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Recently, scholars have argued that poetry provided the foundations for the development of rhetoric in antiquity. Lyric poetry in particular functioned as epideictic performance, a public, generalized art able to encompass a range of rhetorical motives. I propose that poetry played a similar role in early modern England, especially in the development of the devotional lyric. This contrasts with the prevailing view, that poetry served a primarily dialectical role in humanistic classroom and, more broadly, acted as a propaedeutic to ethical and philosophical instruction. I argue that these different uses of poetry actually represent two coevolving traditions centered on two competing ideas about the goal of poetry: "performative" poetics sees poetry as a situationally-defined, rhetorical art of invention; "paideutic" poetics sees poetry as a hermeneutic art that trains ethical and philosophical judgment. I examine how these traditions manifest themselves in Renaissance poetics, particularly in George Puttenham's Art of English Poesy and in William Scott's Model of Poesy. The former imagines poetry to be a performative, courtly art, where rhetoric and poetry are fundamentally alike; the latter sees poetry as a theoretical art of moral instruction defined by an Aristotelian criterion of mimesis. I argue that these traditions also influence the religious lyrics of George Herbert and John Donne. Herbert and Donne, I suggest, innovate within these two very different paradigms: Herbert treats his lyrics as public, liturgical performances, while Donne sees his as "literary critical" artifacts meant to exercise practical judgment and train aristocratic taste.

Recent scholarship which addresses the presence in George Herbert's poetry of both a rhetoric of courtesy and of Christian piety generally regards the two as incompatible; scholars have sought to show that Herbert renounced this courtly rhetoric entirely, incorporated it somewhat reluctantly into his poetry, or was unable to suppress its global influence on his poetic method. I argue that what previous authors have neglected to consider when accounting for the relationship of courtly rhetoric to Herbert's piety is the analogous function easing anxiety has in both courtesy theory and Reformed approaches to pastoral care. To this end, I aim to demonstrate that Herbert (who was himself a parson) incorporates into his major work, The Temple, a method of easing anxiety that Calvinism obviates: how to gauge and improve one's "rank" or status with regard to election or reprobation. Calvinism, specifically the "experimental predestinarian" tradition in England, transposes matters of agency from the sphere of works to that of faith, to the act of discovering evidence of one's election by close scrutiny of one's disposition toward believing. This, I claim, is similar to courtesy theory's aim to provide a metric for self-advancing conduct. I make the case that the overlap between the therapeutic functions of both predestinarian theology and courtesy theory can be located in the argument for aesthetic discernment found in George Puttenham's poetry manual/courtesy book, The Art of English Poesy. Rather than presenting rules of decorum, Puttenham presents extensive examples that, if one is able to discern from them rules of conduct, argue tacitly for the reader's the requisite faculty of discernment. By presenting a large number of elaborate poetic conceits, I believe that Herbert engages in a process that, by thematizing extensively in his poetry the complexities of Christian conduct, argues in turn for a similarly ingrained faculty of discernment; the ability to discern the "correct" rendering of doctrine in Herbert's poetry functions as evidence of election. Herbert thus works to ameliorate anxieties surrounding matters of election by integrating a pastoral role into his lyrics not wholly at odds with matters of self-advancement.

This thesis consists of phase equilibrium studies based on newly measured thermochemical/thermophysical data and a thermobarometric and isotopic study of a high-grade metamorphic terrane in the northern Wind River Range, Wyoming. The heat capacity of natural monticellite (Ca$\sb{1.00}$Mg$\sb{0.91}$Fe$\sb{0.09}$Mn$\sb{0.01}$Si$\sb{0.99}$O$\sb{3.99})$ was measured between 13 and 1000 K using low-temperature adiabatic calorimetry and differential scanning calorimetry. The following entropy equation is valid for end-member monticellite between 298-1000K: S$\sbsp{\rm T}{\circ}$ (J$\cdot$mol$\sp{-1.}$K$\sp{-1}$) = S$\sbsp{298}{\circ}$ + 164.79InT + 15.337$\sp{.}10\sp{-3}$T + 22.791$\sp{.}10\sp5$T$\sp{-2} - $968.94, where S$\sbsp{298}{\circ} = 109.4 \pm 0.2$ J$\sp{.}$mol$\sp{-1.}$K$\sp{-1}$. A best fit to the available experiments on monticellite-bearing equilibria is made when S$\sbsp{\rm 289 (merwinite)}{\circ}$ = 250.2 J$\sp{.}$mol$\sp{-1.}$K$\sp{-1}$ and the effects of solid solution between forsterite and monticellite in the original experiments are considered. The reaction sodalite = nepheline + NaCl (s) was reversed at high pressure, (923 K, 7.4-7.6 kbar; 1023 K, 7.8-8.0 kbar; 1123 K, 8.4-8.6 kbar) and the reaction sodalite = carnegieite + NaCl (l) was reversed at 1 bar (1636-1646 K). The calculated slope for the first reaction is $-$9.0 bar/K compared to the experimental slope of +5.3 bar/K. This discrepancy is eliminated if it is assumed that the experimental sodalite has nearly complete Al/Si disorder. Pressure/temperature estimates from the Archean granulite-facies rocks of the northern Wind River Range, Wyoming are 800 $\pm$ 50$\sp\circ$C/8 $\pm$ 1 kbar, 750 $\pm$ 50$\sp\circ$C/6.0 $\pm$.05 kbar and 650 $\pm$ 50$\sp\circ$C/5.5 $\pm$ 0.5 kbar from mineral inclusions within garnet and the core and rim compositions of groundmass phases, respectively. The inferred clockwise P-T path for the terrane is consistent with a tectonic regime of thickened crust followed by early rapid decompression and later slow cooling and uplift. Oxygen isotope fractionations between quartz and magnetite in the iron formations are 8$\perthous$ (600$\sp\circ$C) in the central portion of the iron formation boudins and 10$\perthous$ (500$\sp\circ$C) near the contact with the surrounding granitic orthogneiss. Greater deformation in the marginal portions of the iron formations may explain the lower isotopic temperature estimates. Retrograde exchange by oxygen self diffusion should continue down to 500$\sp\circ$C if the experimental diffusion coefficients are correct. In order to preserve 600$\sp\circ$C, diffusion rates in $\alpha$-quartz must be 2.5 $\times$ 10$\sp{-18}$ cm/sec$\sp2$, two orders of magnitude lower than the experimental value. Water enhances oxygen diffusion rates in silicates. The diffusion experiments were conducted in the presence of water whereas the iron formations cooled under fluid-absent conditions.