The Impotence of Grief: On Melville\u2019s Wretched Women and Lonesome Girls

The essay addresses Melville\u2019s use and abuse of the sentimental literature of the day through a reading of his most unusual and rare characters, namely the female protagonists of his short fiction of the mid 1850s. Melville's heroines are all abandoned women and lonesome girls who may be said to stand not only as representatives of a common and wretched humanity, but also as specific examples of the subaltern and lower orders of the American continent. As a case in point, the essay focuses on the shy and solitary \u201cpale-cheeked girl\u201d of \u201cThe Piazza\u201d. Marianna is a character who fully belongs to Melville\u2019s lowly community of downtrodden women, a heroine who, like all her Melvillean sisters, is doomed to remain alone and unrescued, beyond the reach of material succor or spiritual alleviation as well as outside the compass of a historical rehabilitation through discursive glorification or counter-traditional versions of hero-worship

Acting in a Global Context: Characterization from the Physical Context of Shakespeare\u27s Spaces

The proposition that the Elizabethan theatre space, with its lack of a fourth wall the delivery of Shakespeare\u27s works is nothing new. From a technical standpoint, scholars have also suggested that analysis of the spoken text implies stage directions for both actors and technicians. These approaches are still used by directors at the New Globe in London, England, and are a heavily emphasized point in the curriculum of the Globe Association. Actors are encouraged to embrace the intimate proximity of the audience and the configuration of the balconies as a major influence in their delivery of the text. There still seems to be a divide, however, between the approach in a Globe-like space (of which there is currently only one in existence), and that of Shakespearean delivery in any other theatrical context. The simple fact is that Shakespeare did not only write for specific audiences, but for specific spaces - some for the Elizabethan stage of the Globe, some for Jacobean spaces such as Blackfriars. These spaces intimately affected the word choices that the Bard made in order to most effectively communicate story, character, attitude, technical cues, and even blocking in a time when stage directions were scarce and actors did not employ the type of extensive rehearsal schedule with which modem actors are now familiar. Therefore, this thesis will endeavor to prove that analysis of Shakespearean text in its original physical context reveals intentional, vital information that is otherwise lost in translation, therefore making it a necessary approach for the modern thespian

Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann: Intertextual References and Private Meaning in Clara Schumann’s Opus 20 and Johannes Brahms’s Opus 9

Buer, Karin. Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann: Intertextual References and Private Meaning in Clara Schumann’s Opus 20 and Johannes Brahms’s Opus 9. Published Doctor of Arts dissertation, University of Northern Colorado, 2020. For centuries, composers have used their music as an expressive tool, imbuing it with publicly accessible meaning that often reflects the time and place in which the composer lived. Throughout the nineteenth century, the view of music as a means of expression, specifically self-expression, became crystallized as never before. Robert Schumann and other literary-minded nineteenth-century composers thus communicated, through their art, meanings which were both public and private, turning to extracompositional and extramusical references as a frequent means of doing so. Consequently, an intertextual approach to their music can reveal additional layers of expressive meaning and can allow current performers and listeners to interpret the music from the perspective of a romantic-era insider. Both Robert and Clara Schumann, and later Johannes Brahms, used their music to communicate amongst themselves and with close associates, especially in more intimate genres such as piano variations. Two works which are particularly ripe with intertextual references and private meaning are Clara’s Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann, Op. 20, which she gave to Robert as a birthday present in 1853, and Brahms’s Op. 9 variations on the same theme, which he wrote for Clara the following year. In her Op. 20 variations, Clara includes quotations and allusions to a number of Robert’s works as well as to works she was performing and therefore practicing at the time, rendering the piece the ultimate birthday present. Brahms, in response to Clara’s variations, composes a set which interweaves references to several of Robert’s works and one of Clara’s, often by layering multiple allusions within the same variation. In doing so, he pays respect to his beloved mentor—the recently institutionalized Robert—while privately providing comfort to and sharing the grief with Clara. A strong historical awareness rooted in documentary evidence, combined with a robust music-theoretical analysis drawing upon Schenkerian analytical methods, provides a mechanism for testing the strength of the connections found within these pieces

\u27So manie gallant gentlemen\u27: Imperial humanists and Tudor imperial identity

This thesis examines the intersection of imperialism, humanism and gender to argue that the Elizabethan period enabled imperial humanists to develop an identity for England as an empire of liberation rather than conquest. A subset of the imperial faction at Court, imperial humanists sought to reconcile activist and pragmatist agendas by marrying civic humanism with chivalry. Imperial humanists deployed this humanist chivalry--with an emphasis on temperance, wisdom, and justice--to elaborate a national mythos of pious restraint that denied avarice and oppression were inherent to extending English dominion overseas and envisioned empire as a virtuous pursuit for gentlemen. With increasing unemployment, land scarcity, and social unrest, imperial humanists feared the beginnings of a cultural devolution into barbarism that would make their island nation subject to domination by Spain. The solution imperial humanists advocated was a curriculum of humanist education among the gentry, a commitment to state service through the vita activa , a civilizing mission, and new overseas outlets for commodities, excess population, and military outposts

The Bristol Hearth Tax 1662-1673

This is the proof version. The final version is available from Bristol Record Society via the link in this record Archived with permission of the Bristol Record SocietyBristol Record Society's publications vol. 7

A historical survey and evaluation of the most prominent theories that Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him

The question of the authorship of the plays, poems, and sonnets traditionally attributed to the pen if William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon has now been before the public for over one hundred years. Many of the most noted poets, playwrights, and nobles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been assigned the authorship of these works. The controversy can be compared to the controversy over Homer’s authorship. In 1975, Friederick Augustus Wolf proposed that Homer did not write The Iliad and The Odyssey. By 1900, Wolf had been disproven, but the question was one of great importance when it was first introduced. The anti-Shakespearean contention has never actually been proven or disproven, and it remains important in the field of English literature. However, from the time the question first came before the public in 1856 until this study was first begun, no extensive and readily available history of the subject had been written. It is the purpose of this study to make a historical survey of the major theories of the controversy and put them under one cover. A further purpose is to evaluate them wherever necessary, although many of the theories refute themselves

"Grave of the images of dead passions and their days": "The country funeral" as McGahern's poetic tombeau

This paper first examines the symbolic filiation between the character of Gabriel in “The Dead” and the figure of Philly Ryan in the short story. Both characters go through the sobering experience of shedding the idealised self-images which helped them to go through life so far. However, Philly actually returns to the Gloria Bog to start a new life by taking in at Peter’s farm. Then it makes the point that the image of Uncle Peter and his matchsticks could well be interpreted as a reflexive comment on the ethics of writing, if we agree to see it as one of McGahern’s successful “lost images”, to the extent that they enable him to come to terms with the repetition of the symptoms of his melancholy by displacing them through a succession of images endowed with a poetic quality