Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Shakespeare, William, Johnson, Samuel'

Submitted by Alison Vanceto (alison-vanceto@hotmail.com) on 2017-05-08T12:32:21Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DissDC.pdf: 1279892 bytes, checksum: 049b63912561fe29c0fa323e624ae408 (MD5)<br>Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-05-10T14:13:38Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissDC.pdf: 1279892 bytes, checksum: 049b63912561fe29c0fa323e624ae408 (MD5)<br>Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-05-10T14:13:46Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissDC.pdf: 1279892 bytes, checksum: 049b63912561fe29c0fa323e624ae408 (MD5)<br>Made available in DSpace on 2017-05-10T17:47:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissDC.pdf: 1279892 bytes, checksum: 049b63912561fe29c0fa323e624ae408 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-08-16<br>Não recebi financiamento<br>The objective of this dissertation is demonstrate by means of a dialectical reading of Preface to Shakespeare (1765) by Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), that the reassessment of the doctrine of the units (action, time and place) no solely unveil the breaking of the English literary criticism with the classical aesthetic but the sign of a deep breaking of the English capitalist society from the eighteenth century with Ancien Régime. The issue (the reassessment of the doctrine of the units) consists in the defense that Johnson does in favor of Shakespeare's plays against the censures of other neoclassical critics, these influenced by French classicism. The defense that English critic undertook in favor of the English poet‘s dramas against the reproaches of neoclassical critics anticipated the rupture of the English criticism with the classical aesthetic. The proposal is treating of the literary and philosophical aspects involved in the chief theme, at last to amplify the horizon of reading through of the notions of structure of feeling by Raymond Williams (1977) and political unconscious by Jameson (1992).<br>O objetivo desta dissertação é demonstrar, por meio de uma leitura dialética do Preface to Shakespeare (1765) de Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), que a reavaliação das doutrinas das unidades (ação, tempo e lugar) não revela somente a ruptura da crítica literária inglesa com a estética clássica, mas o prenúncio de uma ruptura profunda da sociedade capitalista inglesa do século XVIII com o Ancien Régime. A seguinte questão (a reavaliação da doutrina das unidades) consiste na defesa que Johnson faz a favor das peças de Shakespeare, contra as censuras de outros críticos neoclássicos, estes influenciados pelo Classicismo francês. A defesa que Johnson empreende a favor dos dramas do poeta inglês, contra a acusação dos críticos neoclássicos, antecipa a ruptura da crítica inglesa com a estética clássica. A proposta é tratar dos aspectos literários e filosóficos envolvidos no tema principal, e por fim, ampliar o horizonte de leitura, através dos conceitos de structure of feeling de Raymond Williams (1977) e inconsciente político de Jameson (1992).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2001.<br>Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 237, 5 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 226-237).

This thesis is the first full-length study of the English clergyman and historian William Cave (1637-1713). As one of a number of Restoration divines invested in exploring the lives and writings of the early Christians, Cave has nonetheless won only meagre interest from early-modernists in the past decade. Among his contemporaries and well into the nineteenth century Cave’s vernacular biographies of the Apostles and Church Fathers were widely read, but it was with the two volumes of his Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Historia Literaria (1688 and 1698), his life’s work, that he made his most important and lasting contribution to scholarship. The first aim of the thesis is therefore to build on a recent quickening of research into the innovative early-modern genre of historia literaria by exploring how, why, and with what help, in the context of late seventeenth-century European intellectual culture, Cave decided to write a work of literary history. To do so it makes extensive use of the handwritten drafts, annotations, notebooks, and letters that he left behind, giving a comprehensive account of his reading and scholarly practices from his student-days in 1650s Cambridge and then as a young clergyman in the 1660s to his final, unsuccessful attempts to publish a revised edition of his book at the end of his life. Cave’s motives, it finds, were multiple, complex, and sometimes conflicting: they developed in response to the immediate practical concerns of the post-Restoration Church of England even as they reflected some of the deeper-lying tensions of late humanist scholarship. The second reason for writing a thesis about Cave is that it makes it possible to reconsider an influential historiographical narrative about the origins of the ‘modern’ disciplinary category of literature. Since the 1970s the consensus among scholars has been that the nineteenth-century definition of literature as imaginative fictions in verse and prose – in other words literature as it is now taught in schools and universities – more or less completely replaced the early-modern notion of literature, literae, as learned books of all kinds. This view is challenged in the final section of this thesis, which traces the influence of Cave’s work on some of the canonical authors of the English literary tradition, including Johnson and Coleridge. Coleridge’s example, in particular, helps us to see why Cave and scholars like him were excluded lastingly from genealogies of English studies in the twentieth century, despite having given the discipline many of its characteristic concerns and aversions.

