Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

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

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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    Seeing The Divine Through Darkness: Illuminations of Christ Healing the Blind Man, C. 1200-1400
    (2021) Prescott, Hannah; Gill, Meredith J.; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the image of Christ healing the blind man began to appear alongside psalmic text in western European psalters and books of hours. In this thesis, I elucidate the devotional implications of the miracle of the blind man, foregrounding illuminated examples—located in the Rutland Psalter, Saint Elizabeth Psalter, Taymouth Hours, and Psalter-Hours of Yolande de Soissons—within the context of period discourse concerning the corporeal and spiritual nature of the eye. My discussion first considers how lay viewers perceived the miraculous restoration of sight as a reflection of the process of divine illumination and contemplative ascent. I then elaborate upon the relationship between blindness, the sacrament of Baptism, and medieval Passion Plays, demonstrating how the blind man’s place within the overall decorative program of each manuscript underlines the soteriological significance of this miracle and its role as a necessary precursor to the Resurrection.
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    Roger Fry's Concept of Authenticity: the Associative Gauguin Contrasted with the Contemplative Cézanne
    (2005-05-04) Stotland, Irina D.; Hargrove, June; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This thesis analyses the role of Paul Gauguin in the writings of Roger Fry. Fry follows a nineteenth-century opposition of Gauguin as associative artist to Paul Cézanne as contemplative artist. Fry's binary structure influenced the later English language art criticism on Gauguin. Fry, as his nineteenth-century sources, considered aesthetic experience to be a reflection of the artist's inner self. To Fry, Cézanne's paintings mirrored an instinctual, semi-conscious and contemplative artist. In Fry's view, Gauguin could not sustain passivity before nature and destroyed the disinterestedness of beholding by enacting associations with the outside world. The perception of Gauguin's inner self as weak and the consequent affectation, subjectivism, and associativity, allowed Fry to find Gauguin inauthentic. To Fry, through disinterested contemplation, Cézanne achieved significance of forms and enabled a beholder's creation of meaning exclusively from them. For Fry, as a formalist, this factor was decisive in choosing Cézanne over Gauguin