The Iliad in certain key passages construes the Olympian gods as an internal epic audience offering and exploring multiple configurations of audience response to the poem. Chapter 1 explores the special features of the divine audience in general terms and considers previous scholarship. Chapter 2 reads Zeus' provocation of Hera and Athena in Book 4 as a "metaperformative" provocation of the poet's audience. Chapters 3 argues that the audience's mental "viewing" experience is construed as attendance at a live spectacle where the gods also attend, a spectacle for which the duel in Book 3 provides a paradigm. Chapter 4 interprets the duel in Book 7 as a reevaluation of that paradigm, motivated intratextually by the internal audience of Apollo and Athena. Chapter 5 shows that the climactic duel in Book 22, and especially the passage describing Hector and Achilles circling Troy as the gods watch and discuss, problematizes the ethical stance of the extratextual audience. Chapter 6 argues that in the Iliad as a whole the poet uses "the gods" to model a shift in audience sympathy from pro-Achaean bias to pity for the Trojans.

This dissertation analyzes the three main protagonists of Lucan's Bellum Civile through their attempts to utilize, resist, or match a pattern of action which I call the "formula." Most evident in Caesar, the formula is a cycle of alternating states of energy that allows him to gain a decisive edge over his opponents by granting him the ability of perpetual regeneration. However, a similar dynamic is also found in rivers, which thus prove to be formidable adversaries of Caesar in their own right. Although neither Pompey nor Cato is able to draw on the Caesarian formula successfully, Lucan eventually associates them with the river-derived variant, thus granting them a measure of resistance (if only in the non-physical realm). By tracing the development of the formula throughout the epic, the dissertation provides a deeper understanding of the importance of natural forces in Lucan's poem as well as the presence of an underlying drive that unites its fractured world.

This dissertation treats Persius’ book of satires as a physical object, as a text to be read aloud, as a literary artefact that has a fundamental total structure, and as a text that is interested in its genre and in how satire can position itself against tired philosophical and literary traditions and tropes. It seeks to diversify the intellectual contexts in which the satirist may be situated—both literary and philosophical, ranging from Hipponax to Ovid, Plato to Cornutus. In the first chapter, we struggle to track down a poet who compulsively avoids identification in his Prologue. It turns out that he is best identified by a reactionary Hipponactean meter and very misleading birdsounds. Without addressee or self-identification or occasion, the poem is labeled a carmen at the same time that we are told that carmina are to be distrusted. In the second chapter, the poet introduces his libellus to us—or, rather, it turns out that he is not interested in us at all—he talks to his book or to some fiction that he has invented for the occasion of Satire I. The book itself may be read or not, he doesn’t mind. The poet focuses his attention on the poetry-reading practices of others in performance, alighting upon their every intimate body part, but denies us a view of him—he is merely the concealed spleen. In Chapter Three, the poet continues his exploration of performative speech (prayer, this time) in Satire II, while maintaining his self-concealment. We see only his inner, highly unappealing raw heart on a platter. A body part further to the spleen is added to our plate: the heart, uncooked. His last words hint at what he has to offer; but we’ll be sorry that he does soon enough. Chapter Four shows that in the central poem, Satire III, the poet swings vastly in the other direction. Rather than a disembodied critique of others, the poem’s opening lines are highly focalized through the poet’s experience. He exposes more of his body than we would ever wish to see—splitting and gaping open, it becomes a giant pore. At the same moment, his book comes physically into our view, but it is as split as he is. The hardened critic turns out to be a leaky vessel, a failing proficiens who cannot catch up to his Stoic lessons. In the fifth chapter, the poet picks up another book, Plato’s Alcibiades, which shares his interest in the morally underdeveloped youth and the hazards of ethical progress. In Satire IV, his rendition of that dialogue, Persius offers a theory of dialogue as fiction that frames his engagement with philosophy. The result is that the Stoics may find that they have a very bad student on their hands, one who raises the specter of Socrates’ misbehavior and failures. The sixth chapter expands the discussion of Persius’ relation to the Platonic corpus in Satire V, which sustains and develops Platonic questions of desire, slavery, and praise, and confuses its own genres. Finally, Chapter Seven addresses Persius’ retreat, projected death, and reincarnation in Satire VI. He reflects upon the fate of his body. He is unconcerned about what happens to bodies and poets—and, implicitly, their texts—after death. The poet’s book and the body are merged in their insignificance.

