Matching Items (4)
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- All Subjects: Medieval History
- All Subjects: Literature, Medieval
- Creators: Schleif, Corine
Description
This Master's thesis locates four works by William Dyce inspired by Dante Alighieri's Commedia: Francesca da Rimini (1837), Design for the Reverse of the Turner Medal (1858), Beatrice (1859), and Dante and Beatrice (date unknown) in the context of their literary, artistic and personal influences. It will be shown that, far from assimilating the poet to a pantheon of important worthies, Dyce found in Dante contradictions and challenges to his Victorian, Anglican way of thinking. In this thesis these contradictions and challenges are explicated in each of the four works.
ContributorsTiffany, Kristopher (Author) / Serwint, Nancy (Thesis advisor) / Gully, Anthony (Committee member) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The Iberian Queen Sancha (r.1037-1065), of the kingdom of León and Castile has received minimal attention from scholars. As the last Leonese heir, Sancha had the sole responsibility of ensuring that imperial traditions of patronage never waned. Her acts of giving and the commissioning of objects have been attributed by (male) scholars as an obligation to legitimize her husband, Fernando I of Castile. Persuasive evidence found in documents suggests that her involvement in donation transactions was predicated on more than formality. My thesis argues that Sancha used the act of giving, the act of commissioning objects, language in documents, and the powerful institution of the infantazgo, to assert an agency identical to her male predecessors to gain political influence. Creating a “donor profile” of Sancha that examines the total of her donating practices enables the exploration of her conscious and unconscious motives for donation. My investigation into these acts supports a new theory that the building construction projects of Sancha and Fernando I began at the beginning of their reign rather than after 1053 as is currently believed. As the first woman to use the titles regine emperatriz and regina totius Hispaniae, Queen Sancha did more than just legitimize her husband, she built a legacy that established a new female center of power in León that endured until the thirteenth century.
ContributorsWilson, Zaellotius A (Author) / Schleif, Corine (Thesis advisor) / Havens Caldwell, Susan (Committee member) / Brown, Claudia (Committee member) / Frederick, Sharonah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Vivid illuminations of the aristocratic hunt decorate Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. fr. 616, an early fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript of Le livre de chasse composed by Gaston Fébus, Count of Foix and Viscount of Béarn (1331-1391 C.E.), in 1389. Gilded miniatures visualize the medieval park, an artificial landscape designed to facilitate the ideal noble chase, depicting the various methods to pursue, capture, and kill the prey within as well as the ritual dismemberment of animals. Medieval nobles participated in the social performance of the hunt to demonstrate their inclusion in the collective identity of the aristocracy. The text and illuminations of Le livre de chasse contributed to the codification of the medieval noble hunt and became integral to the formation of cultural memory which served as the foundation for the establishment of the aristocracy as different from other parts of society in the Middle Ages. This study contributes new information through examination of previously ignored sources as well as new analysis through application of critical theoretical frameworks to interpret the manuscript as a meaning-making object within the visual culture of the Middle Ages and analysis of the illuminations reveals the complexities surrounding one of the most important acts of performance for the medieval elite.
ContributorsPratt-Sturges, Rebekah (Author) / Schleif, Corine (Thesis advisor) / Cruse, Markus (Committee member) / Cuneo, Pia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This dissertation concerns “revelations to others” in medieval hagiographical and visionary texts. Revelations to others take many forms—spiritual visions, dreams, visual and tactile witnessing of miracles, auditions—but they all are experienced by someone other than, or in addition to, the holy person who is the subject of the text. This type of revelatory experience is common and, I argue, highly significant. Most straightforwardly, revelations to others serve to further authenticate holy women or men, confirming their devotion to God, their miraculous abilities, and/or their favored position with Christ. But revelations to others do much more than authorize the visionary. They voice the possibility that one could learn to have visions, which has interesting connections to modern ideas of guided seeing, such as meditation. They suggest circumstances in which holy persons served as devotional objects, helping their viewers achieve a higher level of religious experience in a similar manner to stained glass windows, crucifixes, or images of Veronica’s veil. For women, revelations to others sometimes offer access to spaces in which they could not physically step foot, such as the altar or the bedrooms of abbots. Moreover, by showcasing the variety of persons participating in divine experiences (monks and nuns, lay persons, nobility, and sometimes other holy persons), revelations to others speak to the larger visionary communities in which these holy persons lived. Through a series of close readings, this dissertation creates a taxonomy of revelations to others and argues for their necessity in understanding the collaborative nature of medieval spirituality.
ContributorsNestel, Meghan Leigh (Author) / Sturges, Robert S (Thesis advisor) / Schleif, Corine (Committee member) / Koopmans, Rachel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019