The purpose of this study was to arrive at conclusions regarding the nature and background of the anonymous playwright of the medieval morality play Mankind (composed c. 1470). The presumed audience for this study is the group of readers who criticize, produce, or perform medieval English drama. An analysis was conducted according to the precepts of classical rhetoric as it appeared in the dialogue of the evil characters Nought, New-Guise, Nowadays, Mischief, and Titivillus. The lines of these characters were closely read for clues as to the rhetorical perspective of the playwright.In addition to the classical evidence, the study gathered textual evidence of Germanic pagan influences upon the playwright. The researcher arrived at the conclusion that the classical and Germanic influences were significant in the playwright's choice of actions and dramatic devices. The study includes a review of literature and a synopsis of the action of the play.

The question of adverbs and the meaning of the present perfect across varieties of English is central to sociolinguistic variationist methodologies that have approached the study of the present perfect (Winford, 1993; Tagliamonte, 1997; van Herk, 2008, 2010; Davydova, 2010; Tagliamonte, 2013). This dissertation attempts to disentangle the effect of adverbial support from the three canonical readings of the present perfect (Resultative, Experiential and Continuative). Canadian English, an understudied variety of English, is used to situate the results seen in the Early Modern English data. Early Modern English reflects the time period in which English has acquired the full modern use of the present perfect with the three readings. In order to address both these questions and current controversies over statistical models in sociolinguistics, different statistical models are used: both the traditional Goldvarb X (Sankoff, Tagliamonte and Smith, 2005) and the newer mixed-effects logistic regression (Johnson, 2009). What is missing from the previous literature in sociolinguistics that advocates logistic mixed-effects models, and provided in this dissertation, is a clear statement of where they are inappropriate to use and their limitations. The rate of adverbial marking of the present perfect in Canadian English falls between rates reported for US and British English in previous studies. The data show in both time periods that while adverbs are highly favored in continuative contexts, they are strongly disfavored in experiential and resultative contexts. In Early Modern English, adverbial support functions statistically differently for resultatives and experientials, but that difference collapses in the Canadian English sample. Both this and the other linguistic contexts support a different analysis for each set of data with respect to adverbial independence from the meaning of the present perfect form. Finally, when the focus of the analysis is on linguistic rather than social factors, both the traditional and newer models provide similar results. Where there are differences, however, these can be accounted for by the number of tokens and different estimation techniques for each model.

The first Englishmen to write about the city-state of Venice were the pilgrims passing through on their way to the Holy Land. Their impressions are recorded in the travel diaries and collections of advice for prospective fellow pilgrims between the early fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the most substantial being those of William Wey, Sir Richard Guylforde and Sir Richard Torkington, who visited Venice in 1458 and '62, 1506, and 1517 respectively. In the 1540s arrived the men who saw Venice as part of the new Europe--Andrew Borde and William Thomas. Thomas's study of the Venetian state emphasized the efficiency of its administration, seeing it as an example of constructive government, where effective organisation for the common good led directly to national stability and prosperity. The mid-sixteenth century saw the beginnings of Venice as a tourist centre; the visitors who came between 1550 and the end of the century described the sights and the people, the traditions and way of life. Fynes Moryson's extensive account details what could be seen and learned in the city by an observant and enquiring visitor. In addition to information available in first-hand accounts of Venice, much could be learned from the work of the late sixteenth-century English translators. Linguistic, cultural, geographical, historical and literary translations yielded further knowledge and, more importantly, new perspectives, Venice being seen through the eyes of Italians and, through Lewkenor's comprehensive work, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, of Venetians themselves. Finally, to assess the general impressions of Venice and the Venetians, we consider the literature of the turn of the sixteenth-seventeenth century; what, and how much, of the three-hundred year accumulation of knowledge of the city and people of Venice had most caught the attention and imagination of the English mind, and how close was the relationship between the popular impression and the documentary information from which it had largely developed.

This thesis explores the use made by Lyly, Spenser, Chapman and Marston of the idea of metamorphosis, with a brief epilogue on Jonson. The two preliminary chapters define certain important contexts for the theme of metamorphosis in this period. Chapter I briefly considers Ovid's use of the theme, the Pythagorean and Platonic theory of transmigration, and the allegorization of metamorphosis. Medieval commentaries on the Metamorphoses are examined, but it is argued that Renaissance attitudes to Ovid and to metamorphosis are significantly different, being uniquely sensitive to both the poetic and metaphysical aspects. Renaissance responses to Apuleius' Golden Ass are also examined. Chapter II studies other Renaissance contexts: in the philosophy of man, in magic, witchcraft and alchemy, and in the love-poetry of Petrarch and Ronsard. Neither Elizabethan lyric poetry nor the epyllion, however, make suggestive use of theltheme: it is explored more fully in larger structures or different poetic modes. The next four chapters deal with the English writers. Lyly's plays use the theme of metamorphosis in two contexts: love, and the adulatory myths of the court. Chapter IV considers the complex and varied uses of metamorphosis in Spenser's Faerie Queene. It examines the treatment of of myth, the concepts behind the Garden of Adonis, and transformation as related to the theme of mutability. Chapter V examines the idea of form, set against deformity or transformation, in Chapman's poetry: especially The Shadow of Night and Hero and Leander. Here the basic philosophic or metaphysical assumptions behind Renaissance views-of the myth of metamorphosis are defined. Chapter VI deals with the satiric use of transformation by Marston. His Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image is analysed as parodying the common image of metamorphosis as an effect of love. The satires present a negative image of transformation caused by man's guilt and folly. The Epilogue, dealing with the negative image of transformation in Jonson's. plays and the positive one in the masques, concludes the study while suggesting further directions for exploration.

