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Varney, Jennifer. "H.d. And the translation of classical greek literature." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/80714.
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A lo largo de su carrera, la poetisa estadounidense Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961) se comprometió con la mitología clásica. A pesar de que produjo una gran cantidad de traducciones de la tragedia griega, muy pocas investigaciones se han desarrollado sobre esta parte de su trabajo. Con el fin de identificar las influencias y las relaciones de poder que confluyeron en las traducciones de H.D. y que dieron forma a su actividad como traductora, esta tesis no solo analiza las traducciones que hizo durante los primeros años de su carrera (1913-1920), sino que también estudia el contexto en el cual se produjeron dichas traducciones. La principal motivación que impulsa este estudio es la de indagar sobre el trato que H.D. dio al género en sus traducciones y sobre la medida en que los asuntos de género fueron relevantes en su papel como traductora.Throughout her career, the American poet H.D. (1886-1961) engaged with classical myth. Despite the numerous translations from Greek tragedy that H.D. produced, very little research has been carried out into this area of the poet’s work. In order to identify the influences and power relations that fed into H.D.’s translations and shaped her activity as translator, this thesis analyses not only the translations that H.D. produced during the early stages of her career (1913-1920), but also the contexts in which these translations were rendered. The driving force behind this study is the desire to interrogate H.D.’s treatment of gender in her translations and the extent to which questions of gender were relevant to her role as translator.
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Badnall, Toni Patricia. "The wedding song in Greek literature and culture." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2009. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12089/.
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This thesis examines the Greek wedding song and its function in literature and culture. The genre, hymenaios or epithalamium, has received little scholarly attention, particularly in English (cf. Muth, WS 1954; Tufte, Los Angeles 1970; Contiades-Tsitsoni, Stuttgart 1990, ZPE 1994; Swift, JHS 2006 & DPhil diss.). Yet an examination of the poetry of marriage, a crucial aspect in the study of the ancient world, contributes to our understanding of gender and social relations, as well as literature. Using elements of genre theory, gender studies, anthropology and cultural history, I argue that the epithalamium was part of a ritual of transition; for both the bride and for the community. The archaic epithalamium enacts this transition in lyric; tragic adaptations of the genre explore the consequences when this tradition is unsuccessfully performed. In contrast, the wedding songs of Attic comedy represent a 'happy ever after' ending for the communities of the protagonists, and portray these unions as a Sacred Marriage of man and goddess. The Helenistic epithalamium takes elements of these literary predecessors, and uses them to articulate a transition in marital relations, and literary politics, in the oeuvre of Theocritus. Philia relations in this era evolve to depict a more prominent mutuality between husband and wife, which also underpins the erotic writings of Plutarch. But more importantly, this author develops epithalamial topoi to present marriage as an 'initiation' for the bridal couple, which brings the thesis full-circle to the concept of transition while laying the foundation for one of the central concepts of Menander Rhetor's prescripts.
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Zourgou, Anna. "The judgement of Paris in ancient Greek art and literature." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2018. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51092/.
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The Judgement of Paris has been one of the most influential and popular myths throughout antiquity. Significant work has been done by previous scholars on the collection and analysis of artistic representations of the Judgement. This thesis is also looking into the Judgement of Paris in ancient Greek art, but it mainly focuses on the collection and analysis of the references to the myth in Greek literature from the eighth century B.C. to the second century A.D. Special attention is paid to recurring themes and ideological implications that the Judgement story raises, as well as to the interaction between those themes and specific genres. The detailed account and analysis of the references available sheds light not only on the perception of the myth itself, but also on conceptions of morality, beauty, gods, free choice, responsibility and even humour in antiquity. Through this thesis it is possible to see the transformations of the Judgement of Paris throughout centuries of literature, from its very first appearance in Homer’s Iliad to the enjoyable world of Lucian, realising the vast possibilities of this mythological tradition.
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Deutsch, Katherine Ariela. "Platonic Footnotes: Figures of Asymmetry in Ancient Greek Thought." Thesis, Harvard University, 2015. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:26566091.
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In 1953, Maurice Merleau-Ponty claimed, “It is useless to deny that philosophy limps…. [In the philosopher’s] assent something massive and carnal is lacking. He is not altogether a real being.” My dissertation is a critical rereading of the Platonic dialogues and their reception through the lens of one key trope: “limping.” I trace limping through philosophical and literary texts and rhetorical treatises – through authors ranging from Plato, Sophocles, and Hippocrates to Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Derrida. I show that this metaphor, a figure for one-sidedness or deficiency, offers new material for the longest and most-footnoted debate, the debate over Platonic idealism. My project is grounded in a sustained re-examination of Plato’s Phaedo – the most body-denying or “somatophobic” of the Platonic dialogues. I demonstrate how the figure of limping works in conjunction with other metaphors of the body – and the figure of Socrates itself, in all its corporeality – to subvert one-sided or somatophobic readings of the Phaedo and of Platonism.
Part One of my dissertation looks at the rhetoric of the body; Part Two examines the body of rhetoric. Part One asks how Socrates’ body, in its satyr-like ugliness and strangeness, itself constitutes a deformity in ancient Athens. Examining the philosopher’s “body techniques,” I show that the Phaedo – which is framed by Socrates’ legs and feet – is mediated by the body it denies. Part Two closely examines Socrates’ terminology in the Phaedo’s first argument for the immortality of the soul. Focusing on the Greek abhorrence of nature as a “limping” body, I study associated tropes of completion and incompletion, balance and imbalance, and metaphors that rely on somatic, circular, and compensatory structures (among them, the periodos, or sentence, and the diaulos, the double racecourse).
My project, which draws its title from Alfred North Whitehead’s famous characterization of European philosophy as a “series of footnotes to Plato,” concerns itself with the metaphorical feet, legs, and gait of philosophy itself. In examining the “lame inheritance” the ancients have provided the moderns, my project uses the rhetoric of disability and prosthesis to reframe Classical reception studies.Comparative Literature
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Sonin, Joanne Faye. "The verbalisation of non-verbal communication in classical Greek texts." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1999. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/251681.
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My Ph.D. thesis constitutes an investigation into the ways in which non-verbal communication (NVC) is represented and relayed by ancient authors through the use of the written word. This written expression of NVC can be represented in conjunction with oral communication, or independently of it, offering intentionally chosen insight into particular perspectives, concepts or situations. The reasons why a specific author, or authors, chose to include certain non-verbal details are considered, as is the cultural, symbolic, and literary significance of each example. The thesis approaches the subject from historical, anthropological, sociological and philosophical perspectives, while retaining an appreciation of the chronological and methodological limitations of studying the behaviour of a society which cannot be directly experienced. My thesis is intended to fill a gap in the historical scholarship of classical Athens as, with a few notable exceptions, the study of NVC remains virtually ignored by ancient historians and classicists. Indeed, most of the research in this area belongs to the discipline of art history and does not include a thorough consideration of the subject through the use of literary and historical sources. My research of NVC includes the study of gesture and body language, as well as investigations into kinesics, manipulable elements of appearance, autonomic nervous system responses, haptics, posture, gait, and mobility. Within these areas of inquiry there exist sub-divisions that must also be taken into consideration, e.g., gender, age, socio-economic status, and race. Furthermore, the symbolism and meaning of any element of NVC do not remain static, and the changes and alterations occurring within the means of communication of the society under investigation are critical to any attempt at understanding the role of NVC in that community. The point of departure for my research is the Attic orators. However, the scope of my work is by no means limited to oratory. Descriptions of NVC are used throughout Greek prose and verse, allowing a web of comparable and conflicting usage to be unravelled. Of particular interest to my work is the influence of early physiognomies and physiognomical thought on the textual usage of the body. In order to establish continuity or change in the attitudes and understanding of NVC in antiquity, the texts I consider are not restricted to the classical period, but spread into adjacent centuries. For methodological reasons, I have divided this dissertation according to body part or function, and have chosen particular aspects of NVC for detailed analysis, both on a practical and on a theoretical level. While each body movement represents a certain emotion or symbolises a particular response or message, bodily traits and actions need also be considered within the wider context of Greek thought. Bodily movement and expression are evaluated in relation to basic Greek concepts such as the psyche, the body, schema, beauty, civic ideals and values, etc. My thesis deals with NVC both as an expression of the ideal and as a possible reflection of reality, taking into consideration its role both as a means to fantasise and as a tool of criticism.
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Cartlidge, Benjamin John. "The language of Menander Comicus and its relation to the Koine." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:37b595ee-b259-4947-bd81-abdd034b5d88.
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The thesis is a study of the language of Menander Comicus (c.341-292/1 B.C.). The core of the thesis is a partial description of his language. Using a sociolinguistically informed model of koineisation, Menander's language is related to developments in the linguistic history of Greek. The first chapter therefore reviews the literature on Menander's language and details the theory of koineisation that will inform the subsequent chapters; accommodation theory is here of particular importance. The second chapter reviews nominal word-formation, used elsewhere in the literature as a criterion of the Koiné. It is pointed out that word-formation is not a good criterion, as the assessment of productivity patterns in a dead variety is difficult. However, by a detailed philological study of the data in Menander, some conclusions are reached about the productive and non-productive suffixes in Menander. The derivational patterns he attests for the most part look classical, but some changes are detected. The third chapter looks at the phonology and morphology of Menander. It is suggested that the vocalism of Menander betrays some characteristic Koiné developments, while the consonantism is mostly conservative. Noun and pronoun morphology are mostly conservative, while verbal morphology shows some signs of paradigm levelling. This is in line with the developments expected of a koineising variety, which are characterised by levelling. The final chapter is much more descriptive and focuses on syntax, particularly subordinate clauses. Some difficult examples of relative clauses are discussed which may anticipate later developments. Adverbial and complement clauses show that the optative, while morphologically stable, is no longer used in certain syntactic contexts (the oblique optative has more or less disappeared). An overall assessment attempts to distinguish the synchronic and the diachronic conclusions: the thesis deliberately discussed both together. It points out some concrete results establishing some spurious Menandrean texts while discussing the status of Menander's dialect. The main conclusion is that the terms of the debate about Menander's language have been misconceived: 'Attic vs. 'Koiné' is a false dichotomy in fourth-century Attica.
