Classical Literature and Philology Commons^™

Ovid's Caeneus As A Queer Hero: Understanding Gender And Gender Variance In The Ancient Mediterranean., Rj Palmer

Theses and Dissertations--Modern and Classical Languages, Literature and Cultures

Caeneus, as written in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is a notable blend of ancient and Hellenistic versions of the myth. Ovid’s Caeneus can be understood as a transgender man, since he was assigned female at birth, but asks for his gender to be changed by the god Neptune, and goes on to live the rest of his life with the body, appearance, and social roles of a man. Ovid incorporates Caeneus’ trans identity with his use of grammatical gender endings for Caeneus, using masculine gender for Caeneus except when discussing his pre-transition childhood, or when the centaurs address him mockingly while fighting. …

Women's Marital Roles In Classical Athens: Male Understanding And Portrayal In Aeschylus' Agamemnon And Euripides' Medea, Elena Graf, Mary Boyes

UROP Posters

Abstract

The Classical Period of Athens (500-336 BCE) was an era of sociocultural growth and stability for the ancient Greeks, renowned for its development of tragic theatre. While Classical Athens nurtured the public sociocultural success of male citizens, women adopted a submissive role, confined to their marital responsibilities. Women were forbidden from directly taking part in politics, philosophy, and above all, the theatrical scene of Athens. Due to these societal perceptions of traditional gender roles, the literature of the Classical Period was heavily influenced by a male bias. This study investigates the connections between women’s role in Classical Athenian society …

Woven Words In The Iliad: Gender, Narrative, And Textile Production In The Scholia Of The Venetus A Manuscript, Anne-Catherine Schaaf

College Honors Program

The work of previous scholars has established powerful connections between the process of creating textiles and process of epic oral composition. I build on disparte sources from the fields of archaeology and philology and analyze how the scholia in one epic manuscript of the Iliad, the Venetus A, treat this issue and with a focus on how it interplays with gender, specifically the female characters in the Iliad who produce textiles. I focus on a few major sections of scholia and important scenes of weaving in the Iliad. The key female characters in the novel, both divine and human nearly …

By The Power Vesta-Ed In Me: The Power Of The Vestal Virgins And Those Who Took Advantage Of It, Elena M. Stanley

Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects

Vestal Virgins were high ranking members of the Roman elite. Due to the priestesses’ elevated standing, Romans made use of their inherent privileges. Through analyses of case studies from ancient authors and archaeology, I identify three ways Romans wielded Vestal power: familial connections, financial and material resources, and political sway. I end by exploring cases of crimen incesti, the crime of unchastity, which highlight all three forms. The Vestals were influential women who shared access to power in different ways. The Vestals were active participants in the social and political world of Rome.

The Impact Of Women On The Life And Legacy Of Mark Antony, Lauren E. Yaple

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Throughout the life of Mark Antony, the women he became involved with had a large impact on his political career, life, and legacy. These women, such as Fulvia and Cleopatra, used Antony as a means to achieve their own political, economic, and personal goals and were able to gain power in a very anti-feminist society through their relationships with and manipulations of him, affecting the career of Antony in many ways including his politics and his actions as a military commander, as showcased by the examination of primary sources from the late Roman Republic and early Roman empire periods. This …

The Multifront Battle Waged Against Female Autonomy: A Comparative Study Of Ancient Medical And Literary Texts, Leah K. Montello

Honors Theses

Male authors have long waged a multifront campaign against female independence. In this thesis, I focus on two specific fronts: literary and medical texts of the Classical Greek period. This thesis intends to explore the varying strategies in a selection of works, employed to reinforce prescribed gender norms. I approach this with a feminist lens to critique attempts made by elite educated Greek men to define what a woman ought to be like. I do not, however, explore every single tactic a medical and literary writer has applied to uphold patriarchal norms. My two body chapters revolve respectively around two …

Conquering Shame: The Growth Of Virginia Woolf’S Character In Moments Of Being, Ellie Windfeld-Hansen

Global Tides

This paper details the roles that shame, guilt, dread and humiliation play in Virginia Woolf's childhood and early adult life. It examines four key instances during these times in her life in which one or more of these feelings are present. Each of these instances also involves certain distinct family members. These experiences of Woolf's discussed in the paper and the family members with which she interacts strengthen her character and contribute to her unique perception and worldview.

