English Theses and Dissertations
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Item The Influence of Jacob Bryant on William Blake(1969) Svatik, Stephen Jr.; Howard, John; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)To understand William Blake's complex mythology, one must understand the sources of his theories. A primary source of mythic material in the eighteenth century was the research and writings of the antiquarians, principally of Jacob Bryant. Blake shared with the antiquarians a desire to understand the origins of man and of the development of man's political and religious institutions. But while the mythographers concentrated on giving simply a temporal account of the development of man and society, Blake expanded on their accounts of history by analyzing the importance of inner man in the development of his social institutions. In A New System, Jacob Bryant discusses three points of mutual interest for Blake. First, he dismisses Greek mythology for having corrupted the truth concerning man's past. Second, he attributes the degeneration of religion to man's error of materialism. And third, he discusses the fragmentation of society and man's subsequent fall from an earlier period of unity, freedom, and peace. Blake's writings contain concepts similar to those of Bryant, but Blake modified and refined them to fit into his unique mythological structure. Blake's most significant departure from Bryant is his paralleling of man's social and political conflicts with man's failure to maintain an equilibrium of his inner essences in his establishing a ratio between the inner man and the outer world. Blake's mythopoeic imagination surpasses those of Bryant and the antiquarians in meaning and significance when he goes on to forsee man's return to unity, to a Golden Age of freedom and peace.Item A Translation of Richard Morison's Apomaxis Calumniarum(1968) Eakin, Mary H.; Zeeveld, W. Gordon; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)The thesis includes a foreword and a translation from the Latin of the Apomaxis Calumniarum, a book written by Richard Morison, apologist for Henry VIII, hired by his secretary, Thomas Cromwell. The work was composed as a rebuttal to an attack by the German theologian Johann Coclaeus, and contains a defense of Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and of the executions of Thomas More and John Fisher, and an attack upon the papacy. Morison maintains and supports by Biblical testimony that the divorce merely righted a wrong, as Henry's union with Catherine had been incestuous. He claims that More and Fisher were respectively sick and old, and were seeking the glory of martyrdom, but both were deserving of an ignominious death for the horrendous crime of obstinately upholding the power of the pope in England. He charges that the papacy had a spurious origin, and that throughout history popes have had a harmful effect. A large part of Morison's book consists of a personal attack on Coclaeus.Item The Prophet and the Poet: The Relationship of Thomas Carlyle with Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hugh Clough(1968) Gadziola, David Stanley; Brown, Samuel E.; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Thomas Carlyle attempted to put into practice both his theories of poetry and his ideas concerning Heroes and Hero Worship by seeking to influence several poets of his acquaintance to write poetry according to his order. Though he failed, he nevertheless left a significant mark on the poetry of Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Arthur Hugh Clough.Item Lafayette, America's Hero: The Growth of a Legend(1963) Bloxom, Marguerite Doris; Beall, Otho T.; English; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)The legend of Lafayette began to grow about the time of his 1784 goodwill visit to the United States. Identical biographical sketches of Lafayette appeared in several early histories of the Revolutionary War, and similar versions were included in other histories. The core of the sketch was the picture of a young French nobleman, inspired by the ideals of liberty and equality, who came to America at great personal sacrifice and his own expense to take part in the fight for freedom. His story was used to add weight to the rightness of the action of the American patriots, and to stimulate feelings of national pride. After the turn of the century, the story of Lafayette became shorter and more routine. It was dropped from some textbooks, and was greatly abbreviated in others. It seems probable that while Lafayette would not have been forgotten, his place in American history would have been small, perhaps even obscure, if he had not visited America again in 1824. During this last visit, after an absence of forty years, the General received an enthusiastic and overwhelming reception. Interest in Lafayette revived quickly, and accounts of him appeared in newspapers, periodicals and separate books. The importance of his contribution to the foundation of the United States was emphasized; as a hero, he approached the position of America's savior. In addition, his personal characteristics endeared him to the people. In all probability, Americans' lasting esteem for Lafayette was developed as a result of the 1824 visit.