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Cairns, Douglas Laidlaw. "The concept of Aidos in Greek literature from Homer to 404 BC." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1987. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1379/.
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The introduction deals briefly with the question of the classification of societies as shame or guilt-cultures, and the position is taken that, firstly, such a distinction has no real basis in human psychology and, secondly, that its application to the differences between ancient Greek culture and our own is largely superficial. The challenge to the shame-culture/guilt culture antithesis continues in the chapter on Homer, of which one of the central topics is the extent to which Homeric man possesses an internal conscience. The fundamental association of aidos with popular opinion is noted, and the terms which describe both the kind of situation or conduct which merits censure and the censure itself are studied, with a particular view to their relevance to competitive and co-operative standards. It is concluded that there is no basis for a subordination of the co-operative to the competitive in the vocabulary of the poems, although it is certainly the case that many characters are more concerned with failure in the latter sphere. This, however, is in no way part of the moral ideology of either the poet or his characters. The main areas of operation of aidos are identified: its role in battle and as fear of disgrace in general, its relevance to the co-operative standard of philia, its concern with positive regard for others, especially suppliants and guests and the particular form which the concept takes with regard to sex, especially in women. These are broadly the categories which also obtain in subsequent chapters. Instances of the relevant terms in the poetry from Hesiod to Pindar are largely heterogeneous, but particularly worthy of note are Hesiod's remarks on the ambivalence of aidos (a notion also present in Homer), Solon's application of the verb, aideomai, to his lack of concern for the misguided opinions of others, and the association of qualities like aidos and loyalty to one's friends, itself promoted by aidos, with arete, both moral and social, in Theognis. In the Tragedians, attention is paid first of all to the role of aidos etc. in the motivation of characters, then to its importance in the thematic structure of the plays, and only then, and with some caution, to the possibility that the usage of the tragedians may reflect changes in the society outside the plays. In Aeschylus, the operation of the concept in the above-mentioned categories is, briefly, surveyed, but the bulk of the chapter is concerned with its role in the psychology of characters faced with an acutely difficult choice: here the inhibitory force of aidos is apparent, as it frequently provokes crises of indecision. Such indecision, moreover, is often an important sign that all is not well. The psychological insight of Aeschylus, it is argued, is very far from elementary, but, of the three tragedians, it is Sophokles who makes most use of aidos in the psychology and motivation of his characters. In all but two of the extant tragedies aidos etc. have a central thematic importance: the possibility of conflicting ideas of aidos, a topic perhaps suggested by sophistic relativist theory, is frequently explored, and one demand of traditional aidos is often set against another. Sophistic discussions of the nature of aidos are particularly in evidence in two plays, the Ajax and the Philoktetes, which both reveal the operation of the concept as an internal form of conscience which can work without reference to the `other people' whose judgement is often mentioned in the context of the aidos-reaction. This appreciation of the internal aspect of aidos corresponds with Demokritos' view of its operation in the conscience of the individual. Sophistic ideas are even more readily apparent in Euripides, although they are much less closely integrated into the psychology of individual characters than they are in Sophokles. Relativism is also important in the younger poet, and a particular feature of his
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Rojcewicz, Stephen J. "Our tears| Thornton Wilder's reception and Americanization of the Latin and Greek classics." Thesis, University of Maryland, College Park, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10260313.
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I argue in this dissertation that Thornton Wilder is a poeta doctus, a learned playwright and novelist, who consciously places himself within the classical tradition, creating works that assimilate Greek and Latin literature, transforming our understanding of the classics through the intertextual aspects of his writings. Never slavishly following his ancient models, Wilder grapples with classical literature not only through his fiction set in ancient times but also throughout his literary output, integrating classical influences with biblical, medieval, Renaissance, early modern, and modern sources. In particular, Wilder dramatizes the Americanization of these influences, fulfilling what he describes in an early newspaper interview as the mission of the American writer: merging classical works with the American spirit.
Through close reading; examination of manuscript drafts, journal entries, and correspondence; and philological analysis, I explore Wilder’s development of classical motifs, including the female sage, the torch race of literature, the Homeric hero, and the spread of manure. Wilder’s first published novel, The Cabala, demonstrates his identification with Vergil as the Latin poet’s American successor. Drawing on feminist scholarship, I investigate the role of female sages in Wilder’s novels and plays, including the example of Emily Dickinson. The Skin of Our Teeth exemplifies Wilder’s metaphor of literature as a “Torch Race,” based on Lucretius and Plato: literature is a relay race involving the cooperation of numerous peoples and cultures, rather than a purely competitive endeavor.
Vergil’s expression, sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt [Here are the tears of the world, and human matters touch the heart] (Vergil: Aeneid 1.462), haunts much of Wilder’s oeuvre. The phrase lacrimae rerum is multivocal, so that the reader must interpret it. Understanding lacrimae rerum as “tears for the beauty of the world,” Wilder utilizes scenes depicting the wonder of the world and the resulting sorrow when individuals recognize this too late. Saturating his works with the spirit of antiquity, Wilder exhorts us to observe lovingly and to live life fully while on earth. Through characters such as Dolly Levi in The Matchmaker and Emily Webb in Our Town, Wilder transforms Vergil’s lacrimae rerum into “Our Tears.”
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Bocksberger, Sophie Marianne. "Telamonian Ajax : a study of his reception in Archaic and Classical Greece." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a9bacb2a-7ede-4603-9e6a-bf7f492332ed.
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This thesis is a systematic study of the representations of Telamonian Ajax in archaic and classical Greece. Its aim is to trace, examine, and understand how and why the constitutive elements of his myth evolved in the way they did in the long chain of its receptions. Particular attention is paid to the historical, socio-cultural and performative contexts of the literary works and visual representations I analyse as well as to the audience for which these were produced. The study is divided into three parts, each of which reflects a different reality in which Ajax has been received (different with respect to time, place, or literary genre). Artistic representations of the hero, as well as his religious dimension and political valence, are consistently taken into account throughout the thesis. The first part - Ajax from Salamis - focuses on epic poetry, and thus investigates the Panhellenic significance of the hero (rather than his reception in a particular place). It treats the entire corpus of early Greek hexameter poetry that has come down to us in written form as the reception of a common oral tradition which each poem has adapted for its own purpose. I establish that in the larger tradition of the Trojan War, Ajax was a hero characterised by his gift of invulnerability. Because of this power, he is the figure who protects his companions - dead or alive - par excellence. However, this ability probably also led him to become over-confident, and, accordingly, to reject Athena's support on the battlefield. Hence, the goddess's hostility towards him, which she demonstrated by making him lose the reward of apioteia (Achilles' arms). His defeat made Ajax so angry that he became mad and committed suicide. I also show how this traditional Ajax has been adapted to fit into the Iliad's own aesthetics. The second part - Ajax in Aegina - concentrates on the reception of Ajax in the victory odes of Pindar and Bacchylides for Aeginetan patrons. I argue that in the first part of the fifth century, Ajax becomes a figure imbued with a strong political dimension (especially with regard to the relationship between Athens and Aegina). Accordingly, I show how the presence of Ajax in Pindar's and Bacchylides' poems is often politically charged, and significant within the historical context. I discuss the influence this had on his representation. Finally, the third part moves to Athens, as I consider Ajax's reception during three distinct periods: the sixth century, the first half of the fifth century, and finally the rest of the classical period. I equally insist on the political dimension of the figure. I demonstrate that his figure undergoes a shift of paradigm in the early fifth century, which deeply affects his representation. By following in the footsteps of Ajax, this study prompts a series of reflections and comments on each of the works in which the hero features as well as on the relationship of these works to the historical context in which they were produced.
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Uchitel, Alexander. "Mycenaean and Near Eastern economic archives." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1985. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1317733/.
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The present research was conducted. with the aim of better understanding of Linear B texts through the help of the Near Eastern parallels. The method chosen was the comparison between individual texts and groups of texts and not between the 'models' reconstructed for this or that society. Several restrictions for such a comparison were set up. The comparison itself was limited to the problems of manpower (lists of personnel, ration lists, land-surveys). The best parallels for Mycenaean records of work-teams (male and female) were found among the Sumerian documents from the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, for the quotas of conscripts from specific villages - in Ugarit, and for the texts dealing with the land tenure and the organisation of the cultic personnel - among the Hittite cuneiform texts and Luwian hieroglyphic Kululu lead strips. The attempt was made to reconstruct the structure of the productive population in Mycenaean Greece and to find its place among other societies of the Ancient World.
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Chen, Jingling. "An Acropolis in China: The Appropriation of Ancient Greek Tradition in Modern Chinese Literature." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493311.
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This dissertation explores the transcultural relationships between modern China and ancient Greece, with a view toward appreciating how Greek philosophical and literary visions have been received, reformulated, and repurposed by Chinese writers from the turn of the twentieth century to the Cultural Revolution that began in 1966. The project is a combination of intellectual inquisition and textual analysis. Contextualized in the narrative of modern Chinese intellectual history, my study focuses on critical analysis of certain literary texts that contain or appropriate Greek elements. The objective of this study is to uncover the sophisticated transcultural practice in Chinese writers’ creative representation of what they consider the original source of the Western civilization. This in turn has contributed to the making of new intellectual trends that characterize modern Chinese culture. While constructing “a Greek layer” in the characteristics of Chinese modernity, these intellectuals’ reception of Greek imagery was also conditioned by their own political and cultural purposes. This reception was a process of appropriation that turned ancient Greece into an integral element in the formulation of a new cultural subjectivity of modern China, a course defined by David Damrosch as to mobilize elements derived from the foreign works within a vital and ongoing home tradition. This dissertation considers the Chinese translations of, introductions to, and commentaries on texts of Greek antiquity as recreations adapted to the domestic context. My study does not only analyze what has been rendered and changed in the translations of the broad term when compared with the original texts, but also treat the translations as reformulated texts that succeeded in representing Greek imagery as an internal part of the intellectual history of modern China. As the first comprehensive study of the multi-layered literary relationships between ancient Greece and modern China, this study aims to better understand the modernization of Chinese literature and culture in the context of transculturation.East Asian Languages and Civilizations
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Prodi, Enrico Emanuele. "Pindar's Prosodia : introduction, text, and commentary to selected fragments." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3c75c05c-30f3-45b3-8e12-896ffe687a7b.
