<p>The significance of early modern Bible translation cannot be overstated, but its “breadth, and length, and depth, and height” have often been understated (King James Version, Ephesians 3.18). In this study, I use three representative case studies of very different types of translation to create a more dynamic understanding of actual Bible translation practices in early modern England. These studies examine not only the translations themselves but also the ways that the translation choices they contain interacted with early modern readers. </p><p><br></p> <p>The introductory Chapter One outlines the history of translation and of Bible translation more specifically. It also summarizes the states of the fields into which this work falls, Translation Studies and Religion and Literature. It articulates the overall scope and goals of the project, which are not to do something entirely new, per se, but rather to use a new framework to update the work that has already been done on early modern English Bible translation. Chapter Two presents a case study in formal interlingual translation that analyzes a specific word-level translation choice in the King James Version (KJV) to demonstrate the politics involved even in seemingly minor translation choices. Chapter Three treats the intermedial translation of the Book of Psalms in the Sternhold and Hopkins psalter. By using the language and meter of the populace and using specific translation choices to accommodate the singing rather than reading of the Psalms, the Sternhold and Hopkins psalter facilitates a more active and participatory experience for popular worshippers in early modern England. Finally, Chapter Four analyzes John Milton’s literary translation in <i>Paradise Lost </i>and establishes it as a spiritual and cultural authority along the lines of formal interlingual translations. If we consider this translation as an authoritative one, Milton’s personal theology expressed therein becomes a potential theological model for readers as well. </p> <p><br></p><p>By creating a more flexible understanding of what constitutes an authoritative translation in early modern England, this study expands the possibilities for the theological, interpretive, and practical applications of biblical texts, which touched not only early modern readers but left their legacies for modern readers of all kinds as well. </p>

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In his Book of the Courtier, Castiglione appeals to the Renaissance notion of self-fashioning, the idea that individuals could shape their identity rather than relying solely on the influence of external factors such as birth, social class, or fate. While other early modern authors explore the practice of self-fashioning—Niccolò Machiavelli, for example, surveys numerous princes identifying ways they have molded themselves—Castiglione emphasizes the necessity of modeling one's-self after a variety of sources, "[taking] various qualities now from one man and now from another." In this way, Castiglione advocates for a self-fashioning grounded in a discriminating kind of synthesis, the generation of a new ideal form through the selective combination of various source materials. While Castiglione focuses on the moves necessary for an individual to fashion himself through this act of discriminatory mimesis, his views can explain the ways authors of the period use source material in the process of textual production. As poets and playwrights fashioned their texts, they did so by consciously combining various source materials in order to create not individuals, as Castiglione suggests, but characters to represent new cultural ideals and values. Early moderns viewed the process of textual, as well as cultural production, as a kind of synthesis. Creation through textual fusion is particularly common in early modern accounts of the heroic, in which authors synthesize classical conceptions of the hero, which privilege the completion of martial feats, and Christian notions of the heroic, based on the contemplative nature of Christ. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how Thomas Kyd in The Spanish Tragedy (1585), Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene (1590), William Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus (1594), and John Milton in A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (1632) syncretized classical and Christian notions of the heroic ideal in order to comment upon and shape political, social, and literary discourses. By recognizing this fusion of classical heroism with contemplative heroism, we gain a more nuanced understanding of the reception of classical ideas within an increasingly secular society.

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This thesis provides a full-length critical treatment of the Essayes (1600-01) of Sir William Cornwallis (c.1579-1614). Cornwallis' Essayes are the first examples of the ‘familiar’ essay in English: to which the rhetorical shaping of persona and the use of the personal voice are central. This is the first such study of Cornwallis since the first half of the twentieth century, and situates his Essayes within their cultural, social, and material contexts. The thesis draws upon previous work on Cornwallis and his Essayes from the 1930s and 1940s, but also on recent developments in early-modern English studies, especially in the fields of the history of rhetoric and the history of reading. The thesis challenges the assumptions behind two major critical approaches to the early-modern essay: firstly that it is a form in which the personal voice can be unambiguously expressed, and secondly that it is an essentially unoriginal genre which is more closely related to reading than to writing. This thesis qualifies these approaches, while demonstrating that the origins of each are found in the rhetorical practices of early English essays. This thesis argues however that Cornwallis’s essays are elaborate fusions of classical commonplaces, humanistic rhetoric, and ethical theories of how to live, resulting from complex interactions between different strands of humanistic educative practices, and that Cornwallis’s use of the personal voice is shaped by ethically-inflected rhetorical theories of affect and imitation. The thesis further attempts to think about how essays were being read in this period, and to do so offers a study of the material traces of reading, in the form of annotations and commonplace books, left by early-modern readers of John Florio’s English translation of Montaigne (1603).

