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Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: With the discovery of the so-called “New Sappho” in 2004, there has been a revival in the research about Sappho, Greek lyric and old age in Greek literature. In this short fragment, Sappho writes about the symptoms of old age. She interweaves this with mythological references to Eos and Tithonus. It was especially this remarkable find that has focused my attention on the themes of old age, caducity, bodily decay and mortality in Greek literature. In my opinion the discovery of a new fragment of Greek poetry justifies research on this genre as well as the themes that occur in it. This thesis explores the following research question: What is the view of old age that is brought to the fore in a thematic examination of early Greek poetry? My discussion includes works by Sappho, Anacreon, Ibycus, Mimnermus, Tyrtaeus of Sparta, Solon of Athens, Theognis, Archilochus and Semonides of Amorgos. This thesis found that the view of old age in early Greek poetry is predominantly negative. The thesis proves the hypothesis that the view of old age, caducity, bodily decay and mortality that is brought to the fore in a thematic examination of early Greek poetry agrees with the negative view of these aspects as appears from the other literary genres from the Greek canon. In most cases there is a strong relationship between old age and eroticism and how old age obstructs eroticism. In these fragments we often find a human revolt on a universal scale against old age and the loss of love. The aged body is no longer seen as an erotic object. This also has serious implications for the social circumstances of the aged. The use of the first person voice stresses both the raw, personal experience of old age and the universal experience thereof. The first person plural in some cases underlines the collective attitude and experiences of the ageing person. Early Greek poets describe old age as πόλιος (grey), ὀδυνηρός (painful), ἀργαλέος (baneful), κακός (evil), ἄμορφος (ugly), οὐλόμενος (accursed) and ἄζηλος (unenviable). The epithets and adjectival clauses which are identified in the discussed poetry form a conceptual nexus of old age which is almost uniformly negative. Except for Tyrtaeus and maybe Solon, most poets have a disapproving, reproachful, despising and repulsive attitude towards old age. In these fragments, old age is described as the threshold to death. Old age in itself is a type of death, a living death. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Met die ontdekking van die sogenaamde “Nuwe Sappho” in 2004 het daar weer opflikkering gekom in die navorsing oor Sappho, die Griekse liriek en die ouderdom in Griekse letterkunde. In hierdie kort fragment skryf Sappho oor die simptome van die ouderdom en verweef sy dit ook met mitologiese verwysings na Eos en Tithonos. Dit is juis hierdie merkwaardige vonds wat my aandag gefokus het op die temas van ouderdom, verganklikheid, aftakeling en sterflikheid in die Griekse letterkunde. Die ontdekking van ʼn nuwe fragment Griekse poësie regverdig na myns insiens navorsing oor hierdie genre en dus ook die temas wat daarin voorkom. In hierdie tesis word die volgende navorsingsprobleem ondersoek: Wat is die siening van ouderdom, verganklikheid, aftakeling en sterflikheid wat na vore kom in ʼn tematiese ondersoek van die vroeë Griekse digkuns? My bespreking sluit werke deur Sappho, Anakreon, Ibukos, Mimnermos, Turtaios van Sparta, Solon van Athene, Theognis, Archilochos en Semonides van Amorgos in. In hierdie tesis is daar bevind dat die siening van die ouderdom in die vroeë Griekse digkuns oorwegend negatief is. Die tesis bewys die hipotese dat die siening van ouderdom, verganklikheid, aftakeling en sterflikheid wat na vore kom in ʼn tematiese ondersoek van die vroeë Griekse digkuns ooreenstem met die negatiewe siening oor hierdie aspekte wat in ander letterkundige genres van die Griekse kanon blyk. Daar is in die meeste gevalle ʼn sterk verbintenis tussen die ouderdom en die erotiek en hoe eersgenoemde die tweede kortwiek. Dikwels tref ons op ʼn universele vlak ʼn uiting van die menslike verset teen die ouderdom en die verlies van liefde in die fragmente aan. Die bejaarde liggaam word nie meer as ʼn erotiese voorwerp gesien nie. Dit het ook ernstige implikasies vir die sosiale omstandighede van die bejaardes. Die gebruik van die eerstepersoonspreker in die vroeë Griekse digkuns onderstreep tegelyk die rou, persoonlike belewenis van die ouderdom sowel as die universele ervaring daarvan. Die eerstepersoonsmeervoud in sekere gevalle beklemtoon die kollektiewe houding en ervaring van die ouerwordende mens. Die ouderdom word deur die vroeë Griekse digters as πόλιος (gryskop; grou), ὀδυνηρός (pynlik), ἀργαλέος (verderflik), κακός (boos), ἄμορφος (lelik), οὐλόμενος (vervloek) en ἄζηλος (onbenydenswaardig) uitgekryt. Die epiteta en byvoeglike bepalings wat in die bespreekte kortpoësie aangetref word, vorm ʼn konseptuele neksus van die ouderdom wat amper gelykmatig negatief is. Behalwe vir die uitsondering van Turtaios en miskien Solon, is die meeste digters se houding teenoor die ouderdom en bejaardes daardie van afkeer, verwyt, veragting en ongeneentheid. In dié fragmente word die ouderdom geskets as die drumpel tot die dood. Ouderdom is op sigself ʼn soort dood, ʼn lewende dood.

