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<p>Ovid's characterization of women has long been recognized as revealing an understanding of the female psyche. This is shown not only in his love poetry, but also in his depiction of women in the Heroides and Metamorphoses. The Heroides in particular offered considerable scope for the portrayal of women in a state of crisis and for an exploration of their anxieties and conflicts. The verse letters reveal Ovid's interest in portraying women at an early point in his literary career, an interest which he continued throughout his writing career and which again finds expression in the Metarmorphoses.</p> <p>While Howard Jacobson's study (Princeton, 1974) treats all the single letters, Florence Verducci (Princeton, 1985) has restricted her work to five of the fifteen single letters. Little attempt has been made to trace Ovid's depiction of women from the Heroides into his later works. This work investigates the characterization of Medea, Dido, Ariadne and Deianira as they are initially portrayed in the Heroides and as they are later depicted in the Metamorphoses.</p> <p>Each chapter details early accounts of the heroines, followed by an exploration of the characterization in the Heroides and Metamorphoses. It is shown that, while Ovid's knowledge and use of his predecessors is apparent, his ability to adapt the mythological details concerning his heroines creates an entirely new depiction; his portrayal varies from the Heroides to the Metamorphoses due to the demands of the respective genres and to the emphasis which he wishes to place. Despite the familiarity of his figures, Ovid has created divergent, yet coherent, interpretations of pyschological and emotional crises.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

C’est au IVe siècle que le grammairien romain Maurus Servius Honoratus compose son commentaire sur l’Énéide de Virgile. Ce recueil de commentaires, ou scholia, a notamment comme objectif l’enseignement d’une langue normative guidé par les principes de la latinitas : le latin conforme aux principes grammaticaux. Malgré la place centrale qu’occupe depuis longtemps l’Énéide dans l’éducation et la culture latine, Servius voue une grande partie de son commentaire à l’explication des tournures de langue irrégulières que présente le texte de Virgile. S’il excuse ces irrégularités en raison du langage poétique ou de l’antiquité du texte, le grammairien en proscrit toutefois l’usage à ses étudiants. La reconnaissance de l’autorité du texte entretient alors une tension constante avec les règles synthétiques qu’a établies la discipline grammaticale. Cette recherche se propose d’explorer d’abord cette tension sous deux aspects précis : le traitement de la syntaxe des prépositions et le déploiement du langage technique définissant les différentes expressions jugées irrégulières. Pour comprendre de quelle manière langage constitue aux yeux du grammairien le socle du savoir objectif sur le monde antique, un troisième chapitre est consacré à l’apport notionnel et pédagogique des étymologies savantes pour le commentaire. Servius est héritier d’une longue tradition intellectuelle, ce qu’il ne rend pas toujours apparent dans ses notices. Cette recherche s’est fait un souci de déterminer l’origine de principes sur lesquels s’appuie la composition des scholies serviennes. / In the 4th century, Roman grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus composed his commentary on Virgil's Aeneid. One of the aims of this collection of commentaries, or scholia, was to teach a normative language guided by the principles of latinitas: Latin in accordance with grammatical principles. Despite the Aeneid's long-standing centrality in Latin education and culture, Servius devotes much of his commentary to explaining the irregular turns of language in Virgil's text. Although he excuses these irregularities on the grounds of poetic language or the antiquity of the text, the grammarian nonetheless forbids their use by his students. Recognition of the text's authority thus maintains a constant tension with the synthetic rules established by the discipline of grammar. This research will explore this tension from two specific angles: the syntactic treatment of prepositions and the deployment of technical language to define various expressions deemed irregular. To understand how the grammarian sees language as the foundation of objective knowledge about the ancient world, a third chapter is devoted to the notional and pedagogical contribution of learned etymologies to commentary. Servius is heir to a long intellectual tradition, which he does not always make apparent in his notes. The aim of this research is to determine the origin of some principles underlying the composition of Servian scholia.

This thesis explores the influence of the legend of Troy on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and Lydgate's Troy Book. This study seeks to understand why medieval English Christians held the pagan myth of Troy in such high regard beyond the common postcolonial critique of Trojan ancestry as a justification for political power. I begin by demonstrating how Vergil's Aeneid presents a new heroic ideal much closer to Christian virtue than Homeric values, Aeneas submitting his will to fate and earning his piety through suffering. I then turn to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, assessing how Gawain is not only descended from Aeneas but how the major events of his quest echo Aeneas' journey, especially in both heroes' submission of their wills to fate. Next, I reveal how Chaucer's Troilus enacts a platonic ascent from a state of ignorance to a state of truth, but as Troilus' name is also linked to the city of Troy itself, the fate of Troilus becomes the fate of Troy. In this way, Chaucer dramatizes the spiritual ascent of his Trojan ancestors in that they move from sin to salvation as a culture. Finally, I investigate how Lydgate refashions Troy into an earthly manifestation of Augustine's City of God. In doing so, Lydgate not only remembers his people's past but prophesies the fate of Trojan descendants. Such an analysis helps late antique and medieval scholars understand not only why such classical myths were popular in a predominantly Christian era, but also how the legends of Troy gave medieval English society a myth-history through which to dramatize their spiritual lives.

