Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

Although the figure of the warrior woman has always existed as a literary topos, the popularity of the warrior woman figure has never been greater than in the period of the Italian Renaissance. The character of the female warrior in the 14th and 15th centuries in Italy results from many literary traditions ranging from the Amazons of classical and medieval times, to the many versions of the Aeneid to the character of Aigiarne in the Milione of Marco Polo. In addition, other examples exist of female characters who demonstrate their fighting capabilities who, without necessarily being considered warrior women, have helped nonetheless to shape the character of the warrior woman in the Italian Renaissance. The main objective of this thesis is to document the formation of the warrior woman figure in Italian Cavalier Romance poems dating from the late 1300's to the early 1400's before the great poems of Pulci and Boiardo.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 257-269). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / ix, 269 leaves, bound ill., music 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 257-269).

Thesis (M.A. (English))--University of Pretoria, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

During the reign of Queen Victoria was seen the gradual emergence of the emancipated woman. The idea that women were innocent beings who must be kept from real knowledge of the world died hard, however, and to the end of the era there were many who repudiated the very concept of emancipation whether in literature or life. Coupled with the chivalrous, idealistic concept of womanhood was Victorian respectability, and it is not surprising that in the earlier Victorian novels we see clearly the idealistic concept of women and the effects of the cult of respectability. To illustrate my theme, of the gradual change in the concept of the novel which naturally kept pace, more or less, with the progress the emancipation of women was making, I have chosen one novel from each of seven great Victorian novelists whose works span the whale era. The only exception I have made is with Charlotte Bronte. In her case the heroines of two of her novels are discussed mainly because she is the first Victorian novelist to sound a note of protest against the then conventional concept of the heroine.

No description available.

No description available.

C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman are two very popular authors of British Children's Fantasy. Their books The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and The Golden Compass straddle the period of writing that Karen Patricia Smith calls the Dynamic Stage of British Fantasy: from 1950 to the present. Both of these books are part of a larger series and both have been made into recent motion pictures by Hollywood. This paper explores these two books through the lens of their conventional and progressive authors. I discuss in detail the gifts that the heroes and heroines are given, the setting of these books, and the function of destiny and prophecy in order to explore the irony of these books: C.S. Lewis, often viewed as the more conventional author by scholars, is in fact more progressive than his contemporary counterpart. / Master of Arts

No description available.