By convention epinician poetry claims to be both obligatory and truthful, yet in the intersection of obligation and truth lies a seeming paradox: the poet presents his poetry as commissioned by a patron but also claims to be unbiased enough to convey the truth. In Slater's interpretation Pindar reconciles this paradox by casting his relationship to the patron as one of guest-friendship: when he declares himself a guest-friend of the victor, he agrees to the obligation ‘a) not to be envious of his xenos and b) to speak well of him. The argumentation is: Xenia excludes envy, I am a xenos, therefore I am not envious and consequently praise honestly’. Slater observes that envy may foster bias against the patron, but the problem of pro-patron bias remains: does the poet's friendship with and obligation to his patron produce praise at the expense of truth?

This dissertation is a study of the rhetorical uses of evaluative language in Greek lyric and elegiac poetry and inscribed epigram of the period from the seventh to the fifth century B.C.E. The discussion focuses on the poets' evaluations of human worth in three areas, each of which forms a separate chapter: martial valour, the relationship between physical appearance and inner virtue, and political or social values. Within each chapter, particular aspects of the subject under discussion are treated under separate headings. Although the literary material has been treated in various ways in the past, the inclusion of inscribed epigram alongside the other literature in this case offers evidence from a related but distinct branch of poetic tradition for the development and expression of these values; divergences between the literary and the inscriptional tradition can be quite marked, as can the different approaches taken by poets of various genres within the literary material. The attempts of previous scholarship to define clear and consistent systems or codes of value represented in the poetry and to trace their development over this period have been generally unconvincing, but the poets' deployment of evaluative language does show some discernible patterns which appear to be related more to genre and poetic tradition than to the purely chronological processes of development that have been proposed by other scholars.

O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar uma tradução e um comentário textual à 13ª Olímpica de Píndaro, com base nas mais recentes edições e trabalhos críticos acerca do poeta e do gênero desse poema, o epinício. Também foi composto um ensaio interpretativo que tenta abarcar os temas mais importantes da ode e relacioná-los com o todo da obra de Píndaro. As imagens do poema desenvolvem a contraposição entre medida e excesso, representada tanto nas referências mitológicas (Têmis e as Horas contra a Soberba e Insolência; Belerofonte encilhando Pégaso) quanto nas reflexões da primeira pessoa (que não deve exceder-se no elogio para não errar o alvo, assim como um arqueiro disparando suas flechas; nem deve tentar relatar todas as vitórias da família, pois são tão numerosas quanto os grãos de areia etc.). Em anexo, há a tradução dos escólios relativos a essa ode para permitir a consulta direta a essa fonte, que não se acha traduzida. / The objective of this study is to present a translation and a textual commentary of Pindar\'s Olympian 13, based on the most recent editions and critical works about the poet and the genre of this poem, the epinician. An interpretative essay was composed in order to cover the most important themes of this ode and articulate them with Pindar\'s other works. The poetical imagens of the poem develop the central theme, the opposition between measure and excess, represented by the mithological references (Themis and the Hours against the Excess and the Satiety; Bellerophon taming Pegasus etc.) and by the first-person\'s reflections on the laudatory art (the first-person should not exceed in praise in order to not miss the target, as an archer with his arrows; nor should try to enumerate all the victories of this family, for they are greater than the grains of sand from the sea). There is a translation of the scholia to this ode attached, allowing direct consultation, once there is no other version of this text.

Why did so many poets attempt English verse in Ancient Greek and Latin metres during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? And what was at stake in these attempts? The most immediate importance of these questions to literary criticism is the fact that they mark one of the most striking and consistent points of contiguity between the verse-forms — and poetic theories — of poets commonly categorised as ‘Modernists’ and ‘Victorians’. This study uncovers a lineage of experimentation with classical metres connecting Algernon Charles Swinburne to Ezra Pound and H. D., in the process challenging received periodizations of English verse-history. The assumption that vers libre and metrical verse constitute alternate and incompatible paradigms prevents us from being able to perceive, in either of them, the endless performative possibilities that rhythm offers us — possibilities which, as I intend to demonstrate, underpin some of the period’s most influential experiments in verse-form. My close studies of these poetic forms raise another question: what is the ontological status of these poetic forms that pass through multiple languages and millennia? I frame my readings of English poetry in classical measures through the metaphor of the ghost because English poetry can only encounter classical metres as a kind of spectral or incomplete presence. I refer to this encounter, borrowing a term from Jacques Derrida, as ‘hauntology’: a situation of temporal, historical, and ontological disjunction that occurs when a being or entity, apparently present, is revealed to be an absent or continually-deferred (non-)origin. The hauntological character of English poems in classical measures is due not only to fundamental differences between the syntaxes and phonologies of Ancient Greek, Latin, and English, but also to the loss of knowledge concerning the traditions and conventions of metrical performance in Ancient Greek and Latin. This is why writing English poetry in classical metres generally poses a far greater challenge — both technically and conceptually — than writing English poetry in the metres of a living language: recreating classical metres in English requires reimagining the very nature of the encounter between poems and bodies, while also facing up to the quasi-magical charge that ‘the classical’ holds in the English literary imagination.

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Thèse : Lettres : Neuchâtel : 1980. / Bibliogr. p. 185-194. Index.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College Dept. of Classics, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references.

Habilitationsschrift -- Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [298]-310) and index.