This thesis project examines Philip Pullman’s controversial trilogy, His Dark Materials (1995-2000), and its relationships in theme and content to John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667). Though Pullman has publicly discussed the influences of Paradise Lost on his trilogy, very little academic work has been published examining the similarities and differences between the two. Specifically, I analyze the paradigms of gender, family, and authority as they are represented by each text. I contrast Pullman's Lyra to Milton's Eve, drawing conclusions about the inherent meanings and differences in the two female protagonists and, consequently, the narrative worlds surrounding them. References cited include works examining His Dark Materials, Paradise Lost, and children's literature.

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No substantial studies, at least to my knowledge, have yet been dedicated either to Milton's or to Shelley's extensive poetic use of the grotesque. This omission surprises me, especially given the voluminous critical attention both authors receive. Neither Milton nor Shelley's grotesquerie can be viewed as the basis of artistic method or artistic achievement as we might with, say, Rabelais, or Poe, or even Kafka. And neither Milton nor Shelley is self-consciously an artist of "the grotesque." In fact, Milton, from his seventeenth century perspective, would scarcely have regarded the term as being applicable to literary criticism at all. And as a late Romantic, Shelley defined himself rather as a poet of the imagination. Nonetheless I will show that both artists avail themselves of a grotesque aesthetic to achieve some of their most powerful and provocative poetry: we may here consider, for instance, Milton's memorable descriptions of the incongruities of Hell and the deformities of its fallen denizens in Paradise Lost, or Shelley's Gothic touches and his perplexing distortion of conventional linguistic and dramatic form in Prometheus Unbound. / Aside from general considerations of the grotesque in these texts, I will especially focus on how Milton's and Shelley's uses of the grotesque mode provide us with unique, and often fascinating vantage points from which to appreciate their respective political concerns and revolutionary interests. While I expect this critical approach will elucidate Milton and Shelley in their own separate artistic and political spheres, I am especially interested to compare and contrast the poets, to show how the quite different uses made of the grotesque in Prometheus Unbound and Paradise Lost reflect the various ways in which Shelley responds to Milton in his role as a revolutionary forefather.

As epic was considered a culturally comprehensive genre, so Spenser's Faerie Queene and Milton's Paradise Lost provide an effective locus for inquiry into literary representations of body marks in the Renaissance, and hence of the body itself. While grounded on central principles of Renaissance poetics such as delightful teaching, utpictura poesis, and catharsis, Spenser's and Milton's graphic accounts of wounds and diverse other types of body marks show corporeality can have positive import for the soul and heroic identity, just as they are shaped in part by bodily experienees. This dissertation thus reconsiders the widespread assumption that early moderns primarily viewed the body as a subservient yet sometimes threatening container for the soul.... / Une épopée fut culturellement considérée comme un vaste genre: The FaerieQueene, et Paradise Lost, de Spenser et Milton, sont pertinents pour l'étude desreprésentations littéraires des marques corporelles durant la Renaissance, et du corps.Basées sur les principes de la poésie de l'époque, comme l'enseignement délicieux, utpictura poesis, et la catharsis, les explications graphiques de blessures et autres cicatricesde Spenser et Milton montrent que la matérialité peut avoir une portée positive sur l'âmeet l'identité héroïque: elles sont formées par des expériences corporelles.

Thesis (M.S.)--Humboldt State University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 41-45). Also available via Humboldt Digital Scholar.

Thesis (doctorat d'Etat)--Université d'Aix Marseille I, 1979. / Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (v. 3, p. 1399-1454).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xvi, 215 p. : ill., maps (some col.). Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctorat d'Etat)--Université d'Aix Marseille I, 1979. / Includes indexes. Bibliography: v. 3, p. 1399-1454.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The aim of this work is to investigate the possibility that Francis Bacon was a contributor in the writing of three Shakespeare plays: The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Tempest. In order to proceed, I develop a new Rare Collocation Profiling (RCP) method using Chadwick–Healey’s Early English Books Online (EEBO) database to identify those collocations in a target text that are rare. I then list the probable sources of a target and the writers who possibly borrowed from it. In this way, I obtain a DNA-type profile in relation to the target text for all frequently occurring writers that are returned by the searches. However, while collocation analysis is traditionally confined to a database of known dramatists, I widen the search to include all fully searchable texts in EEBO. My test case is the long poem A Funeral Elegye (1612), and my method supports Brian Vickers’ conclusion that John Ford is a better authorial candidate than William Shakespeare. I also analyse two previously unattributed pamphlets: the Gesta Grayorum (1688), an account of the 1594–5 Gray’s Inn revels; and the True Declaration (1610), a Virginia Company propaganda pamphlet, and I conclude from my method that Francis Bacon is the only candidate for having compiled the former and that he was a major contributor to the latter. Two of the Shakespeare plays, The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labour’s Lost have previously been associated with the 1594–5 Gray’s Inn revels. I analyse the three volumes of Nelson and Elliott’s Records of Early English Drama: Inns of Court (NE) to find that the number of professional companies that played at the Inns of Court (one of which is Gray’s Inn) before 1606 has been overestimated. A document shows that Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, were playing at Greenwich on 28 December 1594 when, as the Gesta Grayorum reports, The Comedy of Errors was performed at Gray’s Inn, and the circumstances do not allow Shakespeare to have been present. The evidence suggests that the play was first enacted by Inns of Court players rather than the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Inns of Court plays were often based on translations of classical works and usually commented on the succession question. I argue that The Comedy of Errors displays both of these characteristics and so was likely written with the revels in mind. Also, due to certain rare parallels between Francis Bacon’s speeches at the revels and Love’s Labour’s Lost, I claim that the play was intended for performance there but cancelled. Referring to the results of RCP, I suggest that Francis Bacon not only compiled the Gesta Grayorum but also contributed to the writing of these two plays. I also show that my new method identifies two non-members of the Inns of Court, Thomas Heywood and Thomas Dekker, as later revisers of these plays. In the final chapters, I improve on the dating evidence for The Tempest by showing that Caliban’s speech on edible items relies on knowledge of the Bermudan cahow, a bird whose behaviour was unknown in England before September 1610. The application of RCP to The Tempest confirms that William Strachey’s ‘True Reportory’, a 20,000-word secret report sent back from the Virginia colony to the London Virginia Company, was beyond reasonable doubt a source for the play. RCP also reveals Francis Bacon as a contributor to the writing of the play. I also apply the new method to the Virginia Company’s True Declaration, a pamphlet that almost certainly relied on ‘True Reportory’, and reveal Bacon as a contributor. This means that he must have inspected Strachey’s ‘True Reportory’, a source for The Tempest. I give strong reasons why Shakespeare would have been prohibited from gaining access to Strachey’s restricted company report. Finally, I suggest that The Tempest was used as a political tool to promote England’s influence in the New World, and although Strachey’s ‘True Reportory’ could not have been released for inspection, the Virginia Company must have cooperated in supplying information for the writing of the play.