Classical Literature and Philology Commons^™

Milton's "Lycidas": Elevating The Human Condition, Haylee Edwards

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

John Milton’s 1637 poem “Lycidas” is a pastoral elegy told from the point of view of a shepherd grieving the loss of his friend, Lycidas. Written in honor of Milton’s late classmate, Edward King, “Lycidas” is a Christian allegory. This essay situates “Lycidas” within the history and characteristics of the pastoral elegy before analyzing how the poem at once inhabits and progressively deviates from the traditional form. Milton combines the traditional pastoral form with Elizabethan ideals and imagery to affirm his own religious, political, and existential views about death and the afterlife. The poem becomes increasingly complex, increasingly modern, and …

Medieval Manuscripts At Loyola University Chicago, Ian Cornelius, Kathy Young

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article provides a summary overview of the collection of pre-1600 western European manuscripts in Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. The collection presently comprises four manuscript codices, at least 38 fragments, and four documents. The codices are a thirteenth-century Book of Hours from German-speaking lands; a fifteenth-century Dutch prayerbook; a preacher’s compilation written probably in southern Germany in the 1440s; and two fifteenth-century Italian humanist booklets, bound together since the nineteenth century, transmitting Donatus’s commentary on the Eunuchus (incomplete) and an anthology of theological excerpts, respectively. The fragments consist of thirteen leaves from books dismembered by modern booksellers …

Who Sings And Who Falls Silent? A Spatial And Social Analysis Of Virgilian Graffiti In Pompeii, Rachel Murray

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes Pompeian domestic spaces in which graffiti that quote the works of Virgil have been found. This is particularly compelling because of the Aeneid’s status as a ‘national epic,’ simultaneously ‘high’ culture and seemingly part of the ‘common’ imagination. In the past scholars have argued that the presence of Virgilian graffiti was not indicative of widespread interaction with Virgil, and that a select few individuals were responsible for these quotations. Drawing from ideas proposed by modern graffiti studies and spatial theorists and employing the methodology developed by the Virtual Pompeii Project, this study uses network analysis measures to …

Quid Multa?: What More? A Translation And Digital Annotation Of Selected Letters From Cicero To Atticus, Kelly Zach

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Modern Classicists are modernizing and digitizing the field of Classical Studies with great success. Philology, translation, and annotation are all aspects that have been evolved using techniques from the Digital Humanities. This project is a foray into the intersection between Classics and Digital Humanities combining traditional Classical work with a digital aspect. This digital aspect of annotation using a dependency grammar-based approach and intuitive software enhances the understanding and translation of selected letters from Cicero to Atticus.

Dong Qing Fang’S Musical Depiction Of Lin Chong: An Analysis Of Chinese Traditional Music Elements In His Cello Composition Of 2009, Congcong Bi

Doctoral Projects

Dong Qing Fang (b. 1981) is a prolific composer of cello music. His contribution includes twenty compositions, many of which have been performed around the world.[1] While Fang is the most famous composer in China as well as a leading figure of recent music, his compositions have not been recognized world-wide. This project focuses on his representative cello composition Lin Chong (2009). Lin Chong is a significant character in Chinese literature, known for his role in the classic novel, Water Margin (1524). Fang's musical portrayal of Lin Chong's life incorporates elements of Chinese traditional music.

The methodology for this …

The Desert A City: A Study Of Antony The Great’S Life, Hanyang Chen

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

This paper attempts to provide an insight of asceticism and its development in Egypt through the literal work Athanasius's Life of Antony. It sets out to explain how the peculiar geography and environment in Egypt contributed to the development of asceticism and how the practices of St. Antony reflected the contemporary ideas on soul and body.

Enigmatic, Tragic, Crip; Or, Crip Time In Sophocles’S Oedipus And Aristotle’S Poetics, Maxwell Gray

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

Tragedy represents a classical literary genre the field of disability studies often prefers not to approach too closely, lest disability also be called a tragedy by association. At the same time, my thinking is organized around my personal experience of chronic illness, pain, and disability that appear in early adulthood, when it’s maybe least expected and most difficult to comprehend; or, in a word, tragic. I turn to the literary genre of classical Greek tragedy to think about/with more enigmatic and tragic forms of disability and crip temporality. In particular, I read Sophocles’s classic tragedy Oedipus and Aristotle’s foundational interpretation …

A Case For Tolkien As Master Of The Sublime, Graham A.C. Scheper

Journal of Tolkien Research

The present article aims to reconcile Tolkien with the Literary Critics through an exploration of Tolkien's use of the sublime. First, an explanation of the sublime is given, with a summary of its evolution over the past two millennia. Subsequently, three key thrusts of the sublime's manifestation in Tolkien's work are identified: his use of depth and incompleteness, his use of vastness and grandeur, and his usage of shadows and death. Investigating Tolkien's usage of these devices in turn illuminates his skill as an artist and as an author.

