This dissertation explores Moderata Fonte’s Tredici canti del Floridoro from a new critical perspective, by taking into consideration Fonte’s authorial positionality, situating the text within its literary and historical contexts, and devoting sustained attention to its extradiegetic and structural components. Through this framing, this study highlights Fonte’s innovation as an author of chivalric epic and reveals the Floridoro to be a text with political motivations. The first chapter examines Fonte’s authorial persona and her metapoetics, both as they are written about by her contemporaries and as they are made manifest within the Floridoro. The remaining two chapters are devoted to an analysis of the two ekphrastic sub-narratives found within the Floridoro, and how they mirror Fonte’s dual dedication of the poem to Francesco I de’ Medici and Bianca Cappello: chapter 2 considers Fonte’s Medici genealogy as a response to a specific political moment and to the unique anxieties of her first dedicatee, while chapter 3 explores how Fonte’s history of Venice functions as a civic genealogy for her second.

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

En 1631, Marie de Médicis (1573-1642), reine de France, opposée à la politique de Richelieu, quitte précipitamment le royaume pour trouver refuge à la cour de Bruxelles. Jusqu’à sa mort en 1642, elle ne réussit jamais, malgré maintes tentatives, à rentrer en France. Elle vit dans les Pays-Bas espagnols jusqu’en 1639, puis, après un bref passage dans les Provinces-Unies, à Londres jusqu’en 1641, pour finir ses jours à Cologne. Alors que la guerre de Trente ans déchire l’Europe, Marie de Médicis tisse des liens avec les princes, mais aussi avec d’autres émigrés français, tels que Gaston d’Orléans ou la duchesse de Chevreuse. A travers cette situation exceptionnelle, nous étudions les réseaux, officiels ou secrets, qui se font et se défont autour de ces émigrés. La mise en place des réseaux et leur bon fonctionnement sont assurés par des hommes, ambassadeurs, courtisans, serviteurs, qui ont chacun des profils et des ambitions différents. Leurs histoires individuelles permettent de restituer la logique organique de cet ensemble complexe et mouvant à travers lequel circulent des nouvelles. Celles-ci sont analysées du point de vue matériel de leur support et de leur acheminement, mais aussi en fonction de leur contenu, qui varie selon les circonstances et les tensions politiques du moment. La circulation et les mutations de l’information ont sur la diplomatie des incidences qu’il faut évaluer. De plus, elles reflètent des idées politiques et révèlent des codes, des symboles, des représentations et des comportements particuliers. La mise en scène de l’information devient alors un objet d’étude fondamental. / In 1631, Mary de’ Médici (1573-1642), queen mother of the French king, opposed to Richelieu’s government, precipitately leaves the kingdom to find shelter at the court of Brussels. Until her death in 1642, she never succeeds, in spite of many attempts, to be allowed to come back to France. She lives in the Spanish Netherlands from 1631 to 1639. Then, after a short passage through the United Provinces, she stays in London until 1641, to move out again to Cologne, where she finally dies. Whereas the Thirty Years War tears Europe to pieces, Mary de’ Médici weaves bonds not only with foreign princes, but also with other French banned emigrants, such as Gaston of Orleans or the duchess of Chevreuse. The study of this outstanding situation reveals official or secret networks, which are built up and undone around those emigrants. The making and good working of those networks are ensured by a pool of ambassadors, courtiers, servants, who have various profiles and follow different purposes. By rebuilding the individual stories of these men, we can disclose the organic logic of this complex and moving party, in which the news arise and flow. We try to provide an analysis from the point of view of the material support and routing of information, but also according to its content, which may vary following the peculiar circumstances and political issues. The circulation and changes of the news affect the diplomatic deeds in a way that must be investigated and explained. Moreover, information, as a mirror of political thoughts, is reflecting codes, symbols, representations and behaviors. Therefore, the setting and showing of information can be seen as a significant matter for political studies.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Centered around the accounts of two women—Mary Aubry, a French Catholic midwife living in London, who was burned at the stake for murdering her abusive husband, and Queen Mary of Modena, the Italian Catholic wife of James II, who allegedly tried to pass off an imposter child as her legitimate heir in the so-called “warming pan scandal,” this is a study of murder, deceit, betrayal, paranoia, and repression in seventeenth-century England. The stories of the two Marys are both stories of palpable anxiety. Though the two women bear little resemblance at first glance, they were rumored to have conspired to guarantee a male heir for James II by any means necessary. According to the London gossips, these women were willing to betray, and even kill their husbands in the case of Mary Aubry, to protect their secret plot to perpetuate a line of Catholic princes in England. Though there was little evidence to substantiate this rumor and it quickly disappeared in media accounts, these two women continued to inspire vitriolic attacks from the London press that reveal strikingly similar public concerns. Their stories struck chords of fear within audiences in late seventeenth century England that knew their entire world was threatened. Endangered by a king, James II—who appeared determined to reinstitute Catholicism in England, who showed a penchant for absolutist policies, and who seemed to have fallen into the orbit of the domineering Louis XIV—the public’s apprehension and fear was only heightened by these stories. Just as unnerving as the fears about absolutism, Catholicism and foreign domination was the specter of internal collusion that endangered not simply the political and religious spheres of English Protestant society, but also social and familial hierarchies as well. To much of late seventeenth century English society, the two Marys represented all that was wrong with the world. They were traitors to their families, traitors to the nation, and traitors to the divine. / indefinitely