Dans ce travail nous avons essayé d'interroger le rôle du corps entre le texte et la représentation et de voir dans quelles mesures il véhicule des éléments culturels. Les pièces et les représentations choisies sont de pays différents : La Mégère apprivoisée de Shakespeare produite au Canada, L'Ecole des femmes de Molière produite en Italie, Les Chaises de Ionesco produites en Tunisie et en Attendant Godot de Beckett produit en France. Nous avons structuré notre recherche en cinq parties basées sur trois axes. Le premier cherche à saisir la particularité des approches selon lesquelles fonctionne d'une part le texte, d'autre part la mise en scène. Il a pour but de comprendre la nature des outils avec lesquels auteur et metteur en scène travaillent. Cette étude permet, dans un second temps, de comparer l'image du corps produite d'après le texte à celle qui est produite par la représentation. Le troisième axe de notre étude essaye d'identifier la particularité du travail corporel et s'interroge sur les éléments culturels dont il est porteur. Ce travail prend pour appuie l'analyse des techniques de l'acteur les matériaux du travail du corps : l'énergie, l'émotion, la forme, le rythme, l'espace, l'interculturalité et les influences qu'elle exerce sur sa création théâtrale contemporaine.

In this project, I examine the impact of early literary criticism, early literary history, and the history of knowledge on the perception of the laureateship as it was formulated at specific moments in the eighteenth century. Instead of accepting the assessments of Pope and Johnson, I reconstruct the contemporary impact of laureate writings and the writing that fashioned the view of the laureates we have inherited. I use an array of primary documents (from letters and journal entries to poems and non-fiction prose) to analyze the way the laureateship as a literary identity was constructed in several key moments: the debate over hack literature in the pamphlet wars surrounding Elkanah Settle’s The Empress of Morocco (1673), the defense of Colley Cibber and his subsequent attempt to use his expertise of theater in An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740), the consolidation of hack literature and state-sponsored poetry with the crowning of Colley Cibber as the King of the Dunces in Pope’s The Dunciad in Four Books (1742), the fashioning of Thomas Gray and William Mason as laureate rejecters in Mason’s Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Whitehead (1788), Southey’s progressive work to abolish laureate task writing in his laureate odes 1813-1821, and, finally, in Wordsworth’s refusal to produce any laureate task writing during his tenure, 1843-1850. In each case, I explain how the construction of this office was central to the consolidation of literary history and to forging authorial identity in the same period. This differs from the conventional treatment of the laureates because I expose the history of the versions of literary history that have to date structured how scholars understand the laureate, and by doing so, reveal how the laureateship was used to create, legitimate and disseminate the model of literary history we still use today.