Helen Of Troy? A Reexamination Of Helen's Speech In The Iliad, Erin A. Robichaud

Senior Independent Study Theses

In most interpretations, Helen of Troy’s beauty makes her a vain, promiscuous, and dangerous woman. This is the Helen that patriarchal societies have written into existence and passed on to later generations, but it is not the Helen that appears in the Iliad. This thesis argues that Helen’s voice makes her a perceptive and powerful strategist. On different occasions, Helen adopts the speech patterns of various social groups represented in Homeric society in order to assume their identity. She builds a Trojan and a Greek persona as a means to protect herself from the trauma she experiences during the …

Discourse And Discography: The Pushback Of Female Writers, Characters, And Pop Stars, Amara D. Stroud

Honors College Theses

In my senior thesis, I will be analyzing and comparing early modern literature and “pop” music in order to follow the development of women’s ability to gain power. Throughout history, there has been an ongoing struggle for women’s equity in education, publishing, and socially acceptable actions. While it may seem that comparing literature from the 17^th Century to current pop lyrics, there are major connections that show a consistent female struggle - the inability to voice one’s true feelings due to the reaction of an educated man or an unchanging society. My thesis will focus on literary works such …

Discourse And Discography: The Pushback Of Female Writers, Characters, And Pop Stars, Amara D. Stroud

Honors College Theses

In my senior thesis, I will be analyzing and comparing early modern literature and contemporary popular music in order to follow the development of women’s ability to gain power. Throughout history, there has been an ongoing struggle for women’s equity in education, publishing, and socially acceptable actions. Though the connection between literature and pop music is unordinary, there are major connections that show a consistent female struggle - the inability to voice one’s true feelings due to the reaction of an educated man or an unchanging society. Overall, the response of female characters, authors, and artists is to show their …

Antigone The Bride Of Death, Bailey Gomes

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

Not Your Average Rose: Cultural Inversion In Pizan’S 'City Of Ladies', Alex Donley

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

This research addresses Le Livre de la Cité des Dames—translated into English as The Book of the City of Ladies—as an outstanding work of proto-feminist literature from 1405. It is written by a woman, in defense of women. Christine de Pizan plays the central character in her own work, in which she combats misogyny with a revised account of history. She battles prevalent ideals of courtly love and gender inequality as things that are not merely repulsive or immoral, but wholly heretical. Rather than focusing on historical accuracy, de Pizan uses the literary power of her narrative to …

Pornography And Poetry: The Humanity Of The Performer, Zachary Tympanick

Parnassus: Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Aggression And Violence Against Females: Analyzing The Similarities Between Myth And Film, Julia Papanastou

Parnassus: Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Bloodied Hearts And Bawdy Planets: Greco-Roman Astrology And The Regenerative Force Of The Feminine In Shakespeare’S The Winter’S Tale, Christina E. Farella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis offers a new reading of William Shakespeare’s late play The Winter’s Tale (1623), positing that in order to understand this complex and eccentric work, we must read it with a complex and eccentric eye. In The Winter’s Tale, planets strike without warning, pulling at hearts, wombs, and blood, impacting the health and emotional experience of characters in the play. This work is renowned for its inconsistent formal structure; the first half is a tragedy set in winter, but abruptly shifts to a comedy set in spring/summer in its latter half. What’s more, is that planets, luminaries, and …

