Classical Literature and Philology Commons^™

Fallen Kingdoms And Ancient Monoliths: The Influence Of Atlantis And Egypt In Tolkien’S Númenor, Charlotte J. Brockway

Journal of Tolkien Research

In light of the recent publication of The Fall of Númenor, my essay aims to focus on Tolkien’s, somewhat underappreciated, influences on Gondor; particularly Ancient Egypt. This essay looks at Plato's Timaeus and Critias, Ignatius Donnelly's theories, and examines the Atlantean and Egyptian motifs in Tolkien’s version of Westernesse, in particular, the remnants of Atlantean civilization survived by Egyptian colonists which mirror the Realms of Exile (Gondor and Arnor).

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 …

Emotion In Plato's Trial Of Socrates, Thomas W. Moody

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation argues that Plato composed the figure of Socrates as a three-dimensional literary character who experiences and confronts emotions in ways that other studies have overlooked. By adopting a dramatic, non-dogmatic mode of reading the dialogues and emphasizing the literary elements of the texts and their dramatic connections, this dissertation offers a new and compelling portrait of Socrates in the dialogues that relate his finals weeks of life: Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. This study in turn provides new insights into the genre of Plato’s texts and demonstrates how he exploited the dramatic …

Melville's Billy Budd And Plato's Republic: Sea Captains And Philosopher-Kings, Rob Atkinson

Scholarly Publications

This article shows how Melville's Billy Budd, rightly one of law and literature's most widely studied canonical texts, answers Plato's challenge in Book X of the Republic: Show how "poets" create better citizens, especially better rulers, or banish them from the commonwealth of reasoned law. Captain Vere is a flawed but instructive version of the Republic's philosopher-king, even as his story is precisely the sort of "poetry" that Plato should willingly allow, by his own republican principles, into the ideal polity. Not surprisingly, the novella shows how law's agents must be wise, even as their law must be philosophical, if …

Chimeras, Centaurs, And Satyrs: Creating Mixed Genre Texts In Antiquity And The Renaissance, Claire Sommers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mirroring its many definitions, the concept of hybridity has historically been a highly fraught one, with creatures such as the centaur or the satyr alternately treated as wild and wise. Defined as a “mixed entity,” the English word “hybrid” derives from the ancient Greek hybris, a term with several connotations, including wanton violence, lust, or outrage. The word is also synonymous with “hubris,” or excessive pride. Hybris also developed additional meanings, referring to a deed of excess, an attempt to rise above one’s station, or the desire to surpass the gods. More positively, hybris may also be translated as …

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 …

Good Rhetoric From The Classical To The Jesuits; Or On Αγαθός Λόγος, Andrew J. Wells

The Criterion

Labeling rhetoric as ἀγαθός (good) or κακός (bad) might appear subjective. The Jesuit rhetorical tradition suggests otherwise. Once I place the pursuit of eloquentia perfecta within the context of ancient rhetoricians: Socrates, Gorgias, the author of Dissoi Logoi, and Quintillian, I attempt to find a definition for ἀγαθός λόγος (good speech/rhetoric).

Platonic And Confucian Theories On Music-Parallels And Differences, Christian Moreno

Honors Thesis

Music has always been an important part of humanity, and with the advent of the Axial Age, the period between the 8^th and 3^rd centuries BC where new ways of thinking emerged in a wide range of cultures, two of humanity’s greatest thinkers in Plato and Confucius, would apply their thoughts and theories to music. By examining their opinions of music in their written texts, especially Confucius’ Analects and Plato’s Republic, as well as modern scholarship on the subject like the work of philosopher Mark Muesse, one can gain an insight into the general thinking of these …

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 …

Footnotes To Footnotes: Whitehead's Plato, Nathan Oglesby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the presence of Plato in the philosophical expressions of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). It was Whitehead who issued the well-known remark that “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists in a series of footnotes to Plato" -- the purpose of this project is to examine the manner in which Whitehead positioned himself as one such footnote, with respect to his thought itself, and its origins, presentation and reception.

This examination involves: first, an explication of Whitehead’s cosmology and metaphysics and their ostensibly Platonic elements (consisting chiefly in the Timaeus); second, investigation …

Interpreting The Republic As A Protreptic Dialogue, Peter Nielson Moore

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Protreptic is a form of rhetoric, textual and oral in form, which exhorts its recipients to reorient their lives both morally and intellectually. Plato frequently portrays Socrates' use of this rhetoric with interlocutors who are enticed by the moral and political views of figures from Athens' intellectual culture. During these conversations Socrates attempts to persuade his interlocutors to reorient their lives in a way that conforms more closely to his own moral and intellectual practice of philosophy. Plato's depiction of protreptic, however, also exerts a protreptic effect on readers of his dialogues. Plato's writing thus performs a dual function, simultaneously …

Epic Performance Through Invenção De Orfeu And ‘An Iliad:’ Two Instantiations Of Epic As Embodiment In The Americas, Patrice Rankine

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

The body is a problem for epic performance: as a text, epic absents the body, and such absence is a barrier to the modern audience’s full participation. The modern poet might attempt to resolve this issue in one of two ways, either by using the absence as a rhetorical strategy or, alternatively, by reintroducing the body into performed epic. Jorge de Lima’s Invenção de Orfeu (The Invention of Orpheus) (1952) presents one extreme in addressing the absence of the poet’s body, through textual strategies, in his celebration of the literary condensation of past epics as embodiment. By contrast, …

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Plato's Phaedrus, Kathryn King Barber

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

A Deconstructive Analysis Of Plato's Phaedrus, Marlene Evangeline Anderson

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

Aristotle's Critique Of Mimesis: The Romantic Prelude, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

The most notable element of Plato's theory of art, or at least the most memorable, is his censorship of poetry from the ideal state (Republic III: 398; X: 607). However Plato's argument is construed, it is enlightening to note the domestication to which it is invariably subjected. Since Aristotle's theory is eminently more amenable to our contemporary appreciation for art, and, in one form or another, is judged more central to the history of Western literature, Plato's attack is dispensed with after due characterization as ironic, unmanageably ambiguous, valid only in a most limited context, or excusable in the light …

Quaestionum Criticarum De Chalcidii In Timaeum Platonis Commentario, Specimen Tertium., Iwan Von MüLler

Hermann Sauppe Library

No abstract provided.

Quaestionum Criticarum De Chalcidii In Timaeum Platonis Commentario Specimen Alterum, Iwan Von Müller

Hermann Sauppe Library

No abstract provided.

Quaestionum Criticarum De Chalcidii In Timaeum Platonis Commentario, Specimen Primum, Iwan Von Müller

Hermann Sauppe Library

No abstract provided.

Zur ErkläRung Der Worte In Platons Gorgias: P. 447. C. - 461. B. U. C. - 464 In Fine, Ludwig Karl Paul

Hermann Sauppe Library

No abstract provided.