Contemporary scholarship has seen increasing interest in the study of elegy. The present work attempts to elevate and expand discussions of death and survival beyond the ambit of elegy to a more genre-inclusive and ethically sensitive survey of Romantic posthumous life writings. Combining an ethic of remembrance founded on mutual fulfilment and reciprocal care with the Romantic tendency to hybridise different genres of mourning and commemoration, the study re- conceives 'posthumous life' as the 'inexhaustible' product of endless collaboration between the dead, the dying and the living. This thesis looks to the philosophical meditations of Francis Bacon, John Locke and Emmanuel Levinas for an ethical framework of human protection, fulfilment and preservation. In an effort to locate the origin of posthumous life writing, the first chapter examines the philosophical context in which different genres and media of commemoration emerged in the eighteenth century. Accordingly, it will commence with a survey of Enlightenment attitudes toward posthumous sympathy and the threat of death. The second part of the chapter turns to the tangled histories of epitaph, biography, portraiture, sepulchre and elegy in the writings of Samuel Johnson, Henry Kett, Vicesimus Knox, William Godwin and William Wordsworth. The Romantic culture of mourning and commemoration inherits the intellectual and generic legacies of the Enlightenment. Hence, Chapter Two will try to uncover the complex generic and formal crossovers between epitaph, extempore, effusion, elegy and biography in Wordsworth's 'Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg' (1835-7) and his 'Epitaph' (1835-7) for Charles Lamb. However, the chapter also recognises the ethical repercussions of Wordsworth's inadequate, even mortifying, treatment of a fellow woman writer in his otherwise successful expression of ethical remembrance. To address the problem of gender in Romantic memorialisation, Chapter Three will take a close look at Letitia Elizabeth Landon' s reply to Wordsworth's incompetent defence of Felicia Hemans. Mediating the ambitions and anxieties of her subject, as well as her public image and private pain, 'Felicia Hemans' (1838) is an audacious composite of autograph, epitaph, elegy, corrective biography and visual portraiture. The two closing chapters respond to Thomas Carlyle's outspoken confidence in 'Portraits and Letters' as indispensable aids to biographies. Chapter Four identifies a tentative connection between the aesthetic of visual portraiture and the ethic of life writing. To demonstrate the convergence of both artistic and humane principles, this cross-media analysis will first evaluate Sir Joshua Reynolds's memoirs of his deceased friends. Then, it will compare Wordsworth's and Hemans's verse reflections on the commemorative power and limitation of iconography. The last chapter assesses the role of private correspondence in the continuation of familiar relation and reciprocal support. Landon's dramatic enactment of a 'feminine Robinson Crusoe' in her letters from Africa urges the unbroken offering of service and remembrance to a fallen friend through posthumous correspondence. The concluding section will consider the ethical implications for the belated memorials and services furnished by friends and colleagues in the wake of her death.

O foco dessa dissertação é analisar o papel, as características, e a presença dos bobos ao longo da história, focando em sua constante aparição no teatro. Os personagens principais da minha análise serão o Bobo, na peça Rei Lear de William Shakespeare, e Vladimir e Estragon, na peça Esperando Godot de Samuel Beckett. Na análise desses personagens, discuto semelhanças entre os autores, que já foram notadas por críticos como Martin Esslin, Jan Kott, e Northrop Frye, e mostro como os personagens de Beckett são similares aos bobos de Shakespeare. Bobos, no teatro, frequentemente agem como mediadores entre o palco e a plateia, guiando os espectadores e falando verdades. O Bobo de Lear diz verdades criticando seu mestre e o lembrando das decisões erradas que ele tomou; os personagens em Esperando Godot dizem verdades sobre a falta de sentido de nossas vidas e, mais importante, nos mostram essa falta de sentido no decorrer da peça. Em relação à linguagem, o uso dela pelos bobos é diferente do uso dos outros personagens porque eles a manipulam para criar desentendimentos e jogos de palavras. No teatro de Shakespeare, a principal razão para esse uso peculiar da linguagem é que os bobos querem mostrar sua sagacidade; no teatro de Beckett, eles usam uma linguagem sem sentido para mostrar que ela está quebrada e que tentativas de comunicação são inúteis. Através das ações e diálogos dos bobos de Beckett em Esperando Godot, podemos ver que a vida é absurda e que vivemos em um mundo cheio de incertezas. Apesar de personagens bobos geralmente serem vistos como superficiais e insignificantes, especialmente nas peças de Shakespeare, eles são extremamente importantes no teatro e têm uma maneira única de interagir com os outros personagens e com o público.<br>The focus of this thesis is to analyze the role, characteristics, and presence of fools throughout history, focusing on their recurrence in the theater. The characters I will focus on are Lear's Fool in William Shakespeare's King Lear, and Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, discussing similarities between the two authors, which have been mentioned by critics such as Martin Esslin, Jan Kott and Northrop Frye, and showing how Beckett's characters are similar to Shakespearean fools. Fools in the theater often act as mediators between the stage and the audience, guiding spectators and telling truths. Lear's Fool tells truths by criticizing his master and reminding him of the wrong decisions he has made; the characters in Waiting for Godot tell truths about the meaninglessness of life and, most importantly, show us this meaninglessness throughout the play. The use of language by fools is different from that of other characters because they manipulate it to create misunderstandings and word games. In Shakespeare's theater, the main reason for this peculiar use of language is that fools want to show their wit; in Beckett's theater, the characters use nonsensical language to show that language has broken down and that attempts at communication are pointless. Through the actions and dialogues of Beckett's fools in Waiting for Godot, we can see that life is absurd and that we live in a world full of uncertainties. In spite of the fact that fool characters are often seen as shallow and insignificant, especially in Shakespeare's theater, they are of extreme importance in the theater and have a unique manner of interacting with other characters and with the audience.