Gynocentric Apuleius: Female Agency In 'The Golden Ass', Kelsey Schalo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Through a close reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass, I argue that characters such as Byrrhena, Photis, and Psyche function as positive examples of female sexual authority and autonomy and effectively challenge the phallocentric theories commonly applied to Greek and Roman gender and sexuality, the Penetrative Model associated with Foucault, and structuralism, associated in classics with French historians Marcel Detienne, J-P Vernant, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet. While still penetrated, many of these women actively claim their agency in sex through pleasure and narrative. Additionally, in correlation with Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject, while Apuleius’s female witches behave in horrific and chaotic …

Disbelieved Through Millennia: Cassandra As Woman Truth-Teller And Translator, Marissa Lewis

Honors Projects

This paper investigates two major characterizations of the mythological figure Cassandra, reading her in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Seneca’s Agamemnon as a woman truth-teller and translator. It develops a notion of translation as negotiation of discursive space and breaking open of boundaries, including boundaries between pairs of languages, experiences, times, and places. This sense of translation draws on the reception theory of Charles Martindale and privileges the discursive location of the translator as integral to their translation; a specifically female translator occupies different discursive spaces than her male counterpart due to the social experience of gender. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Cassandra’s …

& One Night The World Will Have Changed, Hanna Andrews

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

& One Night the World Will Have Changed is a collection of poems largely concerned with thresholds—what does one have to reconcile when standing at a precipice, when grappling with a crisis of faith, and how does one begin again? The collection is marked by three distinct sections: the first section of poems considers the effects of a devastating storm along with the emotional upheaval of abandonment (both the act of having been left, and then later, of leaving behind one life for a different one.) The second section is a series of prose poems that narrate the aftermath in …

Sacred And Profane Loves: The Renaissance Influence In C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, Kevin Corr

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

C.S. Lewis’ last novel, Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold, has often been regarded as his greatest work, but just as often as his most enigmatic work. The purpose of this thesis is to unveil much of the novel’s mystery by considering the impact Renaissance literature had in shaping the novel, most notably Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Although it is well-known that Lewis was Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge, current scholarship on Lewis has overlooked the Renaissance influence in the author’s work, which particularly plays a vital role in Till We Have Faces. …

Vim Parat: Patterns Of Sexualized Violence, Victim-Blaming, And Sororophobia In Ovid, Melissa Marturano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation argues for the importance of understanding the depiction of sexualized violence and rape in the Roman poet Ovid’s extensive corpus through the modern feminist concepts of victim-blaming (blaming victims of sexual abuse for their own abuse) and sororophobia (female figures participating in misogyny). It explores sexualized violence and rape in Ovid long-form, examines the discernible patterns that emerge and the deviations from them as he depicts that violence throughout his texts, and more importantly, introduces victim-blaming and sororophobia into an analysis of these patterns. Despite the fact that previous scholars have done substantial analyses of the patterns of …

Female Madness In Greek Tradition And Medicine, Caitlin T. Connelly

Student Publications

This paper considers the similarities and differences in Greek thought concerning female madness among both traditional views of madness and medical views. It identifies three broad types of female madness – Dionysian madness, most often associated with maenads and maenadism; desire-induced madness, associated with Aphrodite or Eros; and the medical views of madness of the Hippocratic Corpus, Plato, and other writers. Divinely-inspired madness was considered an assault on the individual from the outside, while the physicians considered madness to be an affliction from within. However, while desire-induced madness and medical madness were seen as the results of women avoiding men, …

Roxana: A Contemporary Analysis To An Eighteenth Century Voice For Women’S Rights, Kendra Gardner

Toyon: Multilingual Literary Magazine

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Landay As The Voice Of Pashtun Women's Passion And Social Life, Fahim Rahimi

Journal of Research Initiatives

This paper explores Landay a form of folk poetry and consist of couplets; the first one consists of nine syllables and the second thirteen. This format of poetry is described by some to consist of one and one half verses. The author of such couplets is generally unknown. Some of them have names of authors or national figures and heroes attached.

