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The purpose of this dissertation is to identify the Stoic influences in the Jacobean drama. Although the Stoic figure and references to Stoicism appear frequently in this drama, there has never been a comprehensive study of the Stoic element in the drama of this period. This study will fill this scholastic gap.

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Master of Arts (Research) / An account of the critical reception of Ford's plays in the Romantic Period, in which the influence of Longinus's notions of the sublime is emphasized.

Master of Arts (Research) / An account of the critical reception of Ford's plays in the Romantic Period, in which the influence of Longinus's notions of the sublime is emphasized.

This thesis investigates the sermons delivered at Paul's Cross, the outdoor pulpit at St. Paul's Cathedral, during the reign of James I. It examines the preachers' use of rhetoric to influence the religious and political attitudes of contemporaries by comparing theories of preaching, found in sacred rhetorics and other tracts, to preachers' practice in their sermons. By this method, arguments associated particularly with Paul's Cross and its London audience can be identified and the rhetorical, doctrinal and socio-political aspects of Jacobean preaching, which are fragmented in much of the current scholarship, can be integrated. The thesis consists of five 'case studies' in the functions of rhetoric in sermons on different subjects. A short introduction reviews current scholarship on seventeenth-century preaching and describes the methodology used. Chapter I examines political preaching, focusing on John Donne's 1622 sermon defending James I's Directions concerning Preachers (STC 7053). It demonstrates the importance of the division between the 'exposition' of the scriptural text from its 'application' to the hearers in political preaching. The second chapter looks at preaching on religious controversies. It compares the rhetorical techniques of polemical sermons with those of recantation sermons preached by converts. Examining this topic in relation to William Crashaw's Sermon preached at the Crosse of 1608 (STC 6027) and Theophilus Higgon's recantation sermon of 1611 (STC 13455.7), this chapter shows the centrality of arguments based on the opponent's character (ethos) to controversial preaching. Chapter III studies exhortation with reference to Joseph Hall's Pharisaisme and Christianity (1608; STC 12699). It demonstrates that persuasion was considered a function of argumentation, not rhetorical ornament. It also examines the disabling of rhetoric in exhortations to charity by the Church's strict sola fide doctrine. The arguments for plain or ornamented preaching styles and their relation to the role of the preacher in the Church are discussed in Chapter IV, on Daniel Featley's 1618 sermon The Spouse her Pretious Borders (STC 10730). This chapter investigates preaching decorum and the debates over the display of rhetoric and learning in the pulpit. The 'prophetic sermon' or 'Jeremiad' is examined in Chapter V, on Thomas Adams' The Gallant's Burden (1612; STC 117). The characteristic use of biblical types and examples in these sermons is re-examined and the current argument that the use of Old Testtament examples suggests a 'special relationship' between God and England is denied.

<p> Through examining various stage representations of women, this dissertation investigates both the limitations and possibilities that seventeenth-century conceptualizations of the soul-body relationship posed for female subject-positions. The gender-coded soul-body dichotomy lies at the root of many negative and disempowering depictions of women. And yet, this in many ways oppressive construct, I argue, could also function as an effective tool for radically redefining gender expectations. Women and the Soul-Body Dichotomy demonstrates how a critical awareness of a text's engagement with theories of the spirit-matter divide can suggest new readings of its representations of women - readings available to seventeenth-century audiences that we should not overlook. More specifically, I explore dramatic disruptions of the soul-body hierarchy, and the usual values attached to each "side," that significantly challenge the patriarchal subordination of women. While the recent emphasis on the body in early modern studies has proven immensely productive, this focus tends to eclipse seventeenth-century concepts of the soul and the soul-body dynamic. I insist here that not only developing ideas about the body, but ideas about soul and body together are what crucially shaped gender ideology and cultural perceptions of women.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The role of the Jacobean romance mode has been undervalued and misunderstood, not least because of what it has been seen to symbolise politically, and perhaps also because it was seen as beginning to be associated with a female audience. I suggest that gender and sexuality were often represented in romance in a radical way which was frequently empowering for women. Among dramatists, Fletcher and his collaborators in particular were freed by their use of romance to experiment with representations of gender in a radical way. The thesis is divided into four sections, all of which address the way that gender and sexuality are represented in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon. The first section has a chapter on Fletcher's debt to Shakespeare in Bonduca, and another on the two romance plays on which Fletcher and Shakespeare collaborated - The Two Noble Kimmen, and the lost Cardenio. The second section discusses Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess, first giving the context of English Jacobean pastoral tragicomedy and explaining its special significance for women, and secondly comparing Fletcher's play with Lady Mary Wroth's Love's Victory, a rare example of a Jacobean play by a woman. Section three explores the debt to prose romance of four plays - Philaster, Valentinian, Love's Cure and The Island Princess - focusing on the possibility that Fletcher may have been influenced by French precieux ideas. The final section investigates the part that women played in masques in the second half of the Jacobean period, and the way that Fletcher and his collaborators use masques and masque-like elements in their plays to exploit the dramatic potential of the Jacobean female masquer's unusually public and self-affirming role. By exploring the impact of Jacobean feminocentric romance forms on the plays of Fletcher and his collaborators I offer a fuller understanding of the ways in which they regarded gender and sexuality, and contribute to the wider project of rediscovering a history of women in the Jacobean period.