This thesis examines the concept of the sublime as represented by three Latin authors of the Neronian period: Lucan, Seneca and Petronius. Through analysis of these texts I explore, first, the relationship between Pseudo-Longinus’ <i>Peri Hupsous</i> and post-Classical theorisations of the sublime; and, second, the complex relationship between the sublime and politico-ethical discourses of freedom and oppression. In doing so, I argue in particular for Lucan’s epic <i>Bellum Civile</i> as a vital and hitherto overlooked text of the sublime and, more broadly, for the Neronian period as an important phase in the concept’s artistic history.

No description available.

This thesis examines the immediate impact of the Second World War on classics and the classical tradition. I begin with a study of Jean Anouilh’s <i>Antigone. </i>Now understood almost by default (at least outside France) as the tragedy of a <i>Résistante,</i> in fact, <i>Antigone </i>was neither embraced by the Resistance as a sister-in-arms, nor was the play received by the German or collaborationist press as an attack on the Nazi occupiers or the Vichy government. It was, however, politically controversial, becoming the focus of intense debate. In this chapter I examine the significance of the critical response to the play. The importance of this <i>Antigone</i> generally reflects the long tradition of European criticism on the Antigone story, but the historical circumstances of the play’s production and its consequent reception reveal much about the dynamics of the appropriation of antiquity in the twentieth century. My second chapter focuses on <i>Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente </i>by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. To answer the question of how the Enlightenment project could have failed so miserably to present the kind of barbarity typified by fascism, Horkheimer and Adorno turn to the <i>Odyssey. </i>Here those patterns of dominating reason, which recurrently emerge in the European mind, are first to be found and exposed. No doubt the text uses the <i>Odyssey</i> to construct its theory but, beyond this, I argue that <i>Dialektik </i>also offers a radical and damning critique of (German) Philhellenism. <i>Dialektik der Aufklärung </i>is a text which performs its own complicated role in enlightened thinking. The authors’ reading of the <i>Odyssey</i>, in its elusiveness, reflects this tortured dialectic. My final chapter takes its initial focus from Martin Heidegger’s <i>Brief über den Humanismus. </i>The way in which the politics of the 1930s and 40s are refracted through the philosophy of Heidegger has long been a concern for those interested in the intellectual history of the twentieth century. To some extent Heidegger’s <i>Brief </i>constitutes a reflection on his own political engagement with Nazism, particularly in its confrontation of the accusation that his ontological philosophy was practised at the expense of ethics.

No description available.

The dissertation includes a general introduction and commentaries on <I>C. </I>4.1, 2, 10, 11 and 15. A detailed essay, including an overview of recent literary criticism, prefaces the commentary proper on each of the selected odes. In each case line-by-line exposition is offered on literary, linguistic, textual, metrical, historical and generic matters. In the general introduction verbal and thematic connections between <I>Odes</I> Four and Ennius <I>Annals</I> Book Sixteen are highlighted and examined. Horace's self-representation as a poet, particularly with regard to Augustus, is also discussed. The introduction to <I>C. </I>4.1 explains how the central stanzas of the poem are an idealized rehearsal of epithalamial festivities; this is a development from a hypothesis first expounded by Kiessling that Paullus is commended to Venus in terms suitable for a bridgegroom. In the commentary, an ancestral precedent for Paullus' dedication of a shrine to Venus is demonstrated. The introduction to <I>C. </I>4.2 focuses on the problem of how the addressee, Iullus Antonius, could plausibly be requested to play a Pindaric role in the stead of Horace himself. This entails both a discussion of peotic <I>aemulatio</I> and an analysis of the relationship of <I>laudator</I> and <I>laudandus</I> as depicted by Pindar, with a consideration of how this relates to Horace's modes of praise in <I>Odes</I> Four. The introduction and commentary on <I>C. </I>4.10 show how Horace takes a situation familiar from Greek epigram, and introduces verbal and thematic novelties into the standard framework. The introduction to <I>C. </I>4.11 demonstrates the unity of what is usually seen as one of Horace's most starkly disjointed odes, by illustrating how the theme of Maecenas' birthday and the limits of mortal life extends even into the <I>exempla</I> and advice ostensibly directed only at Phyllis. In the commentary, the importance of the context of the Bellerophon <I>exemplum </I>in Pindar <I>I. </I>7.38ff, is highlighted for the first time.

No description available.

No description available.

