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The decoration of the Amesbury Psalter, c.1250, is of immediate appeal because of its skilled execution and the richness of its decoration. It is, moreover, interesting iconographically; the Madonna and Child page, which presents Mary as the Virgo lactans, appears to be the earliest representation of this type of Madonna which is of English provenance. Although the Virgo lactans is the oldest image of Mary known to us, it has never been the popular image of the Virgin as has been, for example, the representation of the seated Hodegetria. This essay traces the history of the Virgo lactans to the cult of Isis in Egypt, explores the image of Mary expressed in theological writings through the centuries, and examines popular concepts of the Virgin portrayed in vernacular literature, and the various ways in which the Madonna and Child theme has been visually presented. While attempts to link the theological and/ or popular concepts of Mary, which obtained at a particular time and place, with specific images of the Virgin, are sometimes erroneous, there are a few examples of the Virgo lactans of late Romanesque and early Gothic Europe which suggest that they were taken over from the Byzantine world because of a new religious atmosphere. Evidence suggests that the appearance of the Madonna as the Virgo lactans in mid-thirteenth century England might have come about through the personality of Henry III whose piety seemed to be expressed frequently in the form of artistic representation. Furthermore, his interest in the Priory of Amesbury, which has been well documented, might suggest that the so-called Sarum Master, who created the Amesbury Psalter, was one of the many artists employed by Henry, whose royal patronage of art has not been equalled in the annals of English history. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph.D.)—Boston University / Mary Ellen Chase, a contemporary author of many parts, has followed the double career, not uncommon in twentieth-century Anerica, of writing and of teaching college English, contributing the vigor of her New England heritage in a complementary fashion to both professions. She has written short stories, and novels, biographies and autobiographies, volumes of essays and Biblical commentary, textbooks and a miscellany of introductions, reviews, articles, and pamphlets. Although she retired from the Smith College faculty in 1955, she continues to write books and many lesser pieces. Since the body of her published work is now a substantial one, it has seemed a good time to survey her general accomplishnent to date, in the individual use of many ideas and traditions, both historical and literary. The name of Mary Ellen Chase has appeared in footnotes, appendices, and lists. She has sometimes been mentioned or even briefly discussed as a New England regionalist. Almost all of her books have been reviewed, some of them often and quite generously, but there has been no general survey or study of the whole body of her writing. Thus there has been very little established opinion to guide this study. The problem has been to bring together such ideas about Miss Chase's writing as have been separately expressed, mainly in reviews, and to find in her writing its motivating themes, recurrent interests, and developing characteristics of style. A complete bibliography of her books and contributions to major periodicals has been attempted. Miss Chase's New England heritage has been the pivot on which many of her interests have turned. Unfailingly her concern for her own traditions and others as well has been motivated by her delight in them and by the search for any understanding which can contribute to a "good life" in the present. She makes it clear that the past, even at its high points, should inform the present, but never afford a mere retreat from it. The New England past forms a large part of her New England consciousness, which includes a strong sense of place and of the things and people to be found in the rural and coastal areas of Maine. Her contributions serve mainly to brighten old knowledge into new. Often the sense of place in her writing outweighs the impact of the past. Some of her best style describes the relationships between her characters and their natural environment. Sonetimes she shows the symbolic power of one single object from the natural environment. In her interest in England and in the Bible, Miss Chase is focusing on secondary aspects of the cultural heritage of New England. In her studies of the Bible, past and place are again important, as is the love of language, which has permeated all her writing with increasing effectiveness. Characteristic of Miss Chase's books about the Bible is her infectious enthusiasm for the ancient Hebrew people and for their literature. The impact of literary traditions on rer work has occasionally been noted, and sone close examination has been made of her imagery, the aspect of her style most generally useful to her. Its use has often allowed her to make distinct the multiple pasts producing together the total sense of the past which she never wishes to separate from the present.

