UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
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Item Staging the Middle Ages: History and Form in Early Modern English Drama(2022) Daley, Liam Thomas; Robertson, Kellie; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Early modern conceptions of what it meant to be “medieval” continue to shape our own conception of what it means to be “modern.” Writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries claimed to separate historical fact from literary fiction more effectively than their medieval forebears. And yet, many widespread ideas about the Middle Ages that persist to this day—including the idea of a “Middle Ages” at all—are the fictional inventions of early modern writers, from chroniclers and antiquarians, to poets and playwrights. Focusing on the affordances and limitations of dramatic form, this dissertation examines how enduringly popular visions of the Middle Ages crafted by Shakespeare and other early modern playwrights (including John Bale, Thomas Hughes, and Elizabeth Cary) still inform our historical understanding. These writers shaped their revisionist historiographical narratives for the Renaissance stage in a host of generic guises, not only in Elizabethan chronicle history plays, but also in secularized morality plays, Senecan tragedies, and closet drama. These early modern depictions of the medieval past gave new life to older dramatic forms characteristic of both classical and medieval theatre, such as the chorus and various forms of theatrical spectacle, while also employing new formal strategies such as the soliloquy, the dumbshow, and the play-within-a-play. All the plays examined here—including John Bale’s Kynge Johan, Shakespeare’s King John and Richard II, Thomas Hughes’s The Misfortunes of Arthur, and Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam—engage in self-conscious medievalism. Remediating earlier chronicle accounts as well as contemporary historiographical controversies (or “battles-of-the-books”), these plays fashion new fictions of when the Middle Ages ended and when modernity began. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of modern dramatic medievalism in Tony Kushner’s twentieth-century stage epic, Angels in America, a play that witnesses the continuing power of premodern dramatic and historical models as tools for re imagining ideas of national and cultural identity. Examining the formal strategies employed by all these playwrights provides insight into the ways that readers and writers have understood the medieval past, the modern present, and the shape of history itself.Item THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL HISTORY IN EARLY TURKISH EPICS: REMEMBERING GENDER, FAMILY AND SOVEREIGNTY(2022) Johnson, Leo; Karamustafa, Ahmet; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The early Turkish epic tradition is relatively understudied, and many existing works focus on using Turkish epics to reconstruct earlier eras without fully understanding their role in the period from which the manuscripts date. Using a translation of Battalname based on the earliest fifteenth and sixteenth century manuscripts, and a translation of two sixteenth century manuscripts of The Book of Dede Korkut , this work examines the social context of Turkish literature in Anatolia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as well as its relation to the social world of epic society. A memory studies framing is used to situate the works and understand their role as a fifteenth and sixteenth century depiction of the past. Chapters are devoted to the role of literature in society, including circulation and reading practices, creation of Turkish literature and the vernacularization process, as well as to the role of women, men and gender, and to the structure and political significance of the family.Item Making English Low: A History of Laureate Poetics, 1399-1616(2018) Maffuccio, Christine; Coletti, Theresa; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation analyzes lowbrow literary forms, tropes, and modes in the writings of three would-be laureates, writers who otherwise sought to align themselves with cultural and political authorities and who themselves aspired to national prominence: Thomas Hoccleve (c. 1367-1426), John Skelton (c. 1460-1529), and Ben Jonson (1572-1637). In so doing, my project proposes a new approach to early English laureateship. Previous studies assume that aspiration English writers fashioned their new mantles exclusively from high learning, refined verse, and the moral virtues of elite poetry. In the writings and self-fashionings that I analyze, however, these would-be laureates employed literary low culture to insert themselves into a prestigious, international lineage; they did so even while creating personas that were uniquely English. Previous studies have also neglected the development of early laureateship and nationalist poetics across the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Examining the ways that cultural cachet—once the sole property of the elite—became accessible to popular audiences, my project accounts for and depends on a long view. My first two chapters analyze writers whose idiosyncrasies have afforded them a marginal position in literary histories. In Chapter 1, I argue that Hoccleve channels Chaucer’s Host, Harry Bailly, in the Male Regle and the Series. Like Harry, Hoccleve draws upon quotidian London experiences to create a uniquely English