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This dissertation examines the surviving remains of the two books of Pindar’s Prosodia. The introduction falls into four parts. The first is concerned with gathering the evidence for the books, through a review of their ancient testimonia (Chapter 1) and of the indirect and direct transmission of their fragments (Chapter 2); the second is concerned with the prosodion as a poetic genre, with some introductory remarks (Chapter 3) followed by an investigation of the collected evidence for the notion of prosodion in describing poetic texts (Chapter 4) and in later scholarship and generic theory (Chapter 5); the third combines the results of the first two into an analysis of the surviving fragments of Pindar’s Prosodia and an inquiry on the generic principles that shaped the collection (Chapter 6); the fourth consists of a descriptive catalogue of the papyrus manuscripts that contribute to the text of Pindar’s Prosodia (Chapter 7). The critical text of the eighteen main fragments and groups of fragments is followed by an introduction and line-by-line commentary to six of them, nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, *6, and *7 (= fr. 89 Snell-Maehler and ‘Paeans’ 14, 15, 6.123-183, 17, and 18).
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Strazdins, Estelle Amber. "The future of the second sophistic." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6ca95d02-246c-4dee-be90-675278ac5e92.
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This thesis explores the anxieties and opportunities that attend fame and posterity in the second sophistic and how they play out in both literary and monumental expressions of cultural production. I consider how elite provincials in the Roman empire, who are competitive, bi- or even tri-cultural, status-driven, often politically active, and engaged in cultural production, attempt to construct a future presence for themselves either through the composition of literature that is aimed (at least in part) at the future or through efforts to write themselves into the landscape of their native or adopted cities. I argue that the cultural and temporal perspective of these men drives their multifarious, playful, and self-reflexive approach to the production of literature or monuments. For those men engaged in the ‘second sophistic’, in the narrower, Philostratean definition, there is an ever present tether on their creative efforts, in that for contemporary success they must immerse themselves in the culture of classical Athens; and the prominent practice of epideictic oratory, with its promotion of improvisation and lack of repetition, discourages the kind of literary effort that aims at eternity. At the same time, their attempts to build themselves into the hearts of cities is less restricted, in that those who possess or have access to sufficient wealth can grant elaborate benefactions which essentially stand as monuments to their financer. Nevertheless, their belated position with respect to the Greek literary canon and the heights of political and cultural prestige invested in classical Greece infuses the cultural efforts of the second sophistic with a sense of pathos that acknowledges the impossibility of creating and controlling one’s future reputation regardless of how much effort is applied. At the same time, this impossible position, rather than limiting them, endows these men with a varied, self-ironizing, intertextual, intermedial, and unique approach to cultural production that actively engages with the inescapable and laudable past in order to carve a lasting impression on the literary and physical landscape of the Roman empire.
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Phipps, S. R. "The styles and voices of non-dramatic Greek poetry in the fourth century BC." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b4003441-7b02-4441-b5c6-8990d62dad9d.
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This thesis is an investigation into the styles and voices of the non-dramatic Greek poetry of the fourth century BC. This has been a neglected area of study in Greek literary history, and the extant poems of the fourth century have either been largely ignored or regarded contemptuously by modern critics. I seek to redress this balance by providing close readings of surviving poems, and aim to show that contrary to widespread opinion, there are signs that this is a period of dynamic creativity. The first section looks more closely at the various factors that have led to a neglect of fourth-century poetry, including issues of periodization, the transmission of texts and the canonisation of poetry, the impact of musical and technological innovations and of social changes. Scholarship on late-classical Greek art is also discussed as a comparison. I then turn to discuss specific texts in depth, focussing on the way poems characterise themselves through speakers and addressees. I begin with inscribed poetry (epigrams and hymns), in which I observe tendencies both to conform to a generic model and occasionally to produce more apparently literary-conscious works. The sometimes intrusive presence of the learned author-narrator is discussed in ‘bookish’ poems; the final section is devoted to various kinds of sung poetry, including enkomia, burlesque and parody. Although the texts I analyse are diverse in genre and character, they are sufficient to point to a wider vitality of literary activity throughout the century.
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Roussou, Stephanie. "Pseudo-Arcadius' Epitome of Herodian's Περὶ καθολικῆς προσῳδίας : with a critical edition and notes on Books 1-8." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:235409a4-7f6c-4495-83b3-41f8291f46d4.
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This thesis is a new edition of the Preface and Books 1-8 of Pseudo-Arcadius’ Epitome of Herodian’s Περὶ καθολικῆς προσῳδίας. It includes an introduction, critical apparatus, apparatus of parallel passages and notes on the text, and is intended as a contribution to modern Herodianic studies. Most of our knowledge of Greek accentuation is due to Herodian’s lost Περὶ καθολικῆς προσῳδίας. The main sources for this work, an epitome misattributed to Arcadius and another by John Philoponus, do not have modern critical editions. Lentz’s only collected edition of Herodian’s works (1867-70) is difficult to work with, because Lentz attempts to reconstruct Herodian’s work rather than to lay out the surviving evidence. The new critical edition of Pseudo-Arcadius’ Epitome is a response to the need for new and separate editions of the sources for the Περὶ καθολικῆς προσῳδίας. A new edition of this text is important because the previous two editions (Barker 1820, Schmidt 1860) have many weaknesses; neither editor examined all the surviving manuscripts, and they did not read the manuscripts themselves but used copies made by other people. My new examination of all the surviving manuscripts, excepting some very late and uncontroversially derivative manuscripts, comes to a new conclusion about their interrelations. The two manuscripts which I am the first to employ turn out to be the only non-derivative manuscripts, and therefore by far the most important. They enable us to improve the text significantly. My introduction includes a substantial new evaluation of the interpolated or doubtful sections in the epitome, whose study is impeded by confusion as to their date and relationships to other works. It also discusses the authorship of this epitome, and its grammatical terminology and concepts. Another innovation is the apparatus of parallel passages. The collection of other texts that have derived material from Herodian shows the extent of Herodian’s influence on later grammatical texts. The parallel passages, as witnesses to Herodian’s text in some form, often enable us to correct the text of Pseudo-Arcadius’ Epitome. A further contribution of my thesis consists of the commentary, which discusses corrupt passages, features of the text that have never been explained before, and places where specific details of the epitomator’s methods can be identified. The commentary also provides argumentation supporting decisions taken in editing the text, and other helpful information for the understanding of the text.
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Nikolaev, Alexander Sergeevich. "Diachronic Poetics and Language History: Studies in Archaic Greek Poetry." Thesis, Harvard University, 2012. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:10489.
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The broad objective of this dissertation is an interdisciplinary study uniting historical linguistics, classical philology, and comparative poetics in an attempt to investigate archaic Greek poetic texts from a diachronic perspective. This thesis consists of two parts. The first part, “Etymology and Poetics”, is devoted to several cases where scantiness of attestation and lack of semantic information render traditional philological methods of textual interpretation insufficient. In such cases, the meaning of a word has to be arrived at through linguistic analysis and verified through appeal to related poetic traditions, such as that of Indo-Iranian. Chapter 1 proposes a new interpretation for the enigmatic word ἀάατο̋, the Homeric epithet of the waters of the Styx, which is shown to have meant ‘sunless’. Chapter 2 deals with the word ἀριδείκετο̋, argued to mean ‘famous’: this solution finds support in the use of the root *dei̯k- in the poetic expression “to show forth praise”, found in Greek choral lyric and the Rigveda. Chapter 3 investigates the history of the verbs ἰάπτω ‘to harm’ and ἰάπτω ‘to send forth (to Hades)’. Chapter 4 improves the text of Pindar (O. 6.54), restoring a form ἀπειράτωι. Chapter 5 discusses the difficult word ἀμαυρό̋, establishing for it a meaning ‘weak’ and proposing a new etymology. Finally, Chapter 6 places Alc. 34 in the context of comparative mythology, with the object of reconstructing the history of the Lesbian lyric tradition. The second part, “Grammar of Poetry”, shifts the focus of the inquiry from comparative poetics to the language of early Greek poetry and its use. Chapter 7 addresses the problematic Homeric aorist infinitives in -έειν, showing how these artificial forms were created by allomorphic remodeling driven by metrical necessity; the problem is placed in the wider context of the debate about the transmission and development of Homeric epic diction. The metrical and linguistic facts relating to the distribution of infinitives are further discussed in Chapter 8, where it is argued that the unexpected Aeolic form νηφέμεν in Archil. 4 should be viewed as an intentional allusion to the epic tradition, specifically, the famous midsummer picnic scene in Hesiod.Linguistics
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Dasteridou, Magdalini. "Fear and Healing Through the Serpent Imagery in Greek Tragedy." Thesis, Harvard University, 2015. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:24078361.
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This work explores how the tragic poets, by means of snake imagery, convey the notion of disease. Moreover, it examines how snake imagery contributes to the process of healing through the emotion of fear that it triggers. My analysis of the tragedies in which the three main tragedians employ snake imagery builds upon findings from ancient authors that refer to snakes and their characteristics, and upon the findings of contemporary scholars. My overall method relies on tools from structuralism and psycholinguistics. Through snake imagery the tragic poets portray disease as it manifests itself through arrogance, deception, physical pain, and madness. For this purpose the poets employ images inspired by the particular anatomy and behavior of the snake.
Within the context of tragedy, and through the fear that it triggers, the snake imagery encourages self-knowledge and healing through self-correction.
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van, Emde Boas Evert H. "Linguistic studies in Euripides' Electra." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dbecc2f8-f980-4a33-9fdc-20d8c1329dc5.
