In the history of medicine "from below," religious language has been sidelined as a convention that interfered with the expression of peoples genuine experiences and feelings. This thesis uses the autobiographical writings of three well-known seventeenth-century women, Lady Anne Halkett, Lady Ann Fanshawe, and Alice Thornton, to explore how religious language actually facilitated the expression and preservation of their illness experiences. Having suffered considerable loss during the Civil War and Interregnum, these women relied on familiar religious scripts to present their life stories, including many illness experiences, as persuasive apologies for their difficult situations as widows after the Restoration. Considering their individual expressions of thanksgiving, the good death, and balance within a broader literary context reveals the extent to which each woman not only employed but also adapted convention to suit her particular purpose for writing. The womens illness narratives must therefore be read with due attention to their religious language, and both need to be interpreted in light of how the womens particular social situations and writing habits related to the cultural conventions of their time.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-04282011-105513 |
| Date | 13 May 2011 |
| Creators | Miller, Tenyia E. |
| Contributors | Deutscher, Tom, Smith, Lisa, Wright, Sharon, Meyers, Mark, James-Cavan, Kathleen |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-04282011-105513/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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