Numerous ancient epics and their heroes share certain characteristics. Lord Raglan and Joseph Campbell, among others, developed these characteristics into hero models. In their models, it is mentioned that many heroes undergo a katabasis or a figurative death and resurrection. The presence of a female guide in the hero’s descent into the Underworld has been largely neglected in Classical scholarship, despite the fact that the study of epic has been for some time a largely saturated field. It will be this aspect of the epic that I intend to examine. I will be examining a selection of female guides and will create a model consisting of their similarities loosely based on those models of Raglan and Campbell. I will be examining the role of female guides in various epics; namely, the Gilgamesh Epic (Siduri), the Odyssey (Circe), and the Aeneid (the Sibyl) and in a later chapter, those in the Argonautica (Medea) and the Pharsalia (Erichtho). In addition to these guides, I shall be examining one guide that does not come from epic, Ariadne. The female guides I shall be examining appear in two forms, either as a literal guide who descends with the hero into the Underworld, or as a figurative guide who provides assistance from a distance through advice or instruction. One of the reasons why I feel that this topic is of importance is the socio-historical context in which these texts were written, times and places when women played a largely inferior and subservient role to men. The fictional literary guides seem to be representing strong and independent women. I find this to be remarkable considering the times that these texts were written in. The analysis of these female guides will conclude with a compilation of the similarities they share that shall form the basis for my own female guide model. My model will be established in two consecutive steps: first the female guides Siduri, Circe and the Sibyl will be examined and a preliminary model established. In addition, I will try and prove a common ancestry for them. Secondly, I will test my preliminary model on Medea, Erichtho and Ariadne. As a result, I will propose a final model comprising all the female guides dealt with in my dissertation. This model will be my contribution to scholarship on epic literature from a Comparative approach. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2018-06-04T12:34:46Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Neemias Oliveira da Silva.pdf: 12742091 bytes, checksum: 41af331a98c1be3780516d060d7a6551 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-06-04T12:34:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Neemias Oliveira da Silva.pdf: 12742091 bytes, checksum: 41af331a98c1be3780516d060d7a6551 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-23 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This thesis proposes the investigation of the myth built regarding Spartacus figure, slaves revolution leader in Ancient Rome and the demystification of this character in contemporaneity. We also analyzed Spartacus uses and appropriations which from eighteenth century on became symbol of revolutions. Thus, Spartacus became part of the popular culture along the time, reviving the epic hero at the cinematographic work from Stanley Kubrick (1960). Resuming in the twenty-first century through the series Spartacus (2010 - 2013), from epic hero to hero of masses. The return of the mythic hero is seen as nostalgia, a hero's model that no longer exists. Based on this we studied how the cultural industry reinforces occidental beauty patterns based on a body model. The hero's body is muscled, considered virility synonym and sexual symbol. Technological and scientific advances contributed to disenchantment of myths, the super natural, demystifying the hero. New hero models were built, ordered and integrated to a globalized media. This way the sources analyzed were Spartacus series, classical and reference works. The methodology used consists on Spartacus iconography analysis as a cultural representative and product of mass culture. At last the fact that Spartacus series was chosen as audio visual source is justified by the symbolic form the body and hero are described as simulacra of contemporaneous man. Spartacus would unfold himself in his lots of myths: “Myths of Spartacus” / Esta tese tem como propósito investigar como se deu a construção do mito em torno da figura histórica de Espártaco, líder da revolta de escravos na Roma Antiga, e a desmistificação deste personagem na contemporaneidade. Também analisamos os usos e as apropriações de Espártaco, que a partir do século XVIII, fez-se símbolo de revoluções. Assim, ao longo do tempo, Espártaco tornou-se parte da cultura popular, revivendo o herói épico na obra cinematográfica Spartarcus de Stanley Kubrick (1960). E, ao ser retomado no século XXI, por meio do seriado Spartacus (2010-2013), passou de herói épico a herói das massas. O retorno do herói mítico é visto como saudosismo, um modelo de herói que não existe mais. Dessa forma, estudamos também como a Indústria Cultural reforça os padrões de beleza ocidental baseado em um modelo de corpo. O corpo do herói é musculoso, considerado sinônimo de virilidade e símbolo sexual. E com o avanço tecnológico e científico, ocorreu um desencantamento dos mitos e do sobrenatural, desfazendo o misticismo em torno do herói. Construiu-se novos modelos de heróis, encomendados e integrados a uma mídia globalizada. Neste sentido, as fontes analisadas foram o seriado Spartacus, obras clássicas e obras de referência. A metodologia utilizada consistiu na análise icnográfica de Espártaco como representante cultural e produto da cultura de massas. Por último, o fato do seriado Spartacus ter sido escolhido como fonte audiovisual, justifica-se pela forma simbólica em que o corpo e o herói foram abordados, como simulacros do homem contemporâneo. Com isto, Espártaco desdobrar ia-se em seus muitos mitos: “Os mitos de Espártaco”

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The ‘loss of self’ trope is a pervasive shorthand for the prototypical process of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the popular imagination. Turned into an effect of disease, the disappearance of the self accommodates a biomedical story of progressive deterioration and the further medicalization of AD, a process which has been storied as an organic pathology affecting the brain or, more recently, a matter of genetic calamity. This biomedical discourse of AD provides a generic framework for the disease and is reproduced in its illness narratives. The disappearance of self is a mythic element in AD narratives; it necessarily assumes the existence of a singular and coherent entity which, from the outside, can be counted as both belonging to and representing an individual person. The loss of self, as the rhetorical locus of AD narrative, limits the privatization of the experience and reinscribes cultural storylines---storylines about what it means to be a human person. The loss of self as it occurs in AD narratives functions most effectively in reasserting the presence of the human self, in contrast to an anonymous, inhuman nonself; as AD discourse details a loss of self, it necessarily follows that the thing which is lost (the self) always already existed. The private, narrative self of individual experience thus functions as proxy to a collective human identity predicated upon exceptionalism: an escape from nature and the conditions of the corporeal environment.