In Renaissance culture there was an iconographic and literary language of trees, related to the motif of the tree of life, an ancient symbol of immortality associated with paradise. The properties of trees were used to express a range of ideas, including the death and resurrection of Christ, the fall and regeneration of political regimes, and virtue and vice within the individual soul. The juxtaposition of the tree of knowledge with the tree of life, as motifs of sterility and fertility, expressed aspects of the human condition and constructions of spiritual history and destiny. This thesis explores the language of trees in visual art and a range of English Renaissance texts from the late-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century: two plays by Shakespeare, two country-house poems, and a prose treatise on growing fruit-trees. Each of the writers drew on arboreal metaphors and motifs in unique and innovative ways. However there are numerous parallels and connections between the texts, and with contemporary and antecedent visual art, to justify considering these works together. In Shakespeare’s tragedy Titus Andronicus (1594) Lavinia, when she has her hands cut off, is metaphorically described as a tree with lopped branches and linked with the stricken political entity of Rome. Shakespeare evokes the tree of virtue, the classical myth of Daphne, and the arboreal language of virtue and vice. In the late tragicomedy Cymbeline (1610), the king is symbolized in a dream vision as a tree, with its cut branches representing the princes who are initially stolen but then reunited with the king. The tree represents the family tree as well as the political state, two interlinked concepts in the play and in contemporary iconography and ideology. Since Cymbeline’s reign heralded the Nativity, the prophecy of the lopped and regenerated tree invokes the idea of Christ as the tree of life and the fruit of the tree of Jesse. In both plays, Shakespeare’s tree imagery comments on the exercise of political power and the resultant health of the state. Shakespeare’s contemporary Aemilia Lanyer wrote “The Description of Cooke-ham” (1611), part of a published volume of poetry entitled Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. In the poem she imagines a prominent tree on the estate as the tree of life. An abstract metaphor is envisaged as part of the physical landscape. The motif transforms the estate to sacred terrain, enabling her to claim access to a space she is otherwise excluded from by class and gender. Lanyer links the sap from the tree of life with her writing, seeking to legitimize her claim as a female poet. Such strategies are part of her bid for patronage from the Countess of Cumberland, her primary dedicatee. In another country-house poem, Andrew Marvell’s “Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax” (1651), the poet creates a forest of the mind in which he explores different aspects of the language of trees. The speaker imagines himself encircled by vines and crucified by thorns, in imitation of Christ as the tree of life, while a fallen oak tree suggests the regicide. He takes on various roles including that of the enigmatic Green Man. I place Marvell’s imagery in the context of the Civil War and the relationship with his employer Lord Fairfax. Marvell’s exploration of arboreal motifs also subjects Christian tree of life imagery to the challenge of its pagan antecedents and reflects anxieties over the natural processes that threaten metaphors of regeneration. Lastly, in Ralph Austen’s A Treatise of Fruit-trees and Spiritual Use of an Orchard (1653), the author blends advice on horticultural practices in growing fruit-trees with religious metaphors. For Austen, gardening is both a physical and a metaphysical pursuit. His readers are expected to plant fruit-trees in orchards that evoke the idea of Christ as the tree of life and related ideas. His use of the motif is part of his advocacy of agricultural and social reform, motivations that were part of those in the circle surrounding Samuel Hartlib. Austen’s text is situated at the end of the English Renaissance and at the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution, when emblematic and symbolic frameworks for interpreting the natural world were subject to new pressures derived from empirical and rationalistic outlooks. What becomes apparent from these works is that tree metaphors were literalized, just as they had been in visual art, and given a new naturalism as they were projected onto landscapes. Symbolic trees merged with botanical trees in imagined landscapes, creating hybrid terrains that were both descriptive and mythical. Recognition of the language of trees in Renaissance culture opens up new readings of both canonical and lesser-known texts and highlights the porous disciplinary border between literature and art. Our historical readings are richer for understanding the potent language of trees. Overall the thesis highlights the importance and cultural preoccupation with trees in European visual and literary traditions.

The extensive survival of late medieval bosses in the roofs of many parish churches in Devon has long been recognised. These carvings escaped the widespread destruction of images during the Reformation through their relative inaccessibility, and yet most have never before been recorded; nor has systematic study been made of their design, their positioning within a sacred space, or the ways in which they may have been viewed and used by a largely illiterate audience. This thesis rectifies this oversight in its detailed documentation and photography of figural roof bosses and contextual information from 121 churches across the county, appended as a gazetteer, and in its thorough analysis, which considers the varied interactions between the people of the parish and their carvings. The thesis reviews the literature on roof bosses in Britain, particularly the work of C.J.P. Cave whose studies have hitherto dominated the field, before considering materiality and method, namely the properties of oak, the dating of the timber, the carvers and the carving process, and the surface finish and visibility of roof bosses. The social, religious, and decorative context is then discussed, especially the role of ecclesiastical authorities in the life of the parish church and its people, and the motivation of patrons, clergy and laity in the decoration of their parish church. An exploration of motifs carved on roof bosses follows, with these motifs linked to other images within the parish church, the cathedral and the wider world, to the words of the sermon and the confessional, and to scriptural texts and popular literature. Medieval understandings of vision are considered, as are the circumstances in which roof bosses may have been seen and used. The thesis argues, in particular, that many bosses may have served as mnemonic devices and aids to prayer in a penitential process which sought to cure the soul of sin. The thesis concludes with case studies of six parish churches from across Devon which confirm that these carvings should be recognised as a significant resource for our understanding of the late medieval parish church and its people in the Diocese of Exeter and beyond.