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Euripides’ Electra has long been one of the playwright’s most controversial works. This book offers a reading of the play concentrating on its language, which is analysed by applying a variety of modern linguistic approaches: conversation analysis, pragmatic theories of speech acts and inference, politeness theory, the study of the interplay of gender and language, paroemiology, and the study of discourse cohesion. The first three chapters argue for the Peasant, Electra and Orestes, respectively, that their linguistic behaviour constitutes a vital part of their characterisation. The Peasant’s (ch. 1) sturdy morality is established by the way his language becomes more forceful when he touches on ethical questions; it is then tested in his conversations with Electra, where his language is suggestive of a conflict between his morals and his desire to please his royal wife. Electra herself (ch. 2) is characterised initially by the inability to communicate successfully with those around her — a disconnect which is suggestive of the fundamental incongruity of her circumstances. This adds a dimension to her motivations, which, as a force driving Electra’s linguistic behaviour, remain highly stable throughout the play up until the matricide. Another consistent feature of Electra’s language is the way it is patterned by her gender. Orestes’ characterisation in the early part of the play is ingeniously kept to a minimum through his sustained disguise. Various aspects of his language, but particularly his use of gnomai, contribute to that disguise, which involves a suppression of emotion, an avoidance of self-reference, and the exertion of control over the flow and topic of his conversation with Electra. We can only interpret a dramatic text if we know what it says, and if we know who says what. In chapter 4, I argue that the linguistic approaches I adopt can also help us in making a determination about textual-critical problems, particularly concerning the issue of speaker-line attribution (two notorious cases are discussed: 671-84 and 959-87). The final two chapters deal with longer speeches. In the messenger scene (ch. 5), Euripides uses linguistic devices to create an ebb and flow of suspense, and to manipulate audience expectation. In the agon (ch. 6), differences in the way Clytemnestra and Electra structure their speeches, particularly their narrationes, reveal much about their different (and fundamentally irreconcilable) viewpoints and approaches.
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Slattery, Samuel Robert. "Editions of a selection of literary, paraliterary, and documentary papyri from Oxyrhynchus." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:00f55cac-1a3a-4e63-8ac9-65d7febd6bd8.
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This thesis presents twenty-one unpublished Greek literary and documentary texts from Oxyrhynchus kept in the Sackler Library, Oxford. Each papyrus is identified, transcribed, and edited with a detailed introduction and notes largely in accordance with the conventions and format of presentation of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (London 1898–). The literary texts are diverse in content. The item of especial interest is a new fragment from Sophocles’ Tereus, which joins a quotation from Stobaeus’ Anthologium. It provides new information on the play’s dramatis personae and the long vexed question of where the quotation is to be located in the play. Another new text is the remains of an unknown hexameter poem on a mythical subject which refers to the Lapiths and Centaurs. From the known texts, a minute fragment of Polybius’ Historiae, a fragment Plutarch’s Alexander and two fragments of Plato’s Philebus stand out due to the rarity of these texts. The documentary texts illustrate a variety of matters tending on social, economic, fiscal, and legal aspects of life in Roman and late antique Oxyrhynchus. Of the texts from the Roman period, a text dealing with the execution of a testamentary bequest and another text concerning a summons to the prefect’s conventus are notable for the information which they provide on the functioning of testamentary bequests and the practice of litigation respectively. Of the four texts from the Byzantine period, an Oxyrhynchite lease of land is of special importance due to the comparative rarity of documents of this kind from Oxyrhynchus and because it exhibits a number of points of interest, not least that the lessee is a colonus adscripticius. A ‘sale on delivery of wine’ also involves a colonus adscripticius. The other document of special interest is a large private letter which concerns various matters of business from a man who claims to be in a precarious situation.
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Parmar, Hiteshkumar Chimanlal. "Strabo and India." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/23448.
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Scholarship on Strabo’s Geography has long noticed that the procedure adopted by the author in his account of India is inconsistent with the method he follows elsewhere (Puskás 1993). On the one hand, it has been argued that, while describing the subcontinent, the author quotes so extensively from his sources that he allows practically no space for his own reasoning. Such a writing strategy is unlike the practice he normally adopts (Dueck 2000:180-6). On the other hand, after stressing that the geographical writing may only draw on reliable sources and that the reports on India are unreliable (Geography, 2.1.9 C 70), Strabo writes his own account on the subcontinent by drawing on authors he deemed untrustworthy (Geography, 15.1.1-73 C 685-720). This procedure clearly shifts from the method he follows across his work. However, very few studies have been dedicated exclusively to the matter and this thesis proposes to fill the lacuna. In fact, within Strabonian studies, one trend has tended to analyse individual regions described in Geography (Andreotti 1999), while another has examined themes permeating the book (Clarke 2001 and Engels 1998). The description of India has been widely used to reconstruct relevant aspects of ancient history (Karttunen 1997 and Parker 2008). However, little attention has been paid to the author’s conception of India, which will be the main focus of this thesis. By analysing what Strabo selected from his sources and by considering a network of concepts pervading his work, we will see that apparent inconsistencies serve a number of purposes. In Chapter 1, it will be argued that the inclusion or omission of a given detail related to India was relevant for the political agenda underlying the text. In view of the literature produced at the time and the data made available today by the archaeological research on Indo-Roman trade, Strabo’s account shares the ideology underlying the Res Gestae Divi Augusti. Yet, at times, his text lies between a panegyric and a satire of the Roman Empire. Chapter 2 will show that the author creates an image of India that served to support the aforementioned political agenda. By portraying native kings in association with luxury and corruption, the text refers to traditional Greek conception of the East and this has a bearing on the depiction of the Roman Empire. In Chapter 3, we will see that Strabo’s description addresses ethical questions that were left unsolved by Greek philosophical schools at the time, namely, education for women and the relationship between the philosophical way of life and political compromise. Within this setting of philosophical reflection, the text provides a sound set of moral illustrations, exempla, complete with brief autobiographical remarks.
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Fisher, Elizabeth A. "Planudes' Greek translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses." New York : Garland Pub, 1990. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/21077839.html.
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King, Daniel A. "Painful stories : the experience of pain and its narration in the Greek literature of the Imperial period (100-250)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c5509a42-cd3f-4e11-b9a1-8a3b6fa84101.
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This research project investigates the relationship between pain and the practices of explaining and narrating it to others. Current scholarship argues that the representation of suffering became, during the Imperial period, an increasingly effective and popular strategy for cultivating authority and that this explains the success of Christian culture’s representation of itself as a community of sufferers. One criticism of this approach is that the experience of pain has often been assumed, rather than analysed. Here, I investigate the nature of pain by attending to its intimate relationship with language; pain was connected to the strategies used to communicate that experience to others. I will show that writers throughout the Imperial period were concerned with questions about how to communicate pain and how that act of communication shaped, managed, and alleviated the experience. I investigate this culture along three axes. Part 1, ‘The Sublime Representation of Pain’, investigates the way different authors thought about the capacity of sublime language and rhetorical techniques such as enargeia to effectively communicate pain. I argue that for writers such as Longinus, the sublime offers an opportunity to replicate the traumatic experience of the pain sufferer in the audience or listener—pain is narrated to the audience through a traumatic communicative mode. Contrarily, I show how authors such as Plutarch and Galen were particularly concerned to desublimate the representation of pain, reducing the affective power of images of pain by promoting the audience’s conscious engagement with the text or representational medium. Part 2, ‘Medical Narratives’, examines a conflict between Galen and Aristides over the way language and narrative signified or referred to painful experiences. I show how both writers negotiate the way pain destroys and transcends ordered, structured, narrative by engaging in a process of narrative translation. I will illuminate the difference between scientific, diagnostic narratives which explain and rationalise pain experiences (in the case of Galen) and those which attempt to give witness to the nebulous, ineffable qualities of pain. In Part 3, ‘Narrating Cures’ I investigate ancient practices of psychotherapy. I show how various philosophical consolations were underpinned by an understanding of the power of pain to continually return and overwhelm the individual. I show further that the Greek romances engage in a type of talking cure: the novels use narration and story-telling to help assert the protagonists’ distance from their past traumatic experiences and, thus, allow the individual to overcome their painful past.
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Hemingway, Ben. "The dream in classical Greece : debates and practices." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2009. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d0d272ee-e293-44bf-b8c2-02b68304d22f.
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This thesis aims to address the Greek attitude to their dream experience in the classical period, as it was conceived in theories and engaged with in dream practices. The emphasis is on the relationship between these elements and the wider cultural frames which surrounded them, in order both to illustrate the manner in which culture influences the conception of dreams, and also to use dreams themselves as a mirror to reflect parts of Greek culture. As a study it has been heavily shaped by the approaches to dreams developed by anthropologists, outlined in Chapter 2, who have emphasised the importance of studying dreams intra-culturally. In Chapter 3 I analyse the language that the Greeks used to express their dreaming experience, drawing from it the important way in which language was both determined by, and determined, the Greeks' understanding of the phenomenon. This forms a base for engaging with dream theories in Chapter 4, both the implicit allusions in literature and explicit explanations proposed by philosophers and medical writers. I then explore the theories at work within Greek culture via dreams as we see them active in the lived religion of the polis: I examine in Chapter 5 the dedications set up by individuals on account of spontaneous dreams, and in Chapter 6 the practice of incubation. I then turn to examine specific relationships: in Chapter 7, the association of dreams with status, i.e. the possibility that powerful people would have equally powerful dreams; in Chapter 8, dreams and gender, assessing the possibility that women considered their dreams to be more important than their male counterparts. In Chapter 9, I position dreams within the context of the other divinatory practices of the period, which allows us to see the unique ways in which dream practices functioned in comparison to the other divinatory forms.
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Mehta, Arti. "How do fables teach? reading the world of the fable in Greek, Latin and Sanskrit narratives /." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2007. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3297125.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Classical Studies, 2007.Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 25, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0602. Adviser: Eleanor W. Leach.
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Vatri, Alessandro. "The linguistics of orality : a psycholinguistic approach to private and public performance of classical Attic prose." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2ef61a6c-a296-4c00-b7c9-78c5d7b5ffa8.
