Although much of Gustav Klimt's work is well recognized, his painting Hope II (1907-1908) has received little attention in academic studies. Rejected by his peers on its initial exhibition, this work was found offensive by even his staunchest supporters. Second wave feminists have also been critical of his painting, finding in it an objectification of women. This is likely due in part to the central subject of the piece involving pregnancy. Klimt was unafraid to paint images that shocked and diverged from traditional aesthetic styles. During a time of rapid social change and development of the feminist movement, Klimt offered fin-de-siècle Vienna an image that invited conversations about female sexuality, identity, and fertility. This paper constitutes a rereading of Klimt as empathetic to the female experience by way of a close analysis of Hope II. The artist's closeness to many women indicates his awareness of their plight. His portrayal of fertility in this painting offered a new perspective of womanhood in art with a depiction of woman as autonomous and empowered. Criticism from second-wave feminists often follows Klimt's work. However, his continued representation of the female body should be read as a glorification of the body rather than objectification of it.

In contemporary America the haunted house appears regularly as a figure in literature, film, and tourism. The increasing popularity of the haunted house is in direct correlation with the disintegration of the home as a refuge from the harsh elements of the world. The mass media populates society with dark images and subjects, portraying America as a dark place to live. Americans create fictional narratives of terror and violence as a means of coping with their own modern horrors. Their horrors are psychologically displaced within these narratives. The haunted house is therefore a manifestation of contemporary anxieties surrounding the dissolution of the home, a symbol of the infusion of terror and violence into domestic space.

Few works have created such memorable characters as the Iliad and Odyssey. Readers come away from these works with the impression that the characters described in the stories are larger than life: Achilles is strong, Ajax is enormous, Patroclus is bloodthirsty, Nestor is ancient, Stentor is loud. Nobody leaves Homer’s epics thinking his heroes are not worthy of their lasting fame. This study argues that, although the heroes of the two Homeric epics are meant to be impressive, their characterization in the Iliad and Odyssey is the result of a process of rationalization whereby the hyperbole traditionally ascribed to such figures was toned down when the two poems were finally committed to writing. I argue this by showing that the hyperbole used to describe these heroes is paralleled across many Indo-European epic traditions and that, for the most part, it is much more exaggerated in these related epics. From the scant remains of the Epic Cycle, there is reason to believe that the context in which Homeric poetry was formed was receptive to the fantastic. The best explanation of these two pieces of data is that the Iliad and the Odyssey rationalize traditional hyperbole. This was done so that the poems would have a broader appeal and greater clarity, vividness, and simplicity, traits which have long been considered hallmarks of Homer’s style.

In both the narratives of their reigns and as objects of allusion in accounts of later periods of Roman history, the seven kings of Rome (r. 753-509 BCE, traditionally) frequently feature in historiographical and biographical works written after the death of Livy (17 CE) with meaningful nuance despite the relative crystallization of Rome's founding and regal legends during the age of Augustus (r. 31 BCE-14 CE). I demonstrate how 12 authors writing over a period of four centuries, from late in the reign of Tiberius (r. 14-37 CE) to shortly after the death of Theodosius I (r. 378-395), refashion the kings as creative reflections of, or reactions to, the Roman emperors in both their narratives and the time of writing those narratives. These writers are, in Latin, Velleius Paterculus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Florus, Justin, Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and the anonymous authors of the Historia Augusta and Epitome de Caesaribus; in Greek, Appian and Cassius Dio. Through close, contextual readings I examine how and explain why certain authors present the kings as exemplary monarchs whose conduct should be imitated or avoided, especially in contexts where those kings are by a variety of rhetorical tactics compared or contrasted with figures in narratives of later history. I then place those readings along a chronological spectrum to reveal common elements of continuity and evolution of the kings among these 12 authors at various points in imperial history. It can be shown that the idealization of the kings is roughly a function of the author's audience and social class (i.e. Roman senators are less favorable to them than equestrians and provincials). Moreover, the kings evolve over time, beginning as blood ancestors of emperors in the early Principate, expanding to products and benefactors of a diverse, Mediterranean cosmopolis during the High Empire, then restricting to symbols of traditional political, cultural, and religious notions tied to the physical city of Rome in Late Antiquity, when the political, spatial, and spiritual transformation of the imperial office made the kings obsolete as persuasive models of imperial rulership. More broadly, this project adds to our understanding that at any point, societies tend to not only reinvent their histories as reflections of their own time, but also credit "Great Men" both as explanatory devices for major events and as embodiments of national identity.

