Milton and romance: vernacular romance and chivalric traditions in Paradise Lost

The thesis examines Milton's strategic use of romance in Paradise Lost, arguing that such a handling of romance is a provocative realignment of its values according to the poet’s Christian focus. The thesis argues that Milton's use of romance is not simply the importation of a tradition into the poem; it entails a backward judgement on that tradition, defining its idealising tendencies as fundamentally misplaced. The thesis also examines the Caroline uses of romance and chivalry in the 1630s to provide a vision of British unification, and Milton's reaction to this political agenda.

A nation preferring visions: moving statues, apparitions and vernacular religion in contemporary Ireland

This thesis examines important issues of Irish vernacular Catholicism, Irish religious and cultural identities, the impacts of modernity plus socio-religious and economic change on traditional religiosity, sacred landscape and topophilia, religious material culture, folk and individual creativity, gender roles and expectations, and devotional subcultures through the vehicle of Marian apparitions and their aftermath in the Republic of Ireland in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This thesis examines in detail five Irish Marian shrines as case studies; Knock shrine (Co. Mayo), Ballinspittle and Mitchelstown grottoes (Co. Cork), Mount Melleray grotto (Co. Waterford) and the Marian shrines of Inchigeela in West Cork and the attached houses of prayer. Key themes include; vernacular religious theory; the nature of Irish indigenous Catholicism; local, global and transnational trends in contemporary Irish devotional life; areas of individual creativity, fluidity and agency in Marian devotion; and the vital role and influence of material culture in and on local and individual religiosity.

Between respectability and disgrace: schismogenesis and the regeneration of inequality, stigma and social exclusion in Limerick

The thesis examines cultural processes underpinning the emergence, institutionalisation and reproduction of class boundaries in Limerick city. The research aims to bring a new understanding to the contemporary context of the city’s urban regeneration programme. Acknowledging and recognising other contemporary studies of division and exclusion, the thesis creates a distinctive approach which focuses on uncovering the cultural roots of inequality, educational disadvantage, stigma and social exclusion and the dynamics of their social reproduction. Using Bateson’s concept of schismogenesis (1953), the thesis looks to the persistent, but fragmented culture of community and develops a heuristic ‘symbolic order of the city’. This is defined as “…a cultural structure, the meaning making aspect of hierarchy, the categorical structures of world understanding, the way Limerick people understand themselves, their local and larger world” (p. 37). This provides a very different departure point for exploring the basis for urban regeneration in Limerick (and everywhere). The central argument is that if we want to understand the present (multiple) crises in Limerick we need to understand the historical, anthropological and recursive processes underpinning ‘generalised patterns of rivalry and conflict’. In addition to exploring the historical roots of status and stigma in Limerick, the thesis explores the mythopoesis of persistent, recurrent narratives and labels that mark the boundaries of the city’s identities. The thesis examines the cultural and social function of ‘slagging’ as a vernacular and highly particularised form of ironic, ritualised and, often, ‘cruel’ medium of communication (often exclusion). This is combined with an etymology of the vocabulary of Limerick slang and its mythological base. By tracing the origins of many normalised patterns of Limerick speech ‘sayings’, which have long since forgotten their roots, the thesis demonstrates how they perform a significant contemporary function in maintaining and reinforcing symbolic mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion. The thesis combines historical and archival data with biographical interviews, ethnographic data married to a deep historical hermeneutic analysis of this political community.

Reading Lydgate's Troy Book: patronage, politics, and history in Lancastrian England

This thesis, Reading Lydgate's Troy Book: Patronage, Politics and History in Lancastrian England, discusses the relationship between John Lydgate as a court poet to his patron Henry V. I contend that the Troy Book is explored as a vehicle to propagate the idea that the House of Lancaster is the legitimate successor to King Richard II in order to smooth over the usurpation of 1399. Paul Strohm's England's Empty Throne was a key influence to the approach of this thesis' topic. I examine that although Chaucer had a definitive impact on Lydgate's writing, Lydgate is able to manipulate this influence for his own ambitions. In order to enhance his own fame, Lydgate works to promote Chaucer's canon so that as Chaucer's successor, he will inherit more prestige. The Trojan war is seen in context with the Hundred Years War, and can be applied contextually to political events. Lydgate presents characters that are vulnerable to human failings, and their assorted, complicated relationships. Lydgate modernises the Troy Book to reflect and enhance his Lancastrian society, and the thesis gives a contextual view of Lydgate's writing of the Troy Book. Lydgate writes for a more varied target audience than his thirteenth-century source, Guido delle Colonne, and there is a deliberation on the female characters of the Troy Book which promulgates the theory that Lydgate takes a proactive and empathetic interest in women's roles in society. Furthermore Lydgate has never really been accepted as a humanist, and I look at Lydgate's work from a different angle; he is a self-germinating humanist. Lydgate revives antiquity to educate his fifteenth-century audience, and his ambition is to create a memorial for his patron in the vernacular, and enhance his own fame as a poet separate from Chaucer's shadow.

Talom Rukbo and the Donyipolo Yelam Kebang: restructuring Adi religious practices in Arunachal Pradesh, Northeast India

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine and contextualize the recent changes in the articulation of Donyipolo faith among the indigenous community of the Adi from the 1980s until the present. This is achieved by documenting both ‘non-formalized’ and ‘formalized’ belief and ritual within this Eastern Himalayan community. Since the mid-1980s, the Adi – led by indigenous activist Talom Rukbo and the Donyipolo Yelam Kebang (Donyipolo Faith Council) – have been restructuring Donyipolo to fit the model of more mainstream religions via a series of processes that could be called ‘formalization’ or ‘institutionalization’, a reformation blueprint that has subsequently spread to neighboring ethnic groups. This ethnography, exploring both folk practice and the modern reformation, is rooted in radical empiricism – in this context, meaning to collect data and allow analysis to arise organically. Radical empiricism is employed alongside vernacular theorizing to allow for the acknowledgement of indigenous theory through which we can trace indigenous agencies and the construction of indigenous lifeworlds. Facilitating this space for the acknowledgement of ‘religious re-imaginings’ as a means of cultural preservation – and as a representation of creativity – is significant particularly when viewed in the context of contemporary research on similar movements in Northeast India, which sometimes tends toward the negation of indigenous innovation by representing such religious revivals as conversion tools attributed to the Hindu right. It is hoped that the reader will come away from this dissertation with an understanding of the ‘constellations of faith’ that comprise ‘traditional’ Donyipolo and a comprehension of the innovative institutionalization processes that have shaped the new Adi praxis. Donyipolo should be viewed as a complex, nuanced, and independent indigenous faith, whether in its forms of folk expressions or in its new structure as expressed through the Donyipolo Yelam Kebang.