In the study of a society various aspects of society can be discussed like historical background, cultural elements, cultural heritage, which are main points of a society. Furthermore, it gives importance to fundamental values and customs along with life …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

Taking On The Man: Female Rebellion Against Gender Roles In Classical Greek Drama, Gabrielle Killough

Senior Honors Theses

The portrayal of women in Ancient Greek drama seems at times opposed to the societal gender roles within Classical Athens. In the plays, women are strong and dynamic figures who enact change and upheaval in their world. Ancient dramas, like Agamemnon, Medea, Antigone, and Lysistrata, portrayed women with strong autonomy and minds which matched their male counterparts; whereas the women in Classical Athens found themselves in more limited circumstances. In analyzing the nature of these disparities, it seems that the constant factor is that the plays concern the violation of the household. The female characters respond in one of …

Penelope’S Daughters, Barbara Dell`Abate-Çelebi

Zea E-Books Collection

A feminist perspective of the myth of Penelope in Annie Leclerc’s Toi, Pénélope, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and Silvana La Spina’s Penelope.

At the origin of Western literature stands Queen Penelope—faithfully waiting for her husband to come home: keeping house, holding on to the throne, keeping the suitors at arm’s length, preserving Odysseus’ place and memory, deserted for the pursuit of war and adventures, and bringing up a son alone, but always keeping the marriage intact. Yet recently the character of Penelope, long the archetype of abandoned, faithful, submissive, passive wife, has been reinterpreted by feminist criticism and re-envisioned by …

Did The Shrew Tame You: An Exploration Of Sexual Politics In Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew, Marisa Stickel

SEWSA 2016 Intersectionality in the New Millennium: An Assessment of Culture, Power, and Society

This paper explores the sexual politics present in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, examining the gender roles that influence the relationship between Katherine and Petruccio. By analyzing Petruccio’s attempts at taming Katherine, in comparison to the ending of the play where she is supposedly tamed, I will emphasize Katherine's abilities to manipulate a patriarchal society’s rule over women. While she seems to demonstrate acquiescing full sovereignty to her husband, my argument will pose that Katherine assumes the role of a proper wife to trick Petruccio, allowing her access to marital dominance. By examining the patriarchal society of the time …

A Passage From Brooklyn To Ithaca: The Sea, The City And The Body In The Poetics Of Walt Whitman And C. P. Cavafy, Michael P. Skafidas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This treatise is the first extensive comparative study of Walt Whitman and C. P. Cavafy. Despite the abundant scholarship dealing with the work and life of each, until now no critic has put the two poets together. Whitman’s poetry celebrates birth, youth, the self and the world as seen for the first time, while Cavafy’s diverts from the active present to resurrect a world whose key, in Eliot’s terms, is memory. Yet, I see the two poets conversing in the crossroads of the fin de siècle; the American Whitman and the Greek Cavafy embody the antithesis of hope and dislocation …

Characters Through Time, Alyssa Venezia

Honors Thesis

T. S. Eliot once wrote that we “often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of [an author’s] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously” (Eliot 37). By focusing on character adaptations, one comes to understand how authors of children’s books are able to adapt classic literature into age-appropriate texts that retain the merits of the original. Five sets of characters shall be analyzed to demonstrate the success of the adaptations presented in children’s literature. In the first, Sir Bedivere from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur …

Gender, Othering, And Loki 2015, Amanda Munson

Master's Theses

With many enigmatic characters and engaging stories, Norse literature and mythology have had a formative impact on English literature from the early Middle Ages in poetry like the Edda and many Icelandic sagas. A lot of scholarship has been done on Nordic myth and literature, including character studies on many figures, especially Odin and Thor. However, it is difficult to find studies of the figures who make up the "other" in Nordic tales, such as the trickster Loki. While Loki plays a significant role in many tales, his position as the "other" in general Norse mythology and folklore is perhaps …