Concerns regarding political ‘enslavement’ and imperial constraints on free speech are especially palpable in the literature that follows the emperor Domitian’s assassination in 96 C.E. Under his successors, Nerva and Trajan, authors worked to differentiate the post-Domitianic age from the prior era of metaphorical enslavement and suppressed speech. Scholars have studied some of the ways in which Neronian and Flavian authors employed literary accounts of the Saturnalia, a festival characterized by temporary license and the notional transformation of social roles, to criticize individual rulers and thematize issues of imperial control. Yet they have not fully appreciated the pervasive use of literary Saturnalia in Flavian and post-Flavian political discourse. I examine the Saturnalia as a political metaphor in five texts: Martial’s Domitianic Epigrams 5 and Nervan Epigrams 11, Pliny’s Trajanic Epistles and Panegyricus, and Dio Chrysostom’s Trajanic fourth Oration. In Epigrams 5, Martial thematizes the circumscription of Saturnalian freedom to highlight limits to his poetic expression under Domitian. Later, in his Epigrams 11, Martial’s presentation of the Nervan regime as an age of ‘Saturnalia,’ a festival whose freedoms are inherently temporary, signifies anxiety about whether post-Domitianic freedom from imperial ‘enslavement’ will be short-lived. In the Panegyricus, Pliny praises Trajan for reasserting the social hierarchies that had become troublingly eroded under the dystopic ‘Saturnalia’ of Domitian. Through Pliny’s depiction of domestic Saturnalian celebrations in Epistles 2.17, the senator proves that the perverse ‘Saturnalia’ that plagued imperial life before Trajan are no more. Finally, in Orations 4, Dio Chrysostom uses circumscribed Saturnalian freedom not only as a metaphor for the limited political authority available to Greeks, but also to valorize his own Greek wisdom as essential to Trajan’s correction of shameful ‘Saturnalian’ rule. The authors in this study, although writing from different personal and generic perspectives, depict metaphorical Saturnalia to articulate the distressing limits of freedom under imperial rule or—in the case of Pliny and Dio—to burnish the image of the anti-Saturnalian ruler Trajan. My dissertation demonstrates that literary representations of the Saturnalia occupy a far more important role in imperial Greek and Roman understandings of autocracy than has been previously appreciated.

Esta pesquisa pretende discutir a forma com que Dioniso foi transformado em herói épico nas Dionisíacas de Nono de Panópolis, uma epopeia em quarenta e oito cantos sobre o ciclo de Dioniso, desde a fundação de Tebas e o estabelecimento de seus antepassados à apoteose olímpica do deus. A análise será baseada nas características de Dioniso no campo de batalha e em oposição aos três principais adversários no poema, Licurgo, Deríades e Penteu. Para uma melhor compreensão da construção de Dioniso como herói, é necessária uma análise sobre o contexto social e cultural em que Nono compõe sua obra, assim como a relação do poeta com Homero, o principal poeta épico grego. Em anexo encontram-se os cantos XXXIX e XL das Dionisíacas em original grego e na tradução feita por mim. / This research intend to discuss the way Dionysus was transformed into epic hero in Nonnus Dionysiaca, an epic in forty-eight chants concerning the Dionysian Cycle, from the foundation of Thebes and the establishment of their ancestors to the Olympic apotheosis of the god. The analysis will be based on Dionysos features on the battlefield in opposition to the three main opponents in the poem, Lycurgus, Deríades and Pentheus. For a better understanding of the construction of Dionysus as a hero, an analysis is needed on the social and cultural context in which Nono composes his poem, as well as the poet\'s relationship with Homer, the Greek main epic poet. Attached are the chants XXXIX and XL of Dionysiaca in original greek and the translation made by me.

Esta pesquisa pretende discutir a forma com que Dioniso foi transformado em herói épico nas Dionisíacas de Nono de Panópolis, uma epopeia em quarenta e oito cantos sobre o ciclo de Dioniso, desde a fundação de Tebas e o estabelecimento de seus antepassados à apoteose olímpica do deus. A análise será baseada nas características de Dioniso no campo de batalha e em oposição aos três principais adversários no poema, Licurgo, Deríades e Penteu. Para uma melhor compreensão da construção de Dioniso como herói, é necessária uma análise sobre o contexto social e cultural em que Nono compõe sua obra, assim como a relação do poeta com Homero, o principal poeta épico grego. Em anexo encontram-se os cantos XXXIX e XL das Dionisíacas em original grego e na tradução feita por mim. / This research intend to discuss the way Dionysus was transformed into epic hero in Nonnus Dionysiaca, an epic in forty-eight chants concerning the Dionysian Cycle, from the foundation of Thebes and the establishment of their ancestors to the Olympic apotheosis of the god. The analysis will be based on Dionysos features on the battlefield in opposition to the three main opponents in the poem, Lycurgus, Deríades and Pentheus. For a better understanding of the construction of Dionysus as a hero, an analysis is needed on the social and cultural context in which Nono composes his poem, as well as the poet\'s relationship with Homer, the Greek main epic poet. Attached are the chants XXXIX and XL of Dionysiaca in original greek and the translation made by me.

