Thesis--Utrecht. / Stellingen inserted. Summary in English. Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 144-150).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1916. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell University, 1921. / Description based on print version record.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Regent College, Vancouver, BC, 2007. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-170).

This dissertation is a survey and analysis of the ideal of severe asceticism conveyed in early religious Daoist texts. “Severe asceticism” in this study refers to religious practices that entail hardship, suffering and the rejection of basic human needs, along with the beliefs and attitudes that serve as justification and motivation for such practices. The period dealt with in the study is roughly the first six centuries of the common era. The study addresses three basic questions: 1) What specific severe ascetic training methods and ways of behavior were being carried out by Daoists? 2) What attitudes and beliefs served as motivation for such practices? 3) How and to what degree did the severe ascetic practices and the beliefs and attitudes dictating them evolve during the period in question? The study finds that throughout the period discussed, severe asceticism was always an important ideal for Daoists, especially for advanced adepts. The prominent severe ascetic practices included fasting, celibacy, sleep-avoidance, wilderness seclusion and selfimposed poverty. Highly uncommon and generally disapproved of were austeries which harmed and weakened the body with no purpose of ultimately strengthening it. In general, the motives for severe asceticism were (1) the strengthening and transformation of the body, (2) contact and participation in what is sacred and transcendent and (3) disdain and fear of the world and society. However, it is also discussed how during the latter part of the period examined, the emergence of new, partly Buddhist-influenced, soteriological and cosmological beliefs intensified the inherent tension between the two primary sotenological objectives, longevity and transcendence, and may have given justification to austenties which harmed the body and contradicted the archaic ideal of bodily immortality. In order to be able to analyze the phenomenon of severe asceticism in its full integrity, an approach has been taken that emphasizes comprehensiveness. This is because the phenomenon was much too widespread and diverse to be accurately assessed on the basis of one authoritative text. Thus a wide variety of sources have been utilized so that severe asceticism in early Daoist religion can be viewed to its fullest and understood properly based on a broad base of information.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Australian Catholic University, 2002. / A thesis submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements fro the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographical references (274-282). Also available in an electronic version via the internet.

This dissertation examines the representation of ascetic renunciation in early modern drama, focusing in particular on the way asceticism functions as a tool of political agency. This study argues that the act of renunciation is essentially performative and public, directed outward to an audience whose responses the performer hopes to shape or direct. The specific political significance of ascetic acts varies according to the status and social position of those who perform and receive them, potentially functioning as a discourse both of resistance and of control. In early modern England, traditional asceticism's association with heterodox catholicism lent it an extra-normative and subversive quality that found utility in acts of resistance. However, ascetic or renunciatory discourse could also be utilized in the exercise of power by monarchs, both as a discourse of legitimation and as an act of public image construction. To help explain this flexibility, this study utilizes the sociolinguistic theories of M.M. Bakhtin, V.N. Voloshinov, and Pierre Bourdieu, all of whom offer models for interpreting language in shifting contexts and across discursive fields. The introduction defines asceticism as performative and potentially political, before tracing some of the relevant historical developments of asceticism from the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century. Chapter One analyzes the representation of asceticism in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, focusing in particular on the character of Isabella, whose celibate vows place her in conflict with mechanisms of power. Chapter Two examines the literary representation of asceticism in both medieval and early modern contexts by reading Shakespeare and Fletcher's The Two Noble Kinsmen in relation to its Chaucerian source material, The Knight's Tale. Chapter Three shifts to an examination of ascetic postures and discourse by monarchs, considering first The Escorial, Philip II's monastic palace, and then moving to a reading of Elizabeth I's translation of the renunciatory Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. Chapter Four further pursues this intersection of kingship and asceticism with an analysis of ascetic discourse in Shakespeare's Henry V. The conclusion considers areas for further analysis of asceticism in early modern literature, including revenge tragedy and Milton's Paradise Lost.

This dissertation reconsiders sacred tropes in the Romantic poetry of William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, and John Keats within the context of ascetic performances and written saints’ lives. I argue that reading these poets as ascetic figures helps us to better understand Romantic isolation as a deeply social engagement, for an ascetic rejects his social milieu in order to call for the sanctification of a corrupt community. Asceticism redraws the lines of Romantic immanent critique of nineteenth-century England and newly explains the ghostly afterlives of poets whose literary personae transcend their biographical lives. Furthermore, this study takes up the ways in which the foundational ascetic tropes of Romantic poetry bind the major poets together in an impenetrable canon of writers with holy vows to poetry and to each other. My readings examine different kinds of ascetic vocation at play in the work of each poet, and I ultimately argue that this traditional support for the Romantic canon demands that we reconsider our critical attachments to Romanticism as the beginning of a secular literary tradition.

