Browsing by Subject "Early modern"

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A market for speech : poetry recitation in late Mughal India, 1690-1810
(2014-12-09) Tabor, Nathan Lee Marsh; Hyder, Syed Akbar; Hansen, Kathryn G; Ali, Kamran Asdar; Schofield, Katherine Butler; Minault, Gail
This project focuses on 18th-century Persian and Urdu language mushairahs or poetry gatherings patronized by Mughal India’s urban elite and depicted in period compendiums or tazkirahs. Besides preserving poetry, the compendiums chronicle the social, aesthetic, and sensual aspects of 18th-century public and private gatherings from a stance that prizes the delight of lyric verse. The 1740s in particular mark a watershed decade for poetry exchange and criticism as they bridged several generations of India-based poets who were advancing the “fresh” goals of contemporary Persian writing and who were also recasting Persophone civility according to vernacular sensibilities in a social setting that was arguably the heart of Safavid and Mughal literary production. This dissertation examines how poets, listeners, and patrons enacted a material form of literary sociability that informed the circulation of people and verse over the 1700s. Analyzing this pre-colonial context allows for a more critical understanding of aesthetic and ethical drives in South Asian literary practices, providing a more grounded and critical understanding of lyricism as a cultural practice. By foregrounding the socio-aesthetic implications of recitation as a discursive practice, the present study understands the mushaʿirah as a unique site of literary subjectivity. Hence, the disciplinary boundaries between history, literary criticism, and ethnography are blurred to show that lyricism was not abstracted in 1700s poets’ gatherings. Instead, it formed a highly instantiated social script that allowed for the playfulness of Persian-based aesthetics to parallel the levity of Mughal-era sociability found in period salons. The Mughal literary sphere in the 1700s was governed by expectations of honesty, humor, exaggeration, enchantment, and originality, qualities that were not bounded by one language or textual medium. Historiographically, the compendiums from the 1700s attest to mushairah verse being self-referential, intertextual, and multilingual whereby the conventions of Persian-based aesthetics had a charismatic social life.
Defining borders, defining bodies : insularities, Utopia and other ideal figures in Las Sergas de Esplandián
(2011-05) Macaulay, Rachel Miriam; Harney, Michael, 1948-
While islands have long been a point of literary interest and curiosity, in the 16th century, one begins to see the stubborn application of the island’s geographical structure to non-islands. Recent scholarship on the issue of insularity has placed emphasis on the development of modern literature through the ambiguity of insularity of spaces and the language used to describe them. In the English and Spanish traditions, the focus on insularity in 16th century literature can be tied to the influence of colonialism. Despite widespread popularity in the 16th century, Las Sergas de Esplandián has become little more than a footnote in reference to the name of California. Nevertheless, the geographic elements of Las Sergas deserve closer examination, as they highlight the connection between geographic and literary texts in their portrayal of gender in the early modern period. In this essay I apply border theory to Las Sergas to understand the way in which these elements interact in the early modern period. In many ways, Las Sergas achieves the opposite of Anzaldúa’s intent in her development of border theory, which was designed to highlight that which exists between or outside the hegemonic structure left behind by colonialism rather than re-colonize it, but some of the insular spaces within Las Sergas demonstrate a geographic, linguistic and gendered ambiguity that fits well within border theory.
