Matching Items (8)
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- All Subjects: Religious history
- All Subjects: English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.
- Creators: Chen, Huaiyu
- Creators: Newhauser, Richard
Description
This dissertation considers why several characters on the Early Modern Stage choose to remain silent when speech seems warranted. By examining the circumstances and effects of self-silencing on both the character and his/her community, I argue that silencing is an exercise of power that simultaneously subjectifies the silent one and compels the community (textual or theatrical) to ethical self-examination. This argument engages primarily with social philosophers Pierre Bourdieu, Alain Badiou, and Emmanual Levinas, considering their sometimes contradictory ideas about the ontology and representation of the subject and the construction of community. Set alongside the Early Modern plays of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Thomas Kyd, these theories reveal a rich functionality of self-silencing in the contexts of gender relations, aberrant sociality, and ethical crisis. This multi-faceted functionality creates a singular subject, establishes a space for the simultaneous existence of the subject and his/her community, offers an opportunity for empathetic mirroring and/or insight, and thereby leads to social unification. Silence is, in its effects, creative: it engenders empathy and ethical self- and social-reflection.
ContributorsKrouse, Penelope (Author) / Perry, Curtis (Thesis advisor) / Thompson, Ayanna T (Thesis advisor) / Fox, Cora V (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Christina of Markyate, a twelfth-century visionary and prioress, has been frequently seen in scholarship as an outsider at her home institution of St Albans, enduring solely under the protection of its abbot, Geoffrey, her spiritual friend and confidant. This characterization appears incorrect when The Life of Christina of Markyate, St Albans' record of Christina's personal history and religious career, is viewed in its original literary environment. The high volume of extant material from twelfth-century St Albans makes it possible to view Christina's depiction in several original ways: as a textual construction (at least in part) influenced by Bede's narratives of holy women in his widely read Ecclesiastical History; as a portrayal of contemporary devotional prayer in the style of Anselm of Canterbury, a major authority on devotional practices of the time; and as a prominent addition to St Albans' own liturgy, the record of its celebrated saints and local patrons, as an object of devotion herself. The strategy of Christina's endorsement in her Life is also notably different from strategies on display in St Albans materials related to Katherine of Alexandria, an important saint for Abbot Geoffrey, which further suggests he was not her sole promoter at the abbey, if he was involved in the process of her textual production at all. Finally, the historical fact that she was employed as a patron of St Albans before none other than Pope Adrian IV, to whom St Albans was appealing for numerous institutional benefits at the time, shows that the prevailing opinion of Christina at the abbey can not have been entirely negative. Placing the Life within the literary and cultural circumstances of its production thus provides a fresh reading of Christina's institutional and devotional roles at St Albans, medieval views of women's spirituality and its place within the western European Christian tradition, and the compositional process of a major work of medieval hagiographical literature.
ContributorsVanGinhoven, Bryan (Author) / Voaden, Rosalynn (Thesis advisor) / Newhauser, Richard (Committee member) / Sturges, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation analyzes presentations of death in late-medieval English Arthurian literature through the optic of the Ricardian and 15th-century English vernacular ars moriendi tradition. The period under examination begins in 1380 and ends with a discussion of the gradual loss of the artes moriendi and reimagining of King Arthur in Tudor England. The Arthurian texts examined are the Alliterative Morte Arthure (AMA), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK), and Malory’s Morte Darthur. The theological texts examined include the following: De visitacione infirmorum (A Text), BL MS Royal 18 A.X and The Book of Vices and Virtues (both ME translations of Friar Laurent’s Somme le roi), Learn to Die (a ME translation of Heinrich Suso’s Horologium sapientiae), A Tretyse of Gostly Batayle supplemented by illuminations from MS Harley 3244 (Summa de vitiis f.27v-f.28r), The Boke of the Craft of Dying, Martin Luther’s Sermon on Preparing to Die, Thomas Lupset's A Treatise of Dying Well, Richard Whitford's Daily Exercise and Experience of Death, and Desiderius Erasmus's Preparation of Death. My methodology combines Comparative Literature, New Historicism, and Jane Gilbert’s Lacanian approach. The primary research method is a comparison of the death sequences of major Arthurian figures in late-medieval English literature with the major tenets of several ars moriendi tracts. Further, these source materials are examined and compared to the earlier Arthurian texts. Lastly, some ars moriendi expedients already present in the Arthurian source materials are compared with contemporaneous rituals to elucidate which of them belong to an earlier tradition and therefore are not updates. This dissertation demonstrates the following: Malory and the authors of the AMA and SGGK captured a uniquely late-medieval English understanding of death by updating their source materials, battlefield expedients for the dying included in late-medieval English Arthurian literature can be traced back well before the Black Death, and finally, that the English knight developed into a figure who spiritually battles accidental sudden death, or mors improvisa, in the memento mori tradition, which in turn influenced English Arthurian legend.