Scholarship on Strabo’s Geography has long noticed that the procedure adopted by the author in his account of India is inconsistent with the method he follows elsewhere (Puskás 1993). On the one hand, it has been argued that, while describing the subcontinent, the author quotes so extensively from his sources that he allows practically no space for his own reasoning. Such a writing strategy is unlike the practice he normally adopts (Dueck 2000:180-6). On the other hand, after stressing that the geographical writing may only draw on reliable sources and that the reports on India are unreliable (Geography, 2.1.9 C 70), Strabo writes his own account on the subcontinent by drawing on authors he deemed untrustworthy (Geography, 15.1.1-73 C 685-720). This procedure clearly shifts from the method he follows across his work. However, very few studies have been dedicated exclusively to the matter and this thesis proposes to fill the lacuna. In fact, within Strabonian studies, one trend has tended to analyse individual regions described in Geography (Andreotti 1999), while another has examined themes permeating the book (Clarke 2001 and Engels 1998). The description of India has been widely used to reconstruct relevant aspects of ancient history (Karttunen 1997 and Parker 2008). However, little attention has been paid to the author’s conception of India, which will be the main focus of this thesis. By analysing what Strabo selected from his sources and by considering a network of concepts pervading his work, we will see that apparent inconsistencies serve a number of purposes. In Chapter 1, it will be argued that the inclusion or omission of a given detail related to India was relevant for the political agenda underlying the text. In view of the literature produced at the time and the data made available today by the archaeological research on Indo-Roman trade, Strabo’s account shares the ideology underlying the Res Gestae Divi Augusti. Yet, at times, his text lies between a panegyric and a satire of the Roman Empire. Chapter 2 will show that the author creates an image of India that served to support the aforementioned political agenda. By portraying native kings in association with luxury and corruption, the text refers to traditional Greek conception of the East and this has a bearing on the depiction of the Roman Empire. In Chapter 3, we will see that Strabo’s description addresses ethical questions that were left unsolved by Greek philosophical schools at the time, namely, education for women and the relationship between the philosophical way of life and political compromise. Within this setting of philosophical reflection, the text provides a sound set of moral illustrations, exempla, complete with brief autobiographical remarks.

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The late eleventh and early twelfth centuries saw a revival in the study of Ovid in the literary circles of the Loire Valley region of France. The poetry of Baudri, abbot of Bourgueil from approximately 1078-1107 and archbishop of Dol from 1107 until his death in 1130, exemplifies this trend. Baudri’s determinedly Ovidian collection contains 256 poems, several of which are addressed to nuns and to boys subject to his authority as abbot. Baudri’s use of Ovid displays an intricate understanding of the issues of gender and power at play in Ovid’s works, in particular the Ars Amatoria and Amores. Baudri uses his position of authority to manipulate his inferiors into behaving in ways that are pleasing to him, crafting an unflattering persona that shares many characteristics with the unsympathetic Ovidian amator and praeceptor amoris. Baudri’s letters to boys problematically evoke the tradition of monastic friendship letters, using classical allusion to represent an inappropriately sexualized and manipulative discourse. His letter to the nun Constance and her reply depict a struggle for control of discourse. Constance, by following Ovid’s instructions to the elegiac puella in her reply to Baudri, demonstrates that she is circumscribed by Baudri’s dominant male discourse, which she nonetheless manages to undermine from within. Baudri’s depiction of the power relationships between himself and his social inferiors mirrors the relationship between the Ovidian praeceptor amoris and the elegiac puella, and consequently engages with the plight of his inferiors in the same way that Ovid’s poetry draws attention to the dangerous lives of the courtesans in his elegy. Furthermore, his Ovidianism can be situated within the context of the contemporary Gregorian Reforms. In the same way that the puella can be seen as a projection of elite Roman males’ experience of disenfranchisement amidst the rise of the Principate, Baudri’s problematic correspondence with his social inferiors reflects social anxieties in the face of the Church’s assertion of centralized power and curtailment of clerical freedoms.

The late eleventh and early twelfth centuries saw a revival in the study of Ovid in the literary circles of the Loire Valley region of France. The poetry of Baudri, abbot of Bourgueil from approximately 1078-1107 and archbishop of Dol from 1107 until his death in 1130, exemplifies this trend. Baudri’s determinedly Ovidian collection contains 256 poems, several of which are addressed to nuns and to boys subject to his authority as abbot. Baudri’s use of Ovid displays an intricate understanding of the issues of gender and power at play in Ovid’s works, in particular the Ars Amatoria and Amores. Baudri uses his position of authority to manipulate his inferiors into behaving in ways that are pleasing to him, crafting an unflattering persona that shares many characteristics with the unsympathetic Ovidian amator and praeceptor amoris. Baudri’s letters to boys problematically evoke the tradition of monastic friendship letters, using classical allusion to represent an inappropriately sexualized and manipulative discourse. His letter to the nun Constance and her reply depict a struggle for control of discourse. Constance, by following Ovid’s instructions to the elegiac puella in her reply to Baudri, demonstrates that she is circumscribed by Baudri’s dominant male discourse, which she nonetheless manages to undermine from within. Baudri’s depiction of the power relationships between himself and his social inferiors mirrors the relationship between the Ovidian praeceptor amoris and the elegiac puella, and consequently engages with the plight of his inferiors in the same way that Ovid’s poetry draws attention to the dangerous lives of the courtesans in his elegy. Furthermore, his Ovidianism can be situated within the context of the contemporary Gregorian Reforms. In the same way that the puella can be seen as a projection of elite Roman males’ experience of disenfranchisement amidst the rise of the Principate, Baudri’s problematic correspondence with his social inferiors reflects social anxieties in the face of the Church’s assertion of centralized power and curtailment of clerical freedoms.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Classical Studies, 2007. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 25, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0602. Adviser: Eleanor W. Leach.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2009. / Principal faculty advisor: J.A. Leo Lemay, Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references.