Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Hearts Of Ovid's Heroines In Trojumanna Saga, Luke J. Chambers

Masters Theses

In western civilization no story has been retold more times than the Trojan War. Homer's works were known only by repute in western Europe after the fall of Rome. As such, the Middle Ages saw the blossoming of a new Troy tradition based on Dares Phrygius's De Excidio Troiae Historia (The History of the Destruction of Troy). Most countries of medieval Europe used this laconic work to retell the Troy story in each country's particular idiom.

The settlers of Iceland developed a sophisticated literary culture in the thirteenth century. No other people wrote narrative prose works on such a …

Recovering The Saumurois: Lay Patronage To Saint-Florent Of Saumur, Ca. 950-1150, Adam C. Matthews

Masters Theses

In the mid-tenth century, the lay powers of the Loire valley established the abbey of Saint-Florent at Saumur with the local aristocracy welcoming the monks and forming spiritual and economic relationships through acts of patronage. The brothers remembered gifts of property, grants of rights, and exemptions in charters which were ultimately collected into the abbey's first cartulary, the Livre Noir. Despite this wealth of sources, historians have paid only cursory attention to Saint-Florent in recent scholarship. The present study incorporates the abbey's charter sources into broader debates concerning society in eleventh-century France. The use of case studies provides insight …

Weaver Of Allegory: John Bunyan's Use Of The Medieval Theme Of Vice And Virtue As Devotional Writer And Social Critic In The Holy War, David Madsen

Masters Theses

The literary artistry of Bunyan's The Holy War is overshadowed by the longstanding popularity of his greatest-known work The Pilgrim's Progress. However, The Holy War displays an impressive intricately-woven story with several complex strands of allegorical meaning. One such strand is its emphasis on the theme of virtue and vice in literature of the Middle Ages. In The Holy War, Bunyan applies this thematic thread from the Medieval Psychomachia and morality plays to his allegory in seventeenth-century Restoration England. The present research begins with an exploration of allegory as story with emphasis on Bunyan's role as storyteller in general and …