This dissertation focuses on the triangulated relationship among female sexuality, patriarchy, and empire and examines literary and historical texts to understand how Britons increasingly identified as imperialists over the course of the nineteenth century. This project, the first book-length study of its kind, features analyses of canonical works like Mansfield Park, David Copperfield, and Adam Bede as well as analyses of paintings, etchings, conference proceedings, newspaper advertisements, colonial reports, political tracts, and medical records from Britain and its colonies. I challenge critical conceptions of the fallen woman as a trope of domestic fiction whose position as outcast illustrates the stigmatization of female sex during the nineteenth century, and I argue that the depiction and punishment of fallen women in multiple genres reveal an interest in protecting and maintaining an imperial system that claims moral superiority over the people it colonizes. My critical stance is both feminist and postcolonial, and my work complicates readings of fallen women in Victorian literature while also adding significantly to scholarship on gender and empire begun by Anne McClintock and Philippa Levine. I claim that during the nineteenth century, the fallen woman comes to represent that which will threaten patriarchal and imperial power, and her regulation reveals an intent to purify the British conscience and strengthen the nation’s sense of itself as a moral and exceptional leader in the world. My investigation into fallenness and empire through a wide range of texts underscores the centrality of imperialism to British society and to the lives of Britons living far removed from colonial sites like India or East Africa.

Les bouleversements politiques et intellectuels provoqués par l’avènement du principat augustéen entraînent sous le Haut Empire une redéfinition des buts et des fonctions assignés à la formation intellectuelle de l’élite romaine et occidentale. Le développement de l’éloquence judiciaire et épidictique au détriment de l’éloquence politique modifie l’enseignement traditionnel de la rhétorique, tandis que la pratique philosophique prend de plus en plus de place au sein de la société et favorise le développement de son enseignement. Ces changements suscitent chez plusieurs auteurs des Ier et IIe siècles apr. J. C. des réflexions sur la manière d’améliorer l’enseignement rhétorique et philosophique alors que diverses initiatives sont prises pour organiser à l’échelle de l’Empire la diffusion de ces savoirs. Notre travail se propose d’examiner, en se concentrant sur les acteurs du système éducatif – professeurs et étudiants –, la façon dont cette formation intellectuelle se développe sous le Haut Empire dans les régions latinophones et de dresser une cartographie de l’enseignement de la rhétorique et de la philosophie en acquérant une connaissance concrète de ces personnages, par l’examen de leurs origines géographique et sociale et de leurs mobilités. Cette dimension réaliste se double d’une étude de la représentation de ces deux groupes dans la littérature impériale. Une attention particulière est portée à la question de la formation des futurs empereurs, dont la vie est richement documentée, afin de déterminer si la description de leur éducation est altérée par le souvenir qu’ils ont laissé de leur règne. / The political and intellectual upheavals caused by the advent of Augustus’ Principate result, in the Early Empire, in a new definition of the aims and functions assigned to the intellectual training of the Roman and Western elite. The development of judiciary and epidictic eloquence at the expense of political eloquence modifies traditional rhetorical teaching whereas philosophical learning is gaining importance within society thus favouring the teaching itself of philosophy. These changes bring several 100 and 200 A.D. authors to reflect upon the way of improving rhetorical and philosophical teaching. Meanwhile various initiatives are taken to spread these forms of knowledge throughout the Empire. By focusing on those who are in charge of the educational system – teachers and students – our research offers to examine how intellectual training develops in the Latin speaking regions in the Early Empire and to draw a map of rhetorical and philosophical teaching while getting to know these characters concretely through the study of their geographical and social backgrounds together with their mobility. Such realistic aspect goes with a survey of the representations of the two groups in imperial literature. Emphasis is laid in particular on the question of the education of the future emperors the documentation of whose lives is rich in order to examine whether the description of their education is altered by the memory that remains of their reign.