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The thesis tests the hypothesis that certain aspects of linguistic variation in Attic prose are related to the type of oral performance, private or public, which the author envisaged for his text. This hypothesis rests on the assumption that authors more or less consciously optimized their texts for their intended communicative situation. A crucial feature of texts optimized for public delivery was clarity, which figures as an essential component of the 'virtue of speech' in the Greek rhetorical thought. In private situations the audience itself could alter the pace of reading or recitation. Clarifications could be sought, and pauses and repetitions would be possible. The case was different with public situations, where the text itself coincided with its performance and it was entirely up to the speaker to determine the way in which the audience would access it. Especially in political and judicial contexts, where important decisions were to be made, public speakers could not afford being unclear. In order to test whether public texts were clearer than private texts, 'clarity' must be defined in a linguistically thorough way. Modern psycholinguistics studies human language comprehension, and experimental research has revealed language-independent mechanisms which can be confidently applied to dead languages. In the thesis, clarity is measured by the number of syntactic, semantic, and referential reanalyses which linguistics structures induce in a given amount of text. This methodology is tested on a corpus of Attic speeches, which includes both texts that were devised exclusively for written circulation and private delivery, and texts that were at least conceived for public delivery, although we do not know to what extent they correspond to the versions which were actually delivered. The difference between the average score of 'public texts' and that of 'private texts' is statistically significant and supports the hypothesis that 'public texts' were generally clearer than 'private texts' for audiences of native speakers.
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Curtis, Lauren. "On with the Dance! Imagining the Chorus in Augustan Poetry." Thesis, Harvard University, 2013. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:10991.
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This dissertation investigates how Augustan poetry imagines, redefines and reconfigures the idea of the chorus. It argues that the chorus, a quintessential marker of Greek culture, was translated and transformed into a peculiarly Roman phenomenon whereby poets invented their relationship with an imagined past and implicated it in the present. Augustan poets, I suggest, created a sustained and intensely intertextual choral poetics that played into contemporary poetic debates about the power of writing versus song and the complexity of responding to performance culture through multiple layers of written tradition. Focusing in particular on Virgil’s Aeneid, Propertius’ Elegies and Horace’s Odes, the dissertation uses a series of case studies to trace the role played by scenes of embedded choral song and dance in Augustan poetics. The scene is set by comparing how a range of texts respond differently to a single fundamental aspect of Greek choral culture—the figure of the chorus leader—and by establishing Catullus as an important predecessor to Augustan choral discourse. The dissertation then turns to explore how choral language and imagery become involved in some of the central issues of Augustan poetry: Latin love poetry’s construction of female desirability and male anxiety, the creation of poetic authority in Augustan lyric and elegy, and the search for the origins of Roman ritual in Virgil’s Aeneid. Finally, these embedded scenes are juxtaposed with Horace’s Carmen Saeculare, a text composed, remarkably, for choral performance on the Roman civic stage, which is shown to activate the choral metaphor that had been created by the Latin literary imagination. By demonstrating Augustan poetry’s engagement with this aspect of Greek performance culture, the study sheds new light on the relationship between Greek and Roman poetry, shifting the focus from the reinvention of Greek genres and the study of particular sites of allusion towards an understanding of the complex dynamics of reception and reconfiguration at work in these poets’ reappropriation of both a literary and cultural idea.The Classics
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Pateridou, Georgia. "Yannis Psycharis's Greek novels (1888-1929) : didactic narratives, cultural views and self-referentiality." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2004. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7669/.
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The aim of this thesis is to examine Psycharis's Greek novels by focusing on his modes of writing and the ideas manifested in them. Psycharis saw his role as that of an intellectual aiming to reform Greek culture and he fought consistently for the establishment of the demotic - as he understood it as the language of literature. Yet his novels serve as a filter not only for his views on language and literature, but also for other social and philosophical issues of relevance to his time, and even to contemporary readers. I have defined three major areas for examination: the didacticism of the novels, expressed in the themes and in the narrative techniques employed by the author; the overall recurring cultural views presented in them, and the preoccupation with the importance of fiction, the role of literature and of the prose writer. The novels will be examined in chronological order and I shall address each of the three major areas explained above in turn, emphasising the most prominent one in each case. The objective of this thesis is to make Psycharis's Greek novels better known and to indicate the role that he played in the development of Modern Greek prose and culture.
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Voyiatzaki, Evangelina. "The body in the text : James Joyce's Ulysses and the modern Greek novel." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2000. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4380/.
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This thesis examines the body's thematization in narrative, and as part of the aesthetic consciousness of the modernist novel. Its starting point is Joyce's pioneering association of Ulysses with the functions of a live body, and the interdisciplinary rationale that his Thomist aesthetics of wholeness enact. Joyce's view of his text as a multi-levelled, reciprocally interdependent hierarchy of various fields, including art and science, as developed in the Linati and Gilbert Schemes, sheds light on the polyphonic and polyglottic narratorial tactics of U. Joyce's enterprise is compared to the Greek modernist novel which developed its innovative techniques in accordance with the general demand for a reorientation of Greek literature toward introspection. The reception of U in Greece coincided with the heyday of this attempt which was characterized by experimentation and was influenced by psychoanalysis, phenomenology and anthropological studies. The three Greek authors in this study, Stelios Xefloudas, Nikos Gavriil Pentzikis, Giorgos Cheimonas, each of them representing a different period in the development of the modem novel, were variously influenced by Joyce's work. The argument particularly focuses on their use of the body in the text in the light of Joyce's work. The foreword, a theoretical introduction, sets forth the terms of the argument. The first chapter is a brief survey of Us reception in Greece. It discusses the quest for the renewal of Greek literature which started around the thirties. Tracing the links of this renewal With Joyce's work, it particularly focuses on the techniques of introspection and their association with the body, as part of the aesthetic consciousness of the inner-orientated or 'introverted' novel. The second chapter is an analysis of Joyce's paradigmatic use of the body in the text. Focusing on the act of creation in comedy, scientific discovery and aesthetic rapture, it discusses the psycho-physiological processes and the cultural psycho-dynamics which are compressed within Q, and support its multi-perspectival and multi-interpretative orientation. Joyce's mock-heroic, his anti-theology, the aesthetics of the androgynous artist, desire in language and bodily interference in the act of writing are seen in relation to the body and in the light of Joyce's explanatory schemes. Chapter three examines Xefloudas's attempted assimilation of Joyce's introspective techniques, in the use of myth, in the questing voyager archetype, and in desire in language through the myth of eternal return. The fourth chapter discusses N. G. Pentzikis's Christian-Freudian-Jungian perspective on Joyce's work and his reworking of Us motifs in a surrealist mode (dream, metamorphosis, free association). His endeavour to subvert his own literary past takes place through the re-writing of Drosmiis's novel, To Mythistorema fis Kytlas Ersis. In this book all elements of Greek modernism are welded together. Pentzikis undoes and redoes the Parnassian novel, drawing heavily upon Q, and the Hellenic and Byzantine legacies which he semi-parodically incorporates into his art. His use of the Rabelaislan body and the grotesque, which reflects his language games, also emulates Joyce's. The fifth chapter deals with Cheimonas, as a successor of the previous authors. Cheimonas revisits all the thematic motifs of Joyce and of the aforementioned Greek authors in the light of contemporary phenomenology, psychoanalysis, psycho-linguistics and deconstruction. In an attempted assimilation of the language of FW and Joyce's preoccupation with the sound of the word, he writes an elliptical prose violated in its syntax, grammar and word-formation. His texts are a journey to the origins of language. Through violent dramatizations of psycho-linguistic theories, these texts aim at revealing the body's voice.
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Hosty, Matthew. "An edition with commentary of the Batrachomyomachia." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9af478b9-771d-4a9f-94ed-8cf6bc7d7cd2.
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The thesis consists of three main sections: the Introduction, the text (with apparatus), and the Commentary. The Introduction begins with a survey of the available evidence for the poem’s date and authorship, before moving on to consider its generic affiliations and influences, focusing on two particular areas: its links with the ill-defined genre of παρῳδία, and its relationship to animal-narratives elsewhere in ancient literature (particularly fable) and visual art. This is followed by a detailed analysis of the poem’s style and metre, a brief tour of its Nachleben up to the 13th century, and a summary of the notoriously tangled manuscript tradition. The text is new, and differs substantially from both that of Allen (in the OCT) and of West (the most recent English edition). The apparatus, as explained in more detail on p. 117, is somewhere between the two: it takes into account the readings of only nine MSS from the 80-100 extant, and does not attempt to represent every single textual variation even among these nine, but it is much fuller than the minimalist apparatus of the Loeb. It aims to provide a useful source for scholars interested in the poem’s many and serious textual cruces, while remaining more succinct and user-friendly than the dense and sometimes baffling apparatus of Ludwich’s monumental 1896 edition. The text is followed by an English prose translation: this makes no claims to beauty, and is simply intended as a relatively literal guide to the sense of the Greek. The Commentary, finally, is twofold. Any commentary on the Batrachomyomachia will inevitably spend much space and ink on purely textual issues, and on the fundamental task of unearthing meaning from the dizzying range of wild and nonsensical variants available. Interspersed with these textual points, however, this commentary includes considerations of the poem not as a mechanics problem but as a sophisticated Hellenistic work of art – exploring its intertextualities, its characterisation, its dramatic effects, its dry sense of humour, and subjecting it to the serious literary analysis it has often been denied.
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Mahoney, Maria C. "Sancti et linguae the classical world in the eyes of Hibernia /." Diss., Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10355/5675.
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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008.The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on September 5, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.
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Bowden, Hugh. "Herodotos and Greek sanctuaries." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1990. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cf106c48-5008-46c2-a0e8-fcc94b20f159.
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This thesis argues that sanctuaries of the gods played a significant role in the political life of the Greek polis in the archaic and classical periods, and that the politics of the period cannot be understood fully without consideration of religion. It uses the text of Herodotos as a source of evidence about the history and perceptions of the period, but also makes use of other literary and archaeological evidence, so that the resulting models may be considered generally useful for the study of the period. Ch. 1 lays out the background to the subject; ch. 2 is an analysis of the activities related to sanctuaries described by Herodotos; ch. 3 examines sanctuaries as the meeting places of federations of Greek states, as well as investigating the nature of sanctuaries as areas of bounded space, showing that political meetings were frequently, if not always, held in sanctuaries, and that this was perceived as allowing some divine influence on decisions; ch. 4 investigates the dedications made at sanctuaries by foreigners, as part of a diplomatic process, showing that they provided a means of access to the polis as well as the god; ch. 5 compares the dedication of booty at sanctuaries with the construction of the battlefield trophy; ch. 6 argues that Herodotos portrays divine intervention as always happening through sanctuaries; ch. 7 argues that Herodotos' frequent mentions of Delphi are a sign of its importance in Greek history, not his own interest; ch. 8 draws some of these ideas together and suggests some general explanations for the importance of sanctuaries, as providing symbolic control of access to the polis, and bestowing authority on decisions taken by assemblies. Finally it suggests that Herodotos's inclusion of religious matters in his histories increases his importance as a source and an historian.
