Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Blurring The Lines: The Intermingling Of Garden And Theater In Seventeenth Century France, Abbie Elizabeth Rufener

Theses and Dissertations

Seventeenth century French society was a time in which the arts flourished and were used to create an eminence of power and absolutism. The gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte were commissioned by Nicolas Fouquet and designed by André Le Nôtre. The gardens created a political and social space through the characteristics of design and standards of order which together conveyed power and absolutism. Louis XIV, newly crowned king, recognized at Vaux the perfect vehicle for the portrayal of power. French theater at the same time was gaining popularity and establishing itself as a great art form. Similar to the gardens at Vaux …

Demographics In World History—Population Explosion And Implosion, Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Dakota Land In 1862, A Genocide Forgotten: How Civilizational Transformation Can Get Lost In The Fading Rate Of History, Michael Andregg

Comparative Civilizations Review

The year of 1862 was critical in a process by which a land larger than many nations was transformed from one civilization to another. But the process was not a classic conquest easily recorded in history books. Rather, it was a slow "digestion" of over 20 million hectares of territory by one civilization, accompanied by moments of true genocide or "ethnic cleansing" during long periods of high death rates for one group and high birth rates and immigration rates for the other group. But this was sufficiently gradual that most historians did not record it on their lists of wars …

About The Gospel Of John: Considering P66: A Literary History, Or A Categorical Hermeneutic, Christopher Ryan Haney

Theses and Dissertations

New Testament text critics are fueled by a search for origins. But in the absence of an autograph, questions of origins are complicated at best. The fruit of that search for origins has resulted in the creation of hypothetical, eclectic texts—texts which have left us translating and interpreting the Bible in a form that no community in human history has before. Far from being failed projects, however, these eclectic versions aptly represent the problem of the One and the many, a problem not easily solved: When faced with hermeneutic duties, can we effectively speak of New Testament texts without speaking …

Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Adaptations Of Nineteenth-Century Literature, Kathryn Hartvigsen

Theses and Dissertations

The theatre in the nineteenth century was a source of entertainment similar in popularity to today's film culture, but critics, of both that age and today, often look down on nineteenth-century theatre as lacking in aesthetic merit. Just as many of the films now being produced in Hollywood are adapted from popular or classic literature, many theatrical productions in the early 1800s were based on popular literary works, and it is in that practice of adaptation that value in nineteenth-century theatre can be discerned. The abundance of theatrical adaptations during the nineteenth century expanded the arena in which the public …

Negotiating Identity In The Transnational Imaginary Of Julia Alvarez's And Edwidge Danticat's Literature, Erik R. Kerby

Theses and Dissertations

The increased contact between nations and cultures in the globalization of the twenty-first century requires an increased accountability for the ways in which individuals and countries negotiate these points of contact. New World and Caribbean Studies envision the cross-cultural and transnational encounters between indigenous, European, and African peoples as important contributors to a paradigm within which identity in relation offers an alternative to identities rooted in national and filial frameworks. Such frameworks limit the ability to construct identity without relying upon static representations of history, culture, and ethnicity that tend to privilege one group over another. In the literature of …

The Conception Of Irony With Continual Reference To Kierkegaard: An Examination Of Ironic Play In Fear And Trembling, Julie Ann Parker Frederick

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the relationship of irony, as defined in Kierkegaard's The Concept of Irony to the text and subject of Fear and Trembling. Irony is interpreted in this thesis as negative space, which both binds and separates and which assumes meaning equal to or greater than the positive space that binds it. This definition applies to Kierkegaard's Socrates who lived ironically in the space between actuality and ideality. This thesis considers how Abraham also lived in ironic space and why ironic space is a prerequisite for faith. Unlike Socrates, Abraham did not stop with irony, but used irony to …

Books Recommended For Courses: Denis De Rougement. Love In The Western World, J. M. Anderson

Quidditas

Denis de Rougemont’s Love in the Western World has become something of a classic since it first appeared in 1939. Rougemont traces the development of romantic love from its origins in the twelfth century to its mutated condition in the twentieth. His thesis is that romantic love and marriage are fundamentally opposed. “My central purpose,” he wrote in his Preface to the 1956 revised edition, “was to describe the inescapable conflict in the West between passion and marriage; and in my view that remains the true subject, the real contention of the book as it has worked out.” Whereas romantic …

Review Essay: Bringing The Middle Ages Into The World History Survey Course: Some Suggestions, Tiffany A. Trimmer

Quidditas

Too often World Historians neglect coverage of the European Middle Ages, and medieval history courses tend to lose sight of the ways in which medieval Europe played a part in the wider world to which it belonged. Part of this results from the artificial pre/post 1500 CE split that dominates the organization of the typical world history survey, and part from the reluctance of World Historians to realize the potential of a global history approach to the era before the age of exploration and colonization. The works included in this essay attempt to rectify the absence of earlier European historical …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2008)

