Classics Commons^™

Louisa May Alcott In Her Own Time: An Introduction Through Her Printed Works, Maggie Kopp

Faculty Publications

Text and slides of presentation given at Orem Public Library, 19 April 2011.

From Obsurity To Fame And Back Again: The Caecilii Metelli In The Roman Republic, Dustin Wade Simmons

Theses and Dissertations

The house of the Caecilii Metelli was one of ancient Rome's most prestigious yet overshadowed plebeian families. Replete with dynamic orators, successful generals, and charismatic women, the Caecilii Metelli lived during the period of Rome's great expansion. Having participated in its transformation into the principal power in the Mediterranean, they survived until the fall of the Republic. By contemporary Roman standards they were a powerful and respected family. Seventeen consulships, nine triumphs, nine members of priestly colleges—including three who became pontifex maximus—and five censors are evidence of their high position in Rome. The trappings of magisterial office and military …

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead As Modern Midrash, Robert J. Taggart

Theses and Dissertations

It is the intent of this project to show that Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead might be profitably read within the context of the rabbinical exegetical tradition of midrash. It examines Gilead as a midrashic retelling of the Abraham story in the Bible, and shows how reading it in this light illuminates some of the key theological and social concerns at play in the novel. Midrash offers a unique model for reading Gilead because it combines elements of intertextuality, narrative theology and formal exegesis. Since midrash provides the framework for such a reading of Gilead, the first chapter discusses some …

Aesthetic Self-Reliance: Emersonian Influence On American Art, Adrienne Lynn Rumsey

Theses and Dissertations

This essay is an examination of the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson on the development of American art through his essays, specifically his writings on nature and self-reliance. Through emphasizing individual potential, Emerson also influenced the visual arts. Instead of following the required formula in Europe of attending certain ateliers and seeking prestigious patronage, American artists, namely the Luminists and the Ashcan School, sought to address the issues of their day and portray life as it existed around them. Each of these groups formed during periods of time when American society was shifting and the American identity was evolving. Through …

Tensions Between Word And Image In Amalie Skram's Professor Hieronimus, Benjamin A. Bigelow

Theses and Dissertations

In her 1895 novel, Professor Hieronimus, Amalie Skram describes the struggle of Else Kant, a young mother and artist, against a tyrannical and apparently unfeeling doctor who keeps her at a Copenhagen asylum for more than a month against her will. Else feels terrorized by the constant surveillance to which she is subjected. This voyeuristic tendency in psychiatry is not only a reflection of Amalie Skram's own experience at a Copenhagen asylum, but is also indicative of a new psychiatric epistemology that understood visual observation as the key to ascertaining objective truth. Skram's novel is thus read against the …

Paradox And Paradise: Conflicting Perspectives On Race, Gender, And Nature In Aminata Sow Fall's Douceurs Du Bercail, Catherine Gardner Guyon Van Uitert

Theses and Dissertations

In my thesis, I examine Aminata Sow Fall's sixth novel Douceurs du bercail "The Sweetness of Home" through three lenses: race, gender, and nature. I analyze the way Sow Fall approaches each of these three areas in terms of paradox to emphasize her understanding of the complexity of these issues and her reluctance to outline them rigidly. Instead of putting forth hard opinions about how race, gender, or nature should be understood, Sow Fall exhibits a propensity to allow each area to remain complicated. I study why she allows racial, gendered, and environmental paradoxes to circulate around one another in …

Crosses, Flowers, And Toads: Classic Maya Bloodletting Iconography In Yaxchilan Lintels 24, 25, And 26, Kirsten Rachelle Steiger

Theses and Dissertations

The lintels of Yaxchilan Structure 23 seem to be a demonstrable case wherein specific symbols are singled out and deliberately used in an ordered sequence. Taken together as a unified series, Yaxchilan Lintels 24, 25, and 26 summarize the multi-step process of royal autosacrifice. An iconographic study of the huipil patterns depicted on these lintels yields a better understanding of complex bloodletting iconography and the way in which depictions of ceremonial autosacrifice reinforce Classic Maya beliefs relating to the divine role of Maya elite in eliciting communion with the gods and the subsequent rebirth of the cosmos. The rich iconography …

Ghouls, Hell And Transcendence: The Zombie In Popular Culture From "Night Of The Living Dead" To "Shaun Of The Dead", Jasie Stokes