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Van, Essen-Fishman Lucy. "Character through interaction : Sophocles and the delineation of the individual." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c23353ec-cc60-453e-8c58-b13d01840a19.
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In this thesis, I argue that Sophoclean characters take shape through a number of different kinds of interaction. On the most basic level, interaction occurs between characters; interactions between characters, however, provide a framework for interactions between those characters and a variety of more abstract concepts. These interactions, by allowing characters to situate themselves with respect to concepts such as, for example, the social roles which shape the society of the play, provide a more complex picture of the personalities depicted onstage; a fuller view of Antigone’s personality, for example, emerges both from her own interactions with the concept of sisterhood and from the differences between her interactions with that concept and Ismene’s. At the same time, these interactions involve the audience in both the construction and the interpretation of Sophoclean characters; as they watch figures interact with each other onstage, the audience, in turn, interact with their own prior knowledge of the concepts which drive the characters of a play. In my five chapters, I discuss five different areas of interaction. In my first chapter, I look at interactions between characters and myth, arguing that Sophoclean characters emerge out of a tension between novelty and familiarity. In my second chapter, I discuss the interactions between characters and their social roles, looking at the problem of appropriate role performance as it applies to Sophoclean characters. My third chapter deals with characters and their memories; I argue that Sophoclean characters shape and are shaped by their memories of past events depending on shifting present circumstances. In my fourth chapter, I discuss the interactions between characters and the passage of time and suggest that Sophoclean figures are characterized by the ways in which they move through time and respond to its passage. In my final chapter, I look at the use of general statements by Sophoclean characters, arguing that the ability of characters to generalize successfully provides a useful measure of their ability to function in the world of the play.
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Werner, Erika Pereira Nunes. "Lá vem a noiva: o epithalamium suas configurações do período helenístico à era flaviana." Universidade de São Paulo, 2011. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8143/tde-25072011-135922/.
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Esta tese dedica-se ao estudo do gênero poético conhecido como epithalamium, \"epitalâmio\", e sua presença entre as composições poéticas supérstites localizadas temporalmente entre o início do período helenístico e o fim da Antigüidade Clássica. Neste estudo, são analisadas composições poéticas gregas e latinas com o objetivo de identificar as características que seriam associadas a esse gênero ao longo desses séculos.This doctoral thesis is a study about the poetical genre known as epithalamium and its occurrence among the transmitted poetical compositions located between the beginning of the Hellenistic period and the end of the classical antiquity. Greek and Latin poetical compositions are analysed in order to identify the main characteristics that are supposed to be associated to that genre during that time
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Meister, Felix Johannes. "Momentary immortality : Greek praise poetry and the rhetoric of the extraordinary." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2a2e9801-b29e-485f-bb1d-2eda190de8e1.
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This thesis takes as its starting point current views on the relationship between man and god in Archaic and Classical Greek literature, according to which mortality and immortality are primarily temporal concepts and, therefore, mutually exclusive. This thesis aims to show that this mutual exclusivity between mortality and immortality is emphasised only in certain poetic genres, while others, namely those centred on extraordinary achievements or exceptional moments in the life of a mortal, can reduce the temporal notion of immortality and emphasise instead the happiness, success, and undisturbed existence that characterise divine life. Here, the paradox of momentary immortality emerges as something attainable to mortals in the poetic representation of certain occasions. The chapters of this thesis pursue such notions of momentary immortality in the wedding ceremony, as presented through wedding songs, in celebrations for athletic victory, as presented through the epinician, and at certain stages of the tragic plot. In the chapter on the wedding song, the discussion focuses on explicit comparisons between the beauty of bride and bridegroom and that of heroes or gods, and between their happiness and divine bliss. The chapter on the epinician analyses the parallelism between the achievement of victory and the exploits of mythical heroes, and argues for a parallelism between the victory celebration and immortalisation. Finally, the chapter on tragedy examines how characters are perceived as godlike because of their beauty, success, or power, and discusses how these perceptions are exploited by the tragedians for certain effects. By examining features of a rhetoric of praise, this thesis is not concerned with the beliefs or expectations of the author, the recipient of praise, or the surrounding milieu. It rather intends to elucidate how moments conceived of as extraordinary are communicated in poetry.
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Park, E. C. "Plato and Lucretius as philosophical literature : a comparative study." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:97c3ba13-d229-429d-83fc-138fcbaf58b1.
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This thesis compares the interaction of philosophy and literature in Plato and Lucretius. It argues that Plato influenced Lucretius directly, and that this connection increases the interest in comparing them. In the Introduction, I propose that a work of philosophical literature, such as the De Rerum Natura or a Platonic dialogue, cannot be fully understood or appreciated unless both the literary and the philosophical elements are taken into account. In Chapter 1, I examine the tradition of literature and philosophy in which Plato and Lucretius were writing. I argue that the historical evidence increases the likelihood that Lucretius read Plato. Through consideration of parallels between the DRN and the dialogues, I argue that Plato discernibly influenced the DRN. In Chapter 2, I extract a theory of philosophical literature from the Phaedrus, which prompts us to appreciate it as a work of literary art inspired by philosophical knowledge of the Forms. I then analyse Socrates’ ‘prelude’ at Republic IV.432 as an example of how the dialogue’s philosophical and literary teaching works in practice. In Chapters 3 and 4, I consider the treatment of natural philosophy in the Timaeus and DRN II. The ending of the Timaeus is arguably an Aristophanically inspired parody of the zoogonies of the early natural philosophers. This links it to other instances of parody in Plato’s dialogues. DRN II.333-380 involves an argument about atomic variety based on Epicurus, but also, through the image of the world ‘made by hand’, alludes polemically to the intelligently designed world of the Timaeus. Through an examination of Plato’s and Lucretius’ polemical adaptation of their predecessors, I argue that even the most seemingly technical passages of the DRN and the Timaeus still depend upon literary techniques for their full effect. The Conclusion reflects briefly on future paths of investigation.
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Todd, Helen Elizabeth. "Rewriting the Egyptian river : the Nile in Hellenistic and imperial Greek literature." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ed3c2d53-f7d6-4208-8a4c-cb84b5c27854.
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This thesis explores Hellenistic and imperial Greek texts that represent or discuss the river Nile. The thesis makes an original contribution to scholarship by examining such texts in he light of the history of Greek discourse about the Nile and in the context of social, political and cultural changes, and takes account of relevant ancient Egyptian texts. I begin with an introduction that provides a survey of earlier scholarship about the Nile in Greek literature, before identifying three themes central to the thesis: the relationship between Greek and Egyptian texts, the tension between rationalism and divinity, and the interplay between power and literature. I then highlight both the cultural significance of rivers in classical Greek culture, and the polyvalence of the river Nile and its inundation in ancient Egyptian religion and literature. Chapter 1 examines the significance of Diodorus Siculus' representation of the Nile at the beginning of his universal history; it argues that the river's prominence constructs Egypt as a primeval landscape that allows the historian access to the distant past. The Nile is also seen to be useful to the historian as a conceptual parallel for his historiographical project. Whereas Diodorus begins his universal history with the Nile, Strabo closes his universal geography with Egypt; the second chapter demonstrates how Strabo incorporates the Nile into his vision of the new Roman world. Chapter 3 presents a diachronic study of Greek discourse concerning the two major Nilotic problems, the cause of the annual inundation and the location of the sources. It examines first the construction of the debates, and second the transformation of that tradition in Aelius Aristides' Egyptian Oration. The functions of the Nile in Greek praise-poetry are the subject of chapter 4; it is shown that the Nile and its benefactions are used by poets to lay claim to political, religious or cultural authority, and to situate Egypt within an expanding oikoumene. The fifth and final chapter turns to Greek narrative fictions from the imperial period. The chapter demonstrates that the Nile is more familiar than exotic in these texts. It is shown that Xenophon of Ephesus and Achilles Tatius play with the trope of 'novelty' in this very familiar literary landscape, while Heliodorus articulates a more profound disruption of the expected Egyptian tropes, and ultimately replaces Egypt with Ethiopia as a new Nilotic environment.
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Westwood, Guy A. C. M. "History and the making of the orator in Demosthenes and Aeschines." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e16d2b68-0ced-4087-b910-10e6bbacff23.
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This thesis aims to contribute to the study of the role of the civic past in the public discourse of fourth-century Athens. It does so by close examination of the surviving public speeches of Demosthenes and Aeschines, arguing that presentation of the city’s history in front of mass audiences held singular persuasive potential for public speakers, allowing them to furnish with a more meaningful ethical context both the discussion of issues addressed in the Assembly and the arguments advanced in public trials. Deploying the past convincingly in such settings redounded to speakers’ personal credibility and authority, and Demosthenes and Aeschines – who offer rare examples of paired opposing speeches from the same trials – are selected as ‘case-study’ orators in order to illustrate: i) the importance of the invoking of Athenian historical models, both distant and recent, to Demosthenes’ self-fashioning as a politician; and ii) the extent to which orators made the very question of how to cite the past in public a stake in their wider struggle for political pre-eminence, seeking to be recognized as the ‘true’ and authoritative mediator of this material. These interests are reflected in the organization of the thesis. After an Introduction which discusses key preliminaries, Chapter One argues for Demosthenes’ early recognition of the potential of historical illustration for wider self-presentation, honed over the course of his Assembly career (Chapter Two) to become essential to his self-casting as Athens’s leading statesman. Chapter Three compares Demosthenic and Aeschinean approaches to citing the past in court, in two prosecutions from the mid-340s, and Chapters Four and Five – focusing on the high-profile Embassy and Crown trials – move to argue the importance of each politician’s contestation of the other’s versions of history to their battle over the reputations arising from their careers to date. The Conclusion summarizes, and reflects on some methodological aspects with a view to further work.