This thesis provides the first study of the representation, performance, and reception of Shakespeare’s ageing women in early modern and present-day England. It contributes an exposition of the physiology and theory of early modern ageing, drawing on this original material to make an argument for the ageing woman as a source of anxiety within the plays as they were originally staged, and as they are performed and received today. It finds the old and ageing woman in Shakespeare’s drama to be represented as physically and verbally excessive; the thesis also identifies a corresponding urge in the plays and in their reception towards the ageing woman’s containment and control. This containment is exercised in the text, the rehearsal room, the theatre, and the public space of performance reviews. My introduction determines my methodology and establishes the terms of reference for the project. The first chapter defines early modern old age and delivers a study of the early modern literature and theory of the ageing body. Each of the four subsequent chapters explores an ageing female character or characters through the lens of a theme: magic, motherhood, sexuality, and memory. The characters studied are drawn from The Merry Wives of Windsor, Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, Coriolanus, King John, All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, and Richard III. Some brief concluding remarks complete the thesis. The larger project of the thesis is a cultural study. Throughout, I am keen to learn how characters are talked about as well as written and performed. My effort to understand the work which Shakespeare’s older women are asked to carry out in the present day defines my methodology: I draw on prompt books, production recordings, reviews, costume, photographs, programmes, and interviews with actors and directors to aid my investigation, juxtaposing these with close study of the written plays and the early modern culture and knowledge which underpins them. The word count, exclusive of bibliography but inclusive of all footnotes and an appendix, is approximately 92,000.

During the Duke of Alençon's second courtship of Queen Elizabeth the Earl of Leicester emerged as the leading opponent of the marriage. At the same time he began to patronize a circle of writers which included Gabriel Harvey, Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney, who helped to create the 'golden 1 literature of the English Renaissance. In this thesis I investigate their relations with Leicester and by a detailed examination of their main works, such as the Spenser-Harvey Letters, the Old Arcadia, theShepheardes Calender and theFaerie Queene, and their development, show how they reflect the Earl's intellectual and political concerns. I argue that Alençon was a notable patron and that his growing knowledge of his rival's academic interests encouraged Leicester to maintain his own literary faction. One of his aims was to show the French that English culture was not provincial and he demon- strated this in the entertainment The Four Foster Children of Desire for which he was largely responsible. Having outlined the background of the crisis of the courtship I evoke Leicester's life and circumstances during this period, particularly his relationship with the Queen and patronage at Oxford. I then describe the distinctive interests of his circle in law, history, politics and poetry and go on to establish that Alençon took part in the French academic movement and that his courtiers included distinguished poets and thinkers. The second half of the thesis is a series of detailed studies of Harvey, Spenser and Sidney in relation to Leicester, and their writings during the Alençon court- ship. Finally I examine the court entertainments of this period and argue for the Four Foster Children as a turning-point in Elizabethan literature. My conclusion is that Leicester was a more loyal and discriminating patron than he is usually said to have been and that he played a significant part in introducing the 'golden' age of Elizabethan literature.

This thesis investigates cognition and knowledge in a rich selection of late medieval Florentine commonplace books (zibaldoni) and diaries (ricordanze) with a special focus on Giovanni Rucellai’s Zibaldone Quaresimale. In Chapter Two a new methodology, named Mental Model Framework in History (MMFH), is elaborated. By studying mental processes such as categorisation and decision making, MMFH enables us to study cognition in historical documents. The dissertation is based on a computer-assisted analysis described in Chapter Three . This has brought together a number of technologies (Natural Language Processing, Semantic Web, Text Encoding Initiative) and used them according to the interpretative goals of the MMFH. Chapter Four investigates the knowledge-constructing practice of late medieval Florentines, and concludes that commonplace books and diaries were tools of information management and knowledge transmission. The core chapters study four domains of thinking: space, time, agency and perception. Chapter Five analyses social recognition and judgement in Renaissance Florence and reveals how a new ethical thought took shape, one that prepared the transition to capitalism. By applying decision and game theory, Chapter Six examines horizontal friendship, a bond that functioned as an informal but risky social insurance in Florence. Chapter Seven studies how Florentines used superlatives to construct a hierarchy of the world, with Florence on the top. This was the manifestation of a fierce competition within and outside the walls of Florence, competition that strongly influenced the social and physical environment of the city. By studying selection, periodisation and causal reasoning, Chapter Eight pinpoints the gradual secularisation of the conception of time. The thesis concludes that the late medieval revolution in information culture marked by the gradual transition from an overwhelmingly oral culture to an increasingly literate culture produced quantitative and qualitative changes in human thought. This largely contributed to the birth of modern thought, and to the late medieval transformation of the social and physical environment.

