This dissertation examines early modern literary engagements with the rhetorical and ethical dimensions of law reform. One of the most important mechanisms of social regulation in late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean England, law reform was a matter of, first, the “perfection” of the organization and expression of existing laws, legal instruments, and legal processes. However counter-intuitively, these officially-sponsored reforms were calculated to prevent more radical innovations that would generate “inconveniences,” systemic contradictions and uncertainties that threatened the law’s ability to produce just results. Second, law reformers generated a discourse on “execution” that targeted the character of legal representatives. This tradition of character criticism, delivered directly from the Lord Keeper’s mouth or circulated through other legal-political, literary, theatrical, didactic, and religious works, encouraged officers’ conscientious execution of their duties and alerted the English public to the signs of the abuse of authority. Law reform created a distinct critical orientation toward legal and governing activities that was reproduced throughout a system of justice in which an extraordinary number of subjects participated. It was a critical orientation, moreover, that was refracted in literature sensitive to the implications of the socio-political dominance of legal language, traditions, and officers. The principles and practices of law reform—along with the conflicts and anxieties that inspired and sprang from them—were appropriated by amateur and professional writers alike. Close readings reveal that Inns-of-Court revellers, Francis Bacon, John Donne and Shakespeare all engaged deeply with the potential, as well as the ethical and practical limitations, of law reform’s central role in local and national governance. In the Gesta Grayorum and Donne’s “Satyre V,” the reveller and the satiric speaker improvise on legal forms to compensate for the law’s imperfections that threaten the security and prosperity of the English subject. In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale, the character of the legal-political officer and reformer is tested as he attempts to put policies and principles into practice.

This dissertation examines early modern literary engagements with the rhetorical and ethical dimensions of law reform. One of the most important mechanisms of social regulation in late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean England, law reform was a matter of, first, the “perfection” of the organization and expression of existing laws, legal instruments, and legal processes. However counter-intuitively, these officially-sponsored reforms were calculated to prevent more radical innovations that would generate “inconveniences,” systemic contradictions and uncertainties that threatened the law’s ability to produce just results. Second, law reformers generated a discourse on “execution” that targeted the character of legal representatives. This tradition of character criticism, delivered directly from the Lord Keeper’s mouth or circulated through other legal-political, literary, theatrical, didactic, and religious works, encouraged officers’ conscientious execution of their duties and alerted the English public to the signs of the abuse of authority. Law reform created a distinct critical orientation toward legal and governing activities that was reproduced throughout a system of justice in which an extraordinary number of subjects participated. It was a critical orientation, moreover, that was refracted in literature sensitive to the implications of the socio-political dominance of legal language, traditions, and officers. The principles and practices of law reform—along with the conflicts and anxieties that inspired and sprang from them—were appropriated by amateur and professional writers alike. Close readings reveal that Inns-of-Court revellers, Francis Bacon, John Donne and Shakespeare all engaged deeply with the potential, as well as the ethical and practical limitations, of law reform’s central role in local and national governance. In the Gesta Grayorum and Donne’s “Satyre V,” the reveller and the satiric speaker improvise on legal forms to compensate for the law’s imperfections that threaten the security and prosperity of the English subject. In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale, the character of the legal-political officer and reformer is tested as he attempts to put policies and principles into practice.

The PhD thesis studies the translations and the overall reception of John Donneʼs poetry in the Czech literary culture. Its introduction explains the choice of the topic, outlines the structure of the text and the main question to be answered: to what extent Donne has become a significant presence in the Czech cultural context and how his work has been transplanted through translations. The first chapter gives a brief overview of the historical changes in the appreciation of Donneʼs poetry and, drawing on a range of Donnean literature, attempts to define the main features of his poetics. The second chapter traces the gradual building of an awareness of Donneʼs poetry among Czech readers through translations, translation paratexts and references in the works of Czech literary scholars. It introduces the Czech translators of Donne and discusses their motives for translating his work where these could be ascertained. The first part of Chapter 3 describes the method used in analyzing the Czech translations. It introduces the model of translation criticism presented by Antoine Berman in his analysis of French Donnean translations (Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne, 1995) and comments on its application in the study of the Czech translations. The second part sums up the findings of two...