“Had he not been abused against nature?” : priests, Italians, and children in French sodomy trials, 1540-1670
(2019-12-06) Taft, Alexander Edward; Hardwick, Julie, 1962-
Though scholarship on the history of sexuality has at times been oriented towards a narrative of the cultural creation of the “homosexual,” the act of sodomy was itself extraordinarily complicated in its meanings, its practices, and its prosecution. In this paper, I draw on cases from the early modern Parlement of Paris, the court of last instance for the northern half of metropolitan France, to explore this sexual act on a scale from small villages to large cities. Sodomy as an act had multitudinous meanings for early modern people. Despite its premodern status as an “unnatural vice,” it increasingly fell to secular authorities to determine punishment for sodomy in the early modern period. Between 1540 and 1670, as many as 137 men were prosecuted for male-male sodomy in the Parlement of Paris. The details of their cases suggest that specific factors pushed neighbors to denounce these men over others. These relatively few individuals were prosecuted for a common sexual practice because they exhibited markers of difference which placed them on the margins of their communities. This analysis demonstrates that key markers of difference, when combined with sodomitical activities, were clerical status, foreign origins (particularly association with Italy), and age relative to their victims of possible “abuse.” However, there were also components of these identities, such as clerical privileges, which could be leveraged to advantage a sodomite in the course of prosecution. I argue that sodomy as a practice was common in early modern French cities as well as in rural villages and that these markers, particularly association with Italians, represented a kind of dog-whistle for criminal sodomitical intentions that could lead to denunciations which were serious enough to be heard in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Parlement of Paris.
Milton aspiring : belief, influence, and Shakespeare
(2015-08-12) Moore, Joseph Aaron; Rumrich, John Peter, 1954-; Mallin, Eric Scott; Wojciehowski, Hannah C; Bruster, Douglas S; Dobranski, Stephen B
Abstract: Over the last several hundred years, literary criticism has paid generous attention to the works of John Milton and his greatest and, in space and time, closest predecessor, William Shakespeare. However as Alwin Thaler observed almost a century ago, “strangely enough . . . it has neglected the relationships between them.” Exploring the literary, ideological, and political reasons for that neglect, this dissertation searches out the ways that Shakespeare influenced Milton and, more specifically, how that influence contributed to the young Milton’s self-fashioning of the poetic identity he desired for himself: to be the vates poet of the English people. The influence of Shakespeare on the young Milton exemplifies a certain version of imitation that G.W. Pigman III has termed “dissimulative,” expanding on common notions of influence, particularly when authors with seemingly disparate approaches to their art still draw from one another in a way that is intentionally difficult to detect, however powerful. Each of the four chapters offers a reading of one of Milton’s early poems alongside one or more germane works by Shakespeare never before been read in the context of Milton’s early poetic development. Chapter 1 explores the two authors’ competing metaphysical notions of time by reading Milton’s mid-winter birth poem, On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, hereafter referred to as the Nativity Ode, alongside Shakespeare’s play set around the “Festival of the Epiphany,” Twelfth Night: Or, What You Will. Chapter 2 explores the two authors’ competing notions of language, how it works and what it should do, by reading Milton’s A Masque to be Presented at Ludlow Castle, hereafter referred to as Comus, alongside Love’s Labour’s Lost and Measure for Measure. Chapter 3 explores the young Milton’s notions of poetic fame, the proper social role of the poet, and opposing approaches to employing poetry as a means to immortality by reading Lycidas alongside a selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The final chapter states a never-before suggested claim about Milton’s early verses “On Shakespeare,” namely that the young poet’s work contains layers of irony: while praising and imitating, Milton is also obliquely criticizing his latest and greatest predecessor.
On female witches and woodcuts : Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus
(2016-08) Srsic, Elizabeth C.; Smith, Jeffrey Chipps, 1951-; Holladay, Joan A
The present Master’s thesis seeks to develop a better understanding of two influential series of witchcraft prints and drawings: the woodcuts of Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus and three of Hans Baldung’s works. I will begin with a discussion of the role that gender played during the witch trials and how it influenced two of the woodcuts in De lamiis. Following the discussion of gender, I will examine the remaining De lamiis woodcuts in the context of the text and other visual sources. Finally, I will end with three of Hans Baldung’s witchcraft images, describing how they reflected and expanded established motifs.