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Turquois, Elodie Eva. "Envisioning Byzantium : materiality and visuality in Procopius of Caesarea." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:943e33e8-10cd-4f27-8134-60b6f088b5a8.
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The three works of Procopius of Caesarea, the History of the Wars, the Buildings and the Secret History, form a corpus which can be profitably studied as a whole. My thesis is a typology of the visual in Procopius’ corpus, which is embedded in a study of narrative technique. It concerns itself with the representation of material reality and the complex relationship between materiality and the text. It utilises the digressive and the descriptive as an indirect entry point to expose Procopius’ literary finesse and his use of poikilia. In the first half of this thesis, the main object of my study is the representation of the material world in Procopius. The first chapter is devoted to the first book of the Buildings as it depicts the city of Constantinople. The second chapter moves to the representation of space and the third chapter to that of objects of all sizes and kinds. From these three different angles, I demonstrate how the visual is deeply charged with both ideological and meta-textual intentions. The second half of the thesis goes beyond materiality to examine what I discuss as the imaginaire of Procopius. The fourth chapter examines the way violence is depicted in a material and spectacular manner as well as its meta-textual implications, and the fifth and final chapter addresses the omnipresence of the supernatural in the corpus as well as Procopius’ self-representation as narrator and character. While preoccupied to some extent with ideological and political concerns, this thesis is first and foremost centred on the text itself and how its relationship to the description of material culture throws light on a crucial author on the cusp between the classical and the medieval imaginaire, one of the most significant authors in Byzantine literary culture.
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Panopoulou, Maria. "Reconsidering the relationship between early Gothic literature and the Greek classics : the cases of William Beckford and Matthew G. Lewis." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2016. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/7733/.
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The view that Gothic literature emerged as a reaction against the prominence of the Greek classics, and that, as a result, it bears no trace of their influence, is a commonplace in Gothic studies. This thesis re-examines this view, arguing that the Gothic and the Classical were not in opposition to one another, and that Greek tragic poetry and myth should be counted among the literary sources that inspired early Gothic writers. The discussion is organised in three parts. Part I focuses on evidence which suggests that the Gothic and the Hellenic were closely associated in the minds of several British literati both on a political and aesthetic level. As is shown, the coincidence of the Hellenic with the Gothic revival in the second half of the eighteenth century inspired them not only to trace common ground between the Greek and Gothic traditions, but also to look at Greek tragic poetry and myth through Gothic eyes, bringing to light an unruly, ‘Dionysian’ world that suited their taste. The particulars of this coincidence, which has not thus far been discussed in Gothic studies, as well as evidence which suggests that several early Gothic writers were influenced by Greek tragedy and myth, open up new avenues for research on the thematic and aesthetic heterogeneity of early Gothic literature. Parts II and III set out to explore this new ground and to support the main argument of this thesis by examining the influence of Greek tragic poetry and myth on the works of two early Gothic novelists and, in many ways, shapers of the genre, William Beckford and Matthew Gregory Lewis. Part II focuses on William Beckford’s Vathek and its indebtedness to Euripides’s Bacchae, and Part III on Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk and its indebtedness to Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus. As is discussed, Beckford and Lewis participated actively in both the Gothic and Hellenic revivals, producing highly imaginative works that blended material from the British and Greek literary traditions.
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Xanthakos, Viviani. "Quem tem boca vai a Ítaca: um estudo sobrea persuasão no canto XIV da Odisseia." Universidade de São Paulo, 2011. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8143/tde-19042012-153639/.
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Esta dissertação dedica-se ao estudo da persuasão nos discursos proferidos por Odisseu no canto XIV da Odisseia, levando em consideração a interação de três elementos:o orador, o auditório e a argumentação. É seu objetivo refletir sobre qual tese Odisseu busca compartilhar com seu público, Eumeu, e as estratégias de que se vale para atingir esse fim.This dissertation is a study about the persuasion in Odysseus´ speeches in Odyssey XIV, observing three elements: the orator, the audience and the argumentation. My target is make a reflection about what idea Odysseus wants to share with his audience, Eumaios, and the strategies to do it.
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Harden, Sarah Joanne. "Self-referential poetics : embedded song and the performance of poetry in Greek literature." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:69380265-1014-4965-bc6a-32dbc244721a.
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This thesis is a study of embedded song in ancient Greek narrative poetry. The introduction defines the terminology (embedded song is defined as the depiction of the performance of a poem within a larger poem, such as the songs of Demodocus in Homer’s Odyssey) and sets the study in the context of recent narratological work done by scholars of Classical literature. This section of the thesis also contains a brief discussion of embedded song in the Homeric epics, which will form the background of all later examples of the motif. Chapter 1 deals with embedded song in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod’s Theogony. It is argued that the occurrence of embedded song across these poems indicates that the motif is a traditional feature of early Greek hexameter poetry, while the possibility of “inter-textual” allusion between these poems is considered, but finally dismissed. Chapter 2 focuses on Pindar, Bacchylides and Corinna, and explores how lyric poets use this motif in the various sub-genres of Greek lyric. In epinician poetry, it is argued that embedded song is used as a strategy of praise and also to boost the authority of the poet-narrator by association with the embedded performers, who can be seen to have in each case a particular source of authority distinct from that of the poet narrator. Chapter 3 considers the Hellenistic poets Apollonius Rhodius and Theocritus, and how their interest in depicting oral poetry meshes with their identity as literate and literary poets. Appendix I gives a list of all the examples of embedded song I have found in Greek poetry. Appendix II gives an account of Pindar’s Hymn to Zeus, a highly fragmentary poem which almost certainly contained an embedded song, analysing this as an example of the difficulties thrown up by lyric fragments for a study of embedded narratives.
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Posthumus, Liane. "Hybrid monsters in the Classical World : the nature and function of hybrid monsters in Greek mythology, literature and art." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/6865.
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Thesis (MPhil (Ancient Studies))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this thesis is to explore the purpose of monster figures by investigating the relationship between these creatures and the cultures in which they are generated. It focuses specifically on the human-animal hybrid monsters in the mythology, literature and art of ancient Greece. It attempts to answer the question of the purpose of these monsters by looking specifically at the nature of manhorse monsters and the ways in which their dichotomous internal and external composition challenged the cultural taxonomy of ancient Greece. It also looks at the function of monsters in a ritual context and how the Theseus myth, as initiation myth, and the Minotaur, as hybrid monster, conforms to the expectations of ritual monsters. The investigation starts by considering the history and uses of the term “monster” in an attempt to arrive at a reasonable definition of monstrosity. In aid of this definition, attention is also given to themes that recur when considering monster beings. This provides a basis from which the hybrid monsters of ancient Greece, the centaur and Minotaur in particular, can be considered. The next section of the thesis looks into the attitudes to animals prevalent in ancient Greece. The cultural value of certain animal types and even certain body parts have to be taken account, and the degree to which these can be traced to the nature and actions of the hybrid monster has to be considered. The main argument is divided in two sections. The first deals with the centaur as challenger to Greek cultural taxonomy. The centaur serves as an eminent example of how human-animal hybrid monsters combine the familiar and the foreign, the Self and the Other into a single complex being. The nature of this monster is examined with special reference to the ways in which the centaur, as proponent of chaos and wilderness, stands in juxtaposition to the ideals of Greek civilisation. The second section consists of an enquiry into the purpose of the hybrid monster and considers the Minotaur’s role as a facilitator of transformation. The focus is directed towards the ritual function of monsters and the ways in which monsters aid change and renewal both in individuals and in communities. By considering the Theseus-myth and the role of the Minotaur in the coming-of-age of the Attic hero as well as the city of Athens itself, the ritual theory is given application in ancient Greece. The conclusion of this thesis is that hybrid monsters, as manifestations of the internal dichotomy of man and the tenuous relationship between order and chaos, played a critical role in the personal and communal definition of man in ancient Greece.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doelstelling van hierdie tesis is om die sin van monsters te ondersoek deur te kyk na die verhouding wat bestaan tussen hierdie wesens en die gemeenskappe waarbinne hulle hul ontstaan het. Die tesis fokus spesifiek op die mens-dier hibriede monster in die mitologie, literatuur en kuns van antieke Griekeland. Dit probeer om tot ‘n slotsom te kom oor die bestaansrede van monsters deur te kyk na die aard van die man-perd monster. Hierdie wese se tweeledige samestelling – met betrekking tot beide sy interne en eksterne komposisie – het ‘n wesenlike bedreiging ingehou vir die kulturele taksonomie van die antieke Grieke. Die tesis kyk ook na die rol, van monsters in die konteks van rituele gebeure. Die mite van Theseus as ‘n mite met rituele verbintenisse, en die Minotaurus as hibriede monster, word dan oorweeg om te bepaal wat die ooreenstemming is met die verwagtinge wat daargestel is vir rituele monsters. Ten einde ‘n redelike definisie van monsteragtigheid daar te stel, begin die ondersoek deur oorweging te skenk aan die geskiedenis en die gebruike van die woord “monster”. Ter ondersteuning van hierdie definisie word daar ook aandag geskenk aan sekere temas wat herhaaldelik opduik wanneer monsters ter sprake kom. Dit skep ‘n basis vir die ondersoek na die hibriede monsters van antieke Griekeland, en meer spesifiek na die kentaurus en die Minotaurus. Die tesis oorweeg ook die houding van die antieke Griekse beskawing teenoor diere. Die kulturele waarde van sekere soorte diere, en selfs seker ledemate van diere, moet in ag geneem word wanneer die hibriede monsterfiguur behandel word. Aandag moet geskenk word aan die maniere waarop die assosiasies wat die Grieke met diere gehad het, oorgedra word na die aard en handelinge van die monsterfiguur. Die hoofargument van die tesis word in twee dele uiteengesit. Die eerste gedeelte behandel die kentaurus as uitdager van die kulturele taksonomie van die antieke Grieke. Die kentaurus dien as ‘n uitstekende voorbeeld van die manier waarop die mens-dier monster dit wat bekend is en dit wat vreemd is, die Self en die Ander, kombineer in een komplekse wese. Die aard van hierdie wese word ondersoek met spesifieke verwysing na die maniere waarop die kentaurus, as voorstander van die ongetemde en van chaos, in teenstelling staan teenoor die ideale van die Griekse beskawing. Die tweede gedeelte vors die doel van die hibriede monster na en oorweeg die Minotaurus se rol as bevorderaar van transformasie. Hier word gefokus op die rol van die monster in ’n rituele konteks en die maniere waarop monsters verandering en vernuwing teweegbring in enkelinge sowel as in gemeenskappe. Hierdie teorie word van toepassing gemaak op antieke Griekeland deur die mite van Theseus en die rol van die Minotaurus te oorweeg binne die konteks van die proses van inburgering wat beide die held en sy stad, Athene, ondergaan. Die gevolgtrekking van hierdie tesis is dat hibriede monsters, as uitbeeldings van die interne tweeledigheid van die mens sowel as van die tenger verband tussen orde en chaos in die wêreld, ‘n noodsaaklike rol gespeel het in die persoonlike en sosiale definisie van die individu in antieke Griekeland.
