matter, text, and/or the occasion for which the compositions were composed often influenced the composer’s decision to add brass. Four representative pieces will be studied: In Ecclesiis by Giovanni Gabrieli (c.1554-1612); Herr, unser Herscher by Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672); Ecce Sacerdos by Anton Bruckner (1824- 1896); and Ode a la Musique by Frank Martin (1890-1974).

By combining literary criticism, philology, and contemporary psychoanalysis, this dissertation offers an innovative interpretation of Neronian court literature (Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius). I argue that the works of these three authors thematize and embody a problematic relation between the human subject and language. Language is not conceived or represented as an inert tool that can be easily appropriated by the speaking subject, but rather as a powerful entity that may, and often does, take control of the human subject, directing it from without. Besides analyzing how Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius portray the relation between the human subject and language in the internal plots and characters of their works, I also explore the relation between these three authors themselves and language. My conclusion is that this relation is defined by unresolved ambiguities and neurotic tensions, and I suggest that this might be a consequence of the traumatizing circumstances that the three examined authors endured at Nero’s court.

The reign of King Baldwin I (1100-1118) has thus far received little noteworthy attention by historians as the important pivotal period following the First Crusade conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. The two decades of his rule marked the extension of Latin conquests in the east, most notably by the conquest of the important coastal cities of Arsulf, Acre, Caesarea, Beirut and Sidon. These vital ports for the early Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem provided outlets to the sea for commerce, as well as safe harbors for incoming assistance from the west. Further, Baldwin led in the establishment of strong secular control over ecclesiastical authorities, and provided a model of administration for subsequent monarchs to follow until the loss of the kingdom in 1187. Baldwin's contributions to these developments are presented here in a bibliographical framework to illustrate both his important place in crusader historiography, as well as to gauge the significance of his memory in contemporary literature as a second Joshua archetype. The conquest of Jerusalem and the decades that followed were extraordinarily perilous for the western "colonial" transplants, and thus a Biblical precedent was sought as an explanation to the success of the crusaders. This thesis argues that Fulcher of Chartres, the chaplain and primary contemporary biographer of Baldwin I, saw a parallel with the Biblical figure of Joshua as beneficial to posterity. By the establishment of Baldwin's memory in such a context, Fulcher of Chartres encouraged further western support for the Latin Kingdom, and reveals the important trials that faced Jerusalem's first Latin king.

