In this study Richard III's character, motivations, and his path to the throne were examined as they affect the well-being of the country. Analyzed were the political, social, and moral philosophies of Elizabethan England and how they conflicted with Richard's Machiavellian tactics in achieving and holding the position of king. The necessity of purging Richard III from the throne was shown to be consistent with the Elizabethan concept of God's will for the good of the country. "Macbeth" and "Hamlet" revealed the idea that the health of the nation depends on the moral health of the king. In "Coriolanus," another strong but dangerous leader was shown as having qualities that were a value to the state, but he exhibited tyrannical irrationality that became an awesome threat to the country. In contrast, "Richard II" and "Henry VI" indicated that a weak king may be an even greater threat to the well-being of the nation than a tyrant like Richard III. The kings in "Henry IV" and "Henry V - were found to have qualities demanded of kingship. Henry IV's reign, however, was cursed by his participation in the deposition of God's regent on earth. Henry V is revealed as an ideal Renaissance king. He was a capable, mature man who was able to use Elizabethan policies to promote the health of England. In these examples of history plays and related tragedies, Shakespeare seems to demonstrate an ideal pattern of kingship as it affects the good of the country. The king had to be legitimate: and in accordance with Christian tradition, he must act in the best interest of the country. Although Henry V succeeded, Richard III failed to follow the pattern. Thus it was necessary that he be purged from the English throne at Bosworth Field.

The original plan for research was to make a comparative study of plays written in the twenty year span before the theaters closed and in the twenty year period after the theaters reopened - a comparative study of Jacobean and Restoration drama. However, the availability of play copies limited the number of plays read and the authors used. Therefore the twenty year plan proved to be quite cumbersome and the plays were reduced roughly to a twelve year period. The subject for research then became "A Comparative Study of Caroline and Restoration Drama."

The tumulus tale of Troilus and his lover Cressida has left readers intrigued in renditions written by both Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare due to their subversive nature of the authors’ chosen generic forms. Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde challenges the expectations and limitations of the narrative of the chivalric romance. Shakespeare took the story and turned Troilus and Cressida into one of his famous “problem plays” by challenging his audience’s expectations of the tragic genre. I endeavor to draw attention to the ways in which both Chaucer and Shakespeare use the conventions of the chivalric romance and tragedy to play with the imbalances in the central relationship of Troilus and Criseyde/Cressida in the story. These imbalances are the source of experimentation in both texts that allows Chaucer to imbue tragedy in the chivalric romance and allow Shakespeare to undermine tragedy itself.

In my research, I will examine James Joyce’s Dubliners as a collection of stories that is unified by an ongoing theme; escape or the desire to escape. In the collection, the want or need to escape serves a major purpose throughout the characters and their lives. This thesis explores five stories that share this theme in particular: “The Sisters,” “Eveline,” “Araby,” “An Encounter,” and “The Dead.” Each story will be discussed in the context of how each story progresses from a want to an actual escape. In addition, the thesis also considers how these stories exhibit a progression towards isolation and paralysis in the living until the final story, “The Dead.” “The Dead” can be interpreted as a positive, hopeful ending to the bleak collection, but I will argue its ending is anything but optimistic along with its crucial role as a conclusion to Dubliners.

The purpose of this thesis is to take a closer look at Jane Austen’s work and understand the importance of it in both the academic and cultural sphere. With a specific focus on Pride and Prejudice, this research starts with a focus on feminist readings of the novel. Primarily, this research looks at the novel with a feminist lens in order to better understand the female characters and their involvement in the marriage plot. Secondarily, the research goes on to look at the cultural impact of Pride and Prejudice and attempts to understand the ways in which this novel re-appears in different adaptations. Finally, the research suggests that there should be a new way of reading Austen that better fits contemporary society. Despite how far removed Jane Austen’s world may seem, her work remains important and worth studying. This thesis argues in favor of the appreciation of Jane Austen’s work both academically and culturally.

