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The popular image of Richard III remains, even today, deeply indebted to Shakespeare's portrayal; however, the century following the publication of Shakespeare's play in 1597 witnessed a fresh and vibrant re-evaluation of this character in a diverse range of texts from poems and history works to pamphlets. While many authors still perpetuated the negative Tudor image, original writings challenged this ingrained view and resulted in a more nuanced assessment of Richard III than the one pervading the sixteenth century. The present thesis investigates a range of seventeenth-century texts about Richard III which shed new light on the reception of Shakespeare's play, bring unique testimony to the contemporary understanding of tyranny, and capture specific social and political anxieties of the period: the end of the Tudor dynasty, the conflict between the Crown and Parliament culminating in the Civil Wars, and the execution of Charles I. These texts offer a fuller picture of the contemporary literary-political climate, while illuminating the role of historical memory in forming national consciousness, including the forging and dismantling of myths. The thesis analyses seventeenth-century responses to Richard III in historiography, legal and constitutional debates, poetry, plays, and the visual arts. The first two chapters demonstrate that historians and legal theorists during the Stuart reign and the Civil Wars proved unexpected advocates of Richard III. Challenging the traditional narrative of Tudor chronicles, they reappraised Richard's election by parliament and his moderate taxation policies and contrasted them with the controversial high-taxation programmes of the Stuarts. The third chapter offers a re-evaluation of Richard's portraits which betray hitherto unnoticed marks of ageism as a symbol of governmental inadequacy. The chapter explores visual art as a distinct incarnation of historical commentary. Chapter four examines the depictions of Richard's conscience in poems by Richard Niccols and Christopher Brooke. The final two chapters analyse two extensive poems on Richard III. John Beaumont's 'Bosworth Field' (1629) offers an original account of the battle and Richard III as a study of patriotism and leadership. Thomas Wincoll's Plantagenets Tragicall Story (1649) transforms Richard III into a vehicle of anti-Cromwellian political allegory in the time of the regicide. By reconstructing the life of Wincoll, a royalist poet from a puritan family, the chapter outlines the contradictory nexus of convictions which underlie Civil War literature. Overall, my thesis argues that Richard III evolved from the plainly negative tyrant of Tudor chronicles to a more complex figure, resulting in a more original and balanced portrayal of his character in the seventeenth century.

Household inventories record objects that can be compared with surviving artefacts contributing to the study of material culture and social history. However, this thesis shows how heterogeneous inventories found in early modern Scottish sources resist quantification and aggregation. Instead, qualitative use of inventory evidence is advocated. Inventories can contribute information on the locations of activities in the home. These activities may be preferred to the object as evidence of historical change and as units of international comparison. Furnishing a house was cultural activity, and a construction of culture. In this study, objects are regarded as participants in cultural activities, strategies, and the construction of values. Sixteenth-century inventories are often impersonal and tend to show similarities in content, encouraging mechanistic interpretations of domestic life. The seventeenth century saw a proliferation of household equipment and furnishing for elites throughout Europe due to changes in production and consumerism. Some of this new furnishing was bought in London, some in France. While national difference was apparently maintained in architecture, new furnishings may have effaced distinctions within elite rooms. Scottish and English culture was merged by aristocratic intermarriage. This new culture is seen in the inventories of Mary, dowager Countess of Home. She maintained houses in England and Scotland. Some of her furnishings represented the style of an inner circle at court. Her inventories are also significant because they detailed equipment for a range of activities. She personally prepared medicines and sweetmeats, and had a number of scientific instruments. Pursuits reconstructed from the detail of later inventories can illuminate other domestic situations where clues are more subtle or absent. The level of autonomy Lady Home and her daughters exercised over their homes is a reminder of the agency exercised by women over furnishings, gardens, architecture, and estate policy.

