Shakespeare

Historically, women and their role in life have been defined by the prevailing culture in which they lived. This dissertation questions the validity of those definitions by looking at a woman who did not accept cultural limitations but instead lived by her own law: Shakespeare's…

This dissertation explores the use of amazement as a transformative experience capable of reframing traumatic memory in the romances of Cervantes and Shakespeare. Romance offers a structure to moblilize emotion and fantasy to deal with traumatic events. Focusing on the experienc…

Scholars have long noted the prevalence of references to the apocalypse in Shakespeare’s plays from the early Jacobean period, but there are few sustained studies centered on the topic. In this work I will offer an extended treatment of Shakespeare’s use of the apocalypse in Mea…

The dissertation considers some literary problems and opportunities posed by hagiography's few prodigal daughters, primarily Mary Magdalene. Late medieval vitae of these saints, like some works authored by women, render sacred eroticism in surprisingly concrete ways, not because…