This dissertation examines Roman comedy (comoedia palliata) and its influence from the stage onto the pages of Latin literature. I argue that the plays of Plautus and Terence (and increasingly also their Greek model, Menander) continued to be performed during the late Roman Republic and early Empire. Orators like Cicero impressed their audiences by tapping into fond memories of such performances, and from Catullus onwards, a new generation of authors experimented with ways of ‘updating’ the plays. One popular solution was to have allusions to comedy contrast with neighboring references to other attractions at the Roman festival, ranging from pantomime dances to gladiatorial combats. Especially under the Empire, authors like Horace, Propertius, Ovid, and Juvenal came to blend comedy with elements from darker dramas, such as tragedy or mime. Comedy thus emerged as an indispensible component in the creation of ‘new’ genres like Roman love elegy and Imperial satire, or the new Ovidian branch of Latin epic. In closing, I suggest that the vicarious experience provided by episodic television shows (as described by David Foster Wallace and Umberto Eco) can help explain this enduring popularity of Roman comedy: TV viewers and theatrical audiences both find themselves transported into a world whose rules are slightly easier to grasp than those of their own, and they fantasize about navigating their lives as efficiently as a comedic trickster.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 38-05, Section: A, page: 2756. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1977.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 34-04, Section: A, page: 1877. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1973.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-06, Section: A, page: 3280. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 32-09, Section: A, page: 5209. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1971.

<p>This dissertation examines the interplay of ethics and poetic craft in the <italic>Odyssey</italic> through the lens of the theme of <italic>tisis</italic>, "retribution." In this poem <italic>tisis</italic> serves two main purposes: it acts as a narrative template for the poem's composition and makes actions and agents morally intelligible to audiences. My work shows that the system of justice that <italic>tisis</italic> denotes assumes a retaliatory symmetry of precise proportionality. I also examine aspects of the ideology and social effects of this system of justice for archaic Greek culture at large. Justice thus conceived is "open-textured" and readily manipulable to the interests of the agent who controls the language of the narrative. In the end, I show that this system fails to secure communal harmony.</p> <p>The project has three parts. In part one, I argue that earlier scholars have not sufficiently appreciated the narrative character of <italic>tisis</italic>. Following an inductive analysis of the poem's paradigmatic example of Orestes' <italic>tisis</italic>, I draw upon the methods of narratology to propose a new definition of <italic>tisis</italic> as a "narrative," a certain conventional arrangement of a set of actions and roles that together constitute a narrative whole. This narrative acts as a compositional tool for a singer's re-composition and performance of poetry, becoming a major organizing structure in the tradition of Homeric poetry. From this practice arises the <italic>Odyssey</italic>'s complex texture of several interwoven <italic>tisis</italic> narratives that dialectically carry out the poem's moral program. Because Homeric ethics is a narrative ethics, a practice of placing one's self and others in the stories that society tells, <italic>tisis</italic> provides an ethical framework that renders experience morally intelligible and allows actors to evaluate the moral standing of themselves and others. <italic>tisis</italic>, thus, is morally inflected: those who play the role of avenger receive commendation; those who play the victim, condemnation. And the great moral conflicts in the <italic>Odyssey</italic>--between Poseidon and Odysseus, between Odysseus and the suitors--are over the assignment and adoption of these narrative roles.</p> <p>Against the other <italic>tisis</italic> narratives in the <italic>Odyssey</italic>, Odysseus' own, central narrative appears strikingly atypical. Unlike Aegisthus, the suitors have neither killed anyone nor corrupted Penelope--nonetheless, they face the same punishment. But through a creative interpretation of <italic>ius talionis</italic> the singer makes a series of brilliant rhetorical moves to recast the acts of the suitors as accomplished murder and adultery. This allows Odysseus to play the part of just avenger <italic>of himself</italic> Furthermore, it resolves in the person of Odysseus a latent tension between the narratives of <italic>nostos</italic> (which implies the happy return of a hero) and <italic>tisis</italic> (which implies the death of a hero and vengeance on his behalf).</p> <p>In part two, I argue that the ideology of justice that <italic>tisis</italic> denotes--returning equivalent harm for harm--runs through the heart of archaic Greek culture, but it is always vulnerable to manipulation. Speakers--and poets especially--exploit the possibilities of ambiguity in the language of justice in order to fabricate a likeness between crimes and their punishments, thus justifying avengers. Similarly, speakers use poetic techniques to cement this ideology into more than a merely talionic retribution of "like for like" and instead construct a justice that equates a crime and its punishment. Under this strengthened regime of equivalence, crimes merge with and become their own punishment. This ideology has political consequences: I take as a banner example Alcman's <italic>Partheneion</italic>, in which the order of both the political community and the universe rests on <italic>tisis</italic>. I examine as well many other examples of a tight linkage between crime and punishment.</p> <p>In part three, I return to the <italic>Odyssey</italic>, asking why the singer uses this rhetoric of synonymy of crime and punishment and why he has arranged the moral positions of the characters as he has. I conclude that this arrangement serves the narrator's seemingly monologic, overt program of justifying Odysseus and his divine patrons. But at the same time the narrator has taken the symbolic reasoning of <italic>ius talionis</italic> to a rhetorical extreme, effectively making the suitors into cannibals. Likewise, the retributive claims of the suitors' kin at the close of the poem disappear all too easily: hostilities are not so much resolved as obliterated in mass amnesia. Through such holes in the fabric of the justice of <italic>tisis</italic>, the audience perceives the workings of another program, a subversive program that calls into question the narrator's overt program and the entire, corruptible system of retributive justice. </p> <p>My project thus contributes to our understanding of the <italic>Odyssey</italic>'s subversive narrative integrity, the operation of justice in archaic Greece, and the nature of narratorial authority in poetic discourse. My conclusions should interest not only philologists and literary critics, but also scholars of ethics and political theory.</p> / Dissertation

