Academic literature on the topic 'PA Classical philology'

Except for the pseudo-Euripidean Rhesus, fourth-century tragedy has almost entirely been lost to the ravages of time, known only through the quotation of a few isolated lines by later writers or preservation on some sand-worn scraps of papyrus. The poor survival of fourth-century tragedy has inevitably led to suggestions of low quality. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to revise these conclusions, recognising a remarkable inventiveness prevalent in the surviving fragments. This thesis aims to continue the rehabilitation of fourth-century tragedy and takes the form of a commentary on the fragments of Astydamas II, Carcinus II, Chaeremon, and Theodectas, the 'leading lights' of this period whose verses comprise over half of what remains. In the introduction, I focus on fourth-century tragedy in general and all its surviving fragments, even those not treated in the commentary. I begin by exploring the internationalisation of this genre and its spread to the Greek-speaking West and East. I then consider the prevalent themes and stylistic features of the fragments and examine fourth-century reaction to fourth-century tragedy, particularly in comedy, oratory, and philosophy. I also discuss fourth-century satyr drama and some of its best surviving examples, including Python's Agen. In the commentary, I provide a biography for each poet and explore their reception and that of their work. I then discuss each of their plays in turn, reconstructing plots where possible and providing information about other treatments of a myth in fifth- and fourth-century drama. Finally, I analyse each fragment, focusing on any textual issues, their literary, stylistic, and dramaturgical qualities, and on their relationship within the dramatic tradition and Greco-Roman literature. Through analysing the fragments in the form of a commentary, I hope to show that far from representing a 'terminal decline' as Edna Hooker once lamented, they instead display many remarkable qualities which make them worthy of study in their own right.

In many ways, Strindberg's works are among the most paradoxical in modern literature. Violently misogynistic, they nevertheless reveal a man who worships Woman, cannot live without her, loathing her as Mistress but adoring her as Mother; almost brutal in the violence of their emotions, they are at the same time gentle in the irony of their humour; totally unorthodox in their theology, they are profoundly religious; even when most naturalistic (as in Froken Julie: Miss Julie), they are highly symbolic. The leading practitioner of naturalistic drama is also the father of the theatre of the absurd. However unlike his works might appear to one another, and whatever the seeming contradictions and inconsistencies among the various ideas espoused and championed by Strindberg at different points in his career, his themes remained the same: his own life, the struggle for dominance between the sexes, psychological domination through the power of suggestion, the problem of the existence of evil and suffering in the world, and the influence of the supernatural on human life and history. And whatever his literary genre -- drama, poetry, novel, short story, satire, history, autobiography, scientific or philological treatise, political, philosophical, or religious essay -- these themes are expressed and developed through a rich and evocative symbolism drawn not only from the tribal treasury of archetypal images, but supplemented, shaped and refined by his own experience, imagination, and subconscious. An examination of his symbolism, then, will not only elucidate the works by making our interpretation of them surer, but should reveal a consistency and logical development in his writing not always apparent with other approaches. Symbolism can be seen as a kind of shorthand: a way of enriching a text which, particularly in drama, poetry, and the short story, is often more or less severely constrained in terms of length: by drawing on universal or traditional symbols, the author can suggest levels of meaning, connections, and associations which extend his work beyond the limits imposed on it. In more extended literary genres, such as the novel, on the other hand, symbolism is often used only sparingly. Over the course of his career, an author also builds up a set of personal symbols, drawn from his experience, his reading, his interests, and, ultimately, his view of the world; his work cannot be fully understood without an awareness of these symbols. This study seeks to identify Strindberg's symbols, to search out their meanings, to relate them to each other, to the works in which they occur, and to the body of work as a whole, and to suggest, wherever possible, their sources. The overwhelming tendency in Strindberg studies is to approach the works as biographical and/or psychological documents. His habits of working from living models (a practice he called vivisection), of fictionalizing his own experiences, and of meticulously documenting his life and his intellectual and spiritual development make this inevitable. This study does not ignore the author's biography (impossible in such an autobiographical writer), but seeks to place the emphasis elsewhere, on the more exclusively literary concern of meaning (as opposed to reference). Strindberg always considered himself primarily a dramatist, and indeed it is almost exclusively as such that the non-Swedish world knows him. It is, therefore, with Strindberg's plays that this study is primarily concerned. He was, however, a prolific writer, covering most genres, and much of his non-dramatic writing expands upon, explains, or provides the source for, the symbolism of the plays. With two or three minor exceptions (noted in the text), I have therefore looked at all of Strindberg's published works; those not mentioned have been omitted because they do not contribute in any significant way to an understanding of his symbolism. Preference has been given to the Swedish texts in the twenty-two volumes which have appeared so far in the ongoing "National Edition" (Samlade verk: Collected Works); for works which have not yet appeared there, I have used, in the first instance Gunnar Brandell's Skrifter (Writings, the Swedish edition which Glasgow University Library possesses), and, for works that appear in neither of those editions, John Landquist's monumental Samalade skrifter (Collected Writings). Although I have often consulted various English translations, the translations of cited passages are my own, except where noted. Biblical quotations are cited from a variety of English translations, in an attempt to stay as close as possible to the Swedish wording cited by Strindberg; when it is a question of simply providing a reference, I have preferred to cite The Jerusalem Bible. In a few instances, where no English translation could be found which corresponded satisfactorily to Strindberg's version (whether through an anomaly of the Swedish translation he used -- presumably the Karl XII Bible -- or through his own deliberate or unconscious misquotation), I have translated the citation literally. In quotations (and in their translations), underlined ellipses (...) are Strindberg's own; those not so distinguished (...) indicate an omission from the text. In a few instances, when scenes in the Swedish text are unnumbered, I have supplied numbers as an aid to locating cited passages in a translation.