ContributorsPike, Daniel (Author) / Newhauser, Richard (Thesis advisor) / Sturges, Robert (Committee member) / Wheeler, Bonnie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This study focuses on the Black Tiger Cult in Anze, Shanxi from the 17th to the 21stcentury and explores changing human-tiger relationships as well as the localization of canonical traditions. Drawing upon local gazetteers, scholar-officials' petitions, canonical texts, stele inscriptions, and temple murals in the area, this study sheds new light on relations among animals, humans, and gods through the deification of the black tiger. While the harsh natural environment intensified conflicts between humans and tigers, the rise of the Black Tiger Cult in local communities helped ease these ecological and social conflicts during the late-imperial era. As the cult gradually established its presence to serve spiritual and practical needs of local people, its practice complemented the mainstream religious communities and state-sponsored sacrificial rituals. The Black Tiger Cult brought together communities and the state power by providing them a space to express and negotiate their spiritual, political, agricultural, and cultural interests. This study also offers a comparative perspective on the Black Tiger Cult in North China and the Tiger Lord Cult in Taiwan during modern times. Different levels of connections between these cults and the historical memory of human-tiger conflicts may contribute to the reinvention of the deified tiger and its relationship with contemporary people. This study argues that the deification of tigers did not elevate the position of animals higher than that of human beings. The establishment of Black Tiger Temples likely changed the local distribution of tigers. Moreover, although traditions of tiger gods vary in different regions and times, they share similar cultural elements that have been interwoven with local human-tiger/animal relationships.
ContributorsZhang, Shuran (Author) / Chen, Huaiyu (Thesis advisor) / Tillman, Hoyt C (Committee member) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This dissertation challenges the conventional understanding that Song dynasty China (960–1279) was a period when Confucianism was placed at the center of governance. Bringing heretofore inadequately studied Buddhist and Daoist texts into discussion, it offers three case studies on interrelationships between Song emperors and the Three Teachings of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. As shown in all three cases, although a religious campaign directed by the emperor and his institutional apparatus could set out under the influence of a certain teaching/religion, the campaign’s outcome at the state level would often be a fusion of various religious and cultural components. My research suggests that Song emperors employed an eclectic strategy in selecting and utilizing elements from the Three Teachings and attempted to build an imperial religion centered around themselves. As such, Song imperial power emerged as a centripetal force that compelled the Three Teachings to tailor themselves to the imperial religion. Therefore, I term the Song imperial court as a “regulated syncretic field” where segments from different religious traditions became amalgamated into religious/ritualistic entities that served imperial visions of the time. Although proponents of the Three Teachings by and large continued their efforts to gain imperial acceptance of their teachings, they often turned to local society to ensure their authority when their efforts at the court failed. Further, I argue that such phenomena were rooted in the mechanism of patriarchal governance in which the emperor considered themselves and was considered by leaders of the Three Teachings to be the patriarch of his household/empire, who was responsible for balancing the power structure among the Three Teachings.
ContributorsLi, Jiangnan (Author) / Tillman, Hoyt (Thesis advisor) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Thesis advisor) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / Hartman, Charles (Committee member) / Chen, Huaiyu (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This dissertation is a study and translation of the Hereditary Household of the Han Celestial Master (Han tianshi shijia 漢天師世家), a hagiographical account of successive generations of the Zhang family patriarchs of Celestial Masters Daoism (Tianshi dao 天師道) at Dragon and Tiger Mountain (Longhu shan 龍虎山) in Jiangxi province that was compiled in stages between the late fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Zhang family emerged in the late Tang or early Five dynasties period and rose to great prominence and power through the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties on the basis of the claim of direct and unbroken lineal descent from Zhang Daoling 張道陵 the ancestral Celestial Master whose covenant with the deified Laozi in 142 C.E. is a founding event of the Daoist religion. In this study I trace the lineal history of the Zhang family as presented in the Hereditary Household in chronological parallel to contrasting narratives found in official histories, epigraphy, and the literary record. This approach affords insight into the polemical nature of the text as an assertion of legitimacy and allows for a demonstration of how the work represents an attempt to create in writing an idealized past in order to win prestige in the present. It also affords the opportunity to scour the historical record in an attempt to ascertain a plausible timeframe for the origin of the movement and to explore the relationship of the Hereditary Household to earlier hagiographic works that may have informed it. This study also contextualizes the Hereditary Household in the post-Tang religious climate of China. In that period the establishment of lineal authenticity and institutional charisma through narratives of descent became a widespread tool of legitimation employed by Buddhists, Daoists, and Confucians in hopes of obtaining imperial recognition and patronage.