This study explores the dramatic and poetic evocation of place in Greek tragedy through close readings of eight days and the application of modern theories of place and space. Social space, rather than being an inert and homogeneous container of objects, is continually being produced and reproduced by human activity. Within that space, bodily orientation and the identification of spatial dimension occurs as a function of anatomical configuration. Social space is profoundly entangled with the fleshly facticity of the human body, and the founding of place—a more-or-less bounded region of space marked by affect, value and a capacity for gathering—is realised by that selfsame body, a realisation defined by its continually metamorphic nature. Places evolve (and devolve) over time as they are practiced and articulated by the bodies that inhabit them. Over the course of this articulation places, particularly the cherished place of the home, accrue histories and narratives, becoming coloured by human encounter and involvement. The human connection to places such as the dwelling is defined, moreover, by reciprocity. As the human body produces its cherished places and invests them with lived history, so those places influence and affect the bodies that dwell within. The result of this interchange is to bind tightly man and place in an enmeshing that renders human shelter immensely vulnerable to violent, ruinous incursion. Social space, and places of human care in particular, far from being impartially uniform, are powerfully and infinitely affective-for good and for bad. Such an analysis offers a way to illuminate the places and spaces of Greek tragedy and to show how tightly bound tragic men and women are to the places in which they dwell.

This dissertation examines the political philosophy of Cicero’s <i>De Republica (On the Commonwealth)</i> and <i>De Legibus</i> <i>(On the Laws). </i>Through the dramatic settings, the dialogue form, the nominal themes under discussion, numerous allusions to Plato, and the titles of his works, Cicero invites us to consider his indebtedness to Plato’s political philosophy. Unlike many other scholars, I argue that the recognition of Cicero’s philosophical commitment to Plato and the Platonic tradition is indispensable for understanding these works. I turn to <i>Rep.</i> to examine three key issues: the unity of the dialogue, the discussion of constitutional change and the mixed constitution and the definition and analysis of <i>‘res publica</i>’ (commonwealth). I argue that one cannot understand how the otherworldly dream of Scipio in the dialogue’s final book completes the more obviously political parts of the work without recognising Cicero’s significant debt to Plato in fashioning the contours of the argument. Cicero’s discussion of constitutional change and the mixed constitution also owes much to Plato. Cicero uses a Platonic framework to analyse constitutions and to argue that the mixed constitution of Rome is the best practicable option. The historian Polybius had praised the mixed constitution because it neutralises the effects of self-interested factions. Cicero rejects Polybius’ account and, following Plato and Aristotle, argues for the mixed constitution because it is a just arrangement. Turning to <i>Leg.</i> I examine both the argument for natural law in the first book and the relationship between this law and the laws of Cicero’s ideal law code sketched in Books 2 and 3. I argue that the natural law theory in <i>Leg</i>. 1 is presented as an elaboration of a good Platonic doctrine and that Cicero conceived <i>Leg., </i>no less than <i>Rep.,</i> as a work in the Platonic tradition. Recognition that Cicero’s argument depends on Plato’s <i>Laws</i> at key points also proves to be the key to solving the vexed question of the relationship between the natural law of Book 1 and the law of the ideal law code.

Our increasing knowledge of the critical landscape in the 4^th and 3^rd centuries BC makes it timely to consider how Hellenistic poets may have been responding, in the way they composed their poems, to contemporary debates about the function of poetry, its defining characteristics, its style and how it should be read. In doing so we may gain a greater understanding of their poetry and its context. Callimachus’ poetry provides the most compelling case study for looking at this type of interaction and in this thesis I want to focus on a number of aspects of Callimachus’ poetic style and to set them in the context of roughly contemporary literary criticism, reading practice and linguistic theory. One of the major themes of the thesis is the relationship between Callimachus’ poetic style and use of language and Aristotelian theory. This ranges from the argument that it is often useful to assess aspects of Callimachean style against the background of Aristotelian theory, to the suggestion that at times Callimachus may be responding to specific Aristotelian ideas. I also discuss the idea put forward by certain scholars that Stoic theory can illuminate aspects of Callimachean style and linguistic practice. In the course of the thesis there is a movement away from an initial focus on Aristotelian theory and its formal concerns to the development of etymology as an exegetical practice and the allegorical mode of interpretation. In a shorter first part I outline the critical idea, linguistic theory or reading practice in question, before looking in the second part at the relevant aspect of Callimachus’ poetic style and how it might be interacting with, or responding to, the material discussed previously.