Theses and Dissertations

Considering the amount of media created around the zombie and the sustained interest in its role in our society, we can clearly see that a cultural phenomenon is underway, and it is important for us to question this phenomenon in order to gain some understanding of how and why its appeal has stretched so far. The zombie is somehow enthralling, and it is my opinion that this is in part because the zombie is a study of what it means to be human in the postmodern world. My main purpose here is not to ask why zombies are popular or …

Modernity And The Good Death: Heidegger And Jose, Anna M. Jensen

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will analyze José Clemente Orozco's mural The Epic of American Civilization in terms of the problem of suffering. It will focus specifically on two panels, “Human Sacrifice in Ancient Times” and “Human Sacrifice in Modern Times.” This analysis will comprehend not only the works of art within their historical context, but also within Martin Heidegger's philosophical discussion of the question of suffering. Heidegger presents a unique perspective on the question of human suffering when he writes that Western humans have forgotten how to “dwell.” This dwelling is defined by Heidegger's novel conception of ontology as relational rather than …

Map, Manuscript, And Memory: The Emergence Of An Anglo-Saxon Identity Between Origins And Apocalypse, Juliana Marie Chapman

Theses and Dissertations

As the only extant detailed world map of the Anglo-Saxon period, the Anglo-Saxon map, c. 1025, presents a unique opportunity to explore a sense of Anglo-Saxon social identity as evidenced in this graphic worldview. The Anglo-Saxon map has most often been dismissed as an ill-fitting illustration when viewed solely in its manuscript context or an equally poor navigational tool when considered in the context of modern cartography. The purpose of this thesis is to present the argument that the Anglo-Saxon world map is neither simply a bad illustration nor a poorly rendered map intended for travel, but is rather a …

Interpreting The Sacred In As You Like It: Reading The "Book Of Nature" From A Christian, Ecocritical Perspective, Candice Dee Wendt

Theses and Dissertations

Since the advent of the environmental crisis, some writers have raised concerns with the moral influence of Christian scripture and interpretive traditions, such as the medieval book of nature, a hermeneutic in which nature and scripture are "read" in reference to one another. Scripture, they argue, has tended to stifle sacred relationships with nature as a non-human other. This thesis argues that such perspectives are reductive of the sacred quality of scripture. Environmental perspectives should be concerned with the desacralization of religious texts in addition to nature. Chapter one suggests that two questions surrounding the medieval book of nature's history …

Blurring The Lines: The Intermingling Of Garden And Theater In Seventeenth Century France, Abbie Elizabeth Rufener

Theses and Dissertations

Seventeenth century French society was a time in which the arts flourished and were used to create an eminence of power and absolutism. The gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte were commissioned by Nicolas Fouquet and designed by André Le Nôtre. The gardens created a political and social space through the characteristics of design and standards of order which together conveyed power and absolutism. Louis XIV, newly crowned king, recognized at Vaux the perfect vehicle for the portrayal of power. French theater at the same time was gaining popularity and establishing itself as a great art form. Similar to the gardens at Vaux …

About The Gospel Of John: Considering P66: A Literary History, Or A Categorical Hermeneutic, Christopher Ryan Haney

Theses and Dissertations

New Testament text critics are fueled by a search for origins. But in the absence of an autograph, questions of origins are complicated at best. The fruit of that search for origins has resulted in the creation of hypothetical, eclectic texts—texts which have left us translating and interpreting the Bible in a form that no community in human history has before. Far from being failed projects, however, these eclectic versions aptly represent the problem of the One and the many, a problem not easily solved: When faced with hermeneutic duties, can we effectively speak of New Testament texts without speaking …

Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Adaptations Of Nineteenth-Century Literature, Kathryn Hartvigsen

Theses and Dissertations

The theatre in the nineteenth century was a source of entertainment similar in popularity to today's film culture, but critics, of both that age and today, often look down on nineteenth-century theatre as lacking in aesthetic merit. Just as many of the films now being produced in Hollywood are adapted from popular or classic literature, many theatrical productions in the early 1800s were based on popular literary works, and it is in that practice of adaptation that value in nineteenth-century theatre can be discerned. The abundance of theatrical adaptations during the nineteenth century expanded the arena in which the public …