Reforming children : the pedagogy, commerce, and politics of childhood in the early modern French world
(2015-08) Gossard, Julia Morrow; Hardwick, Julie 1962-; Frazier, Alison; Levack, Brian; Olwell, Robert; Bizer, Marc; Kamil, Neil
“Reforming Children” reconfigures the history of childhood in early modern France by considering children as actors as well as subjects. Using “childhood” as a central category for historical analysis, this dissertation reveals that social reform was not a strictly top-down process mandated by the state. Instead, social reform hinged on children’s compliance and defiance as they passed through educational programs in charity schools, hospital-orphanages, and colonial schools. Embedded in these institutions were complex relationships that intertwined children with commerce, work, subjecthood, state formation, and Catholic morality. Unpacking these networks and relationships, this dissertation asserts that childhood was a formative period of development and that children, especially poor children, played fundamental, active roles in society, politics, and economics. As key sources of labor, as future taxpayers, as potential criminals, as prospective colonial subjects, and as future parents, children were a central focus for civic and religious authorities as well as their own families. Through these educational programs, authorities attempted to create a new generation of loyal, industrious workers, with children’s actions essential to achieving this goal. “Reforming Children” refocuses attention on the importance of childhood experience and the centrality of children to the early modern state, collective community, family and kinship networks, regional commerce, and general social welfare. In addition to examining metropolitan children and educational institutions in cities like Lyon and Paris, “Reforming Children” also looks at children in the wider French world in Louisiana, New France, Siam, and the Ottoman Empire, placing children in a wide early modern global context. With such a large geographical scope, this dissertation argues that whether in the colonies, in the metropolitan cities, in the workshops, in the Church, or in the home, children were cruxes of French imperial strategy.
Remorse and the drama of community in early modern England
(2024-05) Pilkenton, Margaret Mendenhall ; Barret, Jennifer-Kate, 1977-; Bruster, Douglas; Frazier, Alison; Mallin, Eric
In this dissertation, I argue that early modern drama addresses an epistemological problematics of remorse that the contemporary religious and moral literature could not accommodate. By “epistemological problematics,” I refer to the dilemmas of sincerity and trust that were unique to remorse as expressed between human individuals with limited knowledge, as opposed to the religious remorse offered to the omniscient Christian God. Unlike theological writing and moral philosophy, early modern drama has the imaginative resources to explore the tension between two seemingly incompatible truths about the experience and expression of remorse. On one hand, remorse is understood as a pragmatic social ritual, a necessary fiction that operates regardless of inward experience to enable community cohesion against the inevitable conflicts of a flawed and difficult world. On the other hand, expressions of remorse are unsettling because they invite speculation about inward experience, reminding readers and audiences of how fragile ideas like truth and sincerity can be outside the space of the individual, solipsistic mind. The plays I examine find ways of posing the question, “What can be done about the fact that it’s impossible to know for certain whether someone is truly sorry?” Rather than coalescing into a unified theory of secular remorse, they exemplify the eclecticism with which moral ideas must be approached among communities of limited, flawed individuals. These plays question the value of remorse without the reward of Christian salvation; they flirt with the possibility of removing remorse altogether; they treat shows of remorse as contingent and motivated as well as innate and virtuous. In these human, worldly, secular moral universes, we can see the outlines of a moral archive that is far more controversial and innovative than the doctrine of the period would have us believe.
Shakespeare's writing practice : literary' Shakespeare and the work of form
(2011-05) Lamb, Jonathan Paul; Rebhorn, Wayne A., 1943-; Bruster, Douglas
In its introduction and four chapters, this project demonstrates that Shakespeare responded to—and powerfully shaped—the early modern English literary marketplace. Against the longstanding critical limitation of the category “Literature” that restricts it to the printed book, this dissertation argues that the literary is not so much a quality of texts as a mode of exchange encompassing not merely printed books but many other forms of representation. Whether writing for the stage, the page, or both, Shakespeare borrowed from and influenced other writers, and it is these specifically formal transactions that make his works literary. Thus, we can understand Shakespeare’s literariness only by scrutinizing the formal features of his works and showing how they circulated in an economy of imaginative writing. Shakespeare self-consciously refashioned words, styles, metrical forms, and figures of speech even as he traded in them, quickly cornering the literary market between 1595 and 1600. Shakespeare’s practice as a writer thus preceded and made possible his reputation both in the theater and in print.