Dutton, Amanda M.

The use of death iconography, especially in the mode of memento mori, was a prevalent and effective means of conveying the Roman Catholic Church’s message of eternal reward through faith to provide hope to those who would follow. This contributed to the success of the Church’s internal reformation in the 16th century. This dissertation will explore a heretofore unexamined shift in the specific artistic mode of memento mori and its rhetorical function in ameliorating the image of the Church during the Counter- Reformation. Specifically, it examines in the mode of sculpture, the works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and the Ossuary of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini; for the mode of painting, the works of Michelangelo Caravaggio and Pietro da Cortona; and for the mode of literature, the works of Giambattista Marino and Cesare Ripa. The artists and works selected for this study provide salient examples of memento mori of the Italian Baroque and its rhetorical function in the preservation of the Catholic faith. These works mark a distinct shift from the medieval modes of death representation which also indicates a shift in presentation of teleological theology in the eschatological message of the Church that is at the core of the faith. This change in rhetorical approach had a positive effect on the Church’s image and reputation that would comfort followers and encourage new converts. Close reading is performed on each of the sample works and their embedded rhetoric is examined. Since the fear of death and the hope for eternal life are the driving sentiments that these works evoke, their power to influence people is strong. Naturally, this increased the chances of the message of the Church being recognized, remembered, and spread. The use of transformed death iconography, especially in the mode of memento mori, was a prevalent and effective means of conveying the Church’s message of eternal reward through faith to provide hope to those who would follow. This contributed, in part, to the success of the Roman Catholic Church’s internal reformation at the time of the Protestant Schism in the 16th century.

Scholars have well established the influence of the Old and Middle English, Norse, Welsh, and also Medieval Latin and Christian mythologies that influenced the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. In particular, the mythology contained in The Silmarillion, specific the cosmology, behaves as sacred texts do in the primary world and mirrors a number of extant mythologies when they are directly compared. Several scholars have note, but as yet no one has studied in depth, the relationship between the cosmology the The Silmarillion to that of a number of extant ancient Near Eastern mythologies. This thesis seeks to address that gap in the scholarship by specifically exploring Tolkien's mythological creation story in relation to those of the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Abrahamic of the Near East. Such a comparative study reveals a number of structural and thematic parallels that attest to the complexity of Tolkien's work that and can be used to argue that his mythology can be considered as well-developed and surprisingly authentic as any of these ancient mythological traditions.