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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Literary Theories Of Circumcision, A. W. Strouse
Literary Theories Of Circumcision, A. W. Strouse
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
“Literary Theories of Circumcision” investigates a school of thought in which the prepuce, as a conceptual metaphor, organizes literary experience. In every period of English literature, major authors have employed the penis’s hood as a figure for thinking about reading and writing. These authors belong to a tradition that defines textuality as a foreskin and interpretation as circumcision. In “Literary Theories of Circumcision,” I investigate the origins of this literary-theoretical formulation in the writings of Saint Paul, and then I trace this formulation’s formal applications among medieval, early modern, and modernist writers. My study lays the groundwork for an ambitious …
The Mystification Of Christian Salvation: On The Anxiety Of Redemption In Renaissance Poetry And Drama, Kimberly Paige Ambroziak
The Mystification Of Christian Salvation: On The Anxiety Of Redemption In Renaissance Poetry And Drama, Kimberly Paige Ambroziak
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
"The Legend of the Red Crosse Knight," "Doctor Faustus," "Hamlet," and "Samson Agonistes" are secular poetic explorations with a common idea: the possibility of Christian salvation. These examples of the redemptive quest seem to reveal the uneasiness of salvation which is representative, if only broadly, of the atmosphere in which their authors were writing. More specifically, the intention of this study is to reveal the possibility and nature of Christian uncertainty as it is firmly rooted in the early modern period. As Christian doctrine proves protean from its beginnings in the first century to Protestant tracts in the sixteenth, these …
Methods Of Revision In Sixteenth-Century English Cycle Drama, John Case Tompkins
Methods Of Revision In Sixteenth-Century English Cycle Drama, John Case Tompkins
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation contends that guilds-folk in sixteenth-century England made their own changes to the play-texts of civic drama and that these changes remain visible to us in the manuscripts which preserve the plays. Further, it argues that the actors and pageant-makers themselves often made these revisions, rather than the civic or ecclesial authorities traditionally credited for rewriting the pageants. These changes, introduced in production and transferred into the texts, helped keep the plays vibrant and successful throughout most of the sixteenth century and reflect the practical and local concerns of their participants. This work continues the historical investigations into pageant …
"My Words Fly Up, My Thoughts Remain Below": Community And Penance In Early Modern English Drama, Benedict John Whalen
"My Words Fly Up, My Thoughts Remain Below": Community And Penance In Early Modern English Drama, Benedict John Whalen
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
This dissertation examines the vexed relationship between Christian doctrine, practice, and community in English Renaissance drama due to the abandonment of the sacrament of auricular confession during the Protestant Reformation. I argue that many English Renaissance dramatists were sensitive to the vast ramifications of the Reformers' theological understanding of penance, particularly in its emphasis upon a sinner's ability to accomplish unmediated contrition, and to be psychologically and emotionally satisfied thereby. By desacramentalizing and interiorizing penitential practices, the Protestant understanding of penance fundamentally changed the ways in which communities dealt with sins. As this dissertation demonstrates, many of the plays from …