This comprehensive book brings to light the portraits, private collections and public patronage of the princesse de Lamballe, a pivotal member of Marie-Antoinette's inner circle. Drawing extensively on unpublished archival sources, Sarah Grant examines the princess's many portra…
This book examines egalitarian social ideals and institutions that arose in preindustrial China and England, and in the process, uncovers China's forgotten role in the history of social justice debate and legislation during the eighteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of visu…
The belief in fundamental distinctions based on sex/gender has been a longstanding basis for inequality through history and literature. Though many notable instances have appeared over time, the seventeenth century stands out as a pivotal yet paradoxical period for the discourse…
This dissertation theorizes a new understanding of “imitation,” the central objective and operation early modern writers prescribed for fiction, better known in the period as “poesy.” Reading poems, plays, and fictional prose from canonical authors, John Donne, William Shakespea…
John Locke’s analysis of the person, developed across all of his major works and even through his notebooks, is as fascinating as it has been influential. I offer an interpretation of the Lockean person that is novel in the contemporary literature. One benefit of my interpretati…
As advised in household recipe books and publicly published prescription books, this paper will delve deep into the realm of domestic remedies particularly those recipes that assist in fertility. These manuscripts include remedies to provoke menstruation, balance the humors of t…
With early modern increases in travel, slavery practices, and colonial efforts, the English experienced increased collisions with other cultures that forced them to determine their own space and identity in the world. One form of cultural contact that was particularly definition…
This dissertation examines beliefs and practices related to second sight in Scotland, with a particular focus on the period from c. 1600 to c. 1800. An influential strain of historiography has asserted that this period was characterized by “disenchantment,” a process of increasi…
This project argues that there is an inherent trans* potentiality in the comedies of William Shakespeare and John Lyly; despite the seeming reinforcement of hegemonic gender norms in the finales of their respective canons, actual staging practices by contemporary theatres sugges…
When the Albertine Dukes of Saxony gained the Electoral privilege in the second half of the sixteenth century, they ascended to a higher echelon of European princes. Elector August (r. 1553-1586) marked this new status by commissioning a monumental tomb in Freiberg Cathedral in …
Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest were brought to life on the early modern stage within two decades of each other. Over the course of those twenty years, England saw a number of political and social changes. The transition from the reign …
Noting the all-too-recent interest of disability scholars in early modern literature, this dissertation seeks to establish a way forward for the study of disability in a period-appropriate way. Through its juxtaposition of disabled authors’ Paul Scarron and Miguel de Cervantes’ …
The prevailing scholarly consensus holds that national ideas are exclusively modern phenomena which had no role in a pre-modern age of dynastic monarchy. And yet, during the Wars of Louis XIV (1667-1714), French and German political pamphleteers regularly mobilized national rhet…
This dissertation examines popular literary representations of domestic crime in Elizabethan and Stuart England (circa 1550-1650), exploring the ways real-life scandals were torn from the headlines to address contemporary anxieties about gender roles, treason, obedience, and the…
Exploring the use of fiction—and science fiction—as an opportunity for "Scientific Outsiders" to present their knowledge and questions about the natural world by analyzing the themes presented in Francis Godwin’s The Man in the Moone and Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World.
Concentrating on six plays in the 1610s, this thesis explores the ways theatrical visual effects described as “strange” channel the period’s moral anxieties about rhetoric, technology, and scepticism. It contributes to debates in repertory studies, textual and material culture, …
Natural Philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626), in his attempt to revise all of knowledge, observed that 'the sense of hearing striketh the spirits more immediately than the other senses', contributing to contemporary dialogues on the relationship between the mind and the senses …
Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, both Austria and Persia were each repeatedly at war with the Ottoman Turks. Diplomats travelled between the two countries in an attempt to forge an alliance against their common enemy. Although the alliance never materialized the relations…
Arthur Ingram and Lionel Cranfield were part of the early modern phenomenon of social mobility, rising from humble merchants to titled gentlemen in one generation. Cranfield, especially, reached significant heights in a matter of years. Despite the fact both men have merited bio…