An overlooked thesis

I have tried to gather information on academic theses concerning Thomas Adams but had so far missed this interesting 1951 thesis by T B Hoover. The interesting thing here is the more theological angle. See this page for access.

Other Theses

Other theses discovered through Proquest (besides those by Moira Baker and Chares Ernst) are:

1. FLANAGAN, Vincent Cabell
A Survey of the Life and Works of Thomas Adams
(Diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1954)

2. HARRALSON, David Mills
The Sermons of Thomas Adams
(Diss. Kent State University, 1969)

3. HEDGES, James Laurence
Thomas Adams and the Ministry of Moderation

(Diss. University of California, Riverside, 1974)

4. PRIOR, Francis Xavier (1926-2006)
Animal Analogy in the Writings of Thomas Adams
(Diss. St John's University (New York), 1969)

5. WILT, Lloyd Paul
An Edition of the Characters of Thomas Adams
(Diss. Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1973)

Also note

PASSARELLA, Lee Joseph
Testimony of God: The Works of Robert Harris, 1654, A Selection and Study

(Diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1986)
This study of Puritan and Westminster Divine Robert Harris (1581-1658) looks at 15 of his sermons and sermon series. Besides a detailed commentary and complete textual notes, the edition is prefaced with a history of the English Puritan sermon, as well as a biography and a study of style and important themes in his works. The sermons are compared with those of Thomas Adams and others - concluding that, like Adams, Harris is a transitional figure in seventeenth-century prose, one who mediates between an earlier, more florid style and the plain style, in its ascendancy during Harris's creative life.

Thesis 02 Ernst

Another thesis found through Proquest is this one

ERNST, Charles Albert Scheuringer

Contextualizing the character: Generic studies of text and canon, rhetoric, style and quantitative analysis in the seventeenth century English prose character.
(Diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1988)
Abstract: The intent of the study is to contextualize the seventeenth-century English prose character as a significant object of critical inquiry through the textual, generic, canonical, rhetorical, and stylistic traditions informing it. Moreover, the first quantitative analysis of the character's structure and (prospectively) of its style aims at a generic "modeling" of the character by the enumerative inventories of descriptive statistics. Chapter One places character studies within contemporary theory and criticism.
Chapter Two considers the economy of texts in publishing records of character books by Joseph Hall, the Overburians, John Stephens, Nicholas Breton, John Earle and Richard Brathwait, and provides an updated survey of scholarship on the character.
Chapter Three clarifies, against the background of type charactery, the "universe" of characters forming the canon of the "charactering" genre by surveying texts from 319 BC (the Theophrastan sketches) to 1710-12, a terminus ad quem accommodating later criticism of the character's style.
Chapter Four shows how type charactery was preserved through rhetorical instruction from classical antiquity to the Renaissance in treatments of epideictic oratory, decorum and figures of characterization and description, culminating in the eventual transmission of character-writing into the English grammar school curriculum by the hitherto unacknowledged influence of Joshua Poole's English Parnassus (1657), along with Ralph Johnson's frequently cited Scholar's Guide (1665).
Chapter Five inscribes the character within the linguistic history and stylistic development of Renaissance England by establishing the "charactering" style as a variant of Baroque prose and, more parochially, of English Senecanism, with attention to the latter's stylistic relation to Euphuism and to the hybrid style of Thomas Adams' characters.
Chapter Six provides the first quantitative study of the character's structure by systematically analyzing six complete textual populations (by Hall, the Overburians, Stephens, Breton, Earle and Brathwait) to obtain a census of numerical data establishing a normative range of values for selected structural components.
Chapter Seven considers the character as a quantitative model of English Senecanism by theorizing the basis for a stylo-statistical profile of character-writing from a numerical census of syntactic variables in complete populations.
Chapter Eight summarizes all findings.

Thesis 01 Baker

At least 8 academic theses have been written on Thomas Adams in the last 40 or 50 years. These are written chiefly within the discipline of an English Literature approach rather than anythuing more strictly theological. I have gleaned this information from ProQuest. The first of these is

BAKER, Moira Phyllis

The Homileic Satires of Thomas Adams

(Diss. University of Notre Dame, 1982)

Abstract: The present study offers a reading of the sermons of Thomas Adams in the light of the theological, homiletic, and literary traditions familiar to him. The purpose of such a reading is to discern Adams' distinctive homiletic mode and to demonstrate how his characteristic manner enables him to work upon the mind and affections of his auditors in order to initiate in them the process of conversion. In so doing, the work advances the thesis that the most characteristic mode in Adams' sermons is satirical as he seeks to rebuke sin and initiate the process of conversion in his auditors. In arguing this thesis, the study attempts to demonstrate how Adams uses satiric structure, the satiric prose character," satiric imagery, and the range of tones available to the satirist in order to advance his auditors along the successive stages of the morphology of conversion as defined by Puritan theologians. The thesis is based on the assumption that the Puritan theology of conversion provided preachers with a psychic model which presents the movement and renewal of the psychological faculties necessary for conversion. The study then proceeds to demonstrate how Adams uses the structure, technique, and style of satire in order to enact, through the experience of the sermon, the process of conversion in the faculties of his auditors.
Chapter 1 provides biographical and bibliographical information on Adams and isolates his central concern with conversion.
Chapter 2 studies the structure of Adams' sermons in light of both the homiletic structures advanced by contemporary ecclesiastical rhetoricians and the structure present in much classical and Renaissance verse satire.
Chapter 3 analyzes Adams' use of the satiric "character," and demonstrates his development of a homiletic "character" which contributes to his preaching of conversion.
Chapter 4 focuses upon Adams' use of satiric imagery.
Chapter 5 demonstrates how Adams uses the curt and loose Senecan styles in order to support his preaching of conversion; the chapter then dwells upon the range of tones found in Adams. The study ends with a discussion of the prophetic voice in Adams as he assimilates satire into prophecy.