Doctor of Philosophy<br>This thesis examines the transmission of Protestantism to Australia by the early British colonists and its consequences for their engagement with the land between 1788 and 1850. It explores the ways in which colonists gave religious meaning to their surrounds, particularly their use of exile and exodus narratives to describe journeying to the colony and their sense of their destination as a site of banishment, a wilderness or a Promised Land. The potency of these scriptural images for colonising Europeans has been recognised in North America and elsewhere: this study establishes and details their significance in early colonial Australia. This thesis also considers the ways in which colonists’ Protestant values mediated their engagement with their surrounds and informed their behaviour towards the land and its indigenous inhabitants. It demonstrates that leading Protestants asserted and acted upon their particular values for industry, order, mission and biblicism in ways that contributed to the transformation of Aboriginal land. From the physical changes wrought by industrious agricultural labour through to the spiritual transformations achieved by rites of consecration, their specifically Protestant values enabled Britons to inhabit the land on familiar material and cultural terms. The structural basis for this study is provided by thematic biographies of five prominent colonial Protestants: Richard Johnson, Samuel Marsden, William Grant Broughton, John Wollaston and John Dunmore Lang. The private and public writings of these men are examined in light of the wider literature on religion and colonialism and environmental history. By delineating the significance of Protestantism to individual colonists’ responses to the land, this thesis confirms the trend of much recent British and Australian historiography towards a more religious understanding of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Its overarching argument is that Protestantism helped lay the foundation for colonial society by encouraging the transformation of the environment according to the colonists’ values and needs, and by providing ideological support for the British use and occupation of the territory. Prominent Protestants applied their religious ideas to Australia in ways that tended to assist, legitimate or even necessitate the colonisation of the land.

En la primera parte de la tesis se establece una comparación entre dos obras metateatrales de finales del siglo XVIII, La comedia nueva de Leandro Fernández de Moratín y The Critic de Sheridan. Estas obras son examinadas en el contexto de las polémicas teatrales que se produjeron durante el siglo en España y en Inglaterra. La segunda parte de la tesis explora las razones de una discrepancia. A pesar de ser muchas las similitudes entre el panorama teatral dieciochesco en los dos países, en España la solución a un panorama que los neoclásicos consideran deplorable se plantea en términos de una “reforma” y esta es auspiciada por el gobierno; en Inglaterra no sucede nada parecido. En esta parte del trabajo se parte de algunas obras de crítica capitales y, al hilo de los temas que tratan sus autores, se examina el distinto valor, peso o significado de algunos “telones de fondo” de la crítica inglesa y española de la época: el patriotismo, la religión, la política… De esta manera se llega a las diferencias en las circunstancias históricas de ambos países que contribuyen a explicar la ausencia de una “guerra teatral” en Inglaterra. Así, por ejemplo, un factor que modifica sustancialmente la simetría del paralelismo que en principio pudiera establecerse entre las polémicas teatrales que se dan en ambos países es el religioso. Debido al papel que los puritanos habían desempeñado en la historia de Inglaterra, los ataques virulentos al mundo teatral son allí ligeramente sospechosos, y ni el gobierno whig ni la monarquía de Hanover se plantearon intervenir activamente en una reforma teatral. Pero los puritanos y las clases medias, de gustos más remilgados que el público de la Restauración, tuvieron la fuerza suficiente como para influir en el curso del teatro creando un clima del que nació la comedia sentimental.<br>In the first part of the thesis a comparison is drawn between two metatheatrical plays from the end of the 18th century, Leandro Fernández de Moratín’s La comedia nueva and Sheridan’s The Critic. These plays are examined in the context of the theatrical controversies that took place during the 18th century in England and Spain. In the second part of the thesis the reasons for a disparity are explored; for even though the theatrical situation in both countries is very similar, in Spain the answer to a theatrical scene considered deplorable by the neoclassicists is presented in terms of a “reform”, which is moreover backed by the government. Nothing of the kind happens in England. In this part of the thesis, and starting from some capital critical works and the topics discussed by their authors, I look into the different value, weight or meaning of a few “backdrops” in Spanish and English criticism of the time: patriotism, religion, politics… This brings us to the differences in the historical circumstances of both countries that help to explain the absence of a “theatrical war” in England. Religion, for instance, is one factor that substantially modifies the symmetry of the parallelism that could initially be established between the theatrical polemics that take place in both countries. Owing to the role the Puritans had played in the history of England, virulent attacks on the theatre are slightly suspect there, and neither the Whig administration nor the Hanoverian monarchy considered actively intervening in a theatrical reform. But the Puritans and the middle classes, more prudish in their tastes than the audience of the Restoration, had enough weight to affect the course of the drama by creating an atmosphere out of which the sentimental comedy was born.