In A Condition Of No Light, Alana Perino

Masters Theses

In a Condition of No Light is an autofictional investigation into lineages of familial domesticity. The performances therein circumnavigate one family in one domestic environment, yet are in dialogue with repertoires learned and rehearsed within legacies of myth, literature, theater, film, music, and image; as well as through the otherwise untraceability of embodied memory and inherited trauma. The methodologies used are primarily photographic but also encompass practices reaching towards sculpture, installation, and performance. The line of questioning reserved for this inquiry is how a home, its objects, and inhabitants generate, spacialize, and embody the conditions of wealth, whiteness, and gender. …

What Our Hearts Crave For: An Examination Of The Paradoxical Attraction To Dante’S Inferno, Ketzalt E. Marquez

Honors Projects

This paper serves to analyze and explain why audiences are attracted to stories with elements of Horror in them, using Dante’s Inferno as the vehicle for this conversation, as the Inferno’s setting is in the worse possible place imaginable. Horror narratives arise feelings of fear and disgust in its audiences through the use of monsters, as audiences relate to the fear and disgust the positive characters in the narratives are feeling because of the monster’s presence. Since these emotions arise in a safe space, such as in literature or film, where the source of the emotions is not endangering the …

How To Grow Blurry: Poems, Nathaniel Metz

Canterbury Scholars

In this collection of poems, Nathan D. Metz explores the distance between the word for a thing and the touch or feeling of a thing. Using a variety of forms both established and innovative, as well as free verse and ekphrastic response, these poems are a celebration of art, color, and the sounds of words. After the collection is a series of poems translated both from the original Japanese and Haitian Creole.

A Typological And Chemical Analysis Of Roman Oil Lamps From Poggio Del Molino, Brandon Tejo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Terracotta lamps, known to the Romans as lucernae, are small, handheld, often decorated objects which provided ancient people light. To modern researchers, they serve as tools for dating stratigraphy and iconographic studies. Beyond their immediately apparent aesthetic and symbolic value, the chemical compositions of the clay of these lamps reflect their origin. This study complements archaeological typologies with chemometric analyses to describe 16 Late Republican and Imperial Roman lamps recovered from the villa at Poggio del Molino (PdM), Tuscany. These finds were recovered from the 2021 and 2022 PdM excavations. The combined approach of typology with X-ray Diffraction (XRD) …

Plato's Republics: A Dramatic Interpretation Of The Early Cities In Plato's "Republic", Simeon Burns

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation will demonstrate a new methodological approach to reading Plato’s Republic. I develop and apply a dramatic, dynamic hermeneutic to Book II and part of Book III in the text. This method holds that each speech is the product of a preceding agreement or disagreement between two speakers. Agreements lead to the argument’s advancement and disagreements result in a regression to a previous agreement from which to restart the exchange. The focus section is largely on the early exchange Socrates has with Adeimantus. I argue that Socrates is an unwilling participant in the famous discussion on the meaning …

“She Didn’T Know I Was In The Room”: The Effects Of Hatfield’S Illustrations On Readers’ Interpretations Of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Mason Repas

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

When Charlotte Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," was first published in New England Magazine in 1892, staff illustrator Joseph Hatfield created three realistic-style images to accompany the text. Research suggests that Gilman had no control or influence over these images, which altered readers' perception of her story about the dangers of the rest cure for female hysteria. While Hatfield faced artistic limitations and his intentions are not discoverable today, the choices and details in his illustrations support interpretations of the short story as a piece of horror fiction in which his cohesive series of images is a more reliable …

"Beowulf": Interpretation And Supplementation, Abigail Martin

Honors Theses

This thesis investigates the various ways in which Beowulf has been interpreted across time, explaining how factors, called paratexts, have played a large part in shaping these interpretations and how, especially in reading the Beowulf manuscript, we inherit the sum of these influences. In order to demonstrate this, I present a variety of arguments and perspectives on the text that have been developed by scholars over the years based on different types of paratexts (physical, intangible, and translational) in the absence of a known author. At each stage of Beowulf’s life, there have been opportunities for individuals with authority …

Heroic (Im)Maturity: Domestic Rupture And The Myth Of Telemachus' Coming Of Age, Mary Whitney

College Honors Program

As one of the most enduring narratives discussed in the field of Classics, extensive research has been written about Homer’s Odyssey. The universal and flexible maxims of the desire for homecoming (νόστος) make the events of this epic so compelling. One central aspect of Odysseus’ νόστος is the return of his son Telemachus to a specific role as the obedient prince. This implies that before the resolution of Odysseus’ νόστος, there exists the rupture of the domestic sphere that allows for freedom and chaos, both of which are removed and checked when Odysseus returns to Ithaca. For as long …

‘Where Now Bucephalus And The Proud Eormanric?' The Interplay Of Gothic And Classical References As A Tacit Background Behind The Wanderer, Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon Source, Giovanni Carmine Costabile

Journal of Tolkien Research

The famous lines "Where now the horse and the rider?" from The Two Towers, spoken by Théoden in Peter Jackson's film, but recited by Aragorn in Tolkien's original text, find an unquestionable source in the Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer, and as such received detailed comment by the Professor as a scholar, stating that it is not very important to identify who the rider being cited might be, as long as we admit he is a "type". In order to understand the type of this rider, then, we only have to look for similar occurrences of the evergreen "ubi …

Review Essay: Lewis’S Lost Aeneid: Arms And The Exile, Nikolay Epplée, B. N. Wolfe, Louis Markos

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

An extended review of C. S. Lewis, C. S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile, ed. by A. T. Reyes (New Haven, 2011). xxiii + 184 pages. $27.50. ISBN:: 9780300167177

Review Of The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek And Roman Mythology Through Christian Eyes, Charlie W. Starr

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Charlie W. Starr: Review of Louis Markos, The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology Through Christian Eyes (Camp Hill, Pennsylvania: Classical Academic Press, 2020). 448 pages. $27.99. ISBN 9781600513954.