The act of wearing a mask, of concealing one’s identity, has been one of the most enticing but controversial cultural practices since the 1500s. Masking evoked an even bolder act of self-fashioning when enacted by the female sex, since the gesture came to be read as a materialization of the deceitful and duplicitous character of woman’s nature, proclaimed by the major state and religious institutions of the early modern era. The ubiquity of this cultural and religious trope, however, has overshadowed a parallel dimension of this phenomenon: women’s appropriation of masking as means to obtain cultural agency and public (in)visibility in the context of a number of sartorial, theatrical, and entertainment practices. How visual representations of female masking served both maskers and audiences to navigate the social, moral, and cultural implications of this reality constitutes the subject of the present study. This dissertation explores the gendering of the act of (un)masking and its dissemination in visual culture during the early modern period in England, looking at four different cultural and chronological settings: the Carnival, the Stuart court masque, the Restoration urban space, and the Georgian masquerade. Through the examination of women’s uses of masks and their artistic representations in these different contexts, the author argues that the iconography of the (un)masked woman not only pervaded contemporary imagery, but also acted as a primary vehicle to comment on, formulate, and negotiate models of femininity throughout the early modern period. As this was a quintessential form of self-fashioning, central to a number of pageants, entertainments, and rituals, the analysis of women’s masking and its depictions reveals the core of early modern attitudes to power, gender, and class, in both the public and private realms. In order to flesh out such ideological discourses, this study considers a wide range of visual depictions and cultural practices, including drawings, prints, paintings, ephemera, costumes, fashion accessories, cosmetic customs, and architectural settings. In methodological terms, this dissertation applies an interdisciplinary, feminist, and art-historical perspective to the study of early modern masking in England, engaging at the same time with a number of interpretative tools from the fields of the history of costume, dance, theatre, and literature.

William Shakespeare is arguably the most famous and influential author in modern history. His plays make up a literary canon that has been translated into every language, is constantly being reproduced on the stage and on film and has persisted in popularity for centuries. Yet, Shakespeare’s first and most popular text is not a play, but the narrative poem, Venus and Adonis. The text that launched Shakespeare into popularity and gave rise to this cultural icon was a poem, rather than a play. But despite its initial success, Venus and Adonis is not a central feature of the modern literary canon and Shakespeare’s original role as a poet has been overshadowed by his achievements in theatre. This paper sets out to explore what happened to Shakespeare’s legacy in poetry by examining the commercial history and aesthetic form of two of Shakespeare’s poems: Venus and Adonis and the sonnets. I will address how the dramatic literary canon was created and why it revolves around Shakespeare as solely a playwright.

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

Although the eruption of religious dissent in Germany touched off by Martin Luther in 1517 began as a theological disagreement, the ensuring years would reveal that these religious ideas had important social consequences. They set into motion a process of reordering society and forming of confessional identities that had significant implications for the nuclear family. Reflecting John Calvin's assertion that "every individual Family ought to be a Little Church of Christ," Reformed Protestants sought to transform nuclear families into spiritual communities, creating domestic microcosms of the larger church. This project examines the religious formation of families among the French Reformed (Huguenot) Churches, demonstrating that this was a cultural offensive as much as it was a religious one. Huguenot leaders wanted far more than their congregants to attend church: this programme transformed the roles and responsibilities of family members, shaped the activities and routines of the household, circumscribed and defined the appropriate associations of family members, and reorganized the family schedule. This study illuminates the Huguenots' conception of a "holy household" by analyzing the four primary characteristics of these godly families - ordered, educational, pure, and pious - and describes how they were conceived of and implemented in Reformed communities across early modern France. In order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the French Reformed family, this dissertation bridges the divide between intellectual history and social history. There was no greater intellectual source for French Protestantism than John Calvin and Geneva: Calvin was one of the primary theologians influencing the development of Protestantism in France, and the Genevan Church served as an advisor and template for many of the Huguenot churches. Accordingly, each chapter examines in depth the theological underpinnings of this effort, analyzing Calvin's sermons, commentaries, Institutes of the Christian Religion, and written correspondence with leaders of the Huguenot churches. This investigation, in turn, provides an understanding of the religious sources for this new emphasis holy family and domestic piety in France, without which it would be impossible to fully appreciate. To balance these prescriptive sources, I analyze descriptive records to understand how the actual reform of the family was carried out on the local level. In particular, my research relies extensively on church discipline records (consistory registers) from churches throughout France: Albenc (1606-1682), Archiac (1600-1637), Blois (1574-1579), Coutras (1582-1584), Die (1639-1686), Le Mans (1560-1561), Mussidan (1593-1599), Nîmes (1561-1564), Pont-de-Camares (1574-1579), Rochechouart (1596-1635), and Saint-Gervais (1564-1568). These records reveal the complex and messy manner of this reform, which was often marked by contestation and negotiation. Throughout, I compare these records to Genevan discipline records to compare and contrast how Calvin's own church instituted this familial reform in the Genevan context. My project, in sum, reveals the heretofore overlooked religious role and significance of the family and home in Reformed churches of early modern France.

