Classical Literature and Philology Commons^™

Poetics As Rhetoric In The Works Of Horace, Lauren W. Brown

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This project demonstrates how Horace uses rhetoric in his poetics in order to advocate for moderation. The first chapter focuses on the rhetorical strategies of the Satires, in which Horace uses a poetic persona with an ambiguous social status and that acts as a bad exemplum of the morals he advocates for. The chapter also explores Horace’s use of a motif where something that appears quantifiably larger is, in fact, either of equal or lesser worth, which also appeals to issues of class. The second chapter turns to Horace’s use of rhetoric in the Odes. In the Odes, Horace focuses …

Μηδὲν Ἄγαν: Conviviality And Excess In The Symposium, Lauren B. Alberti

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This multi-disciplinary project demonstrates that the archaic and classical Greek symposium was a moralizing and educative space that governed the consumption of wine through the social protocol of the metron “measured restraint.” In Chapter One, I investigate sympotic drinking behavior contextualized within this concept of the metron as described by Theognis. Utilizing literary evidence and art historical representations of drinking at the symposium, I argue that a specified drinking protocol encouraged the community to benefit the male aristocratic citizen and ultimately their place in the polis. The symposium was an educative and moralizing space that encouraged communal harmony and …

Erotic Ecology In Ovid's Heroides, Noah Holt

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This project demonstrates that natural imagery in the Heroides is an emotionally charged space that exists as more than just background description. The first chapter explores how descriptions of the pastoral landscape reflect the shifting love affair of Oenone and Paris: when the love is reciprocal, the pastoral landscape is idyllic and peaceful; once Oenone realizes her attempt to win Paris back is futile, the pastoral landscape becomes more antagonistic. Ultimately, Oenone’s rusticitas proves to be incompatible with Paris’ newly acquired cultus, which I suggest can be read as an expression of the opposition between modern refinement and renewal …

Reinventing Maternity In Chariton's Callirhoe, Christine Ellis

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This project analyzes Chariton’s construction of maternity in his Greek novel Callirhoe. I argue that Chariton heavily employs intertexts and allusions throughout his novel, especially with regard to his female protagonists. Through these allusions, Chariton is not only able to insert himself and his work within the literary canon, but he is also able to develop his genre by juxtaposing his heroine with those of the genres of tragedy and epic. Topics of analysis range from debates about killing one’s child to the importance of marital memory. By the end of his novel, Chariton is able both to establish …

Cathartic Concentration: Meditation And Altered States In Apuleius' Metamorphoses, Benjamin L. John

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

In this thesis, I offer my reading of Apuleius’ novel, the Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass. Modern scholars are divided on whether we should read the novel as a genuine expression of religio-philosophical sentiment or a satire of religious devotion. My goal is to show that these are not mutually exclusive readings, but two positions from which to consider the idea of spiritual transcendence.

The first chapter explores the way that Apuleius uses light imagery to characterize the religious experience of the novel’s protagonist, Lucius, by analyzing similar phenomena in contemporary and modern descriptions of altered states of …

Learning To Read In The Theaetetus: The Recuperation Of Writing In Plato's Philosophy, Luke Lea

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

In my thesis, I take up the popular question of the status of writing in Plato’s dialogues, but from a fresh perspective. Instead of approaching the question of writing head-on, I attend to the philosophical message about reading presented by two dialogues, the Phaedrus and the Theaetetus. My thesis offers interpretations of two individual dialogues whose emphasis on writing and reading as both literary themes and philosophical problems ensure that the overall meanings of these dialogues cannot be reached without attention to this subject.

Although I examine the dialogues in isolation, believing that the setting and characters unique to …

Drama As Dream: Sophoclean Tragedy And The Cult Of Asclepius, Molly C. Mata

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis explores tragic drama as a corresponding ritual to the incubation ritual in the cult of Asclepius and theorizes that this ritual is psychologically cathartic and healing. I argue that in Ajax and Philoctetes, Sophocles marks this cathartic ritual through nosological language, setting, and social context. In my first chapter, I explore Sophocles’ use of the language of madness (mania) and illness (nosos) in Ajax to show the exacerbation of the audience’s psychological state. Next, I show that catharsis is achieved through the negotiation and subsequent burial of Ajax. In my second chapter, I argue that Sophocles uses both …

Negotiation And The Construction Of Intimacy In The Letters Between Fronto And Marcus Aurelius, Sarah C. Keith

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This project analyzes the letters between Marcus Cornelius Fronto and his student Marcus Aurelius as works of literature, rather than merely sites for historical mining. The letters, I argue, contain carefully constructed tropes of rhetoric and feature intentional polish that serve as opportunities for discussion about the virtues of philosophy and rhetoric during the Second Sophistic. Topics of discussions between both parties range between the imagery of sleep, and intimate spaces, like bedrooms, to substantive allusions to Plato’s philosophy and his dialogue Phaedrus. By looking beyond the identification of concrete names and dates to the literary, referential, and personal world …