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This thesis attempts to construct an understanding of a sixteenth-century girdle book now held at the British Museum in London. With the exception of a few articles and catalog entries, primarily written by the British scholar Hugh Tait, the Tudor Girdle Book has received very little attention by art historians. It is one of a handful of examples of sixteenth-century precious girdle books, a unique decorative object used exclusively by European noblewomen during the Renaissance. Despite its relative obscurity, I argue that the Tudor Girdle Book offers insights into life at the Tudor court in the 1540s, particularly the role of women in the English Reformation. Furthermore, the replacement interior text, a set of prayers written by Elizabeth Tyrwhit and inserted in the 1570s, indicates a revival interest during the reign of Elizabeth I in the reformist women who surrounded Henry VIII’s last queen, Katherine Parr. Using existing scholarship on the history of the book and women's fashion, along with portraits, inventories, letters, and other extant bindings, I examine how this girdle book, like a court lady, was designed to navigate the precarious experience of Henry's court. The Tudor Girdle Book was a fashionable item, but flexible enough to withstand the whims of the changing English state

Both Kant and Hegel were concerned with the possibility of unifying the notions of right and duty within an overarching ethical theory. Kant's Metaphysics of Morals (MdS ) is a paradigmatic example of a failed attempt at this kind of unification. Hegel's Philosophy of Right (PR ), it is argued, both inherits and overcomes the problems inherent in Kant's work. This dissertation, with its emphasis on the importance of connecting right and duty in a systematic ethics, provides a new critique of the MdS and an account of the PR as putting forth an ethics that corresponds to the actual motivational structure of moral agents. Chapter One demonstrates that Kant's attempt to unify the concepts of right and duty in the MdS fails. It is argued here that Kant grounds the concept of right within his moral framework and thus absorbs right entirely into his ethics. Chapter Two addresses early Hegelian sources that seriously engage Kant's MdS . Emphasis is placed upon the way in which the concern of Hegel's project in the PR , the unification of right and duty, is present in his earliest work and the fact that the narrative that Hegel puts forth is a direct reading of and response to Kant's MdS . Chapter Three treats the realms of abstract right and morality that Hegel constructs in the PR with a focus on how Hegel both appropriates the structure of MdS and levels an implicit critique at Kant. This chapter pays special attention to the way in which Hegel ensures the distinction between right and morality while binding them together inextricably. Chapter Four concludes that what can be gained through Hegel's successful integration of right and duty lies in his "right of subjective satisfaction," the right of the subject to find her satisfaction in whatever action she may be obligated to perform. In this way, right and duty become united within the subject, and as a result she has a right to identify with her actions in order to truly consider herself a free agent.