This thesis explores the role of vision and space in the works of Tacitus. A number of recent studies have assessed the importance of vision, space, and the gaze in ancient literature, across a variety of different authors. The gaze in epic poetry has been analysed by Leigh (1997), Smith (2005), and Lovatt (2013); Feldherr (1998) has considered the role of spectacle in Livy; and Purves (2010) and Rimell (2015) have examined the role of space in Greek literature and Roman poetry respectively. Yet there has been no substantial study of these themes in Tacitus. The present work addresses this gap in scholarship by providing a wide ranging survey of visuality across the Tacitean corpus which extends from the gaze of the emperor and other individuals, to the collective gaze of the Roman populace and the gaze of the reader; within settings such as the dining room, the senate house, the city, and the battlefield. In considering this diverse material, I highlight the importance of taking a wide-ranging approach to the study of Tacitus’ visual techniques, emphasising the interrelation between disparate strands of Tacitean visuality. Such an eclectic approach reveals the centrality of vision and space to Tacitus’ ideas of power, control, corruption, and manipulation under the early principate, as well as the inherent ambiguity of Tacitus’ conception of the gaze. The thesis begins by considering some characteristics of Tacitus’ visual technique and analysing his use of language to create visual scenes. The focus then turns to the individual gaze, in two chapters centred on the gaze of the emperor. Here the imperial gaze emerges as a dominant force that is intrinsically linked to the emperor’s power, yet is also open to manipulation and corruption. This is followed by a chapter on battles and battlefields, in which Tacitus’ use of landscape and visual description is used to explore themes of military power and control and the corrupting nature of civil war. The final main chapter considers the role of spectacle in the city of Rome in the Histories, outlining a Tacitean approach to the viewing of violent spectacle that emphasises the corruption of morals and the breakdown of societal norms. These various themes are drawn together in the concluding chapter, which highlights the role of vision and space as a central pillar in Tacitus’ exploration of power under the principate.

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.

As argued, the connection between Athenian BC society and tragedy - an area of research far from exhausted - should be examined on the basis of an anthropological/cultural, and rather comparatively oriented perspective, rather than a purely historical or literary one. A further defence holds that such an approach explores in a fresh way the connection between the two which is based on a model of self, on the one hand, and Sophocles' and Euripides' characters on the other - both proposed to consist of the same culturally framed, yet diversely expressed components which define an individual actor/self as would be portrayed by anthropological studies. Because of the proposed nexus of variously expressed components, the staged character is seen as an agent who exposes the complexity and ambiguity of one's own self of whom the individual agent was unaware of possessing. The above argument, approached mainly through primary sources, will be defended as follows. After defining in the introduction concepts such as `self' and `performance', the discussion on the components of self and character begins by exploring their background - the ideology and culture of Athens. As argued, because of particular factors linked to economic and military power, Athens is contrasted with other Greek cities, and at the same time, its performance culture becomes the topos of the performing self. The second chapter defends the concepts of self and dramatic character, as well as the elements associating them which are cultural projections of the society, but also are associated with the notion of `self as presented in recent anthropological discussions of human agency. Lastly, the third chapter argues on the actualisation of the self's model on stage; after the comparative analysis of the characters' actions in three plays by Sophocles, and three by Euripides, the conclusion reached is that the proposed model of self, cultural, but also self-reliant, is an entity which is utilised as a model agent of staged characters.

This thesis is a synchronic reception study of a single play, the Oedipus at Colonus. Rather than providing a commentary, or extracting one or two themes in isolation for examination, it considers the play through the lens of the eighteenth century. In so doing it offers a variety of disciplinary approaches, looking at the QC through the eyes of an aesthetic philosopher, creative writer, textual critic, artist, politician, historian, art historian, composer, musicologist, teacher or clergyman. After an introduction outlining some basic presuppositions for the thesis, chapter 1 covers aesthetic philosophy, chapter 2 books, chapter 3 staged reworking, chapter 4 paintings and chapter 5 opera. In reflecting on the play from such a broad range of perspectives, a range of insights emerge. The major theme is the way in which aesthetics develops over time and how these developments are reflected in the wide range of material under discussion. This thesis is about the sublime. Reading the DC through eighteenth-century eyes prioritises certain aspects of it which can, in various guises and at various times, be understood as sublime. This places great emphasis on themes such as religion and the role of landscape, while diminishing others, such as that of blindness, which might usually seem obvious ways to think about the play. Each act of reception draws out something slightly different from the Greek model, and by examining a range of material, our overall appreciation of the play and the eighteenth century is significantly enhanced, particularly in respect to the aforementioned themes.

In the present thesis the author professes to offer neither a systematic account of Sophoclean theology (if indeed there is such a thing) nor a study of the epistemological problem per se in Sophoclean tragedy. His purpose is rather to illuminate - partly expanding on a brief but suggestive study by Hans Diller ("Gottliches und menschliches Wissen bei Sophocles", Kiel 1950) - the ways in which the epistemological chasm between Man and God in Sophoclean tragedy becomes manifest through a 'collision' between the incompleteness and limitedness of human knowledge on the one hand and the transcendence and the unknowability of the gods on the other. An introductory chapter is prefixed which deals with the development of the idea of divine unknowability in archaic Greek literature and in Presocratic philosophy. There follows a detailed examination of the extant plays one by one (with special emphasis on the close reading of practically all the choral odes), by means of which the author endeavours to demonstrate that the centrality of the epistemological problem (in relation, always, to the inscrutability of the Godhead) in Sophocles, far from reducing his dramas to abstract philosophical treatises, contains a tremendous tragic potential and makes for powerful plays. Aspects of each play's structure, of its thematic articulation and of its vocabulary are studied, while a variety of methodological approaches are employed in order to illuminate problems of interpretation. All important secondary literature is cited and / or discussed. Thus, while never losing sight of its central concern (divine unknowability, limitedness of human knowledge), the present thesis also aims to be a thorough study of Sophoclean tragedy as a whole.

The main purpose of this thesis is to establish a level of connection between the epic and satiric genres. The popularity of the epic genre was not always matched by its authors' talents, and the exclusively Roman satiric genre seems to have been one of a handful of genres that rose up as an alternative to the perhaps trite and conventional epic format. It will be shown that one of the techniques by which the satirists sought to replace the pre-eminent literary genre on the populace's reading lists with their own allegedly 'lesser' satiric poetry, involved the exploitation of various aspects familiar from the epic genre, but in an original and often unexpected way. This exploitation of epic material by the satirists can be seen in several different ways, and indeed many of these methods have been briefly pointed out by earlier commentators at specific points in the texts, or have even been discussed in their totality with regard to certain individual satirists. The innovation of this thesis will be to show that these different techniques, gathered together under the umbrella heading of 'exploitation of the epic realm', actually existed, to a greater or lesser extent, in each of the satirists' works, and should therefore be understood as a recurring motif which the satiric genre. The various elements of the epic realm that are exploited by the satirists will be systematically explored: beginning with simple opinions regarding the epic genre; building up through the satirists' utilisation of various stylistic and linguistic devices, recurring themes and motifs, and historical and mythological characters, that were usually associated with epic; then covering the satirists' frequent references to specific moments in earlier epic works, either through quotation or scenic parody; before climaxing with those satires that seem to have a wider epic framework and a 'heroic' central figure. The different levels of exploitation will also be discussed in each case: this can range from a serious and sincere appeal to the past that the epic genre represents, through a comical presentation of a stock satiric subject in ironically exaggerated epic terms, to a totally subversive parody of the epic genre itself.

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

This study looks at three episodes in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, namely the Hercules episode in Book 9 and the Pygmalion and Myrrha episodes in Book 10. These episodes are connected by the fact that, in each, the superficial interpretation of the text interacts with the tale’s underlying meaning and thus invites reassessment of that tale. This is a recurring feature throughout the Metamorphoses. The first chapter looks at the Hercules episode. It begins with a study of Ovid’s sources for the tale of Hercules and Deianira and is followed by a discussion of the episode itself. The central argument is that despite the amatory facade of the tale, the narrator systematically establishes Hercules’ lack of amorous interest in Deianira. The second chapter examines the Pygmalion episode. It looks at recent critical interest in the implicit eroticism of the episode and further contributes to this area of discussion. This study has two parts. In the first, Venus’ contribution to the erotic undercurrent in the tale is discussed. In the second, the relationship between Pygmalion and the Iphis episode in Book 9 is examined. The third chapter discusses the Myrrha episode which immediately follows that of Pygmalion in Ovid’s epic. The central argument of this chapter is that Ovid deliberately establishes a ritual undercurrent of sacred marriage in the tale. This Cyprian cult practice was an important feature of the Myrrha-Cinyras legend and examination of this aspect in the Ovidian adaptation begins with an examination of the relevance of this ritual motif to that legend generally. This is followed by a discussion of how Ovid deliberately establishes the scared marriage as a backdrop to his own incest tale. This depends on the creation of an undercurrent of marriage and on the religious atmosphere which exists alongside it.