This dissertation examines the creation of innovative scholarly environments, publications, and resources in the context of a social knowledge creation affordances engendered by digital technologies. It draws on theoretical and praxis-oriented work undertaken as part of the Electronic Textual Cultures Laboratory (ETCL), work that sought to model how a socially aware and interconnected domain of scholarly inquiry might operate. It examines and includes two digital projects that provide a way to interrogate the meaning of social knowledge creation as it relates to early modern studies. These digital projects – A Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript (BL Add. 17,492) and the Renaissance Knowledge Network – approach the social in three primary ways: they approach the social as a quality of material textuality, deriving from the editorial theories of D. F. McKenzie and Jerome McGann; as a type of knowledge work that digital technologies can facilitate; and as a function of consciously designed platforms and tools emerging from the digital humanities. In other words, digital humanities practitioners are uniquely placed to move what has until now been customarily an analytical category and enact or embed it in a practical, applied way. The social is simultaneously a theoretical orientation and a way of designing and making digital tools — an act which in turn embeds such a theoretical framework in the material conditions of knowledge production. Digital humanists have sought to explain and often re-contextualise how knowledge work occurs in the humanities; as such, they form a body of scholarship that undergirds and enriches the present discussion around how the basic tasks of humanities work—research, discovery, analysis, publication, editing—might alter in the age of Web 2.0 and 3.0. Through sustained analysis of A Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript (BL Add 17,492) and the Renaissance Knowledge Network, this dissertation argues argues that scholarly communication is shifting from a largely individualistic, single-author system of traditional peer-reviewed publication to a broadly collaborative, socially-invested ecosystem of peer production and public facing digital production. Further, it puts forward the idea that the insights gained from these long-term digital humanities projects – the importance of community investment and maintenance in social knowledge projects, building resources consonant with disciplinary expectations and norms, and the necessity of transparency and consultation in project development – are applicable more widely to shifting norms in scholarly communications. These insights and specific examples may change patters of behaviour that govern how humanities scholars act within a densely interwoven digital humanities. This dissertation is situated at the intersection of digital humanities, early modern studies, and to discussions of humanities knowledge infrastructure. In content it reports on and discusses two major digital humanities projects, putting a number of previous peer-reviewed, collaboratively authored publications in conversation with each other and the field at large. As the introduction discusses, each chapter other than the introduction and conclusion originally stood on its own. Incorporating previously published, peer-reviewed materials from respected journals, as well as grants, white papers, and working group documents, this project represents a departure from the proto-monograph model of dissertation work prevalent in the humanities in the United States and Canada. Each component chapter notes my role as author; for the majority of the included material, I acted as lead author or project manager, coordinating small teams of makers and writers. In form this means that the following intervenes in discussions surrounding graduate training and professionalization. Instead of taking the form of a cohesive monograph, this project is grounded in four years of theory and practice that closely resemble dissertations produced in the natural sciences. / Graduate

This thesis presents an analysis of humanism as studied and practiced by Sir Thomas More, in the early-sixteenth century. It will examine the effect those beliefs had in his position regarding Henry VIII's Great Matter and the laws that followed. The thesis is divided into five sections including Introduction; Humanism; The Great Matter and the Acts that Followed; More, The Martyr; and Conclusion. The Introduction provides a terse summary of More's life, including his education and career as well as his personal life. In the section on Humanism, the philosophy is defined and the branches of same are discussed. It delves into Thomas More's practice of the philosophy and discusses three of his humanist works: his 1518 Letter to Oxford, Utopia and The History of Richard III. Erasmian Humanism is also discussed. In The Great Matter and the Acts that Followed, background on same is provided so More's position regarding these political decisions are understood. In this section, More's humanism is discussed as it relates to his own piety and understanding of virtue. In More, the Martyr, More's resignation to his impending execution is discussed in terms of his religious writing and how his humanism still was in effect at this time, though practiced now in a contemplative state. This thesis concludes with the breaking down of More's self-written epitaph and includes analysis on why same makes no direct mention of studia humanitatis. It also touches on how More's practices in humanism and Catholicism are viewed today, as are his stances on politics. It also includes opposition to his being considered a martyr. / acase@tulane.edu

