Portia serves as a complex and often underestimated character in William Shakespeare's controversial comedy The Merchant of Venice. Using the critical methodologies of New Historicism and feminism, this thesis explores Portia's representation of Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England from 1558 to 1603. Striking similarities exist between character and Queen, including physical description, suitors, marriage issues, and rhetoric. In addition, the tripartite marriage at the play's conclusion among Portia, Bassanio, and Antonio represents the relationship Elizabeth Tudor formed between her merchant class and her aristocracy. Shylock serves as a representation of a generic or perhaps Catholic threat to England during the early modern era. Moreover, by examining Portia's language in the trial scene, the play invites audiences to read her as a representative of the learned Renaissance woman, placing special emphasis on the dialectical and rhetorical elements of the language trivium in classical studies. Finally, through a close reading of the mercantile language in the text, Portia can be interpreted as the merchant of the play's title.

Sixteenth century Elizabeth I of England has long been a figure of interest to Renaissance scholars, and their work largely focuses on how her gender impacted the power, politics, and culture of her day. Many have perceived her to be a heroine whose ingenuity and determination circumvented the limitations imposed on a female ruler in patriarchal Renaissance England. In my thesis, I examine the life and work of Elizabeth I, and the self-representations she constructed within the boundaries imposed on highborn women. In the first half of my thesis, I suggest that she embraced and utilized the female roles available to her to secure agency and a degree of safety for both herself and England. In the second half, I suggest that masculine subjects such as Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, in turn, sought to manipulate her later self-representations to negotiate their own agency and identity which was perceived to be beset with anxieties and biases stemming from the ageing Queen's seizure and redefinition of the female gender role allotted to her. A chronological examination of the self representations evident in her personal writing, commissioned portraiture, parliamentary speeches, and sonnets, as well as the poetry of two of her foremost masculine subjects, suggests a shift in gender politics and a tension roused by an ageing Queen regnant in a rigidly patriarchal society. / Graduation date: 2012

This study investigates colonial, independence, and postcolonial moments to identify different modes of self-fashioning in the Jamaican landscape. It also explores the ways collective and individual senses of self, identity and sovereignty are perceived between the late nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. I assert that political processes involved in consolidating official national identities problematically reproduced hierarchies and exclusions reminiscent of the colonial period in politically independent contexts. In this regard, the cultural landscape serves multivalent purposes of proving grounds for visions of Jamaican national identity, counter-hegemonic articulations of those excluded from or marginalized by official notions of Jamaican national identity, and spaces for the invention of non-traditional modes of self-representation. I critique early nationalist projects through an examination of Sylvia Wynter's The Hills of Hebron and discuss the ways unacknowledged or unconsciously retained European cosmological elements undermine the sovereign identity they sought to construct. I also examine Michael Thelwell's The Harder they Come, Sistren's Lionheart Gal and Don Lett's film Dancehall Queen to discuss the marginalization of the working poor that persists within the newly independent relations of political power, and illustrate the ways modes of cultural self-fashioning like the ruud bwoy, or community theater emerge as spaces for negotiating self, identity, survival, and self-determination among the working class. I argue that the independence context is marked by exclusionary politics that provoke the development of more individual modes of self-fashioning, that vary between men and women, and also provide sites for counter-hegemonic discourses in opposition to nationalized discourses. Moving beyond the traditional framework of community based on heteronormative models, I examine Patricia Powell's A Small Gathering of Bones and The Pagoda to consider how queer communities are marginalized in nationalized discourses. I critique self-identity and self-fashioning within non-normative sexual communities in an analysis that traces gender and sexuality as indices of exclusionary patterns that are reproduced within nationalized identities throughout the country's history. This discussion argues that there is an institutionalized complicity between politics, culture, and religion in sustaining colonial power relations far beyond the colonial context.

