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This study analyzes figurations of masculine pregnancy in early modern texts. Because no systematic methodology for conducting such an analysis yet exists, I have synthesized scholarship from anthropology, medicine, and psychoanalysis to construct an appropriate paradigm. Specifically, I bring together the anthropologist's "couvade," the physician's "couvade syndrome," and the psychoanalyst's gender-inflected model of the unconscious. Informed by this interdisciplinary scholarship, I offer a composite theory of couvade desire. I then apply that theoretical model to early modern figurations of masculine pregnancy. I find that the pervasive use of such figurations during the period results from ahistorical bodily disparities and historically-specific epistemological circumstances. The so-called "literary couvade" thus modulates: it directly challenges essentialist claims on the one hand, while simultaneously acknowledging the inexorable link between masculinity and a bodily incapability to give birth. Masculinity, in this model, appears disabled.Mitigating the disability, however, is a cultural imaginary unfettered by modern anatomical knowledge. Key aspects of human reproduction were still seductively obscure in the early modern period. Women birthed babies, that much was plain; but, perhaps men had a compensatory system of reproduction. Perhaps, some speculated, that system was superior to the messy, merely material capability exclusive to women. Masculinity could, in this regard, rival maternity for social significance without disclosing any act of appropriation from maternity. Such a dynamic resembles closely Rene Girard's paradigm of "mimetic desire." Crucial to mimetic desire is an indifference to the ostensible object on the part of both rival subjects. Relating this to the early modern "literary couvade," I conclude that figurations of masculine pregnancy emerge from a compensatory desire: the desire to mollify an apparent lack with the reduction in significance of the rival's manifest capability.

E.M. Statler was a revolutionary figure in the hotel industry. Between 1907 and 1927 the hotel empire that he built would set the model for both the business plan and architecture of many hotels that followed. Statler was the first to build his hotels around the idea of efficiency and economy. He was the first to provide private baths to every guestroom, no matter how small. He built his hotels with similar styles, allowing for mass purchasing of furnishings and a signature look.This thesis is a study of E.M. Statler, his ideas, the development of his hotels, and the architecture of those hotels. Although Statler's hotels would share many similarities based on his core beliefs on service, each one would be an improvement on the previous. Statler was constantly fine-tuning, and each hotel was the prototype for its successor. Through the study of their development, services, form, and layout, this thesis documents the evolution of Statler's ideas. / Department of Architecture

This thesis implements Milton Babbitt's time-point system for music composition via the creation of a computer software application for the Macintosh computer. This system asks the composer to enter musical information, which is used to calculate pitch, duration, articulation, texture, octave, and silence, for the time-point composition. The application generates a file of musical information that is compatible with a performance application; the performance application will execute the composition communicating with MIDI-compatible musical instruments.The purpose of this project was to create a compositional tool that would implement the time-point system by reducing hours of hand calculation and tedium, and would provide an accessible and efficient approach to time-point composition. It is intended that this application be used to assist both the serious composer as well as the student of music composition. / School of Music

Access to abstract restricted until 07/2016. / Eco-typology and the tree of life in Milton's Paradise lost -- The Matthew Bible, eco-typology and the tree of life in Milton's Eden -- The Geneva Bible, eco-typology and the fruit of the living word in Paradise lost -- Speed's 'Genealogies', the King James Bible and the seed of grace in the later books of Paradise lost. / Department of English

This dissertation explores the influence of Reformation representational anxiety on early seventeenth-century poetic depictions of Christ. I study the poetic shift from physical to metaphorical portrayals of Christ that occurred after the English Reformation infused religious symbols and visual images with transgressive power. Contextualizing the juncture between visual and verbal representation, I examine the poetry alongside historical artifacts including paternosters, a painted glass window, an emblem, sermons, and the account of a state trial in order to trace signs of sensory “loss” in the verse of John Donne, George Herbert, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton. The introduction provides a historical and poetic overview of sixteenth-century influences on religious verse. The first chapter contrasts Donne’s sermons—which vividly describe Christ—with his poems, in which Christ’s face is often obscured or avoided. In the chapter on George Herbert’s The Temple, I show how Herbert’s initial, physical portraits of Christ increasingly give way to metaphorical images as the book progresses, paralleling the Reformation’s internalization of images. The third chapter shows that Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum makes use of pastoral conventions to fashion Christ as a shepherd-spouse, the divine object of desire. In the final chapter I argue that three poems from John Milton’s 1645 volume can be read as containing signs of Milton’s emerging Arianism. Depictions of Christ in the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Lanyer, and Milton reveal the period’s contestation over images; the sensory strain of these metaphorical representations results in memorable, vivid verse.

This thesis aimed to understand the factors which shape the police and CPS response to domestic violence in the light of recent policy changes which recommended arrest in such cases. The decisions made by victims, police and prosecutors were charted in over one thousand three hundred reported cases of domestic violence in the Thames Valley during a seven month period in 1993. A random sample of 387 of these incidents were examined in detail. The study sought to understand the needs, desires and expectations of victims and how their choices impacted on the decisions made by police and prosecutors. Having evaluated feminist theories, the thesis argues that police and prosecutors do not randomly exercise their discretion nor can their response be explained by reference to cultural or individual prejudices. Rather, their decisions are best understood in terms of a set of informal 'working rules' developed by police and prosecutors for dealing with these complex and difficult cases. It is shown that whilst evidence of an offence was highly correlated with decisions regarding arrest and prosecution, evidence did not determine police action nor did its absence preclude such action. Rather, evidence facilitated police action where the working rules pointed towards an arrest. One of the strongest working rules related to the willingness of the victim to support a prosecution or not. The majority of victims did not want their partners or ex-partners to be prosecuted even when they had requested that the police arrest the perpetrators. Police and prosecutors believe the criminal justice system to be an extremely clumsy tool in dealing with domestic disputes. They therefore did not pursue independent evidence when victims withdrew their statements and they consequently discontinued these cases or did not initiate prosecution in the first place. Previous research has started from the premise that withdrawal of complaints by victims and the discontinuance of cases represents some kind of failure on the part of the agencies involved and that this would be remedied if the police arrested and prosecuted wherever possible. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that the criminal justice system as it presently operates is capable of responding effectively to the needs of victims of domestic violence. This thesis throws some doubt on the validity of these assumptions.

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.