The mode of carrying out literary spatial studies—or literary geography—has largely shifted to embrace digital methods and tools, culminating in the field of geospatial humanities. This shift has affected the scope of research questions that scholars can ask and answer using digital methods. Although there many continuities between non-digital and digital spatial studies, there are some fundamental points of departure in the critical processes that are involved in carrying out geospatial humanities research, including data modelling, prototyping, and multidisciplinary collaboration, that demand a revisit of the ways that knowledge production and analysis are carried out in the humanities. First there is thinking about how data models, prototypes, and digital projects embed within themselves spatial methodologies and spatial theory that form the foundation of humanities-oriented spatial inquiry. In addition, collaborating across multidisciplinary groups involves working toward shared project goals, while ideally ensuring that individual team members are drawing benefit from the collaborative research experience. Another factor has to do with creating rich and accurate data models that can capture the complexity of their subject of inquiry for meaningful humanities research. This dissertation addresses each of the aforementioned challenges through practical applications, by focusing not only on the literary contributions of geospatial humanities, but also engaging the critical processes involved in this form of digital research. By designing and co-creating three geospatial prototypes, TopoText, TopoText 2.0, and A Map of Paradise Lost, my goal is to demonstrate how digital objects can embody spatial theory and methodologies, and to portray how traditional literary studies approaches such as close reading and literary interpretation can be combined with digital methods that enable interactivity and mixed-media visualizations for an immersed literary geography analysis. The first two chapters translate a literary theory and method of analysis, geocriticism, into a digital prototype and iteratively improve on it to demonstrate the type of research made possible through a digital geocritical interpretation. In that part of the dissertation, I also address the challenges involved in translating a literary framework into a digital environment, such as designing under constraint, and discuss what is lost in translation alongside what is gained (McCarty 2008). Chapter three demonstrates how technological advances enable scholars to build community-university partnerships that can contribute to humanities scholarship while also making research findings publicly available. In particular, the chapter argues that scholars can draw on Volunteered Geographical Information to create rich cultural gazetteers that can inform spatial humanities research. The final two chapters demonstrate how a geospatial prototype that is fueled by rich data and embeds other types of media can inform literary interpretation and help make arguments. By focusing on the process of building A Map of Paradise Lost—a geospatial humanities text-to-map project that visualizes the locatable places in John Milton’s Paradise Lost—the closing chapter addresses the question “why map literature?” and demonstrates how the process of research prototyping is in itself a form of knowledge production. Since the methods and technologies that inform geospatial humanities research are rapidly evolving, this dissertation adopts a portfolio model and consists of five released and one forthcoming publications, as well as three published prototypes. Together, they form a digital dissertation, meaning that the digital component comprises a significant part of the intellectual work of the dissertation. Reflecting the collaborative nature of digital humanities research, some articles were co-authored and all three prototypes were co-developed. In all components of this dissertation, I took on the leading role in the publication and prototype development, which is detailed at the beginning of every chapter. / Graduate

The present thesis considers the allusive and narrative function of fate and its associated concepts of providence, free will, necessity, and natural law in Paradise Lost. It argues that the narrative function of these concepts is shaped by Milton's allusions to classical epic, and assesses their impact on the Christian theology of the poem. It identifies unnoted allusions to well-known epic models (Homer, Vergil, Lucan), and examines how Lucretius' account of natural laws and post-Vergilian representations of epic aftermath influence Milton's own depiction of transgression and its aftermath in Paradise Lost. Chapter 1 considers Satan and other fallen angels' definition of fate as a materialist alternative for the personal rule of the Father. It traces several allusions to fate in cosmological and ethical settings, in Lucretius, Vergil, Lucan, and Statius, and analyses how these allusions interact with the Hesiodic mythical material in the opening books of Milton's epic. Chapter 2 focuses on a pattern of previously unnoted allusions to Lucretius' De Rerum Natura in the narrative of the Fall, culminating in Book 9. It argues that in his temptation of Eve, Milton's Satan subverts Lucretian teachings about the boundaries governing the physical universe as he persuades Eve to transgress her natural state in Eden. Chapter 3 discusses the appearance of the Father in an allusive epic council scene in Book 3. In the dialogue between Father and Son, I suggest, Milton evokes negotiations between the Homeric and Vergilian deities, depicting his God as surpassing his pagan epic counterparts who can only delay the fate of mortals, but not change them. Chapter 4 suggests that Milton's depiction of the aftermath of the Fall is indebted to post-Vergilian epic narratives of 'aftermath'. The final Books of Paradise Lost and the portrayal of Adam and Eve's moral freedom as they leave paradise, with providence their guide, should be read, I posit, against the backdrop of scenes and imagery from Lucan's Bellum Civile and Statius' Thebaid.