Only two ancient historians have written comprehensive histories of Rome that survive in more than fragments, Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, both working in the years after Augustus came to power. Of the original twenty books of Dionysius' Roman Antiquities, which covered the history of Rome from pre-history to the beginning of the First Punic War, we have the first ten, substantial parts of the eleventh and fragments of the rest. But although Dionysius has been well received for his works of literary criticism, his historical work has been comparatively neglected. There are two recent commentaries on selected portions of the Antiquities, but only one commentary for a complete book, an unpublished dissertation commentary for Book I. A French translation with notes exists for Books 1 and 2, but the notes, though useful, are intended for the general reader, not the scholarly community. Dionysius' history, which parallels the work of his greater contemporary Livy, deserves more attention, hence this dissertation, a scholarly commentary on Book II of the Roman Antiquities covering the reigns of Romulus and Numa, the first two kings of Rome. The purpose of this dissertation is, simply stated, to give a scholarly explanation of the text, to elucidate matters of interest to a careful reader. The method used (again, simply stated) was to carefully read the text and ask the basic question: what does this passage mean? Other questions followed. The result is primarily an explication of antiquarian, historical and historiographical matters; textual and linguistic matters were rarely considered. The antiquarian and historical explications are useful for promoting a further understanding of early Roman history. But the examination of Dionysius' historiography shows other points of interest which include the following: Dionysius is adept at thematic development, for example of realistic narrative detail in contrast to Livy's artistic idealization of the Roman experience; in important ways he exhibits a historiography that differs from Livy's, as when he portrays early Rome as cautious, moderate and somewhat defensive in contrast to Livy's confident and aggressive city on the way to fulfilling a pre-ordained glory. The book contains numerous evidences of Augustan influence, and includes Dionysius' thoughts on the use of myth in historical writing. The most significant discovery is that the entire book is the most comprehensive description we have in antiquity of an actual, not theoretical, constitution as Dionysius understood and presented it; that Dionysius thought of the Roman constitution as the creation of Rome's first two kings, who based it upon Socratic virtues; and that he describes a working constitution as no other writer of antiquity did, integrating the virtues into an enduring system of laws and customs that goes beyond a mere rehearsal of ordinances in place at any given time. It is hoped that this commentary will prompt further research and insight into the historical and literary world in which Dionysius worked.

Galen's Avoiding Distress provides an opportunity for scholars to qualify Galen's philosophical eclecticism because his ἄσκησις to avoid distress intersects theory and practice. My thesis carefully analyzes the theoretical framework behind Galen's claim that he “trained his φαντασἰαι for the loss of all his possessions” as well as the specific practices that constitute this training regimen. I trace the concept of φαντασἰα back to the first philosophical discussions in Plato's Theaetetus-Sophist structure and Aristotle's De anima to answer the questions “What are the φαντασἰαι that he talks about?” and “How do they participate in cognition?” I analyze Galen's On the doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, Affections and Errors, and Thrasybulus to identify Galen's specific practices and relate them to what Galen thinks is the purpose of all humans. My inquiry allows me to argue that while Galen uses his imagination to condition himself not to fear the atrocities of Commodus he subordinates emotional tranquility and practices that promote it to the greater goal of doing good deeds for others.