This dissertation looks at the ways in which humans interact with and respond to other humans and nonhumans in Ann Radcliffe's and Mary Shelley's novels. I argue that in light of the social and political turmoil surrounding the French Revolution, Radcliffe and Shelley call not so much for Revolution or drastic reform but for a change in the ways in which individuals respond to the needs of others, both human and nonhuman, and take responsibility for each other. The ways in which humans interact with the nonhuman inform the positive and negative practices that they should use to interact with other humans and vice versa. Chapter One considers the connection between nature and culture in Radcliffe'sA Sicilian Romance, The Romance of the Forest, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and The Italian to argue that Radcliffe's "explained supernatural" occupies a liminal space between nature and culture. Furthermore, some of the upper class are able to discern that the "real," or material, supernatural does not exist while still acknowledging that some form of spiritual supernatural presence is possible, thus reflecting a heightened awareness of concepts beyond the material. Chapter Two looks at Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian to argue that characters who are able to appreciate nature, particularly landscape, are more admirable than those who ignore it. Specifically, these characters indicate an openness to forming reciprocal relationships with the landscapes, allowing the views offered by the landscapes to offer them peace or comfort while simultaneously respecting the power the landscapes hold. Drawing from the theories of place theorists Tim Cresswell and Yi-Fu Tuan, this chapter posits that landscapes can be classified as being on the verge of place. Chapter Three looks at Frankenstein and The Last Man to argue that Shelley demonstrates the types of reciprocal relationships people should form with both humans and nonhumans. Donna Haraway's idea of "contact zones"--places where the human and nonhuman can communicate--inform this reading of the relationships between the human and nonhuman in these two novels. It investigates how Victor Frankenstein and the creature define "human" and then asserts that in Frankenstein the creature cannot form a place for communication with any of the humans whose acceptance and companionship he seeks because no one is willing to do so. The Last Man's Lionel Verney, on the other hand, is able to form reciprocal relationships with both the human and the nonhuman, thus enabling him to ultimately become the "last man." The fourth and final chapter looks at Shelley's Valperga, Lodore, and The Last Man, set in the past, present, and future, respectively, arguing that Shelley uses these different time settings in order to demonstrate that many of the struggles people have are similar to ones that others had in the past and will continue to have in the future if people do not adjust the ways in which they respond to disaster. By presenting readers with specifics about location and environment, Shelley creates settings that readers can connect to and then entertain the idea that these characters' struggles are like their own.

This project is the biography of a symbol: that of the holy woman motif in William Butler Yeats’s oeuvre. For most of Yeats’s writing life, beautiful women have a place of spurious privilege in his spiritual imagination because they have an intrinsic connection with the divine otherworld. In chapters on Yeats’s beauty-worship in his long fin de siecle, Olivia Shakespear’s critique of that beauty-worship in her fiction, and the role of A Vision in The Winding Stair and Other Poems, I argue that Yeats revised the holy woman motif from a limited and limiting goddess or helpmeet role in his youthful work to a full-fledged religious meaning-maker--a Creatrix--in the last decade of his career. I include a study of Olivia Shakespear’s fiction in this project because each of her seven fictional works critiques what she saw as the male tendency from which Yeats’s symbology sprang: the tendency to feign worship of a beautiful woman while simultaneously limiting her ability to be a Creatrix. However, the transformation that Yeats’s system underwent between the 1925 and 1937 versions of A Vision enabled the poet to create a model of religious identity that does not require the erasure of the self and its human desires and therefore makes space in his pantheon for the Creatrix.

