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1
Giannakopoulou, Aglaia. "Ancient Greek sculpture in modern Greek poetry, 1860-1960." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.322258.
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Metcalf, Christopher Michael Simon. "Aspects of early Greek and Babylonian hymnic poetry." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:70c45666-9768-41ac-bf42-5b5e1926d6d6.
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This thesis is a case study of early Greek poetry in comparison to the literature of the ancient Near East, especially Mesopotamia, based on a selection of hymns (or: songs in praise of gods) mainly in Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite and Greek. Chapters 1–3 present the core groups of primary sources from the ancient Near East: Old Babylonian Sumerian, Old Babylonian Akkadian, Hittite. The aim of these chapters is to analyse the main features of style and content of Sumerian and Akkadian hymnic poetry, and to show how certain compositions were translated and adapted beyond Mesopotamia (such as in Hittite). Chapter 4 contains introductory remarks on early Greek hymnic poetry accompanied by some initial comparative observations. On the basis of the primary sources presented in Chapters 1–4, the second half of the thesis investigates selected elements of form and content in a comparative perspective: hymnic openings (Chapter 5), negative predication (Chapter 6), the birth of Aphrodite in the Theogony of Hesiod (Chapter 7), and the origins and development of a phrase in Hittite prayers and the Iliad of Homer (Chapter 8). The conclusion of Chapters 4–6 is that, in terms of form and style, early Greek hymns were probably not indebted to ancient Near Eastern models. This contradicts some current thinking in Classical scholarship, according to which Near Eastern influence was pervasive in early Greek poetry in general. Chapters 7–8 argue that such influence may nevertheless be perceived in certain closely defined instances, particularly where supplementary evidence from other ancient sources is available, and where the extant sources permit a reconstruction of the process of translation and adaptation. Hence this thesis seeks to contribute to the current debate on early Greek and ancient Near Eastern literature with a detailed analysis of a selected group of primary sources.
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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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Papastamati, S. "Gamos in archaic and classical Greek poetry : theme, ritual and metaphor." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2013. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1389425/.
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This thesis considers how advances in optical network and optoelectronic technologies may be utilised in particle physics applications. The research is carried out within a certain framework; CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) upgrade. The focus is on the upgrade of the ”last-tier” data links, those residing between the last information-processing stage and the accelerator. For that purpose, different network architectures, based on the Pas¬sive Optical Network (PON) architectural paradigm, are designed and evaluated. Firstly, a Time-Division Multiplexed (TDM) PON targeting timing, trigger and control applica¬tions is designed. The bi-directional, point-to-multipoint nature of the architecture leads to infrastructure efficiency increase. A custom protocol is developed and implemented us¬ing FPGAs. It is experimentally verified that the network design can deliver significantly higher data rate than the current infrastructure and meet the stringent latency require¬ments of the targeted application. Consequently, the design of a network that can be utilised to transmit all types of information at the upgraded LHC, the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) is discussed. The most challenging requirement is that of the high up¬stream data rate. As WDM offers virtual point-to-point connectivity, the possibility of using a Wavelength-Division Multiplexed (WDM) PON is theoretically investigated. The shortcomings of this solution are identified; these include high cost and complexity, therefore a simpler architecture is designed. This is also based on the PON paradigm and features the use of Reflective Electroabsorption Modulators (REAM) at the front-end (close to the particle collision point). Its performance is experimentally investigated and shown to meet the requirements of a unified architecture at the HL-LHC from a networking perspective. Finally, since the radiation resistance of optoelectronic components used at the front-end is of major importance, the REAM radiation hardness is experimentally investigated. Their radiation resistance limits are established, while new insights into the radiation damage mechanism are gained.
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Fearn, David. "Bacchylides : politics and poetic tradition." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.273160.
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Willi, Andreas. "The language of Aristophanes : aspects of linguistic variation in classical Attic Greek." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.365461.
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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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Ladianou, Aikaterini. "Logos Gynaikos: Feminine Voice in Archaic Greek Poetry." The Ohio State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1236711421.
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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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Hammond, Rhona Bobbi. "The influence of the classical tradition on the poetry of Derek Walcott." Thesis, Open University, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.368004.
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Campbell, Charles. "Poets and Poetics in Greek Literary Epigram." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1384333736.
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Polten, Orla. "Spectres of metre : English poetry in classical measures, 1860-1930." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/278573.
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Why did so many poets attempt English verse in Ancient Greek and Latin metres during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? And what was at stake in these attempts? The most immediate importance of these questions to literary criticism is the fact that they mark one of the most striking and consistent points of contiguity between the verse-forms — and poetic theories — of poets commonly categorised as ‘Modernists’ and ‘Victorians’. This study uncovers a lineage of experimentation with classical metres connecting Algernon Charles Swinburne to Ezra Pound and H. D., in the process challenging received periodizations of English verse-history. The assumption that vers libre and metrical verse constitute alternate and incompatible paradigms prevents us from being able to perceive, in either of them, the endless performative possibilities that rhythm offers us — possibilities which, as I intend to demonstrate, underpin some of the period’s most influential experiments in verse-form. My close studies of these poetic forms raise another question: what is the ontological status of these poetic forms that pass through multiple languages and millennia? I frame my readings of English poetry in classical measures through the metaphor of the ghost because English poetry can only encounter classical metres as a kind of spectral or incomplete presence. I refer to this encounter, borrowing a term from Jacques Derrida, as ‘hauntology’: a situation of temporal, historical, and ontological disjunction that occurs when a being or entity, apparently present, is revealed to be an absent or continually-deferred (non-)origin. The hauntological character of English poems in classical measures is due not only to fundamental differences between the syntaxes and phonologies of Ancient Greek, Latin, and English, but also to the loss of knowledge concerning the traditions and conventions of metrical performance in Ancient Greek and Latin. This is why writing English poetry in classical metres generally poses a far greater challenge — both technically and conceptually — than writing English poetry in the metres of a living language: recreating classical metres in English requires reimagining the very nature of the encounter between poems and bodies, while also facing up to the quasi-magical charge that ‘the classical’ holds in the English literary imagination.
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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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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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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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Piantanida, Cecilia. "Classical lyricism in Italian and North American 20th-century poetry." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4422c01a-ba88-4fe0-a21f-4804e4c610ce.
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This thesis defines ‘classical lyricism’ as any mode of appropriation of Greek and Latin monodic lyric whereby a poet may develop a wider discourse on poetry. Assuming classical lyricism as an internal category of enquiry, my thesis investigates the presence of Sappho and Catullus as lyric archetypes in Italian and North American poetry of the 20th century. The analysis concentrates on translations and appropriations of Sappho and Catullus in four case studies: Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) and Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968) in Italy; Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and Anne Carson (b. 1950) in North America. I first trace the poetic reception of Sappho and Catullus in the oeuvres of the four authors separately. I define and evaluate the role of the respective appropriations within each author’s work and poetics. I then contextualise the four case studies within the Italian and North American literary histories. Finally, through the new outlook afforded by the comparative angle of this thesis, I uncover some of the hidden threads connecting the different types of classical lyricism transnationally. The thesis shows that the course of classical lyricism takes two opposite aesthetic directions in Italy and in North America. Moreover, despite the two aesthetic trajectories diverging, I demonstrate that the four poets’ appropriations of Sappho and Catullus share certain topical characteristics. Three out of four types of classical lyricism are defined by a preference for Sappho’s and Catullus’ lyrics which deal with marriage rituals and defloration, patterns of death and rebirth, and solar myths. They stand out as the epiphenomena of the poets’ interest in the anthropological foundations of the lyric, which is grounded in a philosophical function associated with poetry as a quest for knowledge. I therefore ultimately propose that ‘classical lyricism’ may be considered as an independent historical and interpretative category of the classical legacy.
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Coughlan, Taylor. "The Aesthetics of Dialect in Hellenistic Epigram." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1459440096.
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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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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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Platt, Mary Hartley. "Epic reduction : receptions of Homer and Virgil in modern American poetry." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9d1045f5-3134-432b-8654-868c3ef9b7de.
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The aim of this project is to account for the widespread reception of the epics of Homer and Virgil by American poets of the twentieth century. Since 1914, an unprecedented number of new poems interpreting the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid have appeared in the United States. The vast majority of these modern versions are short, combining epic and lyric impulses in a dialectical form of genre that is shaped, I propose, by two cultural movements of the twentieth century: Modernism, and American humanism. Modernist poetics created a focus on the fragmentary and imagistic aspects of Homer and Virgil; and humanist philosophy sparked a unique trend of undergraduate literature survey courses in American colleges and universities, in which for the first time, in the mid-twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of students were exposed to the epics in translation, and with minimal historical contextualisation, prompting a clear opportunity for personal appropriation on a broad scale. These main matrices for the reception of epic in the United States in the twentieth century are set out in the introduction and first chapter of this thesis. In the five remaining chapters, I have identified secondary threads of historical influence, scrutinised alongside poems that developed in that context, including the rise of Freudian and related psychologies; the experience of modern warfare; American national politics; first- and second-wave feminism; and anxiety surrounding poetic belatedness. Although modern American versions of epic have been recognised in recent scholarship on the reception of Classics in twentieth-century poetry in English, no comprehensive account of the extent of the phenomenon has yet been attempted. The foundation of my arguments is a catalogue of almost 400 poems referring to Homer and Virgil, written by over 175 different American poets from 1914 to the present. Using a comparative methodology (after T. Ziolkowski, Virgil and the Moderns, 1993), and models of reception from German and English reception theory (including C. Martindale, Redeeming the Text, 1993), the thesis contributes to the areas of classical reception studies and American literary history, and provides a starting point for considering future steps in the evolution of the epic genre.
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Kampakoglou, Alexandros. "Studies in the reception of Pindar in Hellenistic poetry." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f97a0403-6f42-41c5-bff2-f7b3991fc48b.
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This thesis examines the reception of Pindar in Hellenistic poetry. More specifically it examines texts of three major Hellenistic poets: Theocritus of Syracuse, Callimachus of Cyrene and Posidippus of Pella. The texts discussed have been selected on the basis of two principles: (i) genre and (ii) subject matter. They include texts that inscribe themselves in the tradition of encomiastic, and more specifically, Pindaric poetry either through the generic discourse which they partake in or through the employment of myths that Pindar had used in his own odes. Throughout the thesis it is argued that the connections with Pindaric passages are carried out on the basis of ‘allusions’ which are picked up by the readers. This term is employed to describe one of the ways in which intertextuality functions. Following the model of Conte and Barchiesi, the discussion insists on the distinction between allusions to specific Pindaric passages and allusions to epinician generic motifs that can best be illustrated through Pindaric passages. The aim of the discussion for each case of textual correspondence suggested is to describe the means whereby this connection is suggested to the reader and to propose a ‘meaning’ for it. In this sense, equal emphasis is given to the detailed examination of all texts that partake in the intertextual connection suggested, i.e. to Pindaric and Hellenistic alike.
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Fox, Peta Ann. "Heroes at the gates appeal and value in the Homeric epics from the archaic through the classical period." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002168.
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This thesis raises and explores questions concerning the popularity of the Homeric poems in ancient Greece. It asks why the Iliad and Odyssey held such continuing appeal among the Greeks of the Archaic and Classical age. Cultural products such as poetry cannot be separated from the sociopolitical conditions in which and for which they were originally composed and received. Working on the basis that the extent of Homer’s appeal was inspired and sustained by the peculiar and determining historical circumstances, I set out to explore the relation of the social, political and ethical conditions and values of Archaic and Classical Greece to those portrayed in the Homeric poems. The Greeks, at the time during which Homer was composing his poems, had begun to establish a new form of social organisation: the polis. By examining historical, literary and philosophical texts from the Archaic and Classical age, I explore the manner in which Greek society attempted to reorganise and reconstitute itself in a different way, developing original modes of social and political activity which the new needs and goals of their new social reality demanded. I then turn to examine Homer’s treatment of and response to this social context, and explore the various ways in which Homer was able to reinterpret and reinvent the inherited stories of adventure and warfare in order to compose poetry that not only looks back to the highly centralised and bureaucratic society of the Mycenaean world, but also looks forward, insistently so, to the urban reality of the present. I argue that Homer’s conflation of a remembered mythical age with the contemporary conditions and values of Archaic and Classical Greece aroused in his audiences a new perception and understanding of human existence in the altered sociopolitical conditions of the polis and, in so doing, ultimately contributed to the development of new ideas on the manner in which the Greeks could best live together in their new social world.
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But, Ekaterina. "Eutrapelia: Humorous texts in Hellenistic poetry." The Ohio State University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1619032780255174.
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Ginard, Puigserver Maria. "BIOI. Tradicions biogràfiques dels poetes mítics grecs." Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/314387.
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La construcció de les tradicions biogràfiques dels poetes mítics grecs va començar a gestar-se des de les primeres manifestacions literàries gregues i es va prolongar durant segles. Al llarg d’aquest període, aquestes figures van ser adoptades amb finalitats diverses i van encaixar en els usos i les necessitats individuals o col·lectius d’autors literaris, grups de culte o interessos polítics. A més a més, la construcció biogràfica d’aquests poetes comparteix processos i mecanismes de caracterització similars als que van fer servir les tradicions dels poetes històrics i d’altres operadors culturals com els filòsofs. Així doncs, la tesi analitza els motius biogràfics principals que s’incorporaren a les figures dels poetes mítics, per blocs temàtics, i el procés com es generaren i s’aprofitaren els t pics i els motius biogràfics en els poetes considerats sovint iniciadors de la poesia grega. Les anàlisis d’aquesta recerca s’organitzen principalment al voltant de figures com Tàmiris, Orfeu, Museu, Eumolp, Epimènides, Linos, Olè, Filammó i Amfíon, entre d’altres, i s’estructuren seguint uns eixos temàtics com són els orígens (genealogia i pàtria), les relacions de magisteri i d’iniciació i altres motius típics de la biografia heroica (el viatge, els enfrontaments poètics i amb el poder, les invencions, la institució de cultes, la mort i la integració en la condició heroica).
L’estudi dels motius biogràfics ha comportat la identificació d’una funció d’equivalència entre alguns d’aquests motius i s’hi ha detectat també una voluntat de jerarquització i competència, molt lligada al context cultual en què molts d’aquests poetes tenien presència. De manera similar, els biografemes han contribuït a assignar als poetes analitzats una funció instauradora per a la tradició literària i religiosa que els prenia com a referent, com a conseqüència de la relació constant i privilegiada amb la divinitat.The development of the biographical traditions of the Greek mythical poets started with the first Greek literary works and it lasted for centuries. Throughout this period these figures were adapted for different uses and they suited literary, cultic or political interests either particularly or collectively. Furthermore, the shaping of the traditions of these poets, generally considered previous to Homer, has similarities with the historical poets, philosophers, sages and others. So, the thesis analyses the main sets of biographical formulaic themes and the process in which these formulaic motifs were elaborated and reshaped. The poets studied are Thamyris, Orpheus, Musaeus, Eumolpus, Linus, Epimenides, Olen, Philammon and Amphion among others, and the topics are their genealogy and origin, poetic initiation and other traditional topics of the heroic biography (teacher-pupil relationship, travel, song contests, quarrel with authorities, inventions, establishment of new cults, death, heroization). The study of these biographical traditions has led to identify the equivalence among some formulaic themes and the intention to set up a hierarchy, tied to cultic context where these poets were used. Similarly, the biographemes contributed to assign them an authoritative role for the literary and religious tradition which took them as a referent, thanks to the constant and privileged relationship with deities.
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Geisz, Camille H. "Storytelling in late antique epic : a study of the narrator in Nonnus of Panopolis' Dionysiaca." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7b323af8-0512-407e-8aed-a0a7970a49ef.
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This thesis is a narratological study of Nonnus of Panopolis' Dionysiaca, focussing on the figure of the narrator whose interventions reveal much about his relationship to his predecessors and his own conception of story-telling. Although he presents himself as a follower of Homer, whom he mentions by name in his poem, the Dionysiaca are clearly influenced by a much wider range of sources of inspiration. The study of narratological interventions brings to light the narrator's relationship with Homer, between imitation and innovation. The way he renews and transforms epic narratorial devices attests to his literary skills as he strives for ποικιλία in his poem. His interventions hint at sources of inspiration other than Homer, such as lyric poetry, historiography, and didactic epic. Another innovation is the way the narrator intervenes not to draw the narratee's attention to the contents of his text, but to underline his own role as story-teller. Some interventions signal a change in tone or the integration of another genre; the expected proems and invocations to the Muse become spaces for a display of ingeniousness, a discussion of the sources and a reflection on the role of the poet. The efforts made by the Nonnian narrator to renew well known devices also denotes his mindfulness of his narratee, whom he involves in the story through metaleptic devices, or by drawing on a shared cultural background to enhance the narrative with allusions to extradiegetic references. The study of narratorial interventions proves that the Dionysiaca were not written only in an attempt to recreate a Homeric epic, but are a compendium of influences, genres, and myths, encompassing the influence of a thousand years of Greek literature.
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Workman, Jameson Samuel. "Chaucerian metapoetics and the philosophy of poetry." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8cf424fd-124c-4cb0-9143-e436c5e3c2da.
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This thesis places Chaucer within the tradition of philosophical poetry that begins in Plato and extends through classical and medieval Latin culture. In this Platonic tradition, poetry is a self-reflexive epistemological practice that interrogates the conditions of art in general. As such, poetry as metapoetics takes itself as its own object of inquiry in order to reinforce and generate its own definitions without regard to extrinsic considerations. It attempts to create a poetic-knowledge proper instead of one that is dependant on other modes for meaning. The particular manner in which this is expressed is according to the idea of the loss of the Golden Age. In the Augustinian context of Chaucer’s poetry, language, in its literal and historical signifying functions is an effect of the noetic fall and a deformation of an earlier symbolism. The Chaucerian poems this thesis considers concern themselves with the solution to a historical literary lament for language’s fall, a solution that suggests that the instability in language can be overcome with reference to what has been lost in language. The chapters are organized to reflect the medieval Neoplatonic ascensus. The first chapter concerns the Pardoner’s Old Man and his relationship to the literary history of Tithonus in which the renewing of youth is ironically promoted in order to perpetually delay eternity and make the current world co-eternal to the coming world. In the Miller’s Tale, more aggressive narrative strategies deploy the machinery of atheism in order to make a god-less universe the sufficient grounds for the transformation of a fallen and contingent world into the only world whatsoever. The Manciple’s Tale’s opposite strategy leaves the world intact in its current state and instead makes divine beings human. Phoebus expatriates to earth and attempts to co-mingle it with heaven in order to unify art and history into a single monistic experience. Finally, the Nun’s Priest’s Tale acts as ars poetica for the entire Chaucerian Performance and undercuts the naturalistic strategies of the first three poems by a long experiment in the philosophical conflict between art and history. By imagining art and history as epistemologically antagonistic it attempts to subdue in a definitive manner poetic strategies that would imagine human history as the necessary knowledge-condition for poetic language.
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Reuter, Victoria. "Penelope differently : feminist re-visions of myth." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4f1ffe10-d690-441d-8726-7fe1df896cb4.
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This thesis examines feminist rewritings of the Penelope myth and the intersections between poetry, myth, and feminist theory. The theoretical framework develops from Rosi Braidotti’s theory of memory and subjectivity which has its roots in the work of Michel Foucault. In Braidotti’s understanding, subjectivity is constructed through narratives of the past including myth. In order to support new, minority, and dissident subjectivities, a re-remembering of mythical narratives needs to happen. This process is linked to Judith Butler’s recent work on narrating the self and to Adrienne Rich’s idea of “Re-vision”. What Butler’s theory adds to Braidotti’s is the notion of dispossession: that as subjects we do not own our identities. We are, instead, dependent on others for recognition. This co-dependence based notion of subjectivity has ethical implications for how we interact with one another and what kind of narratives we iterate and reiterate. The writers discussed in this thesis, namely, Francisca Aguirre, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Gail Holst-Warhaft, and Margaret Atwood, not only rewrite Penelope, but perform Re-visions of the myth. They look back at it with a critical eye and remake it. This thesis further contends that Re-vision provides contemporary feminist writers with a reading and writing strategy that allows them to engage with myth in a way that parallels feminist theory’s efforts to construct new forms of subjectivity. Chapter 1 frames feminist appropriations of myth in a contemporary context and discusses Adrienne Rich’s theory of Re- vision. The next four chapters focus on specific writers who carry out a sustained dialogue with Penelope; they each take an element of the myth and tease it out towards a modern relevance. In looking at how Penelope is revised, this thesis demonstrates that women writers are engaged in a process of remaking canonical, mythic texts in such a way that speaks to contemporary issues of ethical subjectivity and self-making.
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Petrella, Bernardo Ballesteros. "Divine assemblies in early Greek and Mesopotamian narrative poetry." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cfd1affe-f74b-48c5-98db-aba832a7dce8.
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This thesis charts divine assembly scenes in ancient Mesopotamian narrative poetry and the early Greek hexameter corpus, and aims to contribute to a cross-cultural comparison in terms of literary systems. The recurrent scene of the divine gathering is shown to underpin the construction of small- and large-scale compositions in both the Sumero-Akkadian and early Greek traditions. Parts 1 and 2 treat each corpus in turn, reflecting a methodological concern to assess the comparanda within their own context first. Part 1 (Chapters 1-4) examines Sumerian narrative poems, and the Akkadian narratives Atra-hsīs, Anzû, Enûma eliš, Erra and Išum and the Epic of Gilgameš. Part 2 (Chapters 5-8) considers Homer's Iliad, the Odyssey, the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod's Theogony. The comparative approaches in Part 3 are developed in two chapters (9-10). Chapter 9 offers a detailed comparison of this typical scene's poetic morphology and compositional purpose. Relevant techniques and effects, a function of the aural reception of literature, are shown to overlap to a considerable degree. Although the Greeks are unlikely to have taken over the feature from the Near East, it is suggested that the Greek divine assembly is not to be detached form a Near Eastern context. Because the shared elements are profoundly embedded in the Greek orally-derived poetic tradition, it is possible to envisage a long-term process of oral contact and communication fostered by common structures. Chapter 10 turns to a comparison of the literary pantheon: a focus on the organisation of divine prerogatives and the chief god figures illuminates culture-specific differences which can be related to historical socio-political conditions. Thus, this thesis seeks to enhance our understanding of the representation of the gods in Mesopotamian poetry and early Greek epic, and develops a systemic approach to questions of transmission and cultural appreciation.
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Stewart, Edmund. "Wandering poets and the dissemination of Greek tragedy in the fifth and fourth centuries BC." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2013. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/14065/.
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This work is the first full-length study of the dissemination of Greek tragedy in the earliest period of the history of drama. In recent years, especially with the growth of reception studies, scholars have become increasingly interested in studying drama outside its fifth century Athenian performance context. As a result, it has become all the more important to establish both when and how tragedy first became popular across the Greek world. This study aims to provide detailed answers to these questions. In doing so, the thesis challenges the prevailing assumption that tragedy was, in its origins, an exclusively Athenian cultural product, and that its ‘export’ outside Attica only occurred at a later period. Instead, I argue that the dissemination of tragedy took place simultaneously with its development and growth at Athens. We will see, through an examination of both the material and literary evidence, that non-Athenian Greeks were aware of the works of Athenian tragedians from at least the first half of the fifth century. In order to explain how this came about, I suggest that tragic playwrights should be seen in the context of the ancient tradition of wandering poets, and that travel was a usual and even necessary part of a poet’s work. I consider the evidence for the travels of Athenian and non-Athenian poets, as well as actors, and examine their motives for travelling and their activities on the road. In doing so, I attempt to reconstruct, as far as possible, the circuit of festivals and patrons, on which both tragedians and other poetic professionals moved. This study thus aims to both chart the process of tragedy’s dissemination and to situate the genre within the context of the broader ‘song culture’ of the Greek wandering poet.
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Dworin, Richard Reed. "ON THE NOBLE AND THE BEAUTIFUL: AN ESSAY IN THE POETRY OF SAPPHO AND TYRTAEUS." Lexington, Ky. : [University of Kentucky Libraries], 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10225/854.
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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Kentucky, 2008.Title from document title page (viewed on November 3, 2008). Document formatted into pages; contains: iv, 47 p. Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 44-46).
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Soleymani, Majd Nina. "Lionnes et colombes : les personnages féminins dans le Cycle de Guillaume d’Orange, la Digénide, et le Châhnâmeh de Ferdowsi." Thesis, Université Grenoble Alpes (ComUE), 2019. http://www.theses.fr/2019GREAL024.
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L’objet de ce travail est d’étudier les effets de la présence importante du féminin dans l’épopée médiévale, présence paradoxale dans la mesure où il s’agit de poèmes guerriers fortement empreints de masculinité. L’analyse s’appuie sur trois corpus épiques majeurs de France, de Byzance et de Perse, composés du XIe au XIIIe siècle. L’étude des personnages féminins dans un cadre comparatiste permet de faire ressortir leur degré d’impact sur la diégèse, de mettre en regard leurs relations de subordination mais aussi d’indépendance vis-à-vis de leurs homologues masculins, et de faire la part entre les stéréotypes misogynes et les marques de valorisation au sein des représentations littéraires. Le genre épique ayant été récemment redéfini comme le lieu privilégié de l’affrontement de valeurs sociétales antithétiques à travers l’emploi d’outils narratifs plutôt que conceptuels, nous souhaiterions montrer que ce fonctionnement peut aussi s’appliquer aux normes de genre. Parce que leur intervention au sein de l’action épique devient problématique dès lors qu’elle entre en concurrence avec celle des hommes, les femmes de l’épopée suscitent une remise en question permanente de ces normes. Qu’il soit indirect ou frontal, ce mouvement d’interrogation latent fait émerger une transgression proprement féminine, qui, lorsqu’elle conduit à l’héroïsme, autorise une relecture des œuvres allant à l’encontre des préjugés essentialistesThis work is meant to explore the literary effects of the massive presence of female characters in the medieval epic, despite the paradox it represents, given that these poems deal mainly with war and seem to be primarily concerned with masculinity. The research focuses on three major epics from France, Byzantium and Persia, composed between the 11th and the 13th century. The study of female characters from a comparative point of view emphasizes their impact on the narrative, contrasts their submissiveness with their independance from their male counterparts, and sheds light upon the misogynistic stereotypes as well as the positive appreciations among their literary representations. Since the epic genre has been recently redefined as the ideal locus for the confronting of antithetic social values through the use of narratological tools, rather than conceptual, we would like to show that this can also apply to gender norms. Because their agency becomes problematic as soon as it challenges that of men, women in epics bring on a constant inquiry of those norms. Be it indirect or straightforward, this latent tendency gives rise to a specifically feminine transgression that, when leading to heroism, allows to re-read those works as going against essentialist prejudices
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Lagrou, Sarah. "La création poétique dans le théâtre grec classique ou comment surprendre toujours dans un cadre traditionnel : l’exemple du mythe d’Œdipe dans la tragédie grecque." Thesis, Lille 3, 2016. http://www.theses.fr/2016LIL30012.
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Cette thèse de doctorat vise, à partir de l'exemple que constitue le traitement du mythe d'Œdipe par les trois dramaturges que sont Eschyle, Sophocle et Euripide, à comprendre comment les tragiques grecs, qui traitaient toujours des mêmes histoires, et suscitaient pourtant l'intérêt du public, ont su renouveler la création théâtrale, en parvenant à ne pas faire les mêmes pièces à partir des mêmes légendes. Certes, la matière mythique n'était pas figée en soi ; toutefois, comme la tragédie était un genre très codifié dans sa structure et relativement limité en termes d’effets visuels, c'est surtout sur le texte même que l'auteur pouvait intervenir, au prix d'un travail toujours renouvelé sur sa langue.C'est donc au texte même des tragédies que cette étude s'attache, texte qui est abordé selon une triple perspective, à la fois herméneutique, philologique et comparatiste, ce qui permet de comprendre non seulement les enjeux profonds de chacun d'eux, mais aussi les variations sur le mythe et les effets ainsi créés. Le corpus, restreint mais raisonnable (Les Sept contre Thèbes d'Eschyle, l'Œdipe Roi, l'Antigone et l'Œdipe à Colone de Sophocle, et les Phéniciennes d'Euripide), est analysé avec rigueur et aussi peu d'a priori que possible. Cette étude permet de mieux comprendre le fonctionnement de la tragédie, ainsi que la façon dont une poétique se renouvelait sans cesse et évoluait de la sorte, en explorant les possibilités que lui offrait sa langue et en travaillant sur les représentations et les contenus traditionnels dont le poète tragique héritait. Ce projet vise ainsi à mieux saisir les ressorts de la création poétique dans un contexte culturel qui permet d’appréhender au mieux les limites entre lesquelles elle est mise en œuvre ; il permettra également d'approfondir la compréhension d'une culture qui prenait plaisir à aller voir des pièces dont elle connaissait déjà la finThe aim of this PhD thesis, based on Aeschylus’, Sophocles’ and Euripides’ treatments of the Oedipus myth, is to understand how Greek tragic playwrights – who aroused the public interest while always dealing with the same stories – managed to reinvent theatre and write new plays out of the same myths. Admittedly, mythical material was not fixed, yet, tragedy was a genre which structure was highly codified, and quite limited in terms of visual effects. Thus, it was mainly within the text itself that authors could intervene by way of an ever-repeated work on their own language. Therefore, it is the texts of tragedies themselves which are the subject of this study, and which will be explored from three different perspectives; hermeneutic, philological and comparative. This not only allows for an understanding of the deeper issues each text tackles, but also of the variations on the myth and the effects they create. The corpus (Aeschylus' Seven against Thebes, Sophocles' Antigone, Œdipus Rex, Œdipus at Colonus, Euripides' Phoenician Women) – limited yet reasonable – will be analysed rigorously and with as little a priori as possible. What is proposed in this study is a better understanding of how the mechanics of tragedy worked, as well as of how part of a poetics could evolve through perpetual renewal, as tragic poets explored the possibilities of their language, worked on representations and traditional materials they had inherited. The aim of this study is to better grasp the means of poetic creation in a given cultural context so as to gain the best possible understanding of the limits within which it took place. It also allows for a deepened understanding of a culture in which people still enjoyed plays while already knowing how they would end
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Hýl, Petr. "Slovinské národní divadlo v Lublani." Master's thesis, Vysoké učení technické v Brně. Fakulta architektury, 2009. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-215582.
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Claros, Yujhan. "(Post-)Classical Coloniality; Identity, Gender (Trouble), and Marginality/subalternity in Hellenized Imperial Dynastic Poetry from Alexandria, with an epilogue on Rome." Thesis, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-rtx8-ez62.
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This dissertation is about how dominant identity is constructed through the centering and incorporation of marginal and subaltern subjectivities in Ancient Greek thought, with some preliminary consideration of the Classical Age but chiefly devoted to a study of Hellenistic poetic aesthetics at Ptolemaic Alexandria. The thesis argues ultimately for a specifically Queer and Afrocentric reading of the ArgonautikaI use postcolonial methods, tactics, and strategies to theorize the genealogical intersection(s) of gender and race, and explore the ancient roots of racism. I am indebted in my work to Critical Race Theory, Gender and Queer Theory, Intersectionality Theory and Decolonial Studies.
Guided by the millennial discourses of the Coloniality of power and the contributions of Aníbal Quijano and his intellectual heirs to critical thought and theory—positing the fundamental and central functions of epistemological thought, knowledge-production and the control and regulation of knowledge within oppressive social orders as specifically and particularly interrelated practices in the European colonialism of Modernity, and enabling us to deconstruct out of our contemporary knowledge and social practices the oppressive consequences in Modernity as a result of the aftermath of Old World regimes in the New World—the argument throughout this dissertation subjects monuments of Classical Greek literature to an analysis that traces loosely a genealogy of how ideology and identity were constructed and fabricated in imperial contexts in the aftermath of the Greco-Persian Wars, during which time Hellenic peoples were first exposed to Empire, and some great portions of the Greek-speaking world came under the dominion of the Achaemenid imperial regime.
In a manner of speaking, this dissertation deconstructs the intersections of identity, including gender (and ethnicity) and “race”, at pivotal moments in the history of Greek Antiquity. Principal test-cases for this study analyze monumental texts produced in societies under the hegemony of “democratic” imperial authority at Athens in the 5th Century BCE and Ptolemaic Egypt in the 3rd Century, in the aftermath of Alexander’s conquests. This dissertation explores how the control and regulation of racialized and ethnic marginalities and subalternities is critical to civic and political structures in the Classical Age, as well as how the interrelated concept of the gendered other, in artistic expressions of knowledge and authority—high literary monuments—functioned critically to reify and justify imperial and colonial practices in the Ancient Greek World.
Chapter 1 consists primarily of readings of the Wesir-Heru (“Osiris-Horus”) dynastic succession myth from Egypt in representations of kingship and dynastic succession particularly in Africa and African spaces in the texts of Pindar, Herodotos, and Aiskhylos, including an exploration of the what at the instigation of Jackie Murry I call the Imagistic Poetics of Pindar and Aiskhylos in comparative consideration of Egyptian symbolic literary culture, including even the mdw-ntjr (“hieroglyphs”), and an especially instructive close reading of the center of the Agamemnon. To support my readings of Aiskhylos’ interactions with Egypt and Egyptian thought, I also consider how Aiskhylos interacted with the legacy of the Danaid myth. Situated in their proper historical contexts these readings demonstrate that during the height of the Achaemenid Empire in the Mediterranean World, which coincides incidentally with what we call the Greek Classical Age, Hellenism and Africanism were not mutually exclusive.
In fact, as we see early in Chapter 1 with Pindar, Africanism is coextensive with Panhellenism. Furthermore, and critically, as part of my readings of gender as racialized—i.e., constructed under the Ancient Greek linguistic paradigms that govern “racial” otherness (genos)—I show that Blackness, beyond representing masculinity and the male body in the Greek artistic and visual imagination, is separable notionally in the Ancient Greek imagination, and in critical contrast to the modern and contemporary situation, from Africanism. In order to perform this work, I call upon archaeology and material evidence to render a more coherent picture of the networks of culture accessible in the micro- and macro-regions of an interconnected and transnational Ancient Mediterranean. In Appendixes to Chapter 1, I also provide brief readings of intertextuality in the Hellenistic reception at Alexandria of Classical Greek interactions with Egypt, Libya, and the African cultural past and show the embeddedness of that interaction in literary encounters especially, a fact evident from the Classical Greek texts.
Chapter 2 explores the Hellenistic origins of Afro-Greek subjectivity in the literary record with Theokritos at Alexandria. I explore “race” in the West and the formation of Greek ethnicity in the East as a “kairological” artistic and poetic projection that exposes of the roots of 3rd-century universalist and globalist Ptolemaic imperial ideology. I also explore Space and identity, the social imaginary, and consequent(ial)ly the gendering of space in the poetry of Poseidippos. In my readings, we see texts engaged intimately with discourses about Sovereignty, and implicitly with the history of Rome and Qrt-ḥdšt (“Carthage”).
Chapters 3 and 4 function as a pair or couple. After a full historical and social contextualization of Ptolemaic Alexandria in the Hellenistic Age of the 3rd Century BCE, as well as an exploration of an inclusive range of Queer (including “LGBTQ+”) subjectivities in Alexandrian poetry in Chapter 3, in Chapter 4 I argue that in the Argonautika of Apollonios Rhodios Medeia represents a Queer woman who endures systematic heteronormative and patriarchal oppression, or heterosexism. This opens up Book 4 of the Argonautika for fertile close readings of the inclusive and all-encompassing aesthetics that constitute Hellenistic poetry, including authentically Kemetic (“Egyptian”) voices.
The Epilogue provides a roadmap for applying these analytic tools to the Latin Literature of Rome.
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Sze, Gillian. "The erring archive in Anne Carson." Thèse, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/12451.
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L’archive erronée dans l’œuvre d’Anne Carson enquête sur les effets que peuvent entraîner l’archive classique sur la poésie d’Anne Carson et révèle que le travail de cette dernière est issu de l’espace situé entre la critique et la créativité, ce qui génère ce qu’on appellera une « poétique de l’erreur ». La poésie de Carson se démarque par sa prédilection pour les accidents, les imperfections et les impondérables de la transmission. La présente dissertation émerge des attitudes critiques ambivalentes face à la dualité de l’identité de Carson, autant poète qu’universitaire, et leur offrira une réponse. Alors que l’objectif traditionnel du philologue classique est de reconstruire le sens du texte « original », l’approche poétique de Carson sape en douce les prétentions universitaires d’exactitude, de précision et de totalisation. La rencontre de Carson avec l’archive classique embrasse plutôt les bourdes, les mauvaises lectures et les erreurs de traduction inhérentes à la transmission et à la réception de traductions classiques.
La poésie de Carson est ludique, sexuée et politique. Sa manière de jouer avec l’épave du passé classique torpille la patri-archive, telle que critiquée par Derrida dans Mal d’Archive ; c’est-à-dire cette archive considérée comme un point d’origine stable grâce auquel s’orienter. De plus, en remettant en question la notion de l’archive classique en tant qu’origine de la civilisation occidentale, Carson offre simultanément une critique de l’humanisme, en particulier au plan de la stabilité, du caractère mesurable et de l’autonomie de « l’homme ». L’archive, pour Carson, est ouverte, en cours et incomplète ; les manques linguistiques, chronologiques et affectifs de l’archive classique représentent ainsi des sources d’inspiration poétique.
La présente dissertation étudie quatre dimensions de l’archive classique : la critique, la saphique, l’élégiaque et l’érotique. Grâce à ces coordonnées, on y établit le statut fragmentaire et fissuré du passé classique, tel que conçu par Carson. Si le fondement classique sur lequel la culture occidentale a été conçue est fissuré, qu’en est-il de la stabilité, des frontières et des catégories que sont le genre, la langue et le texte ? L’ouverture de l’archive critique de manière implicite les désirs de totalité associés au corps du texte, à la narration, à la traduction et à l’érotisme.
En offrant une recension exhaustive de sa poétique, L’archive erronée dans l’œuvre d’Anne Carson tente d’analyser l’accueil hostile qu’elle a subi, contribue à renforcer la documentation sans cesse croissante dont elle fait l’objet et anticipe sa transmutation actuelle de médium et de genre, sa migration de la page à la scène.The Erring Archive in Anne Carson investigates the responsiveness of Anne Carson’s poetry to the classical archive and argues that Carson works from within the space between the critical and the creative, generating what I call a “poetics of error.” Carson’s poetics is distinguished by a predilection for accidents, imperfections, and the contingencies of transmission. My dissertation also responds to and emerges from the ambivalent critical attitudes to Carson’s dual identity as both a scholar and a poet. While the traditional aim of the classical philologist is to reconstruct the meaning of the “original” text, Carson’s poetic approach self-consciously undermines scholarly pretensions to accuracy, precision, and totalization. Rather, Carson’s encounter with the classical archive embraces the mistakes, misreadings, and mistranslation inherent in classical transmission and reception. Carsonian poetics is ludic, gendered, and political. Her play with the wreckage of the classical past undermines the patri-archive, as critiqued by Derrida in Archive Fever; that is, an archive that is considered to be a stable, governing point of origin. Furthermore, by challenging the notion of the classical archive as the origin of Western civilization, Carson simultaneously offers a critique of Humanism, particularly the stability, measurability, and autonomy of “Man.” The archive, for Carson, is open, ongoing, and incomplete; the linguistic, temporal, and affective gaps of the classical archive are thus opportunities for poetic production. My dissertation examines four dimensions of the classical archive: the critical, the sapphic, the elegiac, and the erotic. By means of these coordinates, I establish the fragmentary and ruptured status of the classical past, as conceived by Carson. If the classical bedrock upon which Western culture has been conceived is fractured, what does this mean for the stability, borders, and categories of genre, language, and the text? The openness of the archive implicitly critiques related desires of totality associated with the textual body, narrative, translation, and Eros. The Erring Archive in Anne Carson is keen to analyze Carson’s own vexed reception and contributes to growing Carsonian scholarship, as it provides a comprehensive entry into her poetics and anticipates her current generic and media shift from the page to the stage.
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Richards, Rebecca Anne. "Iliadic and Odyssean heroics : Apollonius' Argonautica and the epic tradition." Thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/28107.
Full textAbstract:
This report examines heroism in Apollonius’ Argonautica and argues that a different heroic model predominates in each of the first three books. Unlike Homer’s epics where Achilles with his superhuman might and Odysseus with his unparalleled cunning serve as the unifying forces for their respective poems, there is no single guiding influence in the Argonautica. Rather, each book establishes its own heroic type, distinct from the others. In Book 1, Heracles is the central figure, demonstrating his heroic worth through feats of strength and martial excellence. In Book 2, Polydeuces, the helmsmen, and—what I have called—the “Odyssean” Heracles use their mētis to guide and safeguard the expedition. And in Book 3, Jason takes center stage, a human character with human limitations tasked with an epic, impossible mission. This movement from Book 1 (Heracles and biē) to Book 2 (Polydeuces/helmsmen and mētis) to Book 3 (Jason and human realism) reflects the epic tradition: the Iliad (Achilles and biē) to the Odyssey (Odysseus and mētis) to the Argonautica (Apollonius’ epic and the Hellenistic age). Thus, the Argonautica is an epic about epic and its evolving classification of what it entails to be a hero. The final stage in this grand metaphor comes in Book 3 which mirrors the literary environment in Apollonius’ own day and age, a time invested in realism where epic had been deemed obsolete. Jason, as the representative of that Hellenistic world, is unable to successively use Iliadic or Odyssean heroics because he is as human and ordinary as Apollonius’ audience. Jason, like his readers, cannot connect to the archaic past. Medea, however, changes this when she saves Jason’s life by effectively rewriting him to become a superhuman, epic hero. She is a metaphor for Apollonius himself, a poet who wrote an epic in an unepic world. The final message of Book 3, therefore, is an affirmation not of the death of epic but its survival in the Hellenistic age.text