In the 150 years since Lewis Carroll and John Tenniel (1865/1866) first published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, various illustrators have found inspiration in this story to recreate its images again and again. Since Carroll and Tenniel, Wonderland has concerned itself with sociocultural ideas and the work of artists who re-illustrated this story provide ways to trace history of these ideas. Accordingly, the purpose of this project was to examine connections and breaks with tradition in illustration that contribute to an evolution of meaning in the Wonderland story. Additionally, through this project, I worked to interpret ideas from different artists in different times and spaces in an attempt to understand intersecting ideas of culture and Wonderland illustration. Through this work, I developed the concept of curation as a visual research methodology in order to make sense of and share my discoveries. Wonderland offers a rich context to explore and elucidate the arts-based qualitative methodology of curation because of its literary merits, artistic interpretations, and persistence and pervasion worldwide over the last century and a half. Curation allowed me flexibility in thinking about thematic interpretations of the illustrations I studied. Specific curatorial methods led me to identify the scene of Alice's decent to Wonderland, visual characterizations of the Hatter character, and depictions of the playing card characters as signals of sociocultural changes. When examined together, these interpretations point to an ever-shifting relationship between author, illustrators, and readers in classic, illustrated novels. Specifically, through the illustrations in Wonderland, Alice is no longer portrayed as a particular girl and illustrators over time have placed readers as the subject of the adventures. In recent times, Wonderland has gained some ability to cross over from its pages into the real world and take a look at its readers. This shift in perspective in Wonderland speaks to a current sociocultural environment wherein reality is hyper-subjective and nothing is quite as it seems.

This paper examines similarities between imagery of the countryside and the “country life” in both the poetry of Augustan Rome and contemporary American country music. It analyzes the themes of agriculture, poverty, family, and piety, and how they are used in both sets of sources to create an idealized countryside. This ideal, when contrasted with negative portrayals of urban life and non-idealized rural life, endorses an ideology that is opposed to wealth and that emphasizes the security and stability of the idyllic countryside. This ideology common to both may stem from the historical contexts of these two eras, revealing that Augustan Rome and modern America have unexpected similarities.

In chapter 1, I ponder the role of authorship and whether or not an original text can truly exist. Specifically, the claim that Borges has that a copy can be superior to an original. From this, brings me to chapter 2 with the movie Man of la Mancha. In this movie, I highlight some of the pros and cons of a copy. The windmill scene is a negative emanation of the Quixote, while the interaction between people and the presence of women is something the movie truly displays well. In the third chapter, I look at Lost in la Mancha because it demonstrates a failed attempt to translate the Quixote. In essence, anything that tries to represent this truly great text will fail; however, it's failure can paradoxically be thought of as a success because it's an homage to the Quixote. As far as the Ezra Pound material, I thought it extremely pertinent to look at his experience on a metro because he attempts to describe a vision that he had through poetry. He notes that it is very difficult to encapsulate his entire experience because the primary form of art (his vision) is being described through a secondary form (words). Thus, when you translate a form of art through a medium it loses some of its value. This is what happens with the Quixote; its primary form (words) is being displayed through a secondary form (film), and it inevitably loses something in the translation. The final chapter/conclusion is a more in-depth investigation of this investigation primary form of art (writing). This uses the character of Gines as a concrete example of a formal and stylistic quality that is unique to literature. Namely, the physical ranging of words on a page in both a spatial and literary sense. When you extract those lines from a novel you implicitly remove some of the dialectic between Cervantes' work and the genres he's invoking, just by taking it out of the form of literature. The surroundings of text establish the meaning of the novel. The conclusion is my final chance to argue why the Quixote is so special and untranslatable. I touch on the qualities that keep it forever live and present in us today. Through the Quixote's proclivity for renaming the real world (established societal beliefs/values, etc.) in his own vein, Cervantes allows for the Quixote to reappropriate the world around him, making it uniquely his. In so doing, Cervantes creates a character who is able, not only to write his own self-history, but to control the way that said self-history will be written by others. By blurring the lines between narrator and narration and history and fiction, Cervantes creates a work that is endlessly present, where words becoming living page, and actions occur as they are said.

Thesis (M.A.)--Guo li zheng zhi da xue, 1970. / Reproduced from typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 194-196).