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On Cleopatra Vii: From Horace And Shakespeare To Self-Representation, Silja M. Hilton

Honors Theses

This thesis explores and analyzes Horace’s Ode 1.37 and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in context of their poetic and theatrical narratives, word choice, and grammatical structures in an effort to form a clearer image of Cleopatra VII. While each work is placed within its historical settings, I do not pursue their historical ‘truths.’ Rather, I draw from the authors’ literary conceptions about the Ruler, from Horace’s inpotens (“a woman lacking in self-control”) to fierce agency in deciding death (“deliberata morte ferocior”), to Shakespeare’s ‘othering’ of Cleopatra as tawny, gypsy, and whore, to his portrayals of her as Goddess …

Violence And Edification In 19th Century Fiction: An Analysis Of The Novels Of Charles Dickens And Leo Tolstoy, Caroline Fassett

Honors Theses

This Thesis argues that violence is essential to the structures and plots of Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge and A Tale of Two Cities and of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and is particularly essential to the edification, or the moral and intellectual improvement, of principal characters in these four novels. Additionally, this Thesis contends that this edification is both anticipated and reinforced by the novelists’ incorporation of counterparts whose demeanor and/or narrative overtly mirror that of the principal characters.

To support this argument, I bring the theory of Thomas Carlyle into conversation with the novels of Dickens …

Nature And Human Flourishing In The Laws Of Manu And The Daodejing, Qijing Zheng

Honors Theses

By comparing the interpretation of dharma in the ancient Indian Laws of Manu (Manusmṛti) with the concepts of dao in the Chinese classic, Daodejing, this thesis discusses that, despite the plausible perception that the former represents despotic, hierarchical governance while the latter promotes freedom (and even anarchy), the two texts in fact share a similar envision of human flourishing through the following of one's nature, as well as a foundational belief that both laws and political ideals emerge from nature.