DAMASCENO, Francisco William Mendes. Ética e metafísica em Schopenhauer: a coexistência da vontade livre com a necessidade das ações. 2012. 118f. – Dissertação (Mestrado) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Programa de Pós-graduação em Filosofia, Fortaleza (CE), 2012. / Submitted by Márcia Araújo (marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2013-11-11T17:13:07Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2012-DIS-FWMDAMASCENO.pdf: 840511 bytes, checksum: 55a93b1f5e0de41ea3d91cba2db0716d (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Márcia Araújo(marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2013-11-12T11:02:05Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2012-DIS-FWMDAMASCENO.pdf: 840511 bytes, checksum: 55a93b1f5e0de41ea3d91cba2db0716d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-11-12T11:02:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2012-DIS-FWMDAMASCENO.pdf: 840511 bytes, checksum: 55a93b1f5e0de41ea3d91cba2db0716d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / A presente pesquisa é uma análise, à luz da filosofia de Schopenhauer, da problemática tradicional acerca do livre-arbítrio, ou liberdade de indiferença, termo mais utilizado por Schopenhauer. Trata-se de investigar até que ponto se pode falar de uma liberdade dos atos particulares e como esta suposta liberdade poderia ser conciliada com a necessidade causal do mundo físico. Para tanto é preciso refazer o percurso realizado por Schopenhauer na sua investigação ético-metafísica acerca da liberdade. Por outro lado, é extremamente importante extrairmos as consequências existenciais surgidas da sua resposta negativa acerca da liberdade moral, ou seja, é preciso também entendermos de que modo a liberdade, ou a sua ausência, estão relacionadas ao sofrimento e o quanto este faz parte da vida. O percurso feito no presente trabalho inicia-se com a exposição dos pressupostos e conceitos fundamentais da filosofia de Schopenhauer, mais especificamente no que se refere à sua teoria do conhecimento e à sua filosofia da natureza. Segue-se uma abordagem acerca do problema da liberdade a partir do ponto de vista ético-metafísico, baseado fundamentalmente na obra principal de Schopenhauer, O mundo como vontade e como representação, mais precisamente o quarto livro. Num último momento abordaremos a problemática a partir de um ponto de vista empírico, tendo como texto base os Aforismos para a sabedoria de vida, textos que compõem a obra Parerga e Paralipomena, considerados por Schopenhauer como escritos menores, por serem textos que se situam exteriormente à perspectiva mais elevada, a ético-metafísica.

This dissertation is a survey and analysis of the ideal of severe asceticism conveyed in early religious Daoist texts. “Severe asceticism” in this study refers to religious practices that entail hardship, suffering and the rejection of basic human needs, along with the beliefs and attitudes that serve as justification and motivation for such practices. The period dealt with in the study is roughly the first six centuries of the common era. The study addresses three basic questions: 1) What specific severe ascetic training methods and ways of behavior were being carried out by Daoists? 2) What attitudes and beliefs served as motivation for such practices? 3) How and to what degree did the severe ascetic practices and the beliefs and attitudes dictating them evolve during the period in question? The study finds that throughout the period discussed, severe asceticism was always an important ideal for Daoists, especially for advanced adepts. The prominent severe ascetic practices included fasting, celibacy, sleep-avoidance, wilderness seclusion and selfimposed poverty. Highly uncommon and generally disapproved of were austeries which harmed and weakened the body with no purpose of ultimately strengthening it. In general, the motives for severe asceticism were (1) the strengthening and transformation of the body, (2) contact and participation in what is sacred and transcendent and (3) disdain and fear of the world and society. However, it is also discussed how during the latter part of the period examined, the emergence of new, partly Buddhist-influenced, soteriological and cosmological beliefs intensified the inherent tension between the two primary sotenological objectives, longevity and transcendence, and may have given justification to austenties which harmed the body and contradicted the archaic ideal of bodily immortality. In order to be able to analyze the phenomenon of severe asceticism in its full integrity, an approach has been taken that emphasizes comprehensiveness. This is because the phenomenon was much too widespread and diverse to be accurately assessed on the basis of one authoritative text. Thus a wide variety of sources have been utilized so that severe asceticism in early Daoist religion can be viewed to its fullest and understood properly based on a broad base of information. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate