This thesis examines feminist rewritings of the Penelope myth and the intersections between poetry, myth, and feminist theory. The theoretical framework develops from Rosi Braidotti’s theory of memory and subjectivity which has its roots in the work of Michel Foucault. In Braidotti’s understanding, subjectivity is constructed through narratives of the past including myth. In order to support new, minority, and dissident subjectivities, a re-remembering of mythical narratives needs to happen. This process is linked to Judith Butler’s recent work on narrating the self and to Adrienne Rich’s idea of “Re-vision”. What Butler’s theory adds to Braidotti’s is the notion of dispossession: that as subjects we do not own our identities. We are, instead, dependent on others for recognition. This co-dependence based notion of subjectivity has ethical implications for how we interact with one another and what kind of narratives we iterate and reiterate. The writers discussed in this thesis, namely, Francisca Aguirre, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Gail Holst-Warhaft, and Margaret Atwood, not only rewrite Penelope, but perform Re-visions of the myth. They look back at it with a critical eye and remake it. This thesis further contends that Re-vision provides contemporary feminist writers with a reading and writing strategy that allows them to engage with myth in a way that parallels feminist theory’s efforts to construct new forms of subjectivity. Chapter 1 frames feminist appropriations of myth in a contemporary context and discusses Adrienne Rich’s theory of Re- vision. The next four chapters focus on specific writers who carry out a sustained dialogue with Penelope; they each take an element of the myth and tease it out towards a modern relevance. In looking at how Penelope is revised, this thesis demonstrates that women writers are engaged in a process of remaking canonical, mythic texts in such a way that speaks to contemporary issues of ethical subjectivity and self-making.

The assertion that the Mahābhārata (MBh) narrative is innately incapable of achieving a conclusion has attained the status of a disciplinary truism in the epic’s study. My thesis challenges this prevalent assumption by proposing an un-investigated path of inquiry into the philological, historical, literary and semantic aspects of the epic. The thesis discusses the ending of the MBh, the Svargārohaṇa parvan (SĀ) by exploring several trajectories: the study of the SĀ in epic scholarship; its reception in the later tradition in Sanskrit literature; and finally, the problematic aspects of the SĀ and its relation to the rest of the narrative. It first points out that in comparison to other MBh episodes, the SĀ has been received with significant disregard or suppression in the literature commenting on the epic. Second, it characterizes the nature of the suppression of the SĀ in each of the three literary strands commenting on the MBh (epic scholarship, Sanskrit adaptations and theoretical discourses). It argues that all of these considerations, which are external to the MBh, have tended, in various modes, to suppress, ignore or overlook the importance of the SĀ. The thesis then proceeds to argue that on the most significant and internal level of the text itself, the SĀ is intrinsically consistent with the rest of the MBh narrative, and that this makes it thematically integral to the text as a whole. This argument derives from the importance with which this study addresses the moment of the condemnation of dharma in the SĀ, and is furthered by a philological and semantic study, as well as textual analyses of the multiple occurrences of the Sanskrit verb garh throughout the MBh. The use of this verb by the epic protagonist, Yudhiṣṭhira, in condemning his father, Dharma, at the last scenes of the SĀ comprises a key moment that bears significant and myriad implications upon the understanding of this pivotal concept (dharma), to which the entire epic is devoted.

Der Sammelband umfasst die Beiträge des 10. Arbeitstreffens slavistischer Nachwuchswissenschaftler im Rahmen des Jungen Forums Slavistischer Literaturwissenschaft (JFSL), das vom 26. bis zum 28. März 2010 an der Universität Trier stattfand. Präsentiert wird ein Überblick über aktuelle Forschungsrichtungen und -themen der deutschsprachigen Slavistik, der trotz der weiter bestehenden Dominanz der Russistik eine zunehmende Tendenz zu Studien über verschiedene slavische Literaturen zeigt. Die Beiträge lassen sich in drei große Bereiche differenzieren: Der erste Teil ,Texturen' beinhaltet literaturwissenschaftliche Studien, die sich mit den textimannenten Effekten literarischer Werke auseinandersetzen. Der Text als Gewebe wird auf seine Fadendichte und -verkreuzung wie Entstehung und Tradierung bestimmter Motive und Topoi, Decodierung intertextueller Referenzen oder Allegorisierungs- und Symbolisierungprozesse hin analysiert. Der zweite Teil vereinigt unter dem Begriff ,Identitäten' Arbeiten aus dem Bereich der kulturwissenschaftlich orientierten Literaturwissenschaft, die mit Geschlechter-, Raum-, Erinnerungs- und postkolonialen Konzepten den Fragen der literarischen Identitätsgenese nachgehen. Untersucht werden ästhetische Umsetzungen von Machtdispositiven, Hierarchiebildungen und Ausschlussmechanismen. Die Beiträge des dritten Teils ,Theorien' reflektieren entweder die Literaturforschung und ihre Ästhetiktheorien oder unternehmen einen Theorieimport aus verschiedenen Disziplinen wie Philosophie, strukturalistische Psychoanalyse, Neuro-, Geschichts- oder Translationswissenschaften, die sich für die Analyse literarischer Texte als fruchtbar erweisen und damit das Literaturverständnis erweitern. / This collection covers the articles compiled in the 10th workshop of Slavonic Study PhD-Students and postgraduates within the framework of the ‘Young Forum of Slavonic Literary Studies’ (JFSL) which took place at Trier University between March 26 and March 28 2010. Participants presented an overview of the current fields of research in German language Slavonic studies, which, despite a prevalence of Russian Studies, shows a growing trend towards multi-Slavonic literature studies. The articles can be divided into three different categories: The first category, textures, comprises literary studies which expose anticipated text effects of literary works. Text is analyzed in the context of its fabric density, for instance, development of particular motives and topics, and the decoding of intertextual references or allegories and symbology. The second category, identities, aggregates works from culturally-oriented Literary studies, which follow questions of the literary genesis of identity concerning gender, space, memory and post-colonialism. Here, the aesthetic shifts of power disposition, demonstrative hierarchy and the mechanisms of exclusion are evaluated. The third category, theories, reflects literary research and its theories of the aesthetic or importation of theory from a variety of disciplines such as philosophy, structural psychoanalysis, neuroscience, history and translation studies, which show themselves as fertile literary texts for analysis and as such may extend our understandings of literature.

W pracy został przedstawiony innowacyjny sposób patrzenia na Europę Wschodnią, widoczny w twórczości Andrzeja Stasiuka odbiegający od klasycznego, czyli “równoleżnikowego” widzenia tej części kontynentu w odwiecznej konfrontacji i nieustannych porównań z Zachodem. Twórczość tego artysty skupia się na zaniedbanym ,,pasie południowym”. 1. Stan badań Twórczość pisarza cieszy się ogromną popularnością w kraju i za granicą. Krytyka literacka z wielką uwagą śledzi kolejno pojawiające się dzieła, niemniej jednak do tej pory stan badań jest stosunkowo niewielki. Nie powstało żadne kompendium wiedzy o wczesnej twórczości pisarza czy monograficzne opracowanie obejmujące ten sam okres twórczości artysty. Do tej pory uwaga krytyki i badaczy zwrócona została głównie na pierwsze utwory powstałe w latach dziewięćdziesiątych. 2. Cel pracy Głównym celem dysertacji była analiza twórczości Stasiuka w odniesieniu do zagadnień i problemów obecnych w filozofii i estetyce takich jak: kategoria piękna i brzydoty w ujęciu ontologicznym, metafizycznym i epistemologicznym, badanie wybranych utworów w kontekście niekonwencjonalnej autobiografii artystycznej, jak również nawiązanie do mityzacji Europy Wschodniej z odwołaniem się do prozy Brunona Schulza. Utworami łączącymi te zagadnienia ujmując chronologicznie są: „Opowieści galicyjskie”(1995), „Dukla”(1997), „Dziennik okrętowy”(2000), „Jadąc do Babadag”(2004). Teksty te łączy wspólny kontekst estetyczny, autobiograficzny, mityczny. 3. Podział i budowa pracy Niniejsza praca składa się z trzech części: pierwszej - „Estetyka brzydoty“, drugiej - „Homo geographicus Fascynacja geografią w kontekście autobiograficznym” stanowiącą pomost między kontekstem estetycznym i mitycznym oraz trzeciej: „Mityzacja Europy Wschodniej. Inspiracja Schulzem”. 4. Uwagi końcowe W zamykających na koniec wnioskach i uwagach warto podkreślić, że w pracy zostały poddane analizie problemy omijane przez wielu badaczy. Celem dysertacji było przedstawienie twórczości tego pisarza w niepodejmowanych do tej pory obszarach tematycznych. Spojrzenie na przedstawioną rzeczywistość i jej zjawiska tym razem w aspekcie estetycznym i mitycznym pozwoliły w zupełnie inny sposób spojrzeć na wybrane utwory Andrzeja Stasiuka. / The dissertation presents innovative way of perceiving Eastern Europe, noticeable in Andrzej Stasiuk’s works different from the classical one so called “parallel” perception of this part of the continent in everlasting confrontation and constant comparisons to the West. The works of this artist concentrate on neglected “southern zone”. Described corners of Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Albania, Moldavia are the space that the writer mythisise in order to save them from oblivion. He gives them new aesthetic quality, changes typically ugly, uninteresting places into more interesting, he often subtilizes them. Andrzej Stasiuk, next to Marcin Świetlicki, Olga Tokarczuk, Magdalena Tulli and others, belongs to “bruLionu” generation born in the 60’s. 1. State of research Works of the writer are very popular both in Poland and abroad. Literary criticism carefully follows successive works, however as of yet the state of research is relatively low. There is no compendium of knowledge on early works of the writer or monographic essay containing the same period of the artist’s output. So far critics and researchers have paid attention mainly to the first works written in the 90’s. 2. The aim of dissertation The main aim of this dissertation was an analysis of Stasiuk’s output in relation to issues and problems present in philosophy and aesthetics, such as: the category of beauty and ugliness in ontological, metaphysical and epistemological depiction, examination of particular works in the context of unconventional artictic autobiography, as well as reference to mythization of Eastern Europe refering to the prose of Bruno Schulz. Works that join these issues are, in chronological order:”Opowieści galicyjskie”(1995), “Dukla”(1997), “Dziennik okrętowy”(2000), “Jadąc do Babadag”(2004). These texts are joined by common aesthetic, autobiographical and mythical context. Sometimes, the subsequent works are continuation of the prior ones. 3. Part and structure of the dissertation The present dissertation consists of three parts: the first – “Aesthetics of ugliness”, the second - “Homo geographicus fascination of geography in the autobiographical context” establishing connection between aesthetic and mythical context, and the third one: “Mythization of Eastern Europe. Inspired by Schulz”. 4. Final remarks In final findings and remarks it must be stressed that the present dissertation includes the analysis of problems omitted by many researchers. The aim of the dissertation was to present the output of this writer in new thematic areas. Preception on presented reality and its phenpmenon, this time in aesthetic and mythical aspect, allowed to look at selected works of Andrzej Stasiuk in a different way.