This master's thesis is primarily concerned with the philosophical conditions of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England that encouraged the emergence of periodical literature and perpetuated the birth of the novel. While most connections between periodical literature and the novel are made on how the former created the readership that ensured the latter's success, I focus on how the epistemology unique to the advent of empirical science together with the growing prominence of casuistic thought created a space in which periodical literature could emerge and the early novel could flourish. I investigate the underlying assertion of a particular philosophical amalgam that I call casuistic-empiricism. Such philosophies encouraged the Renaissance trend that devalued letter-of-the-law thinking, which led ultimately to a significant epistemological transformation in seventeenth-century England. Recognizing the immensity of this epistemological shift, I focus on the early seventeenth-century practice of casuistry as an outgrowth fueled by seventeenth-century natural philosophy. By investigating the poetry and prose of John Donne, I emphasize the pervasive threads of casuistic thought that found parallels in empirical epistemology. I proceed in a linear fashion by following the evolution and growing pervasiveness of casuistic culture into its period of culmination marked by the birth of the Athenian Gazette. Readers' prominent attraction to the periodical is shown to run on a parallel with the incipient empiricism. Indeed, the two prominent lines of thought (empiricism and casuistry) form a dynamic binary where each feeds off of and is fed by the other, culminating in a unique epistemology that aided the emergence of the early novel. Extending this discussion of periodical literature's casuistical qualities into Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, I investigate how Defoe's ties to casuistry are reflected in and perpetuated by Crusoe, illustrating how the novel becomes a medium for resolving cases of conscience. The novel as a genre is shown to be more than just a close relative of the periodical, both genres being spurred into prominence by some of the more salient features attendant to casuistic-empirical philosophy. The novel becomes finally a type of culminating product of a unique casuistic-empirical practice that accounts for the full range of experiences involved in reaching justified conclusions.

A reexamination of John Donne's Holy Sonnet “Batter my heart,” especially one looking at the sonnet's relationship to Early Modern rhetoric, is long overdue. In this paper, I hope to show that a focus on Donne's relationship to Early Modern rhetoric yields several useful new insights. I argue specifically that Donne was probably exposed to Non-Ramist rhetorical methods and theory at many points in his education, from his childhood to his college years to his years at the Inns of Court. Furthermore, Non-Ramist rhetoric has moral implications, suggesting that aspects of an author's feelings, character, and desires can be analyzed by looking at the writer's rhetorical choices in relation to a specific audience in a specific situation. After discussing Donne's rhetorical education, I will look at how the rhetorical decisions of the poetic speaker in Donne's “Batter my heart” reveal his opinions of God and develop his attitudes toward God over the course of the poem. Indeed, the poetic speaker uses rhetoric that exerts power back on him, causing him to change: whereas at the beginning of the poem the poetic speaker thinks he controls his relationship with God, at the end he sees himself as God's humble subject. Ultimately, the poetic speaker's feelings of utter separation from God at the end of the poem actually yield a sense that he has found God and has gained a sense of awe surrounding the Divine.

This study examines the relationship between sonnet form and musical form in Benjamin Britten's sonnet cycles with a view toward identifying the musico-poetic form how the musical form interprets the poetry. Several issues come to the fore: 1) articulation of the large-scale divisions of the poetic form in the music; 2) potential of the musical setting to make connections between lines of the text ; 3) potential of the musical setting to follow or imitate the thought processes of the poem; and 4) placement of the departure and return.

