Skepticism and irony : La Celestina (1499) -- An aesthetics of love : Leone Ebreo's Dialoghi d'amore (1505-1535) -- Inquisition and conversion : El Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) -- Marranism and modernity : the meaning of form in Michel de Montaigne's Essais (1580-1588) -- Sacred t…
Laus angelica: poetry in the medieval mass
The thesis explores the diversity and experimentalism that typifies the narrative writings of the Scapigliatura. It offers a reading of key-texts by Rovani, Tarchetti and Dossi which focusses on the narrative techniques and structures which are used in the construction of meanin…
The aim of this study is to examine the life and work of Filippo de'Nerli and to see what this reveals about the politics society and historiography of his time. The first part of the study is biographical, tracing Nerli's involvement with politics and administration at various …
Accounts of French medieval verse have always supposed that there was no readily identifiable general theory of poetry in the Middle Ages. At most, it is accepted that there were arts of versification (the Latin Poetrie of the XII/XIII centuries, the French Arts de Seconde Rheto…
This thesis examines the attitudes to wealth as depicted in two contrasting literary genres: didactic verse sermons and courtly verse romances. A preliminary chapter briefly outlines the historical background, its relationship with contemporary literature and with the prominence…
This dissertation focuses on the use of the al-Andalus myth and its articulation of Spanish identity via the so-called textos africanistas, which are a series of chronicles and literary works written in response to the 1859 Spanish invasion of Morocco. In the 19th and 20th centu…
This study shows how Leone de' Sommi (1527-1592), impresario at the court of Mantua, confronts Hebrew tradition with Latin and Italian traditions, both in his literary works and in his theory on theatre, in order to express his understanding of relations between the court and th…
Moriscos do not represent a unique case of a minority group in the history of the Iberian peninsula; but they are the only converted group to be sentenced to expulsion from Iberian lands between 1609 and 1614. The reasons behind their struggle are numerous, and they are based on…
This study examines how the sun and the sea in the works of Albert Camus articulate spaces that are both fictional and political. The analysis places the production of the Algerian and Mediterranean space in the larger frame of postcolonial debates. Chapter one, "La Mer et le so…
This dissertation investigates the ways in which three francophone Algerian women authors, Taos Amrouche, Hélène Cixous, and Assia Djebar, approach their respective religions and portray them in their works. Through textual evidence from their fictional works, I show how the pro…
This dissertation aims to study a case of contradiction between Foucault's social practice in his articles on the Iranian revolution and his theories of the "subject", of the "pluralism of centers of power of resistance," and of the notion of "the author". The disparity between …
One of the questions at stake in contemporary theoretical debates over the legacy of the Enlightenment is whether the political violence that has been carried out over the last two centuries is inextricably linked to the rationalist values promoted by the Enlightenment. This cri…
This dissertation examines the novel Consolaçam às Tribulaçõens de Israel, written by Samuel Usque and published in Ferrara, Italy in 1553. The book---simultaneously written as a historical account, a rabbinical response and a pastoral novel---emerges from the context of the exp…
In the 15th and 16th centuries a number of works were written not only to exalt and codify some of the Romance languages, but also to support their literary cultivation in order to improve and dignify them. This goal of literary improvement represents the will to control and to …