Thesis (MA) -- Stellenbosch University, 1977.

My PhD thesis, The Flower of Suffering, offers a philosophical evaluation of Aeschylus' Oresteia in light of Presocratic ideas. By examining several aspects of the tragic trilogy in relation to some of Aeschylus' near-contemporary thinkers, it aims to unravel the overarching theological ideas and the metaphysical and epistemological assumptions underpinning the Oresteia's dramatic narrative. My aim is to bring to relief those aspects of the Oresteia which I believe will benefit from a comparison with some ideas, or modes of thought, which circulated among the Presocratic philosophers. I will explore how reading some of this tragedy's themes in relation to Presocratic debates about theology and cosmic justice may affect and enhance our understanding of the theological ‘tension' and metaphysical assumptions in Aeschylus' work. In particular, it is my contention that Aeschylus' explicit theology, which has been often misinterpreted as a form of theodicy where the justice of heaven is praised and a faith in the rule of the gods is encouraged, is presented in these terms only to create a stronger collision with the painful reality dramatized from a human perspective. By setting these premises, it is my intention to confer on Greek tragedy a prominent position in the history of early Greek philosophical thought. If the exclusion of Presocratic material from debates about tragedy runs the risk of obscuring a thorough understanding of the broader cultural backdrop against which tragedy was born, the opposite is also true. Greek tragedy represents, in its own dramatic language, a fundamental contribution to early philosophical speculation about the divine, human attitudes towards it, indeed, the human place in relation to the cosmic forces which govern the universe.

Orientador: Brunno Vinicius Gonçalves Vieira / Banca: José Eduardo dos Santos Lohner / Banca: Luis Augusto Schmidt Totti / Banca: Cláudio Aquati / Banca: Márcio Thamos / Resumo: O presente trabalho tem como objeto as tragédias Oedipus e Phoenissae, escritas em meados do século I d.C. pelo autor latino Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 a.C.? - 65 d.C.). Consiste em um estudo crítico sobre a tessitura poética do texto latino por meio da proposta de uma tradução expressiva em português para esses dois dramas. Em outras palavras, este trabalho pretende investigar e descrever o idioma estilístico de Sêneca no córpus a fim de ensaiar sua transposição para o português. Far-se-á: 1) uma análise dos textos latinos, 2) uma apreciação da tradução de Oedipus por Candido Lusitano e 3) uma tradução expressiva dos dois dramas. O objetivo é revelar traços fundamentais do idioma estilístico de Sêneca no córpus, bem como refletir sobre sua transposição para o português nas traduções propostas por esta autora e na tradução de Oedipus proposta por Candido Lusitano, no século XVIII. A tradução de Lusitano é a única tradução poética metrificada em português da tragédia Oedipus até o presente momento. Da tragédia Phoenissae, há apenas traduções em prosa. A escolha dessas duas tragédias se deu pelo fato de que, dentre os dramas senequianos, esses são os únicos que se centram no mito dos Labdácidas. Assim, é possível uma abordagem completa sobre o tratamento dado por Sêneca ao mito de Édipo. O conceito de idioma estilístico diz respeito à afinidade estilística necessária para que uma tradução possa ser equivalente ao texto de partida. As tragédias estudadas - poemas dramáticos que sã... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This study has as object the tragedies Oedipus and Phoenissae, written in the middle of century I d.C. by the Latin author Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 a.C. - 65 d.C.). It consists of a critical study on the expressiveness of the Latin text by means of the proposal of an expressive translation in Portuguese for these two dramas. In other words, this work intends to investigate and describe the stylistic language of Seneca in the corpus in order to rehearse his transposition into Portuguese. It will be done: 1) an analysis of the Latin texts, 2) an appreciation of the translation of Oedipus by Candido Lusitano, and 3) an expressive translation of such tragedies. In this wise, we aim at defining the main characteristics of stylistic idiom of Seneca in the corpus and reflecting on its transposition into Portuguese - in our translation of both tragedies and in Candido Lusitano's translation of Oedipus (from 18th century). Lusitano's version was the only poetic and metrified translation of Oedipus we had until this paper - all Phoenissae translation into Portuguese are in prose. Since such tragedies are the only ones that deal with the myth of Labdacids, we chose them. Thus, a complete approach is possible concerning how Seneca treated the myth of Oedipus. The concept of stylistic idiom concerns the stylistic affinity required for a translation to be equivalent to the source text. Both tragedies - as dramatic poems - contain an abundant and sophisticated use of expressive resources, commonly classified as figures of speech, as well as by the stylistic expedients present in the phonic, lexical, morphosyntactic and metrical planes. This work consists of an investigation of how to orchestrate expression and content in the poetic utterance, offering an expressive translation, or, in other words... (Complete abstract electronic access below) / Doutor

