Department de Francais de L'universite du Witwatersrand 1990 Degree awarded with distinction March 1991.

Unrealistic representations of love have rarely been studied across popular music genres. The lyrics of the top songs in five of the most popular genres (Country, Hip Hop/R&B, Pop, Rap, and Rock) during the periods of 1991-1995 and 2011-2015 were coded for specific love myths. The results of the study show that the overall average of love myths found in popular music genres remain consistent over time. More specifically, based on the amount of myths per song, there was an average of .7056 myths per song in the 1990s and an average of .7504 myths per song in the 2010s. However, there are significant changes in mythical content over time and genre. This research should serve as a foundation to further study the prevalence and influence of love myths of popular music throughout both time and genre.

À partir de la constatation de l’absence du mot mito dans les écrits de Leopardi on a essayé de reconstruire le rapport changeant de Leopardi avec le mythe en en mettant en lumière la cohérence substantielle. De l’approche érudite et démystifiant propre à la rédaction du Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi on est passé à la lecture du Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica. Du Discorso on a analysé la défense de la valeur poétique des fables anciennes et la démarcation des conditions de possibilité de l’usage des fables anciennes par les poètes modernes. Les pages du Zibaldone ont nous permis de comprendre le motif du recours au favoloso biblique et le motif de la non-réalisation du projet des Inni cristiani. Si à cause du changement des opinioni popolari les fables grecques ne sont plus capables de susciter la persuasion dont la fiction littéraire a besoin, le favoloso tiré par la tradition biblique se démontre être moins indiqué par rapport à celui païen à l’emploi en littérature. Alla Primavera et l’Inno ai patriarchi semblent prendre congé des fables anciennes or pendant les ans successifs Leopardi émancipe le statut de la mythologie de la religion en créant les bases pour un approche diffèrent à la réécriture des matériaux mythologiques. Le Operette morali et la catabase de Leccafondi dans les Paralipomeni constituent le résultat de l’émancipation des figures de la mythologie grecque de leur propre sfondo di senso : le cosmos. La création d’un sfondo di senso capable de mener au langage ce que de la nature des hommes et des choses est changé pendant les siècles jette les bases pour un emploi moderne des matériaux mythologiques. / The myth in the work of Giacomo Leopardi

Thesis advisor: Robert C. Bartlett / A translation and close study of the “myths” of the afterlife that conclude Plato’s Republic and Gorgias. This thesis attempts to understand the essential political teachings of the dialogues in question—about the definition of justice, its rightness, and its consequences—through the lens of their final stories. Glaucon and Callicles represent two responses to the apparent problem that the unjust fare better than the just. To Callicles, Socrates offers his “political art in truth” in the place of Gorgias’ “art” of rhetoric. To Glaucon, Socrates presents an orderly universe and an orderly city that seem to mirror justice in the soul. Both men require different, salutary accounts of justice from Socrates. These are not false or unphilosophic fables, but true images of τὰ ἔσχατα, of the ultimate and most extreme things—not as guides to any underworld but to the best way of life possible among living human beings. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science.

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My thesis investigates the construction of democratic ideology in classical Athens. Ideology has often provided an alternative tool to formal institutions for the study of Athenian political life. An approach that reconciles institutions and ideology can provide us with a fuller understanding of Athenian democracy. Rather than as a fixed set of ideas, values and beliefs shared by the majority of the Athenians, I argue that Athenian democratic ideology should be seen as the product of a constant process of ideological practice which took place within and was influenced by the institutions of the democracy. My thesis focuses in particular on the construction of shared ideas and beliefs about Athens’ mythical past. Ch. 1 lays down the methodology of my work, which is inspired by the trend in the political sciences known as New Institutionalism. Ch. 2 explores the relationship between myth and Athenian democratic institutions. I show that the Athenians interacted with myth at all levels of their public and private lives, and were thus able to appreciate mythical variants and their potential ideological value. I also show that Athenian democratic institutions were characterised by specific discursive parameters which conditioned the behaviour of Athenian political actors. A comparison between mythical narratives produced for public and private contexts shows that the discursive parameters of Athenian democratic institutions influenced the construction of shared ideas about the mythical past in Athenian public discourse. As proven in Ch. 3-5, the Athenians emphasised different values and mythical variants depending on the institutional settings of the democracy. Ch. 3 analyses the influence of institutions on the values of charis and philanthrōpia in the myth of the Athenian war in defence of the Heraclidae. Ch. 4 explores the use or absence of hybris in accounts of the Attic Amazonomachy produced for public and private contexts. Ch. 5 explores how the myth of autochthony was conceptualised in terms of exclusiveness or collective eugeneia in different Athenian institutions. My research therefore provides a dynamic and multifaceted picture of Athenian democratic ideology, and shows that the Athenian democratic institutions enabled the Athenians to produce multiple and compatible ideas about their mythical past.

The Declaration of Independence commands a special status in American culture. For this reason, it has often been called mythic by Revolutionary historians and scholars of the Declaration alike. Such characterisations tend to be hastily made and pejorative, but the Declaration of Independence takes on a new significance when the characterisation of the Declaration as myth is studied seriously. For Americans, the Declaration serves both a specific and beneficial function which the mere naming of it as myth fails to identify. This identification of the Declaration as myth is one that draws specifically on ideas of the birth of the American nation and the role its authors had in creating that nation. Nowhere is this more obvious than the Declaration's continued use in American political rhetoric today which demonstrates its ever-constant presence as a living document. This understanding of the Declaration has heretofore remained unexplored. By taking the Declaration of Independence seriously as myth, this study looks to both identify the story of the myth of the Declaration and its function in American society by applying to it a theory of myth.

This thesis uses the short story form to examine the influence of myth, magick, and the supernatural on the interstitial areas of the United States. The power of words as a force for change figures prominently in these stories. This thesis looks at the monstrous as it moves in the darkness and in the minds of humans, but also at the tremendous depths of compassion and courage we find in ourselves when faced with monstrous situations.

The most common economic myths through the prism of liberal economic schools Abstract The thesis analyses the two grand, persisting economic myths - the myth of just price and the myth of immorality of profits, vis-à-vis the work of scholarly economists, mainly of the liberal persuasion. This broad intellectual current of economic thought is represented by the so called Chicago school of economics, represented by Thomas Sowell, and the so called neo- Austrian school of economics, represented by Ludwig von Mises. The second part of the thesis deals with the myth of just price and it`s presence throughout our history, from ancient Babylon to today`s Venezuela. Since it took almost 2000 years for this myth to be dispelled by economic thought, a brief history of such thought has been incorporsted into the thesis, beginning from Aristotle, through Thomas Aquinas to Alfred Marshall. A big part of this brief history is then dedicated to the so called marginal revolution and the effects thereof. The end of the second part of the thesis concerns itself with the thought of liberal economists, whose work was at least partly dedicated to dispelling of the myth of just price and other economic myths. The thesis attempts to illuminate the role of prices, value and other associated economic phenomena which relate to these...

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2007. / Document formatted into pages; contains v, 121 p. Includes bibliographical references.