Inaug.-diss.--Bonn. / Lebenslauf.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn. / Vita. Bibliography; p. 442-444.

This study describes the religious content of the Ciceronian corpus and reappraises Cicero’s religious stance. Chapter 1 develops a working definition of religion in terms of interested supernatural agents, briefly situating it within the historiography of religion. Support for this definition from scholars in a range of academic disciplines is demonstrated. It is then engaged in Chapter 2 as a tool with which to locate and classify religious material in the Ciceronian corpus, approaching the texts genre by genre and indicating certain difficulties encountered when seeking to divide the religious from the non-religious. Religion in Cicero now defined, Chapter 3 considers the limitations in scope and methodology of previous research on the topic, arguing that these limitations call for a new approach but also suggest how it should proceed. The corpus must be considered as a whole, with twin objectives: to describe and account for conflicting religious viewpoints within and between individual works, and to establish whether a coherent authorial religious position exists. Cicero generally presents religion as beneficial to society, but never expressly sets out to elucidate the reasoning behind this recurrent proposition or collects in one place those beliefs and practices that are repeatedly advocated. Chapter 4 combines disparate Ciceronian material to show how social utility is thought to accrue and how it is predicated upon a surprisingly large and specific body of religious doctrine. This doctrine amounts to a dominant religious ideology; its operation in practice and its substantial resemblance to Roman orthodoxy are illustrated in Chapter 5, a case study on Cicero’s use of religious rhetoric in connection with the Catilinarian conspiracy. Chapter 6 details the similarities and many conflicts between the dominant religious ideology and the religious viewpoints of the Stoics, Epicureans and Philonian Academics as each school is portrayed by Cicero. Finally, Chapter 7 argues that a coherent authorial attitude to religion is present, which maps closely onto the dominant religious ideology and is characterized by a consistent and spirited endorsement of traditional Roman religion in full awareness of competing rational arguments from Greek philosophy. Some possible explanations for this attitude conclude the study. / The Classics

This dissertation presents a comprehensive study of a fragmentary text of Greek prose fiction generally known as The Sesonchosis Novel (2nd century CE). It provides a new picture of the scope, character, and date of the work with the help of two new papyrus fragments and explores its relationship to both the complex tradition of the Greco-Roman Sesostris legend and the genre of the ancient novel. Thus the first part of the dissertation focuses on the Sesostris legend by tracing the position of the character Sesostris in Egypt, surveying the nature and development of the legend in Greek and Roman texts, and analyzing in detail two episodes from the legendary material (the attempted coup and the royal chariot). It explores how Sesostris held almost semi-divine status in Egypt as well as how useful and potent a symbol of Egyptian kingship he became in Greco-Roman culture. The second part focuses on The Sesonchosis Novel, arguing that the novel's plot may have covered the whole life of its main character and that the text may thus be best described as a biographical novel or "ruler novel." The implications of this hypothesis for the ancient novel genre as a whole are discussed in some detail, particularly in relation to The Ninos Novel. / The Classics

<p> A particular range of sounds express the presence and power of the god Dionysos. &Bgr;&rhov;&oacute;&mu;&iota;o&sigmav;, an epithet almost exclusively applied to Dionysos, especially connotes powerful sounds from the natural world, frenetic sounds, and sounds construed as foreign. The kind of noise conveyed by the name &Bgr;&rhov;&oacute;&mu;&iota;o&sigmav; is created in the ecstatic worship of Dionysos, generating an aurally-defined mobile and temporary Dionysiac space that blurs boundaries and infringes upon other types of spaces. Dionysiac sound conveys the vitality associated with Dionysos and provides a mechanism for his epiphany.</p><p> Accounting for Dionysos&rsquo; relationship with sound allows for new readings of <i>Bacchae</i> and <i>Frogs.</i> The aural aspects of Bacchae provide a counterpoint to its rich visual imagery. Pentheus threatens to silence Dionysos and remains oblivious to the importance of sound in Dionysiac worship. When he dresses as a maenad, he assumes only the visual aspects of the cult. Pentheus&rsquo; screams are incorporated into the Dionysiac soundscape before he dies, silenced forever. Aristophanes&rsquo; <i> Frogs</i> subverts the usual relationship between Dionysos and sound in a way that emphasizes the comical stereotype of the god as weak and incompetent. In particular, both choruses present Dionysiac sound to an oblivious Dionysos. He is irritated by the frogs and enthralled by the initiates.</p>