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / Revised September, 2007 / This study examines the continuity of mediaeval literary tradition in selected rhymed narrative verse. These verses were composed for entertainment at various times prior to 1648. At or shortly before this date, they were collected into The Percy Folio: BL. Add. MS. 27,879. Selected texts with an Historical or Romance topic are examined from two points of view: modification of source material and modification of traditional narrative stylistic structure. First, an early historical poem is analysed to establish a possible paradigm of the conventions governing the mediaeval manipulation of fact or source material into a pleasing narrative. Other texts are compared with the result of this analysis and it is found that twenty paradigmatic items appear to summarize early convention as their presence in other poems is consistent — no text agreeing with less than twelve. The second step is the presentation of the results of an analysis of some fifty mediaeval Romances. This was undertaken in order to delineate clearly selected motifemic formulae inherent in the composition of these popular narratives. It is shown that these motifemes, found in the Romances, are also present in the historical texts of The Percy Folio. The findings, derived from both strands of investigation, are that mediaeval continuity exists in the texts studied. The factors which actually comprise this ‘mediaeval continuity’ are isolated: it is then seen that rather than discard tradition as society grew further and further from the early circumstances that gave rise to it, later poets have chosen to contrive modifications designed to fit new requirements as they arise. Such modifications, however, are always within the established conventional framework. In short, no text examined failed to echo tradition, and mediaeval continuity is an important feature of the popular rhymed narrative in 1648 and The Percy Folio.

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / Revised September, 2007 / This study examines the continuity of mediaeval literary tradition in selected rhymed narrative verse. These verses were composed for entertainment at various times prior to 1648. At or shortly before this date, they were collected into The Percy Folio: BL. Add. MS. 27,879. Selected texts with an Historical or Romance topic are examined from two points of view: modification of source material and modification of traditional narrative stylistic structure. First, an early historical poem is analysed to establish a possible paradigm of the conventions governing the mediaeval manipulation of fact or source material into a pleasing narrative. Other texts are compared with the result of this analysis and it is found that twenty paradigmatic items appear to summarize early convention as their presence in other poems is consistent — no text agreeing with less than twelve. The second step is the presentation of the results of an analysis of some fifty mediaeval Romances. This was undertaken in order to delineate clearly selected motifemic formulae inherent in the composition of these popular narratives. It is shown that these motifemes, found in the Romances, are also present in the historical texts of The Percy Folio. The findings, derived from both strands of investigation, are that mediaeval continuity exists in the texts studied. The factors which actually comprise this ‘mediaeval continuity’ are isolated: it is then seen that rather than discard tradition as society grew further and further from the early circumstances that gave rise to it, later poets have chosen to contrive modifications designed to fit new requirements as they arise. Such modifications, however, are always within the established conventional framework. In short, no text examined failed to echo tradition, and mediaeval continuity is an important feature of the popular rhymed narrative in 1648 and The Percy Folio.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of History, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 39-42).

It is the aim of this thesis to shed light on and gain a more nuanced understanding of the negotiation of the political and constitutional order at the German Imperial Diet and the Polish-Lithuanian Sejm in the crisis-ridden seventeenth century. Both assemblies had to reach collectively-binding decisions on questions of institutional and procedural development in order to keep the constitutional order intact and functional and to process the challenges and changes occurring in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The question of this thesis is how the scope for necessary institutional and procedural adjustments was enabled or constrained by political languages and rhetoric which key actors used in the deliberations at the two central estate assemblies. Why do we have an institutional standstill and comparative decline in Poland-Lithuania until the reform period in the eighteenth century, and a stabilization and gradual institutional adjustment until the 1720s in the Holy Roman Empire? This question is answered by analyzing the communication about the scope of politics in its concrete historical context and institutional setting. Through the analysis the thesis comes to a new interpretation of the role and impact of orality and writing in both assemblies. Establishing socially relevant meaning depended on the means of communication and on the relationship between different media in the process of political decision-making and how they formed communication, in this case oral and written communication. The central claim of the thesis is that political culture and material culture were intricately linked in both imperial systems as the available media in the political process shaped the sayable, and the sayable shaped the doable.

This thesis explores oral communication in St. Gallen through the lens of the linen merchant Johannes Rütiner (1501-1556/7). By reconstructing Rütiner's network of informants and probing four genres of communication within their respective social contexts - jokes, gossip, rumour, and memory narratives -, it explores early modern sociability, the circulation of information, and the relationship between oral testimony, manuscript, and print. Sixteenth-century St. Gallers relied heavily on informal, oral networks to provide them with news and information of all kinds. An individual's access to information was thus to a large degree determined by the social networks within which they spent their life. As St. Gallers sought to secure a place for themselves in such circles, they in turn used jokes, gossip, and information of all kinds as a form of "communicative social capital", allowing them to present themselves as witty, well-connected, and knowledgeable. Rather than treating the instability of oral narratives as evidence of the inherent unreliability of the spoken word, this study proposes to analyse their evolution as a key to early modern mentalities. It also calls into question some of the dominant narratives regarding the printing revolution. Not only did oral communication continue to play a central role in the dissemination of information in the first half of the sixteenth century, but existing systems of "source criticism", developed in the context of dominantly oral networks, moreover cast doubt on the reliability of anonymous prints: because they made their trust in a piece of news conditional on their trust in the messenger, Rütiner and his fellow citizens often preferred oral narratives provided by familiar, trustworthy informants.

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