This dissertation examines the ideological role and adaptation of the mythical British past (derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae) in chronicles of England written in Anglo-Norman, Latin, and English from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, in terms of the shaping of English history during this time. I argue that the past is an important lens through which we can read the imagined geographies (Albion, Britain and England) and ‘imagined communities’ (the British and English), to use Benedict Anderson’s term, constructed by historical texts. I consider how British history was carefully re-shaped and combined with chronologically conflicting accounts of early English history (derived from Bede) to create a continuous view of the English past, one in which the British kings are made English or ‘of England’. Specifically, I examine the connections between geography and genealogy, which I argue become inextricably linked in relation to mythical British history from the thirteenth century onwards. From that point on, British kings are increasingly shown to be the founders and builders of England, rather than Britain, and are integrated into genealogies of England’s contemporary kings. I argue that short chronicles written in Latin and Anglo-Norman during the thirteenth century evidence a confidence that the ancient Britons were perceived as English, and equally a strong sense of Englishness. These texts, I contend, anticipate the combination of British and English histories that scholars find in the lengthier and better-known Brut histories written in the early fourteenth century. For the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, my study takes account of the Albina myth, the story of the mothers of Albion’s giants (their arrival in Albion before Brutus’s legendary conquest of the land). There has been a surge of scholarship about the Albina myth in recent years. My analysis of hitherto unknown accounts of the tale, which appear in some fifteenth-century genealogical rolls, leads me to challenge current interpretations of the story as a myth of foundation and as apparently problematic for British and English history. My discussion culminates with an analysis of some copies of the prose Brut chronicle (c. 1300) – the most popular secular, vernacular text in later medieval England, but it is seldom studied – and of some fifteenth-century genealogies of England’s kings. In both cases, I am concerned with presentations of the passage of dominion from British to English rulership in the texts and manuscripts in question. My preliminary investigation of the genealogies aims to draw attention to this very under-explored genre. In all, my study shows that the mythical British past was a site of adaptation and change in historical and genealogical texts written in England throughout the high and later Middle Ages. It also reveals short chronicles, prose Brut texts and manuscripts, and royal genealogies to have great potential future research.

Jean de Meun's continuation of the Roman de la rose (The Romance of the Rose), written in Paris in the 1270s, presents a vast amount of philosophy and natural science in vernacular poetry, while engaging thoroughly with contemporary, local philosophical and institutional debates. Taking this into consideration, this study investigates how the Rose depends for its meaning on questions around human nature, natural philosophy, and the philosophy of language that were being discussed and debated in the University of Paris at the time of its composition. It suggests a reading of the poem as a work of philosophy that uses Aristotelian ideas of nature and what is natural to present a moral framework – at times explicitly, at times implicitly – within which to assess and critique human behaviour. The concepts of the unnatural and the artificial are used to discuss sin and its effects on sexuality – a key concern of the Rose – and on language. The Rose is shown to present itself as artificial and compromised, yet nevertheless capable of leading imperfect and compromised humans to moral behaviour and towards knowledge which can only ever be imperfect. It is read as a presenting a rhetorical kind of philosophy that is sui generis and that appeals to human desire as well as to the intellect. The specific issue of usury and its relation to avarice is examined, studying contemporary theological and philosophical treatments of the question, in order to illustrate similarities and contrasts in the Rose's theoretical methodology to more orthodox modes of philosophical enquiry. Finally, the poem's valorisation of pleasure and of the perversity inherent in artificial productions is explored to show how poetry, though deviating from the strictures of dialectical language, is nevertheless productive and generative.

Despite the recent interest in late antique archaeology and the increasing number of publications on the transformations of towns (both in Spain and in the Roman world as a whole), the concern shown towards aqueducts has been almost non-existent. Some studies have focused on exceptional local examples, such as Rome or Constantinople, but there have been neither general nor regional syntheses of the chronology of the abandonment of aqueducts on a broad regional scale. This thesis consequently fills this gap in our knowledge by offering an all-encompassing study and compilation of the available material and written evidence for aqueducts in Spain in Late Antiquity, it looks at aqueducts in the late Roman period, and how they evolve through the Visigothic and the Umayyad centuries. For this purpose, each aqueduct in the Iberian Peninsula is assessed according to the available information and studied in its wider urban context. By the end of the thesis it is possible to put forward some clear results on the degree of continuity of aqueducts in Spain. The information is used to analyse how the presence or absence of aqueducts affected the development of urban settlement and housing patterns away from a traditional Roman context. Aqueducts had not been at first an essential part of urban life, yet by Late Antiquity they had become so intimately related to it that the end of aqueduct supply modified urban landscapes. Finally, I present various scenarios to explain why aqueducts ceased to function and how the various elite groups of the period (urban aristocrats, the Church, the Visigothic monarchy and the Umayyads) tried to take over the control of the aqueducts, as they were not only extremely useful functional monuments, but also reminders and legitimising links to the Roman past.