Negotiating Identity In The Transnational Imaginary Of Julia Alvarez's And Edwidge Danticat's Literature, Erik R. Kerby

Theses and Dissertations

The increased contact between nations and cultures in the globalization of the twenty-first century requires an increased accountability for the ways in which individuals and countries negotiate these points of contact. New World and Caribbean Studies envision the cross-cultural and transnational encounters between indigenous, European, and African peoples as important contributors to a paradigm within which identity in relation offers an alternative to identities rooted in national and filial frameworks. Such frameworks limit the ability to construct identity without relying upon static representations of history, culture, and ethnicity that tend to privilege one group over another. In the literature of …

The Conception Of Irony With Continual Reference To Kierkegaard: An Examination Of Ironic Play In Fear And Trembling, Julie Ann Parker Frederick

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the relationship of irony, as defined in Kierkegaard's The Concept of Irony to the text and subject of Fear and Trembling. Irony is interpreted in this thesis as negative space, which both binds and separates and which assumes meaning equal to or greater than the positive space that binds it. This definition applies to Kierkegaard's Socrates who lived ironically in the space between actuality and ideality. This thesis considers how Abraham also lived in ironic space and why ironic space is a prerequisite for faith. Unlike Socrates, Abraham did not stop with irony, but used irony to …

Liminal Butlers: Discussing A Comic Stereotype And The Progression Of Class Distinctions In America, Katie Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will prove how the male domestic servant shows a conservative evolution of class freedom through early American films. As an individual thrust into a liminal sphere, these characters paradoxically become a character type for both keeping class-consciousness as well as breaking up notions of class, albeit in a slow process. In comedy, domestic male servants have always been on duty to help their masters while also becoming sources of mischief as tricksters. In early American films, these characters embody the anxiety of a classless body of men who become scapegoats, trickster-figures, and mask-wearing sages in order to survive—attracting …

Mythic Symbols Of Batman, John J. Darowski

Theses and Dissertations

Batman has become a fixture in the popular consciousness of America. Since his first publication in Detective Comics #27 in 1939, he has never ceased publication, appearing in multiple titles every month as well as successfully transitioning into other media such as film and television. A focused analysis of the character will reveal that Batman has achieved and maintained this cultural resonance for almost seventy years by virtue of attaining the status of a postmodern American mythology. In both theme and function, Batman has several direct connections to ancient mythology and has adapted that form into a distinctly American archetype. …

Erring Knights Of Desire: The Romance In Santa Teresa's Libro De La Vida And Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Emily Marie Stanfill

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores how romance opens the texts of two sixteenth-century authors. The first is the autobiography, Libro de la vida, of Spanish nun, mystic, and reformer, Santa Teresa de Jésus. Amidst the narrative of her life and her instructions on how to better live the mystical life, Teresa uses the mode of romance to construct herself and God in complicated and often conflicting roles: she the wandering (sinning) knight-errant who quests towards the ideal lady, Christ; she the walled garden into which her lover enters for fleeting moments of bliss; she the passive feminine recipient of God's forceful loves; …

The Writing On The Wall: Chinese-American Immigrants' Fight For Equality: 1850-1943, Elizabeth Lyman

Theses and Dissertations

Early in the 1850s, a greater number of Chinese immigrants began to enter the United States, leading to a Sinophobic frenzy that would continue for decades. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, Americans sought to exclude the Chinese literally and figuratively. Americans employed negative imagery to demonstrate the necessity of excluding the Chinese in order to “protect" white America. The negative imagery that became Americans' common view of the “Chinaman," enabled the United States to enact discriminatory laws without compunction. In the face of intense persecution and bitter discrimination, many …

The Birth Of Sacrifice: Iconographic Metaphors For Spiritual Rebirth In Master Matthias' Isenheim Altarpiece, Katherine Lena Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

While little is known concerning the events surrounding the commission of the Isenheim Altarpiece or of the artist known to us as Master Matthias Grünewald, much can be ascertained about the message of the Altarpiece through careful study of the socio-historical-religious context from which the work was commissioned and iconographic analysis of the images portrayed by Master Matthias. This thesis explores iconographic metaphors for birth and sacrifice, metaphors which work to create a theological dialogue about Christian redemption within the nine painted panels and the underlying sculpture that makes up the Isenheim Altarpiece. First, we will address the panels in …