This dissertation traces the development of Alexander Pushkin's sense of the tragic in the context of Russian and European Romanticism. Pushkin was a self-proclaimed skeptic in matters of literature: though deeply influenced by Romantic poets and theorists, he never subscribed to any one school or creed, experimenting in a range of genres to express his changing tragic vision. Many of his works move seamlessly between the closed world of traditional tragedy and the open world of Romantic tragic drama; and yet, they follow neither the cathartic program prescribed by Aristotle nor the redemptive mythologies of the Romantics. My study explains Pushkin's idiosyncratic approach to tragedy by re-situating his works within their literary, historical, and philosophical contexts. In my readings of The Gypsies, Boris Godunov, and The Little Tragedies, I connect Pushkin's works to those of a range of European writers, including Shakespeare, Racine, Rousseau, Goethe, Schiller, the Marquis de Sade, and Hugo; and I examine such topics as tragedy and the tragic, the sublime and the grotesque, the relationship between literature and history, irony and tragic ritual. While I ground my work in traditional Russian philology, I use recent Western scholarship to help frame my study theoretically. In particular, I aim to contribute to the ongoing debate between scholars who claim that Romanticism marked "the death of tragedy" and those who see the change less as a death than as a redefinition.

Speech acts described as forms of “complaint”—lamentations, accusations, supplications—permeate early modern theatrical tragedy. “Shakespeare and the Drama of Complaint” explores and theorizes the largely unexamined relationship between complaint and tragedy in light of the fact that in the early modern period, “complaining” was cultural shorthand for ineffective, effeminate, and shameful responses to loss and injury. Focusing on familiar Shakespearean tragedies such as Richard III, Richard II, Hamlet, and King Lear, as well as contemporaneous plays by other writers, including Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, and Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’s Maid’s Tragedy, I argue that complaint was at the very heart of the way the genre of tragedy was conceptualized in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. As I show, speeches and scenes of complaint were central to the construction of tragic plots and characters, and to the genre’s didactic and affective objectives. But the intersection of tragedy with complaint is more than simply formal and stylistic. I argue that through its engagement with a dazzling array of rhetorical modes and literary forms of complaint, tragedy recuperates “complaining” as a valuable mode of social expression and action. The first half of “Shakespeare and the Drama of Complaint” focuses on plays that attribute ethical value and political efficacy to complaining—to articulating individual and collective grief and grievance, alone and in community with others. Its first chapter explores the ethical dimensions of the existential complaints of the characters of King Lear in relation to what I call the “complaint-shaming” rife in Stoic and Calvinist moral philosophy. My second chapter, picking up on Lear’s notion of complaining as an act of bearing witness to the suffering of others, looks at the plays of Shakespeare’s first tetralogy, and particularly Richard III, as unconventional revenge tragedies in which reiterated speech acts of complaint are politically powerful and efficacious. The second half of the project pivots to plays that take up the interpellative and affective force of complaint within their narratives in order to reflect on the particular agency, and social value, of tragedy itself: my third chapter reads Hamlet as a meditation on how the structure of complaint, incorporated into tragic narrative, might strike theatrical audiences’ consciences, while my final chapter, on Richard II, shows how performances of complaint, even if they do nothing else, might move audiences to tears. As a staging ground for complaint, the early modern theater and its tragic shows oriented audiences to respond to and participate in social modes of complaining—and taught them to be more sophisticated spectators and consumers of tragedy.