The county of Tripoli (Lebanon) was one of four “crusader states” established in the Levant after the First Crusade (1095-99). Compared to the other states, the county of Tripoli has suffered from a disproportionate level of historiographical neglect. What has been produced has taken an institutional and Eurocentric approach to the subject and its sources. The present thesis jettisons this in favour of a post-institutional methodology, approaching the county from the perspectives of geography and demographics, which together ensure that it is treated within its proper Syro-Lebanese context. Chapter one looks at the role of local geography in shaping the political frontiers of the county of Tripoli and its neighbours, arguing that topography was more important than the agency of the European settlers. Chapter two continues to challenge traditional assumptions regarding European influence, arguing that the specifically southern French origins of many of the county’s settlers were of little significance. Chapter three analyses the use of Arabic by the Frankish government of the county, informed by an awareness of diglossia. It argues that the Franks were more likely to know spoken Arabic than written, but remained reliant upon local intermediaries when ruling over Arabophones. Chapter four looks at popular religion, arguing that the cross-fertilisation of religious beliefs and practices was widespread but poorly understood by the contemporary intelligentsia, upon whose sources historians rely. As a whole, the thesis argues that the county’s inhabitants lacked a distinctive culture, identity, religion or language. The sole justification for viewing the county as an integrated unit is geographical.

Thesis analyses the reception of Augustine of Hippo's (354-430) ontological discourse on the soul in late antiquity and the early middle ages, more specifically in the sixth and the ninth centuries. Since Augustine never wrote a 'De anima', nor always presented his readers with definite answers to questions, there was room for later authors to interpret and improvise. This thesis focuses on 4 texts: Cassiodorus Senator's 'De anima', Eugippius of Lucculanum's massive florilegium the 'Excerpta ex operibus Sancti Augustini', both from the sixth century, Gottschalk of Orbais' letter 'Quaestiones de anima', and John Scottus Eriugena's apologetic 'De divina praedestinatione liber', both from the ninth century. This thesis establishes that, apart from Cassiodorus, the author's main interest in Augustine's ideas on the ontology of the soul rests on the way it impinges on their contemporary predestination debates. Cassiodorus consciously wanted to produce a Christian De anima in a classical vein. Especially the question of the origin of the soul takes the interest of Eugippius and Gottschalk. This is an important question for predestination debates, since it is supposed to explain technically how original sin came to be universal. Augustine never found a satisfactory answer to this thorny question. Eriugena's genius lies in building an original ontology of the soul on Augustine's own foundations which sidesteps this problem of the origin of the soul entirely.

In examining the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of the principate, one is inevitably struck by the transformation of the relationship between the individual and the community. Roman society during the Republic was predicated on the communal leadership of the elite and the recognition of excellence in individuals. In the days of the early and middle Republic, this individual recognition served as the vehicle to participation in communal authority, the prize for which aristocratic families competed. Communal authority was embodied in the Senate. The Senate not only acted as the supreme political body in the Roman state, but also acted as the moral and religious arbiter for society. This was in addition to their more easily foreseeable role as the face of the Roman state toward foreign peoples, both diplomatically and militarily. Heads of aristocratic families who were most often already part of the economic elite sought to secure membership within this smaller circle of political elite. Influence was sought in a variety of arenas, all with the purpose of proving one’s worthiness to be part of the administration of the state. Pursuit and possession of the traditional Roman virtues provided the foundation of legitimacy for oligarchic rule, and individual proof of virtue was necessary for inclusion within that rule. One of the chief spheres of proving one’s virtue was war, where martial valor eclipsed all other virtues, and courage on the battlefield and excellence in command proved one’s worthiness to inclusion in communal authority. However, as the Republic found itself facing every more frequent and threatening crises, it increasingly turned to its men of ability, investing them with ever greater license, and permitting, or at least having no choice but to permit, ever greater concentration of state power in the hands of individuals. These men of ambition and ability took advantage of Rome’s changing polity and the professionalization of its military under the reforms of Marius to circumvent traditional avenues of advancement in favor of more direct approaches. Each looked to the man behind him as precedent and to the future as chance for even greater glory. Eventually, Caesar took power at the head of an intensely loyal military force, ready to enforce by force of arms any protests in the name of tradition. Though ultimately assassinated, Caesar’s dictatorship marked the end of Republican Rome and the rise of the principate, defined by an inversion of the traditional relationship between the community and the individual. Now it was the Senate which sought political participation within the overarching framework of individual authority.