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 depicting instances of protreptic at work and attempting to exert a protreptic effect on readers. In this dissertation I argue that understanding this dual function of Plato's writing is inseparable from understanding his conception of philosophy. I analyze the structure of protreptic in Plato's writing by identifying four aspects essential to an interpretive method that takes full stock of the protreptic function of Plato's dialogues. These aspects are (1) the proper recipient of protreptic; (2) the persuasive means available to protreptic; (3) the immediate target of persuasion; (4) the ultimate philosophical aim toward which protreptic advances the recipient. While some of these aspects must be determined with respect to particular dialogues, those that concern the form of Plato's writing—such as the means of persuasion and ultimate philosophical goals—can inform a general approach to Plato's dialogues. The means that Socrates uses to persuade his interlocutors are sometimes affective, influencing their emotions, and other times intellectual, appealing to them exclusively with logical argument. I argue that a combination of these means into a form I call “provocative-aporetic” better accounts for the means that Plato uses to exert a protreptic effect on readers. Aporia is a simultaneously intellectual and affective experience, and the way that readers choose to respond to aporia has a greater protreptic effect than either affective or intellectual means alone. The Republic is a crucial dialogue for studying protreptic because it addresses the ultimate moral and intellectual ends toward which Plato hopes to reorient readers, and puts the various protreptic means at Socrates' and Plato's disposal on full display. The dialogue offers both an argument for a life committed to virtue, and an outline of the theoretical insights—mathematical and dialectical—that philosophers may hope to gain from more serious study. It also portrays Socrates in conversation with characters of a variety sufficient to show his rhetorical and argumentative repertoire. In this dissertation I carry out a reading of the Republic according to the four aspects of the structure of protreptic discussed above. More specifically, I identify moments at which Glaucon and Adeimantus answer Socrates' questions in such a way that they concede to Socrates the truth of premises that contradict their defense of the unjust life. These moments reveal that the central point of dispute in the Republic concerns the nature of moral agency— particularly the functions of reason, desire, and habituation for moral agents. Accordingly, I identify two models of agency—a Technē Model and a Virtue Model— that ground their respective defenses of justice and injustice, and hold their own assumptions about reason, desire, and habituation within their respective moral psychologies. Glaucon and Adeimantus' moments of capitulation, function as moments of aporia for readers, who are then provoked to overcome the aporia by explaining why the capitulation is reasonable. In doing so, we gain an account how Glaucon and Adeimantus are coaxed to abandon their original views about justice, injustice, and moral agency and to accept those of Socrates. This account in turn yields insight into protreptic by depicting how Socrates brings about a reorientation toward philosophy from within a non-philosophical perspective.

No single volume of mythological or philological research exists for Hades. In the one moment Hades appears in archaic Greek literature, speaking for only ten lines, Hermes stands nearby. Thus, to understand and journey to Hades is to reckon with Hermes’ close presence. As I synthesize research by writers from several different disciplines, may some light be brought into the depths. May we analyze Hades’ brief appearance in archaic Greek literature, examining how what I define as the “Hermetic” emits from his breath in the one moment he physically appears and speaks.

This thesis analyzes David Jones’s In Parenthesis to demonstrate the failed notion of chivalry, courtesy, and knighthood in modernity during and after the war. Jones’s semi-autobiographical prose poem recounting his experiences of WWI was published in 1937, nineteen years after the war ended. Jones applied the concepts of chivalry, courtesy, and knighthood to his experiences during WWI through In Parenthesis. Jones used these concepts, which originated in the classical period and the Middle Ages, to demonstrate how they have changed over time, especially given the events of WWI. The best way for Jones to demonstrate the impact of WWI was to use the medieval ideas of knighthood (which were arguably idealized up until the war) to describe how the modern world could no longer be identified with those ideals.

As a text Botandōrō demonstrates bibliographic codes that straddle the border between modern and pre-modern literature. Wakabayashi would present his work as the fruit of his technique of ‘photographing language’ that, by extension, would provide closer and more direct access to the interiority of “author.” In his prologue he presented his shorthand method as a technique that would come to represent the new standard of modern writing. As they created a new system for transcribing language, stenographers were wrestling with the philosophical nature and limitations of language in spoken and written form, and their discoveries and accomplishments would provide a framework for future authors during a highly transformative period in the history of Japanese literature, whether intentional or not. By focusing on these paratextual elements in Botandōrō in the context of the tale’s intertextual construction we find that it is best viewed as a text that exhibits aspects of modern and pre-modern literature in its presentation as a material object, the claims it makes for sokki as a modern writing technique, and its negotiations with the idea of authorship.

For thousands of years, people have been hearing, reading, and interpreting stories and myths in light of their own experience. To read a work by a different author living in a different era and setting, people tend to imagine works of literature to be something they are not. To avoid this fateful tendency, I hope to elucidate what it means to read a work of literature and interpret it: love it to the point of wanting to foremost discuss its excellence of being a piece of art. Rather than this being a defense, I would rather call it a musing, an examination on two texts that I adore: Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Exodus