What C.S. Lewis Really Did To "Cupid And Psyche", Charles Huttar

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

The story of Lewis's engagement, starting at age 18, with Apuleius's story of Cupid and Psyche.

George Colvile's Translation Of The Consolation Of Philosophy, Ian Cornelius

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Consolatio philosophiae of the Roman statesman and philosopher Boethius (fifth/sixth century) was read and studied intensely in medieval western Europe and repeatedly translated into vernacular languages. Medieval commentaries on this text and translations of it claim attention today as case studies in a history of reading, for they exemplify the practices of medieval literary scholasticism. In an English context, the final flowering of this reading tradition may be placed in the year 1556, when John Cawoode printed a new translation of the Consolatio by a ‘George Coluile, alias Coldewel’. The translator remains unidentified. The translation is a medieval throwback …

Evolving Identity: Hellenistic Greece Vs. Arthurian Legend, Irene A. Bougatsos

Publications and Research

This paper for a capstone class delves into two iconic figures from contrasting time periods. While Sir Gawain and Alexander the Great are two literary figures separated by several centuries, the theme of identity is present in the stories of The Greek Alexander Romance and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. How identity fluctuates is what this paper strives to answer.

Justice For All: Moira, Tyche And Nemesis In The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Jason Osborne

Journal of Religion & Film

This article explores the ways in which the ancient concepts of moira, tyche, and nemesis permeate the films and series of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Desire In The Iliad: The Force That Moves The Epic And Its Audience, Rachel H. Lesser

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

This book is the first study to examine desire in the Iliad in a comprehensive way and to explain its relationship to the epic’s narrative structure and audience reception. It offers a new reading of the poem that shows how the characters’ desires, especially those of the mortal hero Achilleus and the divine king Zeus, motivate plot and keep the audience engaged with the epic until and even beyond its end. The author argues that the characters’ desires are primarily organized in narrative triangles that feature two parties in conflict over a third. A variety of desires animate these triangles, …

Lies, Deceits, Manipulations, And Other Forms Of Aesthetic Expression In Horace, Satires 2.5, Andrew Horne

History & Classics Faculty Publications

Finagling an inheritance is one time-tested way of resolving a money shortage: just flatter your way into the good graces of the aged and rich. In Satires 2.5 Horace parodies the Roman version of this vice, known as captatio or ‘legacy- hunting’; with baroque imagination, he presents Odysseus, the mythological hero, consulting the prophet Tiresias in the Underworld and learning how to increase his fortune by amassing inheritances. Odysseus asks: tu protinus, unde | diuitias aerisque ruam, dic, augur, aceruos (‘tell me forthwith, prophet, where I can dig up riches and heaps of money’, 21f.). Tiresias responds: captes astutus ubique …

Born From Myth, Built Anew: Seneca’S Medea As A Stoic Cautionary Tale, Rebekah Dyche

Lewis Honors College Thesis Collection

In Seneca’s Medea, there are two distinct “Medeas” to be examined – Medea the character, who has been built up out of mythical and literary tradition, and Medea as a human individual. By dividing her in this way Seneca opens the door to reimagine an already extant figure through a Stoic lens. He exaggerates the negative portrayal of Medea in her traditional role to draw in the audience and to emphasize the disastrous outcome of the individual Medea’s failure to moderate her human passions – in so doing, he first engages the audience with a familiar character and then challenges …

A Wrath That Remembers: A Feminist Companion To Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Mary Iris Allison

Scripps Senior Theses

This project is a feminist translation and companion to Aeschylus' Agamemnon, which includes detailed footnotes and references to secondary authors that provide a feminist reading of the text.

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. …

Orphan Hermeneutics: Refashioning Archetypes In 19th-Century Epic Prose Fiction, John David Sieker

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Celebrated authors of the 19th century, Herman Melville and Charles Dickens are frequently critiqued within specifically national parameters, regarded as authors whose literary concerns reflect their respective countries and cultures. From that premise, there seems little if any connective thread to link Bleak House, the quintessential "stay-at-home" novel, and Moby-Dick, the epic, sea-faring adventure spanning nearly the entire globe. However, certain parallels between these novels in both form and content prove quite striking and reveal a transatlantic connection worthy of sustained critical attention. Both Melville and Dickens gesture to biblical and Classical antiquity in order to weave their respective narratives. …

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 …