Once Upon A Time In A Single-Parent Family: Father And Daughter Relationships In Disney's The Little Mermaid And Beauty And The Beast, Ashli A. Sharp

Theses and Dissertations

Fairy tales are adapted to fit the needs of each generation, reflecting the unique challenges of that society. In the 1980s and 1990s of the United States, issues of what constituted a family circulated as divorce increased and fatherhood was debated. At this time, Disney released two animated films featuring a father and daughter: The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Both films are adaptations of fairy tales, and they incorporate changes that specifically reflect concerns of the United States in the late-twentieth century. In the original narrative of "The Little Mermaid" the heroine is primarily raised by her …

Willa Cather: Male Roles And Self-Definition In My Antonia, The Professor's House, And "Neighbor Rosicky", Kristina Anne Everton

Theses and Dissertations

Gender roles are a tool used by society to set acceptable boundaries and ideals upon the sexes, and during the early part of the twentieth century in America those gender boundaries began to blur. As a result of the 19th Amendment, men must have felt their decreasing importance because women were no longer solely dependent upon them, and gender roles shifted as woman began to occupy territory that was traditionally held by men. The “New Woman" entered the workforce, and refused to accept traditional female gender conventions. In response to the “New Woman," Theodore Roosevelt and other leading males sought …

Animism In Whitman: "Multitudes" Of Interpretations?, Rachelle Helene Woodbury

Theses and Dissertations

Walt Whitman used animistic techniques in his poetry and prose, specifically "Song of the Redwood Tree," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," and Specimen Days. The term animism can be traced to the Latin root of the word, anime, which connotes a "soul" or "vitality." So, when one is talking about animistic techniques, one is speaking of the (metaphoric or realistic) ensoulment of natural objects. In the wake of a growing global crisis modern scholarship has begun reexamining the implications of this belief; often it introduces ambiguities into an otherwise comfortable relationship of unquestioned human domination. In Specimen Days, Whitman …

P. Herc. 1570 Pieces 4, 5, 6a, 6b: [Philodemi] [De Divitiis], Joseph Anton Ponczoch

Theses and Dissertations

P. Herc. 1570 is an unedited papyrus extant in seven pieces that together measure ca. 1.6 m. long; these are contained in five frames in the Officina dei Papiri Ercolanesi “Marcello Gigante” at the Biblioteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele III&rduo; in Naples, Italy. Like many of the Herculaneum papyri, P. Herc. 1570 has remained unedited largely because of the great difficulty with which traces of letters can be discerned on its surface. It was unrolled more than fifty years after its discovery, as one of ca. 1,100 papyri that were unearthed during the excavation of first-century Herculaneum (1752-1754); but it was …

Through The Eyes Of Shamans: Childhood And The Construction Of Identity In Rosario Castellanos' "Balun-Canan" And Rudolfo Anaya's "Bless Me, Ultima", Tomas Hidalgo Nava

Theses and Dissertations

This study offers a comparative analysis of Rosario Castellanos' Balún-Canán and Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima, novels that provide examples on how children construct their identity in hybrid communities in southeastern Mexico and the U.S. southwest. The protagonists grow and develop in a context where they need to build bridges between their European and Amerindian roots in the middle of external influences that complicate the construction of a new mestizo consciousness. In order to attain that consciousness and free themselves from their divided selves, these children receive the aid of an indigenous mentor who teaches them how to establish a …

Ironic Multiplicity: Fernando's "Pessoas" Suspended In Kierkegaardian Irony, Michelle Pulsipher Hale

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis applies Søren Kierkegaard's understanding of irony as outlined in his master's thesis, The Concept of Irony, to the literary works of Fernando Pessoa. Recently Kierkegaardian scholarship has opened possibilities for non-traditional interpretation of Kierkegaard's dissertation and pseudonymous "aesthetic" texts by reading them in the ironic tone in which they were written. This paper offers a similar re-reading of the poetic and prose works Pessoa attributes to his heteronyms.

Kierkegaard's presentation of Socrates as irony serves as a model for how Pessoa sustains the heteronymic project by balancing the use of rhetorical irony within the works of the heteronyms …

A Circumspection Of Ten Formulators Of Early Utah Art History, Tom Leek

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to study the efforts of ten Utah artists who played significant roles in formulating early Utah art history.