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Body marks in early modern English epic : Spenser's Faerie Queene and Milton's Paradise Lost

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.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.97835
Date January 2006
CreatorsFrey, Christopher Lorne
ContributorsBorris, Kenneth (Supervisor)
PublisherMcGill University
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
CoverageDoctor of Philosophy (Department of English)
RightsAll items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
Relationalephsysno: 3514955, Theses scanned by McGill Library.

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