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Alice Blackwell

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

Peter Severinus: From Humours To Chemistry In The Sixteenth Century, Michael T. Walton, Robert M. Fineman

Quidditas

The re-discovery of the works of Mendel and others has added greatly to our understanding of genetics. Such is now the case of Peter Severinus, with the recent recovery (or re-discovery) of his seminal work, Idea Medicinae Philosophicae (1571). Severinus concurred with Paracelsus’s (1493-1541) concept of seeds (little chemical factories) that worked on matter to form living things; but he was also aware of transplantation (grafting and cross-pollination) that changed phenotypes and genotypes in plants. Severinus applied this understanding to hereditary diseases in humans and extended Paracelsian theory. He believed that certain diseases in one’s offspring were caused by a …

Alphabetical Lives: Early Modern German Biographical Lexicons And Encyclopedias, Richard G. Cole

Quidditas

Those who appear obvious to us as “major players” in past eras may in part result from an unintended consequence of the work of early modern biographical lexicographers. By the eighteenth century, there were enough printed sources and available archival materials to deluge or even overwhelm historians and biographers with information about past actors of sixteenth century history. Those biographical lexicographers made choices about whom to give prominence and whom to minimize or ignore in their works.

Tracing Shakespeare’S Sea-Change: From The Tempest To The New York Times, Joshua L. Comer

Quidditas

An historical approach to the changing use of a Shakespearean phase, like “sea- change,” offers a case study in the long-standing power and evolving meaning of Shakespeare’s language. While all sea-changes today are not so major as those of which Ariel sang in The Tempest, the rich language of Ariel’s song has acquired a significant place in the history of American journalism.

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

Gaiwan's Five Wits: Technological Difficulties In The Endless Knot, Alice Blackwell

Quidditas

Traditionally, the “five wits” of the endless knot on Gawain’s shield in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” have been read as the five senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. The present paper, following recent work by Peter Whiteford, Simon Kemp, and Garth Fletcher, contends that the five wits may be interpreted as the five internal wits, which include imagination and memory and determine perception. This identification of the five wits as the five internal wits calls into question Gawain’s self-identity, predicated as it is upon the five wits’ faultlessness. In this context, Gawain’s self-understanding is really a self-misunderstanding, and …

The Appropriation Of St Cuthbert: Architecture, History-Writing, And Ecclesiastical Politics In Durham, 1083-1250, John D. Young

Quidditas

This paper describes the use of the cult of Saint Cuthbert in the High Middle Ages by both the bishops of Durham and the Benedictine community that was tied to the Episcopal see. Its central contention is that the churchmen of Durham adapted this popular cult to the political expediencies of the time. In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, when Bishop William de St. Calais ousted the entrenched remnants of the Lindisfarne community and replaced them with Benedictines, Cuthbert was primarily a monastic saint and not, as he would become, a popular pilgrimage saint. However, once the Benedictine …

Politics And Culture At The Jacobean Court: The Role Of Queen Anna Of Denmark, Courtney Erin Thomas

Quidditas

Until recently, analyses of the Jacobean court marginalized the important role played by James I and VI’s queen consort, Anna of Denmark. While historians and literary critics now acknowledge that Anna was a key player in patronage networks and artistic circles at the time, the extent of her political involvement remains largely unexplored in favor of portraying her solely as a cultural figure. This essay seeks to examine the connections between Anna’s cultural and political activities and suggests that, by viewing Anna’s involvements thorough a dichotomous lens as being either political or cultural, a truly textured and nuanced understanding of …

Maria Fairfax And The “Easy Philosopher”: Action And Indolence In Andrew Marvell’S “Upon Appleton House”, Byron Nelson

Quidditas

Andrew Marvell dramatizes the difficult choice between action and indolence in his long pastoral poem, “Upon Appleton House.” The nameless nun’s rhetorical temptation of Isabel Thwaites, as narrated in an apparent digression from the past history of the house, anticipates the poet’s own self-seduction in the woods later in the poem. Both Isabel and the poet need to be rescued from their fallen state. The tension between action and passivity is resolved by the redemptive appearance of “Maria.” The model for her providential intervention is the Shakespearean romance, in which an innocent daughter, who is rescued from danger and degradation, …

Full Issue

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No abstract provided.

Books Recommended For Courses: Elena Levy-Navarro. The Culture Of Obesity In Early And Late Modernity: Body Image In Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, And Skelton, Holly Overturf

Quidditas

If next semester’s reading list is feeling a bit thin, consider fattening it up with The Culture of Obesity in Early and Late Modernity: Body Image in Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and Skelton, an important new book by Elena Levy-Navarro. The book consists of six chapters, followed by extensive endnotes and a useful index. The first two chapters introduce the next four, and seek to build a history from which a fat culture can be formed. In the last four chapters, Levy- Navarro flexes her (fat-blanketed) literary anthropologist muscles by looking for symbolic meanings of fat in selected works of …