Yeung Ka-chung, Lorraine. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves viii-xii (3rd gp.)) and index. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter One: --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- Aristotelian Tragedy or Greek Tragedy? --- p.6 / Chapter 1. --- Modern Criticism on Aristotle's Poetics --- p.6 / Chapter 2. --- Aristotle's Theory of Greek Tragedy --- p.10 / Chapter 2.1 --- Mimesis and Action --- p.11 / Chapter 2.2 --- Plot-Structure --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3 --- The Principle of Probability and Necessity --- p.13 / Chapter 2.4 --- Tragedy and History --- p.13 / Chapter 2.5 --- "Pity, Fear and Katharsis" --- p.14 / Chapter 2.6 --- Recognition and Reversal --- p.15 / Chapter 2.7 --- The Proper Kind of Agent --- p.16 / Chapter 2.8 --- The Proper Kind of Circumstances --- p.17 / Chapter 3. --- The Exclusion --- p.18 / Chapter 3.1 --- Does Aristotle exclude the Divinity? --- p.19 / Chapter 3.2 --- Aristotle on Oedipus Tyrannus --- p.21 / Chapter 4. --- The Role of Divinity in Greek Tragedy --- p.22 / Chapter 5. --- The Problem of Tragic Action in Greek Tragedy --- p.24 / Chapter 5.1 --- Aristotle on Tragic Action --- p.24 / Chapter 5.2 --- The Duality of Tragic Action in Greek Tragedy --- p.26 / Chapter 5.3 --- The Tragic Sense of Responsibility --- p.28 / Chapter 6. --- The Different Conception on Happiness --- p.30 / Chapter 7. --- The Problem of Pathos in Greek Tragedy --- p.31 / Chapter 7.1 --- Pathos and Truth --- p.31 / Chapter 7.2 --- The Religious Significance --- p.33 / Chapter 7.3 --- Pathos and Pity among Mortals --- p.34 / Chapter 8. --- The Problem of Conflicts in Greek Tragedy --- p.37 / Chapter 8.1 --- Aristotle and Greek Tragedy on Conflict --- p.38 / Chapter 8.2 --- Agamemnon ´ؤ Killing Among Family --- p.40 / Chapter 8.3 --- The Nature of Tragic Conflicts --- p.42 / Chapter 9. --- Conclusion: Aristotle's Silence --- p.43 / Chapter Chapter Three: --- Aristotle on Tuche --- p.45 / Chapter 1. --- Aristotle and the Moral Luck Problem --- p.45 / Chapter 2. --- Tuche in Aristotle's Physics --- p.48 / Chapter 2.1 --- "Tuche and ""What Happens for the Most Part""" --- p.50 / Chapter 2.2 --- "Tuche and ""For the Sake of Something""" --- p.51 / Chapter 2.3 --- The Implications --- p.52 / Chapter 2.4 --- Remarks --- p.56 / Chapter 3. --- Tuche in Aristotle's Two Ethics --- p.57 / Chapter 3.1 --- Tuche in Eudemian Ethics -- Natural Impulse in the Soul --- p.58 / Chapter 3.2 --- Tuche in Nicomachean Ethics: External Goods and Tuche; Happiness and Blessedness --- p.65 / Chapter 4. --- Tuche in Aristotle's Poetics --- p.78 / Chapter 4.1 --- Hamartia - A Cause in Human Terms --- p.80 / Chapter 4.2 --- Errors and Misfortune --- p.82 / Chapter 5. --- Conclusion: Aristotle's Silence on Tuche in Greek Tragedy --- p.85 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- Tuche in Greek Tragedy --- p.88 / Chapter 1. --- A Deeper Sense of Exposition --- p.88 / Chapter 2. --- Tuche as a Goddess --- p.90 / Chapter 3. --- Tuche and Moira in Greek Tragedy -- The Religious Significance --- p.92 / Chapter 3.1 --- Tuche and Moira in Oedipus Tyrannus --- p.94 / Chapter 3.2 --- The Problem of Necessary Chance --- p.97 / Chapter 4. --- Tuche in Oedipus Tyrannus --- p.99 / Chapter 4.1 --- Tuche and Sophoclean Irony --- p.99 / Chapter 4.2 --- Tuche abd Oedipus --- p.103 / Chapter 5. --- Tuche in Euripides' Tragedies --- p.105 / Chapter 5.1 --- Tuche in Heracles --- p.106 / Chapter 5.2 --- Ironic Unconcern - The Tragic Response to Tuche --- p.109 / Chapter 6. --- The Tragic Views --- p.113 / Chapter 6.1 --- The Tragic Views on Man - The Mortal Limitation --- p.114 / Chapter 6.2 --- The Role of the Messenger --- p.115 / Chapter 6.3 --- The Symbolic Meaning of Nature (Physis) --- p.119 / Chapter 7. --- Conclusion: Tuche and Nature --- p.123 / Chapter Chapter Five: --- Tragedy and Philosophy --- p.125 / Chapter 1. --- From Particular to Universal -- The Significance of the Chorus --- p.125 / Chapter 2. --- The Different Way of Formulation Question --- p.129 / Chapter 3. --- The Different Conception Truth - Plato's Simile of the Cave and Oedipus Tyrannus --- p.130 / Chapter 4. --- Conclusion: Greek Tragedy as Philosophy --- p.132 / Chapter Chapter Six: --- Conclusion --- p.133 / Appendix: Related Pictures / Chapter 1. --- The Image of Goddess Tuche (of Antioch) on a Coin --- p.i / Chapter 2. --- The Image of Goddess Tuche (of Ephseus) on a Coin --- p.i / Chapter 3. --- Athena Between Two Warriors --- p.ii / Chapter 4. --- Oedipus and Sphinx --- p.ii / Chapter 5. --- The Images of Achilles and Priam in a Vase Painting --- p.iii / Chapter 6. --- The Images of Achilles and Priam in a Vase Painting --- p.iv / Chapter 7. --- The Images of Ajax and Odysseus in a Vase Painting: Side A: argument between Odysseus and Aja over the possession of the arms of Achilles --- p.x v / Chapter 8. --- Side B: the casting of votes to award the arms --- p.vi / Chapter 9. --- Tondo: Tecmessa covers body of Ajax --- p.vii / Bibliography --- p.viii / Index --- p.xii / Acknowledgement --- p.xv

Includes facsim of 1572 imprint of first title; and of 1573 imprint of second title. / Also submitted by the editor as part of application for candidature for the degree of Doctor of Letters, University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, Discipline of European Studies and Linguistics, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-174) and index. / lxxix, [183] p.: / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX210353.

Inaugural-Dissertation--München, 1934.

Inaug.-diss.--Giessen. / Lebenslauf.