writerly voice worthy of laureate status. In Chapter 2, I argue that Skelton enshrine the poet’s own fleeting historical experience in the Garlande of Laurell and Phyllyp Sparowe by employing contrasting prosodies to juxtapose the rhythms of tradition with his own demotic meter. I approach Ben Jonson along the path paved by his medieval precursors. In Chapter 3, I argue that in Bartholomew Fair Jonson blends classical comic form with unwieldy city chatter, simultaneously investing the lowbrow with poetic authority and English laureateship with tavern noise. Like Hoccleve and Skelton, Jonson reappears as a product and producer not only of the local literary system to which he was immediately bound, but of a national culture, in no small measure lowbrow, at least two centuries in the makingItem ENTRE EL DESEO Y EL PUDOR, EL AMOR HEREOS EN LA NOVELA SENTIMENTAL: GRISEL Y MIRABELLA DE JUAN DE FLORES(2017) Eldredge, Ginette Alomar; Benito-Vessels, Carmen; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the studies about Medieval Spain, only men were believed to be susceptible to amorous passion or lovesickness. I propose that a more nuanced and complete understanding of women’s roles and actual behavior can be reached by analyzing the same medical and philosophical treatises that deny them the possibility of suffering from lovesickness. In fact, my readings of texts such as Grisel y Mirabella (ca. 1475), Celestina (1499) and Tristán de Leonís (1501), demonstrate that women’s behavior in literary representations is guided by the same symptoms experienced by lovesick men, symptoms that women sometimes suffer even more intensely than men. The topic of women’s lovesickness and the rhetorical devices used to depict the power and influence of women in medieval Spanish literature has not been formally studied due to the misjudgment that this malady was an exclusively male condition. This study shows that women's roles in Juan de Flores' sentimental romance Grisel y Mirabella (1495) were influenced by lovesickness or amor hereos. I also discuss how linguistic and narrative theories, as well as historical rhetoric about sexuality from the time of this text, helps us to understand how lovesickness influenced the female discourse created by Juan de Flores in the late Middle Ages. In doing so, I argue that the female characters were an alterity of power to their real counterparts in society. In some narratives they are resistant within the text, in others they struggle to act upon their desire without fearing the moral and social consequences.Item Syr Degore: Edited from Utterson's reprint of the Copeland text(1930) De Mooy, Elsie Margaret; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Item SOÑADORES LITERARIOS: DE BERNAT METGE A FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO. "EL SUEÑO" Y SU APORTACIÓN AL RELATO HISTÓRICO-CULTURAL DE DOS ÉPOCAS.(2013) Santos Sopena, Oscar Oliver; Sánchez Martínez de Pinillos, Hernán; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation, titled Literary Dreamers: From Bernat Metge to Francisco de Quevedo, explores the intersection of culture, religion, and literary theory in the work of two Iberian Peninsular authors: Bernat Metge (Barcelona, ca. 1340/46-1413) and Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas (Madrid, 1580 - Villanueva de los Infantes, 1645). The first chapter of the study analyzes the work of several Catalan and Castilian authors who use the motif of the dream in a specific humanist perspective as a literary genre and a philosophical classical discourse. Chapters two and three outline the cultural and literary landscape of two primary texts: Lo somni (1396- 99) by the Catalan Humanist Bernat Metge, and Los sueños (1627) by the Castilian Baroque Francisco de Quevedo. Both works represent excellent examples of the use of the dream motif from the Medieval to the Baroque period. As I juxtapose Catalan and Castilian literature, I examine the historical, social, cultural, and ideological perspectives of Catalan Humanism and the Castilian Baroque, two movements that traditionally have not been understood together. Thus, I suggest that Catalan and Castilian texts should be explored in relation to the notion of Christian Humanism, which I understand as a philosophical epistemology linking Christianity and Anthropocentrism. In the context of Humanism and Christianity, the use of the dream motif emerges as both a literary genre and an artistic-philosophical device. To understand the author's strategy, it is crucial to re-examine the extension of Classical, Biblical, and Oriental reminiscences, which helps us analyze the development of dreams in Peninsular literatures. This dissertation seeks to illuminate the cultural, historical, and literary influences of Catalan and Castilian literatures, which are not always taken into account despite the fact that Catalan Humanism preceded the development of Castilian Humanism since the 14th Century. I will examine how Italian Humanism came to the Iberian Peninsula through the Crown of Aragon's connections to Southern France, Italy, Corsica, and Sardinia. I argue that this cross-pollination of humanisms from the Mediterranean world served as a bridge between the different civilizations and cultures since the time of the Catalan prehumanist Ramon Llull (Palma de Majorca, 1232 - Tunis, 1316). This study proves the existence of Catalan Humanism and its importance for Spanish literature, and will lead to a better understanding of European Humanism.