<p>This paper is concerned with the use of mutiny narratives in historical texts as a microcosm of the historians’ goal of the work as a whole. This study is built upon the recent trend in scholarship, where a particular feature of a text has been studied to provide an analysis on the author or the underlying purpose of his work. Mutinies and, more specifically, mutiny narrative patterns have not been studied to a great extent for this type of analysis. However, based upon their tradition delineation and explanation of events and their ubiquitous speeches, mutiny narratives are capable of providing a new avenue for this type of analysis. The first chapter will look at the mutiny of Scipio Africanus’ troops at Sucro in 206 B.C.E. as presented by the historians Polybius and Livy. Both attempted to organize their works upon particular moral and didactic lines, the results of which are clearly expressed in their construct of the mutiny. This intentional framework is also present in the poet Lucan’s historical epic the <em>Bellum Civile</em>, who shaped the mutiny of Caesar’s troops in 47 B.C.E. in order to express his own belief in the inherent cataclysm and paradox of civil war. Finally these same themes of chaos and contradiction are also present in my third chapter and its analysis of five mutinies found in Tacitus, two in 14 C.E. and three in 69 C.E. under Galba, Otho and Vocula. Tacitus deliberately engineered the earlier mutinies in order to create both thematic and linguistic echoes to the later seditions in order to prove that the same problems that caused the later civil war were present under the earliest emperors.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>This thesis has two primary aims: 1) to add weight to the minority opinion that Xenophon is not naively pro-Spartan and that while he appreciates and admires certain facets of the Spartan socio-political system, he recognises and criticises its inherent flaws, and 2) to show that Xenophon is consistent and even-handed in his treatment of Spartans throughout his works with no significant alteration over the period of his literary output. The focus is on those works in which Spartans figure most prominently: the Anabasis, Hellenica, and Respublica Lacedaemoniorum; the Agesilaus and Cyropaedia are dealt with insofar as they complement and illuminate matters under discussion.</p> <p>The first two chapters show that very little is known with certainty about Xenophon's life and the chronology of the relevant works. I argue that this lack of factual evidence has opened the way for scholars to make inaccurate and misleading speculations in support of the traditional view that Xenophon is uncritically pro-Spartan. In the next two chapters various Spartan leaders in the Anabasis and Hellenica are examined with respect to the qualities which Xenophon believed a good leader should possess. It is concluded that Xenophon shows no obvious bias toward Spartans in either work; praise and criticism are apportioned as due. The fifth chapter considers the Respublica Lacedaemoniorum with emphasis on those aspects of the Spartan lifestyle which bear most directly on the way Spartan leaders function. The standard view of the work as encomiastic is challenged and its purpose is reassessed. I argue that Xenophon simply presents an analysis of those Spartan laws and institutions which he believed allowed Sparta to rise to pre-eminence in the Greek world. A comparison with what he says elsewhere shows that he did not necessarily consider these laws to be ideal or worthy of imitation. A short conclusion draws attention to the consistency in Xenophon's attitude to Sparta in the works considered.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

As a passing glance at the popular texts of any given period reveals, the subject of vengeance is nearly inescapable; on billboards, websites, and year end lists, revenge represents a curious constant even amid disparate media. This study explores the cultural commonalities that align revenge texts of the English Renaissance and exploitation films of late 20th century America. As in-depth inquiry reveals, numerous ideas and narrative tropes popularized during the Early Modern period are pushed to their logical extremes in these films. The central factor that aligns London during the Renaissance and New York at the cusp of the 1990s relates to traumatic, far-reaching changes in the urban landscape and its uses. There is an observable preoccupation, on the part of playwrights and filmmakers, with the subject of vengeance as tied to notions of locality, space, and rightful ownership.

Since classical times, the witch has remained an eerie, powerful and foreboding figure in literature and drama. Often beautiful and alluring, like Circe, and just as often terrifying and aged, like Shakespeare’s Wyrd Sisters, the witch lives ever just outside the margins of polite society. In John Marston’s Sophonisba, or The Wonder of Women the witch’s ability to persuade through the use of language is Marston’s commentary on the power of poetry, theater and women’s speech in early modern Britain. Erichtho is the ultimate example of a terrifying woman who uses linguistic persuasion to change the course of nations. Throughout the play, the use of speech draws reader’s attention to the role of the mouth as an orifice of persuasion and to the power of speech. It is through Erichtho’s mouth that Marston truly highlights the power of subversive speech and the effects it has on its intended audience.

This study focuses on the novels of Quicksand by Nella Larsen and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison to explore the phenomenon of poqéakh (פֹּקֵחַ) through the fictionalized lived experiences of their protagonists, Helga Crane and invisible man. Each novelist’s representation of poqéakh offers a portrait of the protagonists’ psyches. The narratives reveal an unsettling truth for the protagonists, who are members of a population often targeted, stigmatized, and fashioned or re-fashioned by Americans and various environs in American society, that they must assimilate—not only their bodies, but their psyches too to fit the “white man’s pattern” (Larsen 4). Their realities inform them that non-conformity and/or developing or utilizing their intellect is disadvantageous—perceiving is unfavorable. Each protagonist learns that she and he will not only be limited by their imaginations or abilities, but also by persons and constructs within American society keeping them witless and amenable. The environs presented in forms such as schools, jobs, even people who prepare each protagonist to accept all and any disparity (inequality and inequity), they are made to be persistently and surreptitiously instructive. As such, these environs are always educating (or training), always molding the psyches of the protagonists to live within a frame—the construct (American society). These ever informing boundaries thoroughly acquaint each protagonist on “how to scale down [their] desires and dreams so that they will come within reach of possibility” (Thurman 115). Poqéakh leads Helga Crane to perceive the boundaries while it prevents the invisible man from returning to unblissful ignorance, thus, for him, providing momentary periods of lucidity. This study utilizes a qualitative research design and method, and relies on phenomenological theory to successfully analyze the novels and explicate on the representations of poqéakh. As this study will illustrate, Larsen and Ellison offer as representative via their novels two narratives of the diasporic psyche (mind), wherein their protagonists’ experiences of poqéakh lead to some unmitigated facts and disturbing truths about their reality.