La thèse analyse l’œuvre de Cioran (1911-1995) et ses rapports avec l’espace littéraire et culturel anglo-américain de la perspective de la littérature comparée et de la po(ï)étique. La première partie présente les principales catégories des matériaux anglo-américains, les raisons qui déterminent leur élection et leur convocation dans l’espace de création cioranien. Après l’étude des enjeux de la lecture, le geste fondamental de collection des matériaux, nous nous intéressons à la manière dont l’auteur emploie ses notes de lecture (de Shakespeare, des poètes romantiques, de Swift, Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Emily Brontë, de Beckett et Fitzgerald) dans la création de ses textes. Nous interrogerons les Cahiers et une partie des manuscrits afin de découvrir les principales coordonnées qui régissent l’état de préparation de l’œuvre. Les diverses transformations des matériaux anglo-américains et leurs formes de combinaison seront examinées en fonction de deux gestes fondamentaux : le bricolage (la traduction) et le collage-assemblage (l’épigraphe, la citation, la reprise et la référence). La dernière partie explore les divers parcours des matériaux anglo-américains dans l’œuvre et la spécificité de l’écriture aphoristique, la recherche de la formule d’écriture se transformant en une recherche d’une formule de soi. Le moi « à fragments » serait pour Cioran un moi à formules anglo-américaines, l’identité se construisant dans les moments de contact entre les textes et l’ego scriptor. L’intertextualité apparaît comme une forme d’impersonnalisation créatrice, l’identité altérée étant investiguée en trois temps : « se vouloir l’autre », « devenir l’autre » et « dépasser l’autre »<br>The thesis analyzes the work of Cioran (1911-1995) and its relationship with the Anglo-American literary and cultural space from the perspective of the comparative literature and of the po(ï)etics. The first part presents the main categories of Anglo-American materials, the reasons which determine their election and their convocation in the space of creation. After the study of the importance of reading, the fundamental gesture of collection of materials, we are interested in the way in which the author employs his reading notes (of Shakespeare, of the romantic poets, of Swift, Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Emily Brontë, of Beckett or Fitzgerald) in the creation of his texts. We will question the Cahiers and a part of manuscripts in order to discover the main coordinates which govern the state of preparation of the work. The various transformations of the Anglo-American materials and their forms of combination will be examined according to two fundamental gestures: the bricolage (the translation) and the collage-assemblage (the epigraph, the quotation, the repetition and the reference). The last part explores the different itineraries of the Anglo-American materials in the work and the specificity of the aphoristic writing, the search of the formula of writing becoming a quest of a formula of the self. The “fragmented self” would be for Cioran a “self of Anglo-American formulae”, the identity being built in the moments of contact between the texts and the ego scriptor. The intertextuality seems a form of creative impersonnalisation, the altered identity being investigated at three levels: “to want to be the other one”, “to become the other one” and “to exceed the other one”

Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth’s last favorite and the last man she executed for treason, has been harshly treated by posterity. Given his leading role at court in what Patrick Collinson calls the “nasty nineties,” Essex has taken much of the blame for the divisive factional politics of Elizabeth’s final decade. However, leading recent efforts to salvage Essex’s reputation, historian Paul Hammer has uncovered a sophisticated bureaucracy operated by highly educated scholars and led by an intelligent, cultivated statesman. A considerable number of high-profile literary figures, moreover, willingly engaged with this ambitiously expanding Essex faction. This thesis proposes that evidence of interference by the censor and the Privy Council, sensitive to a politicized historiography promoting the Earl’s interests chiefly on London’s stages, discloses the presence of a loose, autonomous federation of authors associated with the Essex and post-Essex factions between 1590 and 1610. This thesis considers the suspected works of an eclectic group of writers bonded by their ideological affiliations with Essex’s “radical moderatism”: civil lawyer John Hayward’s prose history of The Life and Raigne of Henrie IIII (1599); William Shakespeare’s second “tetralogy” (1595-99) dealing with the same historical period; Samuel Daniel’s closet drama of the downfall of the Greek general Philotas (1605); and innovative playwright George Chapman’s double tragedy set in France, The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608). I situate these authors within the intellectual and public relations wing of the Essex circle in order to consider how they made contact with the center and with each other, and where they resided within the broader operation of the faction; what they offered and what they expected in return; how they shaped political thinking and how their dramaturgy developed as a consequence; whether they were attracted by the purse or the person; and to what extent they were artistically or ideologically motivated. In considering, finally, whether these writers worked in collaboration or alone, on message or off-the-cuff, as propagandists or political commentators, I illuminate the critically neglected role of the factional writer in early modern England.<br>text

My dissertation revises our assumptions about the Renaissance commonplace that poetic monuments last longer than marble ones. We tend to understand the commonplace as being about the materiality of artistic media and thus the comparative durability of text and stone. In contrast, I argue that English Renaissance poets and theorists treat the monument of verse as a space where their hopes for the poem’s future converge with broader cultural concerns about the reception of the ancient past and the place of English vernacular poetry within the hierarchy of classical and contemporary European letters. In Renaissance poetics manuals, authors appropriate a newly classicizing architectural vocabulary to communicate confidence in the lasting power of English poetic structures. Through their use of architectural metaphors, they defend their vernacular against charges of vulgar barbarism and promote the civilizing potential of English verse. Yet if lyric poets also turn to architectural metaphors to make claims about poetry’s enduring quality, they simultaneously disclose a deep unease about the perils of textual transmission. Indeed, monumentalizing conceits often appear most powerfully in poetic genres predicated on failed hopes and frustrated desires, that is, in the sonnet sequences and complaints of Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, and William Shakespeare. In acknowledging the fragility of the textual and architectural remains of antiquity, lyric poets from Spenser forward consider their own textual futures with an entirely new sense of urgency. I argue, however, that their unease about the future of their art has as much to do with the genres in which they write and their suspicions about the shifting reading practices of future audiences as it does with the material vulnerability of the medium that transmits that art. In the sonnet sequence in particular, lyric poets who monumentalize their beloved partake in—and anxiously question—early modern practices of constructing funeral monuments for the living. I argue that these poets’ fantasy of entombing those who are still in the prime of their lives turns out to be less about a future rebirth than an obsessive, premature preparation for death.<br>text

This dissertation explores how the mythological heroines from Ovid‘s Heroides and Metamorphoses were cataloged, conflated, reconceived, and recontextualized in vernacular literature; in so doing, it joins considerations of voice, authority, and gender with reflections on Tudor technologies of textual reproduction and ideas about the book. In the late medieval and Renaissance eras, Ovid‘s poetry stimulated the imaginations of authors ranging from Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower to Isabella Whitney, William Shakespeare, and Michael Drayton. Ovid‘s characteristic bookishness—his interest in textual revision and his thematization of the physicality and malleability of art in its physical environments—was not lost upon these postclassical interpreters who engaged with his polysemous cast of female characters. His numerous English protégés replicated and expanded Ovid‘s metatextual concerns by reading and rewriting his metamorphic poetry in light of the metaphors through which they understood both established networks of scribal dissemination and emergent modes of printed book production. My study of Greco-Roman tradition and English bibliofictions (or fictive representations of books, their life cycles, and the communication circuits in which they operate) melds literary analysis with the theoretical concerns of book history by focusing on intersections and interactions between physical, metaphorical, and imaginary books. I posit the Tudor book as a site of complex cultural and literary negotiations between real and inscribed, historical and fictional readers, editors, commentators, and authors, and, as my discussion unfolds, I combine bibliographical, historical, and literary perspectives as a means to understanding both the reception of Ovidian poetry in English literature and Ovid‘s place in the history of books. This dissertation thus contributes to a growing body of book history criticism while also modeling a bibliographically enriched approach to the study of late medieval and Renaissance intertextuality.