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Cette étude s'attache à démontrer comment les écrits satiriques du poète élisabéthain John Donne (1572-1631) lui permettent de développer une esthétique propre, qui ne se cantonne pas qu'au corpus satirique strict mais trouve également une résonance dans le reste de son œuvre. Traditionnellement considérée comme une tendance marginale dans sa poésie, la satire chez Donne s'exprime à travers d'autres textes, laissant ainsi transparaître un « esprit satirique ». Le jeu et la prise de distance du poète vis-à-vis des conventions littéraires, sociales et religieuses de son époque nous permettent de mettre au jour une poétique dominée par le doute et la mélancolie. Cette humeur noire, selon la théorie médicale des humeurs, nous conduit vers l'humour et le comique : fort peu examinés chez Donne, ces concepts transparaissent pourtant à la lecture des textes les moins explorés par la critique, dévoilant ainsi une esthétique qui donne sa cohérence au corpus. John Donne n'est pas que le chef de file de la poésie métaphysique : son statut de satiriste lui confère également celui d'humoriste. / This study aims to show how the satiric writings of Elizabethan poet John Donne (1572-1631) display a specific aesthetics, which is also to be found in all his work and not only in his satiric texts. Although it has traditionally been considered as a fringe element in Donne's poetry, satire appears in other writings, thus disclosing a ''satiric spirit''. By playing and distancing himself from the literay, social and religious standards of his time, the poet's work reveals an aesthetics ruled by doubt and melancholy. According to the system of medicine called ''humorism'', melancholy is a black fluid that brings us to humour and comedy : even though they have been rarely examined in Donne studies, these concepts do stand out after a close reading of the least sought-after poems. It thus unites and makes the whole of Donne's poetry coherent. Not only is he the best representative of the metaphysical poets, he is also a satirist as well as a humorist.

My thesis explores the posthumous literary life in the early modern period by examining responses to ‘dead poets’ shortly after their deaths. Analysing responses to a series of literary figures, I chart a pre-history of literary biography. Overall, I argue for the gradual emergence of a linkage between an individual’s literary output and the personal life that predates the eighteenth century. Chapter 1 frames the critical investigation by contrasting examples of Lives written for authors living before and after my chosen period of specialisation. Both these Lives reflect changed attitudes towards the writing of poets’ lives as a result of wider discourses that the following chapters examine in more detail. Chapter 2 focuses on the events following the death of Robert Greene, an author often described as the first ‘professional’ English writer. The chapter suggests that Greene’s notoriety is for the most part a posthumous construct resulting from printed responses to his death. Chapter 3 is concerned with the problem of reconciling a poet’s life-narrative with the vita activa model and examines potential causes for the ‘gap’ between Sir Philip Sidney’s public life and his works, which continues to pose a challenge for biographers. Chapter 4 examines the evolution of Izaak Walton’s Life of Donne. The ‘life history’ of Walton’s Lives, particularly the Life of Donne, reflects an accidental discovery of a biographical technique that anticipates literary biography. My method is mainly based on bibliographical research, comparing editions and making distinctions between them which have not been made before, while paying particular attention to paratextual materials, such as dedications, prefaces and title pages. By investigating assumptions about individual authors, and also authorship in general, I hope to shed some light on a promising new area of early modern scholarship and direct greater scrutiny towards the assumptions brought into literary biography.

This dissertation presents an edition of six poems from John Donne’s Songs and Sonets—“The Indifferent,” “Love’s Usury,” “The Will,” “The Funerall,” “The Primerose,” and “The Dampe”—and a digital edition of one additional poem, “To His Mistress Going to Bed.” Using the methodologies of The Variorum Edition of the Poems of John Donne, I have also adopted the edition’s principal goal—to recover and present Donne’s exact texts to the extent that this is possible. For each poem, I have selected a copy-text and emended it in accordance with the Variorum’s principles. A textual introduction for each poem explains how the copy-text was chosen and traces the circulation of the text in all seventeenth-century artifacts. I have also provided a textual apparatus for each poem, which, in addition to recording the texts collated, emendations to the copy-text, imperfections in the sources, and indentation patterns in the sources, also notes all verbal variants and variants of punctuation. Finally, I have created a stemma charting the transmissional history for each poem and giving a visual representation of how the textual artifacts relate to each other. The other major component of my dissertation, a digital edition of “To His Mistress Going to Bed,” is meant to serve as a prototype for what might usefully be done with Donne’s poems in a digital medium. While the actual digital edition of this poem cannot be fully represented on paper, my chapter on this edition outlines the process I used to create it and describes its major features. The digital edition itself can be found at <http://donnevariorum.tamu.edu/resources/tohismistress/tohismistress.html>.