From Sam Taylor’s 1929 Taming of the Shrew to Kenneth Branagh’s 2000 Love’s Labour’s Lost, nine comedies have been filmed and released for the mainstream film market. Over the course of the twentieth century a filmic cycle developed. By the late 1990s, the films of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies included cinematic allusions to films produced and distributed in the 1930s. This cycle indicates an awareness of and appreciation for the earlier films. Such awareness proves that the contemporary films’ meaning and entertainment value are derived in part from the consciousness of belonging to a larger tradition of Shakespeare comedy on film. Recognizing the intertextuality of Shakespeare’s comedies on film challenges the notion that Shakespeare’s comedies do not merit the same critical attention as their tragic counterparts. The cinematic conversation between directors—as played out on screen—illustrates the relevance and cultural significance of Shakespeare’s comedy. This dissertation explores these comedic adaptations chronologically and offers analysis of the films as they enter the cinematic Shakespeare tradition. Each decade in which the comedies were produced reveals a unique view or understanding of the role of comedy in Shakespeare. For 1930s audiences, the three comedies offer innovative performances by big-name stars as some of them transitioned from silent films to talkies while others tried to flex their acting muscles. 1960s movie audiences saw Shakespeare comedy that was less about the theatrical tradition and more about cinematic realism and social relevance. Kenneth Branagh would move to capitalize on this approach and take populism to the next level with his two comedies in the 1990s. Branagh’s contributions to the comedy tradition proved to be both monumental and overconfident; however, the impact Branagh himself had on the field of Shakespeare on film is undeniable. His influence would inspire other directors (including Trevor Nunn and Michael Hoffman) who pay homage to Branagh stylistically and thematically. Recognizing the history of Shakespeare’s comedies on film allows us the opportunity to revisit and reexamine the comedies’ place on the Shakespeare-on-film canon by calling attention to what these films attempt to accomplish through cultural, social or cinematic means.

The first decades following a country’s conversion to Christianity are sometimes marked by experimentation with native expressions of piety. Out of the multicultural environment of early Christian Northumbria such experiments created an insular Germanic version of sanctity. In the mid-seventh century, Oswiu of Northumbria (642-670), the younger brother and successor to King Oswald, constructed an elaborate narrative of God’s plan for England (without consent or guidance from the Roman Church). His narrative would weave his family into the sacred fabric of his nascent, Christian kingdom. Through skillful manipulation of oral tradition, material culture and sacri loci he crafted a unique interpretation of his brother’s death, an interpretation that Bede later canonizes in his Ecclesiastical History. King Oswiu, developed a novel form of the sacred by fusing certain established topoi of Christian sanctity with cultural elements from the Germans, Irish, Britons and Picts. Oswiu created the first Germanic holy warrior. Oswald with his dual nature as martyred warrior-king and humble saint represented a uniquely hybrid model of Germanic Christian sanctity as an imitatio for his people. It is this same cultural and intellectual environment, that gave birth to the Anglo-Saxon poetic masterpiece, The Dream of the Rood, which I suggest was written during the reign of King Aldfrith (685-705). Whereas Oswiu wished to consolidate political power through aligning his family with the newly introduced religion, the poet of the Dream of the Rood focused on exploring a related issue, the dual nature of Christ. The poem draws inspiration from the same font of political, cultural, and spiritual ideas that Oswiu used when he created his martyr-king. The inversions of traditional roles — Christ as warrior in The Dream of the Rood and warrior-king Oswald as martyr and humble servant of God — represent an outgrowth of the spiritual milieu that existed in seventh century Northumbria. The Dream of the Rood and the narrative of St. Oswald’s martyrdom reflect not merely Germanic ideals but a unique worldview stemming from the cultural and ethnic diversity of Northumbria. Both also reflect a desire by the Northumbrians to include themselves in the narrative of the Christian faith.

This study presents an attempt to understand the political and aesthetic relationship between two of Modernism’s most enigmatic authors, Wyndham Lewis and Ford Madox Ford by examining their novelistic practice in light of their writings on politics and social criticism. A close look at the use of ironic distance, a hallmark feature in our understanding of modernist fiction, in Tarr (1918) and The Good Soldier (1915) reveals both authors conscious effort to distance themselves from their novel’s subjects, Fredric Tarr and John Dowell respectively. In light of both novels’ satirical element, a scathing attack on bourgeois narcissism caused by the wealthier class’ persistent attempts to identify with hollow and self serving social roles through the sham-aristocratic prestige created by England’s pre-war commodity culture, and the fact that both Fredric Tarr and John Dowell are artist figures that somehow resemble their creators, this project reinterprets Ford and Lewis’ ironic distance as an instance of self-distanciation. From this we can infer that both Ford and Lewis were invested in the modernist idea of impersonality, not just as a artistic or literary technique, but as the artist’s only means of escaping the narcissistic and slothful trap of modern subjectivity, and that, along with the production of modernist art, they saw a continual self-effacement as the price of authenticity, therefore inspiring in them the conviction to live as “uncelebrated stylists.”