Thesis (D. Ed. Min.)--New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005. / Abstract. Includes project proposal. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-179, 45-47).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2005. / Thesis directed by Maura Nolan for the Department of English. "July 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 344-368).

Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 2004. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-53).

At the center of this thesis are seven psalms, commonly known as the Penitential Psalms. The Penitential Psalms were often used in connection to corporeal expressions of the sacrament, and though sacramental practices changed, they retained this association, and even became a catalyst for literary change and experimentation. In this thesis, I will show how these psalms were connected to the sacrament of penance throughout the medieval period, and well into the religiously tumultuous sixteenth century. This thesis explores four texts that take up the Penitential Psalms, adapting, refashioning, and reappropriating them to be used in different ways. The Introduction outlines the history of the Penitential Psalms and their interconnectedness with sacramental theology and practice; it further establishes the cultural and theoretical context within which the four examined texts must be considered. These sacramental ties with the Penitential Psalms are not found only in theological writings, but they also infused lay practice and experience, as I will show in Chapter One, where I examine the staunchly Protestant Actes and Monuments by John Foxe. Additionally, I argue that Foxe's accounts of Marian martyrs point to Psalm 51 both as a text of protest and memorialization. Chapter Two then moves to Sir Thomas Wyatt's A Paraphrase of the Penitential Psalms; there I examine the presence of the male body within the work, placing the text within the setting of a visual history that illustrates David's illicit desire for Bathsheba. With this tradition in mind, I examine trajectories of ocularity within the narrative, tracing the redirection of sexual desire. Anne Lock's Meditation of a Pentient Sinner is the center of Chapter Three. Meditation, when considered in relation to the dedicatory epistle, reveals connections to the standardized penitential process, and I argue that Lock presents a modified form of repentance to her reader. The final chapter looks at The Sidney Psalter's Penitential Psalms, which reveal an incoherent view of the penitential body merging with the body of the dead war-hero, Philip. It is within this penitential affect that the penitent displays and partitions his or her own body slipping into an otherness predicated by sin.

The Virgin of Mercy is a Marian devotional image type recognizable by its portrayal of Mary protecting the faithful with her cloak. This thesis situates the iconography of painted panels within their historical and cultural context in Spain from the late medieval period to the Age of Exploration. I explain the image's origins and introduce its various versions, focusing on three major frequently commissioned subtypes: the Sponsorship of the Virgin, plague commissions, and the Mercedarian's Virgin of Mercy. I present a case study of one famous version of the type, the Virgin of the Navigators, and focus on the Spaniards and Amerindians beneath the cloak, situating them in relation to the historic debate that called into question the very humanity of the peoples of the Americas. The thesis explores the painting's possible statement the patrons may have been making through the artistic treatment of both groups.

Hester Pulter addresses personal and spiritual transformation in a unique way. The elusive nature of alchemical language allows Pulter to express the incomplete, ongoing process of internal transformation, with all its difficulties and inconsistencies. By means of a rich alchemical lexicon, Pulter stresses suffering rather than consolation, conflict rather than reconciliation, and lack of resolution rather than closure in her poetry. She repeatedly tries to see a divine order in earthly suffering, but she insists upon this suffering, and she often argues for a gendered element to this pain, particularly as a mother grieving her dead children. The lack of resolution we see in Pulter's writing pushes against conventional constructions of the ideal female Christian as passively accepting God's plan, and shows the limits of the religious lyric to truly provide consolation. My thesis will extend the discussion of Pulter's use of alchemical imagery and symbols in her poetry, and will argue that she uses alchemical language to reflect how transformation and healing are never, in fact, fully achieved during our physical existence. The promise of literary alchemy as a vehicle for transformation and spiritual regeneration is not always fulfilled in Pulter's work.

This thesis outlines two distinct modes of early sixteenth-century devotional practice (image-based and text-oriented), which in the context of the English reformation are increasingly represented as antithetical to one another, as Protestants champion the vernacular Bible and creed-based Christianity, while suppressing "idolatrous" images and traditional practices. Women readers, who tend to be vernacular readers, figure prominently in the religious controversy, and come to represent both the distinctives of Protestantism and anxieties around vernacular readership and hermeneutic agency. The vernacular woman reader stands in direct opposition to the priestly authority of masculine, Latin clerical culture; accordingly she is both rhetorically useful to the Protestant cause and a locus of cultural instability. I then turn to consider female Tudor translators as reading women, and translation itself (rather than a type of "feminine" writing) as a form of meditative or proclamatory reading. While translation has a traditional association with the meditative devotional reader, the religious controversy makes possible a more public and polemically motivated sort of translation by women, which, however, remains framed largely in terms of personal devotional activity. As the number of literate women grows throughout the century, translation (with reading) is also increasingly represented as a means of keeping women out of trouble, a development which reflects the growing acceptance of the Protestant contention that a good woman is a reading woman. The epistolary culture of the persecuted Marian Protestant community illustrates the construction of a community of readers in the Protestant language of spiritual family, and the role of the reading woman in sustaining that community. My concluding chapter outlines the continuing construction of a textual community of exemplary foremothers, a tradition of "godly, learned women," in which the virtuous woman reader is expected to participate. This distinctly Protestant pattern of literate female piety, alongside a growing number of women readers in Elizabethan England, increasingly shapes cultural ideals of female virtue. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

The thesis named Typology and Iconography of Christ in Distress motive. Devotional theme of Christ in Distress in historical Czech lands in late Gothic and early Renaissance wants to survey the occurrence of an unusual topic that began more often appear in the last quarter of the 15th century in central Europe. It expanded at the beginning of the following century in our territory. The thesis reflects a problem of terminology, seeks views on the origin and typological comparison of the theme. Different iconographic types sitting Suffering Christ are located and the most important artworks are presented in the accompanying catalog. The author concludes that the motive was very close to Franciscan spirituality, but also to notable feature of medieval spiritual life of human, namely the expectance of Apocalypse. Key words Christ in distress / devotional (subject) / iconography / sculpture / Czech

How She Sleeps at Night is a collection of lyric poetry constellated around experiences of disability, trauma, and womanhood. A critical essay introduces the collection by elucidating the experiences and theoretical underpinnings that shaped the body of these poems. The introductory essay distills the principles that informed my cardinal poetic goals as I wrote: to create poems that can be read again and again over a lifetime, which connect with readers' common humanity, and which acknowledge the nuances and complexities of being alive.

Chameleon is a collection of poetry that largely springs from John Keats' notion of the chameleon poet, which posits that poets can and should be able to speak with any voice or perspective in their work. A critical essay introduces the collection by putting Keats in conversation with other poets and scholars, such as Paisley Rekdal, Philip Sidney, and Fernando Pessoa, who also have much to say regarding the nature of voice in poetry. The essay further explores some of my most recurring strategies in poetry as well as what I consider to be some of the touchstones of great poetry. The poems that follow are crafted in agreement with Keats' assumption and constitute my attempt to write as a chameleon poet who aims to write good poems in myriad voices while avoiding harmful appropriation.