Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item Lauding and Loathing in the Works of Shakespeare: Epideictic Skepticism and the Ethics of Praise(2010) Tartamella, Suzanne Marie; Grossman, Marshall; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation argues that Shakespeare transforms Aristotelian epideixis (the rhetorical mode comprising praise and blame) into a skeptical mode by laying bare its embedded ethical and epistemological problems. Shakespeare, that is, uses the evaluative procedures inherent within epideictic poetry to scrutinize its own principles of representation, transforming a poetics of praise into a poetics of appraisal. His innovations in the Petrarchan sonnet form stand at the center of my project, but I also illuminate how Shakespeare's epideictic skepticism underlies his experimentation with tragedy and comedy. In a broader perspective, my project shows how an intimacy between philosophical skepticism and the practice of praise had its roots in the cultural and religious upheavals of the sixteenth century. The cornerstone of my project is Shakespeare's young-man sonnets, which provide a unique angle from which to understand the dark-lady poems and some key Shakespearean plays. I show that while the first sequence (1-126) investigates the epistemology of praise, the second (127-52) describes the dramatic interactions between lovers who have advanced beyond epideictic poetry and its accompanying skepticism. Chapter 1, primarily an introduction to my study, considers the religious and cultural background for Shakespeare's epideictic skepticism, reviews classical and Renaissance theories of praise, and closely reads poems by Shakespeare and Petrarch. Chapter 2 explores the canker as the central symbol of Shakespeare's epideictic skepticism and as a threat to the rose of beauty and praise. Tracing the poet's struggle with this persistent figure of satire and blame, I contend that the canker is inherent in the practice of praise. My third chapter maps my interpretation of the canker and the rose onto a new reading of Hamlet. I argue that the young-man sonnets provide a paradigm for understanding Hamlet's relationship with his two fathers, his misogyny and verbal abuse, and the tragic path to which he finally commits himself. Chapter 4 offers a comic resolution to the rhetorical problems emphasized in the previous three chapters. Here, finally, I turn to the sonnets devoted to the notoriously rebellious dark mistress, exploring their relationship to Shakespearean comedy generally and to The Taming of the Shrew particularly.Item All This the World Well Knows: a symphonic cantata in Sonnets and Proverbs for mixed chorus, four solo voices, and orchestra(2010) Perry-Parrish, Joseph Adams; Wilson, Mark E; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)All This the World Well Knows is a 30-minute symphonic cantata for mixed chorus, four solo voices (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and baritone), and orchestra. The libretto, adapted by the composer, weaves together texts from Shakespeare's Dark Lady sonnets and from the King James Bible's book of Proverbs in a loose narrative of love, betrayal, and reconciliation. The composition's pitch material includes microtonality that arises from the just intonation of sonorities derived from the harmonic series. In passages in which the solo voices express this microtonality, they are amplified in order to allow precise, non vibrato intonation. The modest size of the orchestra, which includes pairs of winds and only two percussionists, makes the composition practical for a wide range of performing groups.Item The Tudor Antichrists, 1485-1603(2010) Bossert, Kathleen Meredith Barker; Cartwright, Kent; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The sixteenth-century Antichrist often dons the papal tiara, and he occasionally wears the Spanish crown. He hides in German clerics, and he appears as the Grand Turk, an Eastern harbinger of a not-so-distant Doomsday. While scholars acknowledge the persistence of this figure in Reformation polemic, no critical study examines its multiple rhetorical, linguistic, and metaphoric functions in sixteenth-century texts. My dissertation fills this gap. I examine the figure of the Antichrist in the theological, political, and literary works of Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Luther, Thomas More, William Tyndale, John Bale, Thomas Kirchmeyer, Francis Davison, John Jewel, Thomas Harding, Edmund Spenser, and others. These sixteenth-century writers adapt medieval Antichrist lore to accommodate a new understanding of the figure--one that is increasingly political and tied to emerging notions of English national identity. The Antichrist in particular reveals the inherent difficulty of considering late sixteenth-century texts in isolation from the traditional Middle Ages, and my study joins the ongoing conversation about the putative medieval/early-modern period divide. I argue that the depth of Reformation writers' religious and political arguments derives in good measure from the afterlife of early exegetical traditions. Hence, in the figure of the Antichrist, latent medieval apocalypticism intersects with sixteenth-century notions of eschatology and millenialism, imperialism, and nascent Orientalism.