Inaug.-diss. - Rostock. / Vita.

Three experiments used an appetitive Pavlovian conditioning procedure to investigate the ability of the context to generate excitation. Discrete stimuli (CSs) signalling food unconditioned stimuli (USs) were used to decrease contextual conditioning. Detailed observations of the behaviours of rats during and immediately preceding the presentation of CSs, and in an event-free period were analysed. Experiment 1 showed that a discrete visual CS was able to interfere with contextual conditioning because it was a more efficient cue for food than the context. Experiment 2 found that an auditory CS could reduce contextual conditioning in a similar manner but the topography of responding during the event-free period was specific to the modality of the CS. Experiment 3 demonstrated that signal-appropriate responding during the event-free period occurred only if the CS was a signal for reinforcement.

The following thesis is an examination of the way Seneca constructs Phaedra, the main character of an eponymous tragedy. It aims to prove that the tragedian uses a mixing of mainly two literary genres, tragedy and elegy, and it analyzes the way the elegiac genre is transformed so it can fit this new generic hybrid. Seneca finds inspiration for the elegiac topoi in Ovid's love poems. The author uses the recurrent elegiac convention involving a soft man, the lover, and a dominant woman, the beloved, but he reverses this literary tradition: Phaedra becomes the lover while Hippolytus becomes the beloved. Besides a series of elegiac topoi such as fiery love metaphors, servitium amoris or symptoms of love, Seneca also deals with the erotic hunting. Roman love elegy often associates the lover, the feeble man, with a hunter, while it represents the beloved, the dominant woman, as his prey. In Phaedra, Hippolytus, a true hunter, becomes an erotic prey, while the female character takes on the role of the erotic predator, which causes the young man's tragic death. / Dans ce mémoire de maîtrise on examine la manière dont Sénèque construit Phèdre dans la tragédie portant le même nom. On prouve que pour créer son personnage, le tragédien romain mélange deux genres littéraires : la tragédie et l'élégie. On analyse aussi la façon dont Sénèque altère le genre élégiaque afin qu'il puisse créer un nouveau genre littéraire hybride. L'auteur trouve son inspiration pour les topoi élégiaques dans les poèmes érotiques ovidiens. En dépit de l'utilisation d'une convention élégiaque par excellence qui concerne la relation entre un amoureux, un homme faible, et une bien-aimée, une femme forte et dominante, Sénèque inverse ces éléments et Phèdre devient l'amoureux, tandis qu'Hyppolite se voit attribué le rôle du bien-aimé. À part une série de topoi élégiaques comme les métaphores érotiques du feu, le servitium amoris ou les symptômes de l'amour, le tragédien emploie aussi le lieu commun de la chasse érotique. L'élégie romaine associait très souvent l'homme faible à un chasseur et la femme forte à sa proie. Dans Phèdre, Hippolyte, un vrai chasseur, devient une proie érotique, tandis que le personnage féminin prend le rôle du prédateur, ce qui mène le jeune homme à une fin tragique.

The explicit and implicit definitional criteria of cult heroes as described by Pausanias are examined in an attempt to understand heroes in the terms of ancient Greek religion. The distinctions between gods, heroes, and other mortals are examined. Particular attention is paid to the rituals indicated by the verbs enagizein and thyein with a view towards understanding their role in hero cult. It is found that the sacrifice made to heroes distinguishes the one who sacrifices to them from the one who sacrifices to gods and that hero cult plays an important role in the religious life of the polis through its rituals of purification. / Les critères définitionnels des héros de culte, aussi bien implicites qu'explicites, tels qu'ils sont décrits par Pausanias, sont examinés dans une tentative de comprendre les héros du point de vue religieux de la Grèce antique. Les distinctions entre les dieux, les héros, et les autres mortels sont examinés. En particulier, nous nous concentrons sur les verbes enagizein et thyein, indicateurs de rituels, pour mieux comprendre leur rôle dans le culte des héros. Nous trouvons que le sacrifice aux héros distingue ceux qui les font de ceux qui sacrifient aux dieux. À part cela, nous trouvons aussi que le culte des héros est très important dans la vie religieuse de la polis à travers les rituels de purification.