The relationships between movement, emotion, and ritual communion in Byzantium have drawn the attention of art historians in recent years. While Henry Maguire has considered many facets of this subject, a monumental Late Byzantine icon, the Two-Sided Icon with the Virgin Pausolype, Feast Scenes, the Crucifixion and Prophets, suggests others. While the catalog entry by Annemarie Weyl Carr in Byzantium: Faith and Power remains the only published discussion of this particular icon, or even specifically of the Pausolype ("cease sorrow!") iconographic type, I believe that this image contributes significantly to our understanding of Late Byzantine culture and liturgical practice. Careful study of this particular icon encourages a consideration of the problematic subject of emotion, and its interactions with movement, ritual and art. The paucity of evidence makes it difficult to address specific devotional practices associated with this particular object, although some observations can be made. I am able, however, to align it with its iconographic antecedents and establish contemporary relationships, illuminating aspects of its original function. / Art History

The musical and spiritual life of Mary Lou Williams (1910 - 1981) came together in her later years in the writing of Mary Lou's Mass. Being both Roman Catholic and a jazz pianist and composer, it was inevitable that Williams would be the first jazz composer to write a setting of the mass. The degree of success resulting from the combination of jazz and the traditional forms of Western art music has always been controversial. Because of Williams's personal faith and aesthetics of music, however, she had little choice but to attempt the union of jazz and liturgical worship. After a biography of Williams, discussed in the context of her musical aesthetics, this thesis investigates the elements of conventional mass settings and oral tradition found in Mary Lou's Mass.

In this thesis I assert that Robinson’s theatrical heritage positioned her uniquely to confront the revolutionary explosions of 1790s radical thought. In her writings, Robinson’s onstage experience of gender performativity is transformed into a bold feminist critique of gender roles for women (and men) everywhere. In Chapter 1, I study writings by eighteenth-century theatrical women to argue that Robinson’s feminism must be understood within a theatrical context to appreciate the unique radicalism of her feminist vision. In Chapter 2, I explore how Robinson’s powerful identification with Marie Antoinette lies at the roots of her feminist project. In Chapter 3, I explain how Robinson then turns to the voice of Sappho to develop a radical vision of transcendent genius. In Chapter 4, I demonstrate how Robinson turns her critique of gender on men through the performative space of the masquerade in Walsingham (1797). Finally, in Chapter 5, I explain how this radical feminist critique is moulded to utopian ends in The Natural Daughter (1799), as Robinson rewrites the ending of Wollstonecraft’s Wrongs of Woman in a vision of the revolutionary family. I read three strands into Robinson’s feminism: 1) the rejection of incommensurable sexual difference; 2) the union of rational virtue and benevolent sensibility in the development of transcendent genius; and 3) a radical critique of the anxious crisis in 1790s masculinity. The result of this was a utopian vision of the future quite different from Wollstonecraft’s better-known brand of ascetic feminism. Instead, Robinson’s feminist theory works to rescue the original values of the French Revolution from beneath the ravages of Jacobin corruption. Beyond the limiting categories of incommensurable sexual difference, Robinson envisions a family in which woman would no longer have to renounce her sexual body in order to engage with society, and man could finally accept her as his equal.

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These poems deconstruct Mary Shelley's monster from a spiritually Chthonian, critically post-structuralist creative stance. But the process here is not simple disruption of the original discourse; this poetry cycle transforms the monster's traditional body, using what pieces are left from reception/vivisection to reconstruct, through gradual accretion, new authority for each new form, each new appendage.

This thesis entails a three-part approach to understanding the iconographic program at Santa Maria Tonantzintla. First, an historical and stylistic background of Santa Maria Tonantzintla will be presented. Included in this section is a description of the church and its many saints. The second part is a description of the various images of the Virgin and associated Marian Emblemata within the church design. The third part focuses on the European- based iconography of the Virgin and the iconography of the pre-Hispanic earth mother Tonantzin. It will illustrate how the image of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception at Santa Maria is the physical manifestation of a sacred discourse between Catholic and ancient Mexican iconography.