This thesis is an examination of realism in the love elegies of Propertius: of how it is created, how it is limited, and how its limitations increase its effectiveness rather than diminishing it. The first half analyzes the variety and subtlety of the creation of realism in elegies 1.3, 2.29b, and 4.7, three poems that, because of shared features that link them to each other and set them apart from the rest of Propertius's elegies, represent a case study of realism. The second half begins by describing how the realism in these poems is limited, and how these limitations intensify the effect of their realism by drawing attention to the poet's agency in creating it. This effect is then related to larger trends in the creation and limitation of realism in Propertius's remaining love elegies, in which the same pattern is observed, by means of the analysis of recurring techniques. This examination of aspects of realism in Propertius's poetry provides insight not only into his poetic method, but into his attitude to his genre and its potential. / Thesis (Master, Classics) -- Queen's University, 2008-06-09 15:40:16.227

No description available.

<p> The labyrinth is a powerful image, turning up throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in modernist, high modernist, postmodern, experimental, and digital fictions. Some authors taking up the image of the labyrinth in the latter half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first consider it more than a mere metaphor or a setting before which plots and characters unfold; it offers instead a poetics, a way to discover, explore, and conquer labyrinths constructed of the experiences of everyday life&mdash;the city, the home, the library, the computer, the mind, even the book itself. Throughout this thesis I examine a small selection of their fictions&mdash;Michael Ayrton's <i>The Maze Maker</i>, Alain Robbe-Grillet's <i>In the Labyrinth</i>, Mark Z. Danielewski's <i>House of Leaves</i>, Umberto Eco's <i>The Name of the Rose</i>, Shelley Jackson's <i> Patchwork Girl</i>, Steve Tomasula's <i>TOC</i>, and selections by Jorge Luis Borges and Ovid&mdash;each of whom deploys the labyrinth simultaneously in the diegesis and discourse of their texts in order to discover the shifting boundaries of the page and narrative form. Non-sequential narrative techniques in the spatial, formal, linguistic, and typological structures of these fictions implicitly propose the labyrinth as a model for the unique complexities of writing and reading in the modern world, one that in fact demonstrates the very labyrinth that it describes.</p>

In the final book of the Georgics, Virgil digresses into a nostalgic and regretful explanation of his inability to include a proper discussion of gardening because he is spatiis exclusus iniquis (147). Often deemed “the skeleton of a fifth book of the Georgics” the exact meaning and intent behind this passage is still largely contested. In this paper I will attempt to de-strange this passage by examining it philosophically and allegorically, particularly by means of numerical symbolism.

Part I Anastasius Bibliothecarius, papal librarian, translator and diplomat, is one of the pivotal figures of the ninth century in both literary and political contexts. His contribution to relations between the eastern and western church can be considered to have had both positive and negative ramifications, and it will be argued that his translations of various Greek works into Latin played a significant role in achieving his political agenda, complex and convoluted as this was. Being one of relatively few Roman bilinguals in the latter part of the ninth century, Anastasius found that his linguistic skills opened an avenue into papal affairs that was not closed by even the greatest breaches of trust and violations of canonical law on his part. His chequered career spanning five pontificates will be reviewed in the first chapter. In Chapter 2, we discuss his corpus of works of translation, in particular the Collectanea, whose sole surviving witness, the Parisinus Latinus 5095, has been partially edited in this study. This collation and translation of seven documents pertaining to the life of Maximus the Confessor provides us with a unique insight into Anastasius' capacity as a translator, and into the political and cultural significance of the commissioning and dedication of his hagiographic and other translated works in general. These seven documents will be examined in detail in Chapter 3, and compared with the Greek tradition, where that has survived, in an effort to establish the codes governing translation in this period, and to establish which manuscripts of the Greek tradition correspond most closely to Anastasius' (lost) model. In Chapter 4, we analyse consistency of style and method by comparison with Anastasius' translation of the Historia Mystica attributed to Germanus of Constantinople. Anastasius' methodology will be compared and contrasted with that of his contemporary John Scotus Eriugena, to place his oeuvre in the broader context of bilingualism in the West in the ninth century. Part II contains a critical edition of the text with facing English translation and historical and linguistic annotations.