Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 312-322).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universiteit te Utrecht.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1974. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1999. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 255-265). Also available on the Internet.

The thesis deals with the theme of social groups of individuals, historically known as "disreputable people", among whom the executioners, knackers and bailiffs belonged. The main aim is to capture the social status of these people, who are historiographically considered as the individuals standing on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Detailed analysis of the sources of urban provenance is to show both the interaction of this group and its individuals with the rest of the urban community, especially with individuals considered as honorable, and also the everyday life of disreputable people in the urban environment. The thesis is divided into three parts, which are further thematically divided. The first part shows the theoretical and methodological level with an emphasis on previous studies dealing with the phenomenon of honor and also issues of discreditable people and of capital punishment. The following two parts contain an analysis of the situation of dishonourable people in the East Bohemian town of Pardubice in 17th century and because of the necessary comparison of regional differences, there was also the research of analogous conditions of another East Bohemian town Náchod included. Inside the urban society the professional functions of these individuals, their property background,...

Univ., Diss.--Leiden, 2005.

Inaugural-Dissertation--Universität Greifswald, 1902. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Inaugural-Dissertation--Universität Greifswald, 1902. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis is the first sustained analysis of the relationship between Elizabethan theatre and the judicial practice of burning at the stake. Focusing on a five-year window of theatrical output (1587-1592), it argues that polemical literary presentations of burning are the key to understanding the stage's negotiation of this most particular form of judicial violence. Unlike other forms of penal violence, burning at the stake was not staged, and only fourteen incidences of the punishment are recorded in Elizabethan England. Its strong literary presence in Protestant historiography is therefore central to this study. Part I explores the tragic and overtly theatrical rhetoric that the widely available Acts and Monuments built around the burning of heretics in the reformation, and argues that the narrative of this drama of injustice intervened in the development of judicial semiotics over the late-sixteenth century. By the time that Tamburlaine was first performed, burning at the stake was a pressing polemical issue, and it haunts early commercial theatre. Elizabethan historiography of the stake was deeply influential in Elizabethan theatre. In Part II, I argue that Marlovian fire spectacles evoke tableaux from the Acts and Monuments to encourage partisan spectatorship, informed by the rhetoric of martyrdom. Dido's self-immolation courts this rhetoric by dismissing the sword from her death, while Tamburlaine's book burning is condemned through its emphatically papist undertones. These plays court the stake through spectacles utilizing its rhetoric. In Part III, I show that characters historically destined to face the stake required thorough criminalization to justify their sentence. Alice Arden is distinguished from female martyrs celebrated for their domestic defiance, while Jeanne d'Arc's historical heresy is forcefully rewritten as witchcraft and whoredom to condemn 1 Henry VI's Joan la Pucelle. Both women are punished offstage, and the plays focus instead on the necessary task of justifying the sentence of burning. Though rare in practice, burning at the stake was a polemical issue in Elizabethan England. Despite the stake's lack of imitation in the theatre, I argue that widely available Protestant historiography - propaganda at the heart of debates about burning and religious violence - affected both how plays were written, and how they could be viewed.

Condemned prisoners in Texas and most other states are given an opportunity to make a final statement in the last moments before death. An anecdotal review by the author of this study over the last 15 years indicates that condemned prisoners use the opportunity for a variety of purposes. They ask forgiveness, explain themselves, lash out at accusers, rail at the system, read poems, say goodbyes to friends and family, praise God, curse fate - and assert their innocence with their last breaths. The final words also are typically heard by a select group of witnesses, which may include a prisoner's family and friends, victim's relatives, and one or more journalists. What the public knows about a particular condemned person's statement largely depends on what the journalists who witness the executions chose to include in their accounts of executions, the accuracy of their notes, and the completeness of the statements that are recorded on departments of correction websites or records. This paper will examine, through rhetorical and content analyses, the final words of the 355 prisoners who were executed in Texas between 1976 and 2005, identify those who made unequivocal claims of innocence in their final statements, and analyze news coverage of their executions by the Associated Press.