This thesis investigates the liturgical context of ecclesiastical discipline in early modern Scotland. The core question addresses the narrative being recounted within Protestant rituals of repentance, the liturgical expression of ecclesiastical discipline. Through an analysis of these rituals it is demonstrated that the primary narrative underpinning the performance of repentance is reconciliation with God and with neighbour. An examination of ceremonies officially authorised by the General Assembly, alongside descriptions of local practice, reveals how reconciliation was firmly embedded within the liturgical life of the Kirk. A secondary question addresses continuities and breaks with Scottish penitential practices prior to 1560. Although bringing a physical shift and ‘decluttering’ of performance space, many ritual continuities remained after 1560, especially in costumes, props, gestures and speech. This thesis is divided into four sections. Section One focuses upon ritual penitential practices employed by the pre-Reformation Kirk c.1500-1560. The ‘cluttered’ stage, or stages, upon which rituals of repentance were performed is also analysed. These twin themes, focusing upon pre- Reformation practice and performance spaces, provide the base-line for the assessment of ritual continuity. Section Two moves the performance to the Protestant theatre of reconciliation, 1560- 1610. After an initial exploration of the stages of discipline, rituals employed by the Kirk to effect neighbourly reconciliation are examined. They demonstrate how the expression of reconciliation and dispute settlement presents a potent visible representation of the harmonious community as the ‘true’ church. Moving from the harmonious community at the local level, Section Three investigates the liturgical performance of corporate repentance utilising the key text The Order of the General Fast. At both national and regional levels, corporate repentance became a visible expression of communal reconciliation to God and of the Protestant self-identification as the ‘new Israel’. The focus of the final section concerns excommunication, the ultimate tool of ecclesiastical discipline, and a further authorised liturgy, The Order of Excommunication and of Public Repentance, is examined. Far from permanent exclusion, the ritual of excommunication was intended to be radical soul-saving surgery, designed to reconcile an offender with both God and neighbour. In contrast with other recent studies which have analysed ecclesiastical discipline within a judicial context, the liturgical context of discipline as performed in rituals of repentance is placed centre-stage.

The academic analysis of drama often tends to privilege the written word over those sensory elements that are such critical aspects of live theatre. Rhythm, music, dialect, and silence – all these auditory features contribute significantly to the impact and meaning of a play, and they allow playwrights – together with the actors and stage directors who realize their dramatic visions – to convey political messages and address specific political issues without having to necessarily state them overtly within the dialogue. As Augusto Boal stated in his Theatre of the Oppressed, drama is a weapon to fight against oppressive regimes. Thus this dissertation analyzes the role of the senses – especially those related to hearing – in developing the themes and intentions of political plays from Latin America and Spain. The aim is to explore how this has – or has not – changed throughout the centuries, with the ultimate objective of finding common musical and sensory elements, as well as possible affinities in the use of auditory features, to further enable a deeper understanding of how theatre is different from other literary genres. To facilitate the analysis, this dissertation explores a total of six dramas: three Latin American political plays written in the second half of the 20th century and three Early Modern Spanish comedias that depict political scenes or themes. These plays are treated by pairs in each chapter and analyzed according to their use of auditory features in concert with written stage directions and dialogue as a means to reflect or denounce social problems pertaining to the different historical periods in which the plays were initially staged. Specifically, the dramatic pairings are as follows: Chapter 1: Death and the Maiden by Ariel Dorfman (1991) The Mayor of Zalamea by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (ca.1640) Chapter 2: Information for Foreigners, by Griselda Gambaro (1971) Fuenteovejuna, by Lope de Vega (ca.1610) Chapter 3: The Extentionist, by Felipe Santander (1978) Cruelty for Honour, by Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (ca.1621-22). Each play is analyzed according to the theoretical frames that better serve its specific needs and particularities. However, the theories of Giorgio Agamben, Augusto Boal, José Antonio Maravall, Angel Rama, Walter Ong, and especially Bertolt Brecht, form the spinal chord that sustain this study and tie the three chapters to one another. The attention given to each one of these critics and their theories is explained in each chapter’s introduction. As the conclusions show, these plays rely on sensory, linguistic and musical elements to denounce social and political problems of their time, and to try to move their different audiences towards reflection or action, in order to improve the society in which they lived.