Beowulf presents a literary starting point in the discussion of peace weaving, reflecting the primary focus of Anglo Saxon epic poetry on the male hero rather than the peace weaver. Scholarship on peace weaving figures in the poem tend to negatively perceive the lack of female presence, and determine the tradition as one set up for failure. Adding historical peace weavers like Queen Emma to the discourse encourages scholars to view smaller successes, like temporary peace, as building on each other to ultimately cause the peace weaver to be successful at her task. From studying the life of Queen Emma, the continuous struggle of such a figure to be an influential presence in her nation is more evident. Combining the images of peace weaving set down by literature and then history prove that figures participating in the tradition are as vital to the heroic world as the warrior himself.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the attitudes toward women of female managers, the quality of leader-member exchange between female managers and their female subordinates, and female managers¡¦queen bee behavior which female subordinates perceived. Moreover, this study examined seven related moderator variables within the relationship between the attitudes toward women of female managers and their queen bee behavior female subordinates perceived. We collected 140 matched questionnaires from female managers and one of their random female subordinates as a complete set in various industries, and 129 of 140 sets are valid. Our results showed that the attitudes toward women of female managers had a significant positive relationship with queen bee behavior female subordinates perceived, which means the more traditional attitudes toward women female managers hold, the higher degree queen bee behavior their female subordinates perceived. Besides, we found a significant negative relationship between the quality of leader-member exchange between female managers and their female subordinates, and queen bee behavior female subordinates perceived, which indicates the lower the exchange quality between female managers and their female subordinates, the higher degree queen bee behavior female subordinates perceived. And we also found that marital status of female managers and the female portion in their departments moderated the relationship between the attitudes toward women of female managers and queen bee behavior female subordinates perceived. Further practical implications and suggestions are also discussed in this study.

This thesis examines three factors that may influence the change in protein content and size of the brood food glands in honey bees. Effects on the mandibular gland, involved in the production of brood food and in royal jelly, have not been examined in relation to primer pheromones while effects on the hypopharyngeal glands, also involved in the production of brood food, have not been examined in relation to queen mandibular pheromone. This thesis provides preliminary insight into how these pheromones affect the extractable protein content of brood food glands. The first study in this thesis assessed the effects of brood pheromone (BP), queen mandibular pheromone (QMP), and pollen presence on the protein content of hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands of the honey bee. In this study, newly emerged bees were caged for 12 days in one of eight treatments: Queenless state: 1) control (no pollen + no pheromone), 2) pollen, 3) BP, 4) BP + pollen; Queenright state: 1) QMP, 2) QMP + pollen, 3) BP + QMP, 4) BP + QMP + pollen. This study indicated that regardless of pheromone treatment, the most influential factor on gland protein content and size was pollen. The second experiment examined effects of varying pollen dilution on hypopharyngeal and mandibular gland protein content, bee mass, and lipid content of the honey bee. In this experiment, newly emerged bees were caged for 7 days and fed one of five treatments: pollen, 1:1 pollen: cellulose (vol:vol), 1:2 pollen: cellulose (vol:vol); 1:3 pollen: cellulose (vol:vol), and cellulose. This study indicated that bees on the pollen diet were significantly greater than all other diluted diets in measurements of hypopharyngeal gland protein content, lipid content, and mass with significantly less consumption. However, mandibular gland protein content of bees on the pollen diet was significantly greater only from pure cellulose.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes special report study entitled: Public routes and spatial design. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1976. / Typewritten.

This dissertation examines the patronage of Marie de Brabant, queen of France (1260-1322), and how her commissions transformed the atmosphere of the late Capetian court. Bringing with her from her native duchy of Brabant an established set of cultural preferences strikingly different from those that the saintly Louis IX had promoted in Paris for the previous half century, she introduced a love of secular material and elaborate ceremony upon her arrival in 1274. Taking the form of manuscript illumination, sculpture, stained glass, and architecture, as well as literature, music, science, history, genealogy, ritual, and finery, Marie’s patronage set a trend for courtly consumption for the remainder of the medieval period. Nearly always political in nature, her commissions were nonetheless sumptuous to behold, whether secular or sacred in content and they announced her status as Carolingian princess and French queen. Analysis of the frontispiece of Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal Ms. 3142, a richly illuminated miscellany of fictional, historical, and didactic poetry is crucial for understanding Marie’s taste and priorities, and is complemented by study of her other commissions in Brabant and France. These commissions varied from large scale -- such as the addition of chapels to the east end of the church of Notre-Dame in Mantes or window programs for the chapel of St. Nicholas at the church of St.-Nicaise in Reims and her parent’s necropolis at the church of the Dominicans in Louvain -- to smaller format -- the châsse of Ste. Gertrude at Nivelles or the donor statues of the chapelle de Navarre at Mantes. Most numerous, however, are the manuscripts that made up her diverse library which included the secular romances of Adenet le Roi and the scientific treatises of Guillaume de Nangis as well as historical and religious texts all of which were illuminated by the most renowned and creative artists of the day. After an analysis of her patronage as queen and widow, I look to how her activities as patron and collector influenced other late Capetian royal women, many of whom Marie had raised and whose activities, in turn, complemented and complicated their mentor’s vision of queenship. / text

No description available.