What is a “Jewish book”? Does the history of Jewish secularism necessarily follow a Christian example? Did the Jews living in early modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire understand themselves by the same terms contemporary ones do? This dissertation examines five books printed by Jewish printer Gershom (Hieronymus) Soncino (1460[?]-1534) in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, in Italy and in the Ottoman Empire, which are posited as ‘secular.’ While Gershom is mainly known in “Jewish bibliography” circles – a concept the dissertation investigates and challenges – as a printer of religious Jewish tomes, a critical microhistorical analysis of the five books, their production, material makeup and reception, reveals a ‘secularity,’ a comfort in being-in-the-world which upends the received temporality of Jewish secularization. In rejecting a retrojection of later ideas of ‘secularization,’ often Christian-inflected and ideologically-biased, onto early modern Jewish cultural production, the dissertation asks that the Jews living in Renaissance Italy and the Ottoman Empire be understood by their own lights. To correctly treat Gershom’s books a critical list of his published titles spanning five languages, was necessary: the dissertation therefore first follows the “political economy of classification” which has historically governed what material has been deemed “the Jewish book,” revealing the embedded discursive biases of this scheme and problematizing some of its techniques. It then moves to investigate the ‘world’ each of five secular books was created and consumed in. The ‘world’ of Isaac ibn Saḥula’s 𝘔𝘦𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘭 𝘩𝘢-ḳ𝘢𝘥𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘪 (1490–1491), a compendium of animal fables and the first Hebrew illustrated book in print, is treated as a series of translations between medieval Spain, northern Italy and modern Germany. What do its woodcut illustrations reveal about the representation of the human, the animal and the Jew in Renaissance Italy? The dissertation contends that they reveal a specific Renaissance visual Jewish being-in-the-world. The ‘world’ treated I a grouping of six epic titles Gershom printed in the early 16th century similarly questions ideas of Jewish visuality and national Jewish literature(s): were these chivalric and macaronic titles ‘Judaized’ as ‘foreign’ material, or did the Jews of Italy read and enjoy them all along? An economy of print reuse in these titles further reveals an economic and cultural circuit between the Marche region and Venice. The ‘world’ investigated in connection with the 1534 𝘚𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘢-𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳, an arithmetic primer by Elia Mizraḥi that Gershom printed in Constantinople is one of a “Trans-Adriatic circuit” of scientific dissemination, following certain problematics of intercultural and inter-religious ‘translation’ in the Renaissance. Is printing ‘Western’? Was a book printed in Hebrew in the Ottoman Empire – one of the first ever – an ‘Italian’ production? Did its different readers – Jewish and non-Jewish – understand mathematics and science as ‘secular’? The ‘world’ which a chapter on a trilingual Christian exegesis of the Talmud (𝘋𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘦 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘴, 1518) investigates centers on the question of why a devout Jewish printer would publish a fiercely anti-rabbinic tract. By reading the rise of the 16th-century intellectual-religious phenomenon of Christian Hebraism against the contemporaneous invention of the world’s first Ghetto in Venice, the chapter asks whether the ‘extraction’ of Hebrew and other forms of ‘Jewish knowledge’ during this period can be read as analogous to the rising logic of race, as well as the nascent capitalistic logic of the colony prior to the colony. Questioning and following this ‘early modern extractivism,’ the chapter places 𝘥𝘦 𝘈𝘳𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘴 in its larger intellectual context, positing a secular Jewish being-in-the-world even within a religiously Christian context, rereading the modern birth of ‘Jewish studies.’ The final chapter investigates some visual aspects of the sumptuous woodcut illustration accompanying a Christian theological title, 𝘋𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘶𝘮 𝘤𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘶𝘮 (1507): were they the reason for some bibliographers’ anxieties regarding Gershom’s ‘correct’ religious affiliation? Continuing a discussion on Italian-Jewish worldliness, the chapter fleshes out Gershom’s – and other Jews of the time – adamancy to ‘be in the world’ in which they lived. Taken together, the different ‘worlds’ investigated in this dissertation feature recurring situations of polyglossic hybridity, of ‘diglossia,’ of trans-national circuits operating before the modern formulation of a nation, of a repeated crossing of borders and religious lines of demarcation, of constant translation across and between languages, as well as between the textual and the visual, between the abstract and the material. Gershom himself, the dissertation shows, exhibited a comfort and an ease with ‘being in the world.’ An intervention into both the study of religion and secularity and the history of the book, the dissertation combines insights from Italian history, Ottoman history, Jewish history, book history, art history, sociology, philosophy, and postcolonial and critical theory to counteract a “lachrymose” view of early modern Jewish culture and religion, emphasizing instead its wonderful inventiveness, malleability, intellectual brilliance and its celebration of pleasure.

This thesis argues that social debt profoundly transformed the environment in which literature was produced and experienced in the early modern period. In each chapter, I examine the various ways in which social debt affected Renaissance writers and the literature they produced. While considering the cultural changes regarding patronage, love, friendship, and debt, I will analyze the poetry and drama of Ben Jonson, Lady Mary Wroth, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Middleton. Each of these writers experiences social debt in a unique and revealing way. Ben Jonson's participation in networks of social debt via poetry allowed him to secure both a livelihood and a place in the Jacobean court through exchanges of poetry and patronage. The issue of social debt pervades both Wroth's life and her writing. Love and debt are intertwined in the actions of her father, the death of her husband, and the themes of her sonnets and pastoral tragicomedy. In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596), Antonio and Bassanio’s friendship is tested by a burdensome interpersonal debt, which can only be alleviated by an outsider. This indicated the transition from honor-based credit system to an impersonal system of commercial exchange. Middleton’s A Trick to Catch the Old One (1608) examines how those heavily in debt dealt with both the social and legal consequences of defaulting on loans.

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities / Department of Chinese