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Phillips, Tom. "Pindar's library : performance poetry and material texts." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:fb9b6bcc-0a2e-486e-94c4-f74a30d8cae8.
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Rigolio, Alberto. "Beyond schools and monasteries : literate education in Late Roman Syria (350-450 AD)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:85ff7460-1425-418e-8718-652473a371e6.
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The subject of the present work is the provision of higher literate education in late Roman Syria (c. 350 - c. 450). The difference that Christianity made to literate education has always been in danger of being explained with the introduction and the development of a new kind of instruction provided in monasteries. A rigid dichotomy between secular schools and Christian monasteries, however, finds limited validation in our sources for literate education. While early Christian literature often presented monasteries as providers of education, documentary evidence offers a more blurred picture. On the one hand, studentsʼ papyri show the penetration of Christianity into schools, and, on the other, secular instructional texts have been found in the excavations of early monasteries in Egypt. This thesis presents a neglected corpus of Christian instructional texts that call into question an oppositional understanding of scholastic and monastic education in the Syrian region during late Antiquity. The corpus consists of the Syriac translations of six literary pieces by (or attributed to) Plutarch, Lucian, and Themistius that bring together features of rhetorical education with an interest in Christian asceticism (ch. 2). While the contents and the transmission of the Syriac translations reveal the link to Christianity and Christian ascetic practice (ch. 3), the textual form and the choice of the texts unearths the underlying connection to traditional literate education (ch. 4). These documents, which will be put in relation to instructional literature composed in Greek, Latin, and Syriac in the same period, challenge the existence of a neat line dividing scholastic and monastic education in the Syrian region during late Antiquity. A fresh analysis that is not constrained by a preconceived model of monastic instruction better accounts for the involvement of early Christian leaders in higher education and prompts a new investigation of their conduct on the social scene. Their agency now appears much closer to that of their non-Christian counterparts, sophists in primis, and raises the broader question of the extent to which they owed their considerable success to the implementation of strategies ultimately derived from the world of professional paideia.
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Erlinger, Christopher Michael. "How the Eunuch Works:Eunuchs as a Narrative Device in Greek and Roman Literature." The Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1465737368.
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Billings, Joshua Henry. "The theory of tragedy in Germany around 1800 : a genealogy of the tragic." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:de67c4ef-2ddc-4a7a-8177-c55602c401f9.
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The thesis focuses on the theory of tragedy in Germany around 1800, and has two primary aims: to demonstrate the importance of idealist thought for contemporary approaches to tragedy and the tragic; and to revise the intellectual historiography of the classic phase in German letters. It traces reflection on Greek tragedy from the Querelle des anciens et des modernes in France around 1700 through the aesthetic systems formulated in Germany around 1800. Two intellectual developments are emphasized: the historicist consciousness that develops throughout the eighteenth century and places Greek tragedy more radically in its cultural context than ever before; and the idealist philosophy of art, which seeks to restore a measure of universality to the ancient genre, seeing it as the manifestation of a timeless quality of ‘the tragic.’ These two impulses, historicizing and universalizing, it is argued, are fundamental to modern understanding of Greek tragedy. The genealogical method seeks to establish a greater continuity with earlier eighteenth-century thought than is generally recognized, and to refute the teleologies that dominate accounts of idealist thought. A reconstruction of the central texts of Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, and Hölderlin reveals that the theory of tragedy around 1800 is in large part a reflection on history, an effort to understand how ancient literature can be meaningful in modernity. Greek tragedy becomes the ground for an engagement with the pastness of antiquity and its possible presence. Idealist theories, far from dissolving particularity in abstraction, seek a mediation between philological historicism and philosophical universalism in considering Greek tragedy. A genealogy of the tragic suggests that such mediation remains a vital task for scholars of the Classics.
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Bertoni, Daniel Robert. "The Cultivation and Conceptualization of Exotic Plants in the Greek and Roman Worlds." Thesis, Harvard University, 2014. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11448.
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This dissertation is an investigation into how plants provide a way to explore cultural interactions between Greece and Rome and the east. I use India, a region that remained consistently exotic to most Greeks and Romans throughout antiquity, as a test case to examine how eastern plants were received and integrated into Greek and Roman culture. Throughout I use my test case as a focus and as an object of comparison: India is a constant reminder of what was conceptualized as exotic. My methodology is primarily "plants in text," an approach that incorporates both the physical reality of plants for sale at the market as well as the imagined flora that grows at the end of the earth. The results of this inquiry show the value of investigating the cultural importance of plants and the mental constructs that surround them in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.The Classics
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Gilchrist, Katie E. "Penelope : a study in the manipulation of myth." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1997. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ace5d5e9-520e-455a-a737-0f2ee162e1e1.
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Mythological figures play a number of roles in literature: they may, of course, appear in person as developed characters, but they may also contribute more indirectly, as part of the substratum from which rhetorical argument or literary characterisation are constructed, or as a background against which other literary strategies (for example, the rewriting of epic or the appropriation of Greek culture by the Romans) can be marked out. This thesis sets out to examine the way in which the figure of Penelope emerges from unknown origins, acquires portrayal in almost canonical form in Homer's Odyssey, and then takes part in the subsequent interplay of Homeric and other literary allusions throughout later Classical literature (with chapters focusing particularly on fifth-century Greek tragedy, Hellenistic poetry, and Augustan poetry). In particular, it focuses on the manner in which, despite the potential complexities of the character and the possible variants in her story, she became quintessentially a stereotypical figure. In addition to considering example where Penelope is evoked by name, a case is also made for the thesis that allusion, or intertextual reference, could also evoke Penelope for an ancient audience. A central point of discussion is what perception of Penelope would be called to mind by intertextual reference. The importance of approaching relationships between ancient texts in intertextual terms rather terms of strict "allusion" is thus demonstrated. The formation of the simplified picture is considered in the light of folk-tale motifs, rhetorical simplification of myth, and favoured story patterns. The appendices include a summary of the myth of Penelope with all attested variants, and a comprehensive list of explicit references to her in classical literature.
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Jackson, Lucy C. M. "The Athenian dramatic chorus in the fourth century BC." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6a2c8350-1b7e-4abb-982b-ff958c8d7276.
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This thesis tackles a conspicuous absence in current scholarship on ancient theatre. Amid the recent scholarly interest in the rapid expansion of the theatre industry from the late fifth-century BC onwards, no study has been made of a central, defining even, element of ancient Greek drama at that time – the chorus. Instead, what we find is a widespread assumption concerning the fourth-century dramatic chorus, particularly with regard to the comic chorus, still prevalent in today’s scholarship: ‘The history of the dramatic chorus is one of decline both quantitatively and qualitatively’, states one of the more detailed recent reviews of the evidence for dramatic choral culture in the ancient world (Csapo and Slater 1995:349). The thesis focuses on the literary sources available to us concerning fourth-century dramatic choruses in Athens. The material is divided into three sections. The first section addresses the important testimony of Aristotle concerning the choruses of his day, particularly in the Poetics (chapter one). The second section analyses the choral text in the (probably fourth-century) Rhesus (chapter two), the interpolated choral passages in the Iphigenia at Aulis and Seven Against Thebes (chapter three), and the choruses of Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen and Wealth, as well as extant fragments of fourth-century comedy (chapter four). The third section is a survey of how the chorus is used in a wide range of fourth-century texts (chapter five), and gives special attention to Plato’s somewhat idiosyncratic presentation of the chorus in his works (chapter six). These analyses show 1) that ‘decline’ is an inappropriate term to describe the development of the chorus and 2) the creativity with which the chorus is used and thought about in fourth-century drama and society. The thesis aims to provide an elucidation of dramatic choral activity in the fourth century and to provoke further interrogation of the assumptions commonly held about the development of both the ancient chorus and ancient drama as a whole.
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Sorensen, Anders Dahl. "Craftsmanship, teleology, and politics in Plato's 'Statesman'." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2010. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:990cdb12-accb-47dd-9801-75181bacd935.
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In this thesis I attempt to bring out some interesting implications of Plato’s political thought as it is presented in the Politicus. In particular, I will show how this dialogue provides a new picture of the relation between ruler and ruled; a picture that stresses the importance and responsibility of every citizen, not just of the statesman himself. This is achieved by an analysis of the notion of political craftsmanship envisaged by the main speaker of the dialogue, the Eleatic Stranger. However, before I turn to consider the Politicus itself, I provide a brief presentation of another Platonic craftsman, the demiurge of the Timaeus. As will be clear, the teleological structure, and the accompanying terminology, of his craftsmanship will mirror that of the true statesman and thus help us understand the latter’s political rule. My choice to focus on this aspect of the Politicus is motivated by the text itself. For the question of the kind of craftsmanship involved in political rule is picturesquely, yet effectively, brought to the fore by the myth in the early parts of the dialogue, which distinguishes between two rival conceptions and associates the statesman with one of them. I conclude by reflecting on the significance of my findings for Plato’s political thought as a whole.