Representational artistic works were researched as visual evidence for the social, political, religious and economic lifestyles of the ancient Egyptian elite. The aims were to comprehend the status of elite women and to challenge the hypothesis that during the New Kingdom they enjoyed an increased social status in comparison to that of their predecessors. Many artistic works were analysed (tomb and palace wall scenes, statues, obelisks and personal artefacts), on the quest for evidence for the roles of elite women in events, practices and rituals at the time when the objects were created. Various international museums were visited and personal observations are correlated with expert publications. The study concludes that the status of elite women in the New Kingdom was both significantly different and exalted in comparison with the status of their counterparts during earlier dynasties. / OLD TESTAMENT & ANCIENT NE / MA (ANC NEAR EAST STUDIES)

Representational artistic works were researched as visual evidence for the social, political, religious and economic lifestyles of the ancient Egyptian elite. The aims were to comprehend the status of elite women and to challenge the hypothesis that during the New Kingdom they enjoyed an increased social status in comparison to that of their predecessors. Many artistic works were analysed (tomb and palace wall scenes, statues, obelisks and personal artefacts), on the quest for evidence for the roles of elite women in events, practices and rituals at the time when the objects were created. Various international museums were visited and personal observations are correlated with expert publications. The study concludes that the status of elite women in the New Kingdom was both significantly different and exalted in comparison with the status of their counterparts during earlier dynasties. / OLD TESTAMENT and ANCIENT NE / MA (ANC NEAR EAST STUDIES)

In this dissertation, I investigate the impact of the extended religious and political elements in the ancient Near East of the Late Bronze period that influenced the reigns of Hattušili III, his consort, Queen Puduhepa, circa 1267 to 1237 BCE and their son Tudhaliya IV circa 1237 to 1228 BCE. As rulers of the Hittites, they were not the greatest and most influential royals, like the great Suppiluliuma I circa 1322 to 1344 BCE, but their ability to adopt an eclectic approach similar to that of their great predecessors regarding religion, politics, international diplomacy and signing treaties made this royal triad a force to be reckoned with in the ancient Near East. Therefore, central to this investigation will be the impact of Hattušili III’s usurpation of the throne and Puduhepa’s role in the Hurrianisation of the state cult and pantheon. Also included is a brief investigation into the continuation of the reorganisation and restructuring of the Hittite state cult and local cult inventories by Tudhaliya IV and his mother Puduhepa after the death of Hattušilli III. By researching this royal triad, their deities, their Hurro-Hittite culture and the textual evidence of their rule, it becomes possible to assemble some of the elements that impacted on their rule. I have used available transliterated translated texts and pictures to support and illustrate the investigation of this complex final period in the history of the Hittite Empire. / Biblical and Ancient Studies / MA (Ancient Near Eastern Studies)