ContributorsAmato, Paul (Author) / Bokenkamp, Stephen R (Thesis advisor) / Chen, Huaiyu (Committee member) / Feldhaus, Anne (Committee member) / West, Stephen H. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
“Trauma, Typology, and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern England” explores the connection between the biblical exegetical mode of typology and the construction of traumatic historiography in early modern English anti-Catholicism. The Protestant use of typology—for example, linking Elizabeth to Eve--was a textual expression of political and religious trauma surrounding the English Reformation and responded to the threat presented by foreign and domestic Catholicism between 1579 and 1625. During this period of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, English anti-Catholicism began to encompass not only doctrine, but stereotypical representations of Catholics and their desire to overthrow Protestant sovereignty. English Protestant polemicists viewed themselves as taking part in an important hermeneutical process that allowed their readers to understand the role of the past in the present. Viewing English anti-Catholicism through the lens of trauma studies allows us greater insight into the beliefs that underpinned this religio-political rhetoric.
Much of this rhetorical use of typology generated accessible associations of Catholics with both biblical villains and with officials who persecuted and executed Protestants during the reign of Mary I. These associations created a typological network that reinforced the notion of English Protestants as an elect people, while at the same time exploring Protestant religio-political anxiety in the wake of various Catholic plots. Each chapter explores texts published in moments of Catholic “crisis” wherein typology and trauma form a recursive loop by which the parameters of the threat can be understood. The first chapter examines John Stubbs’s Discovery of a Gaping Gulf (1579) and his views of Protestant female monarchy and a sexualized Catholic threat in response to Elizabeth I’s proposed marriage to the French Catholic Duke of Anjou. The second chapter surveys popular and state responses to the first Jesuit mission to England in 1580. The final chapters consider the place of typology and trauma in works by mercantilist Thomas Milles in response to recusant equivocation following the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and in Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess (1624) as a response to the failure of marriage negotiations between the Protestant Prince Charles and the Catholic Spanish Infanta.
Much of this rhetorical use of typology generated accessible associations of Catholics with both biblical villains and with officials who persecuted and executed Protestants during the reign of Mary I. These associations created a typological network that reinforced the notion of English Protestants as an elect people, while at the same time exploring Protestant religio-political anxiety in the wake of various Catholic plots. Each chapter explores texts published in moments of Catholic “crisis” wherein typology and trauma form a recursive loop by which the parameters of the threat can be understood. The first chapter examines John Stubbs’s Discovery of a Gaping Gulf (1579) and his views of Protestant female monarchy and a sexualized Catholic threat in response to Elizabeth I’s proposed marriage to the French Catholic Duke of Anjou. The second chapter surveys popular and state responses to the first Jesuit mission to England in 1580. The final chapters consider the place of typology and trauma in works by mercantilist Thomas Milles in response to recusant equivocation following the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and in Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess (1624) as a response to the failure of marriage negotiations between the Protestant Prince Charles and the Catholic Spanish Infanta.
ContributorsKimbro, Devori (Author) / Hawkes, David (Thesis advisor) / Fox, Cora (Thesis advisor) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / Irish, Bradley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This thesis is a translation and analysis of the “Epitaph of the Wu Kingdom
Transcendent Duke Ge of the Left Palace of the Grand Bourne” (Epitaph below). The author was Tao Hongjing (456 CE-536 CE). The subject of this Epitaph inscribed on a stele was Ge Xuan (trad. 164 CE-244 CE). Ge Xuan had two titles attributed to him by later Daoists. According to the Lingbao scriptures, Ge was appointed by the Perfected of Grand Bourne, a heavenly title. Later, in the Shangqing scriptures, Ge Xuan was said to be an earthly transcendent without any heavenly appointment. This debate occurred before Tao Hongjing began to write. This stele epitaph is essential, as it records sayings from both Lingbao and Shangqing scriptures. By reading this translated epitaph, scholars can know more about different versions of Ge Xuan's legend, as well as how Ge Xuan's legend was constantly rewritten by later Daoists.
Transcendent Duke Ge of the Left Palace of the Grand Bourne” (Epitaph below). The author was Tao Hongjing (456 CE-536 CE). The subject of this Epitaph inscribed on a stele was Ge Xuan (trad. 164 CE-244 CE). Ge Xuan had two titles attributed to him by later Daoists. According to the Lingbao scriptures, Ge was appointed by the Perfected of Grand Bourne, a heavenly title. Later, in the Shangqing scriptures, Ge Xuan was said to be an earthly transcendent without any heavenly appointment. This debate occurred before Tao Hongjing began to write. This stele epitaph is essential, as it records sayings from both Lingbao and Shangqing scriptures. By reading this translated epitaph, scholars can know more about different versions of Ge Xuan's legend, as well as how Ge Xuan's legend was constantly rewritten by later Daoists.
ContributorsDing, Jiashuo (Author) / Bokenkamp, Stephen R (Thesis advisor) / Chen, Huaiyu (Committee member) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020