This dissertation examines the cultural, intellectual and artistic contributions religious women made in the production of secular and religious books in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy. It presents the first comparative study of nuns' book production across Italy and introduces new manuscripts to the canon of nuns' bookwork. Though the scholarship of the last fifty years has increased our understanding of the institutional and individual lives of nuns, little research has been done on their production and exchange of texts. Nun-scribes and manuscript painters produced liturgical, devotional and administrative books for use in-house, as well as for secular and religious communities and individuals outside the walls of the convents. Evidence of their bookwork repositions them as active participants in a rich spiritual, intellectual and artistic life and broadens their sphere of activity and influence to include a wide community of secular and religious patrons, artistic collaborators, scholars, family members, and book-buying clientele. Through a close examination of the material evidence in their manuscripts, this study illustrates how nuns used the production and exchange of texts to further their individual and institutional goals. This dissertation makes an important contribution to the current understanding nuns' spiritual, artistic and intellectual life and practice and significantly reshapes the current understanding of women's education and learning in Renaissance and early modern Italy (1400-1650).

My dissertation, Agnostos Dei: Staging Catholicism and the Anti-Sectarian Aesthetic in Early-Stuart England, traces over four chapters the emergence of a literary counter-aesthetic to the increasingly violent sectarianism of Post-Reformation England. I focus primarily on popular plays that dramatize the destabilizing effects of radical beliefs on a society, whether small town or royal court, culminating in blood and exile. I argue that the plays' destructive conflicts and redemptive moments suggest the potential worth of cross-sectarian belief and ritual. In doing so, John Fletcher's The Faithfull Shepherdess (1608), William Shakespeare and John Fletcher's Henry VIII (1613), Dekker, Ford, and Rowley's The Witch of Edmonton (1621), and John Ford's `Tis Pity She's a Whore (1629) participate in an aesthetic that rejects the disunity promoted by radical sectarians and revises the rhetoric of English Protestantism. Kings James and Charles promoted, ultimately unsuccessfully, a via media (middle way) for the Church of England, seeking reunification of divergent Christian sects. At the same time, these works used the theatre as a space of free play to consider the possibility of ecumenical success in fictionalized worlds removed from the clashing rhetoric of real kings and clergy. My project responds to the revitalized return to religion in the scholarship of early modern England, which has included a renewed interest in the English Catholic experience and a reconsideration of the variety of believers within the nation, loosely grouped into categories like Puritans and High Church Anglicans. My work presents a correlative- and counter-narrative to these well-established readings. I consider the historical and literary analogues of the plays and the contemporary religiopolitical realities of the times of their staging. Rather than attempting to discover crypto-sectarian messages in the tales or intentions of the playwrights behind them, I argue that such categorizations can reduce and obscure the broader, ecumenical implications of these works. In speaking to a range of sectarian audiences, these playwrights exceed the limitations of clear affiliation to address a wider Christian possibility.

The significant cultural impact of HIV/AIDS has led to the production of an impressive amount of scholarship in the US and Northern Europe since the outbreak of the epidemic in 1980. In contrast, the study of the cultural representations of HIV/AIDS has been largely overlooked in the realm of Spanish literary criticism. The purpose of my dissertation is to address that void through the analysis of a representative corpus of texts and artistic works from different periods and genres that acknowledge the impact of the epidemic in Spain. More particularly, this dissertation analyzes Spanish literary and artistic representations of HIV/AIDS through a critical comparison with other written materials produced in the 16th and 17th centuries as a reaction to the syphilis epidemic that hit Europe at the time, also known as the Great Pox. The corpus of texts used in this dissertation includes Francisco Delicado’s La Lozana andaluza (1528); two short novels by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616); individual poems and collections of poetry by authors such as Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645), Anastasio Pantaleón de Ribera (1600-1629), Aníbal Núñez (1944-1987), or Galician-language poet Lois Pereiro (1958-1996); as well as artistic works and performances by AIDS activist Pepe Espaliú (1955-1993). I explore this corpus through an interdisciplinary approach bringing into play, among others, historical and medical discourses, biopolitics, sociology of literature, semiology, as well as theories about violence and empathy. In my comparative examination of these authors’ representations of disease, I argue that contemporary writers approached HIV/AIDS using a framework inspired on the aesthetic and epistemic strategies developed in the 16th and 17th centuries in the context of the emergence of the Baroque. This framework allowed modern authors to confront the uncertainties caused by Post-Modernity and HIV/AIDS, and inspired them to depict the pandemic by means of metaphor and indirectness. The ultimate goal of my research is to uncover variables that will help to enlighten the well-documented historical trend to stigmatize sexual transmitted and infectious diseases. My work also sheds light on the reasons behind the slow emergence of epidemic diseases as objects of cultural debate in Spain, as well as on the social, political and ethical consequences of this slowness. Finally, I argue that there are some specifically artistic and literary responses to the Great Pox and HIV/AIDS that can help to understand the nature of these diseases and to distinguish discriminatory usages of these phenomena.