Eighteenth-century Paris was the cultural capital of Europe and home to a vibrant network of theatres, not all of which are equally present in modern scholarship. The Comédie-Italienne in particular has frequently been downplayed in historical accounts, and there is no existing work outlining its relationship with its authors. This thesis aims to address this gap through a case study of the Italian author Carlo Goldoni, who began work for the Comédie-Italienne in 1762. His thirty years in Paris hold an ambiguous place in his career: the preface to his autobiography draws attention to France as the site of his authorial glory, but his work for the Comédie-Italienne is dismissed as a failure; a view echoed by many modern critics. This study therefore also sets out to explore this apparent contradiction. Substantial original work on the Comédie-Italienne archives sheds new light on the administration of this theatre, building up the most comprehensive existing account of its finances, audiences and author relations in the 1760s, and situating it in the contemporary cultural field. Dramatic authors are revealed to be at the heart of tensions between symbolic and financial concerns across eighteenth-century theatrical Paris. This re-evaluation also provides a new context for understanding Goldoni’s equivocal account of his Parisian career. He desired a glorious image in posterity, yet the Comédie-Italienne’s collaborative production and lack of publication thwarted the reputation-shaping tactics he had developed in Italy. The only weapon that remained was his French Mémoires (1787), in which he consciously constructed his image and the claim of Parisian glory. Goldoni’s case also raises broader questions about the creation of literary gloire, and the fate of the cosmopolitan artist in a strange land. In modern France, Goldoni is remembered as a famous foreigner, not the Frenchman he believed he had become. The thesis concludes that this failure in posterity stems from his misunderstanding of how to achieve gloire in his French context: to rely on artificially created image alone is not enough, and yet Goldoni had no choice.

The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa is the primary Armenian-language historical source for the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Matthew was a monk who lived in the ethnically mixed city of Edessa; within his Chronicle, he describes the apogee of independent Armenia, its fall to piecemeal Byzantine annexation, the subsequent loss of Byzantium's eastern territory to the newcomer Saljuq Turks, and the sectarian tension that accompanied the First Crusade. This thesis sets out the methodology adopted for the construction of a critical edition of the text, addresses the approach that Matthew took to the composition of the Chronicle, and gives the edited text of the prophecies attributed to Yovhannēs Kozeṙn and the author's prologues to Books Two and Three of the Chronicle. Chapters 2 and 3 comprise a review of the scholarship to date on the Chronicle, and a discussion of the approach taken to a critical edition of the text. The Chronicle survives in a large number of relatively recently copied manuscripts; it was therefore necessary to devise an approach to text collation and editing that takes full advantage of recent advances in computational methods of philology. I have developed a set of software tools to assist in the task of editing the Chronicle; these tools are useful for the creation of text editions in any language that can be represented through the TEI XML standard. Chapters 4–8 give an examination of the overall framework of Matthew’s Chronicle, and of his interpretation of recent history within that framework. Following a long tradition of the use of prophecy to explain Armenian history, Matthew uses two prophecies attributed to the eleventh-century clerical scholar Yovhannēs Kozeṙn, themselves extended in the twelfth century under the influence of the Apocalypse attributed to Methodius, to frame his argument that both the Byzantine emperors and the Armenian kings had abandoned their responsibility toward the Armenian people. His attitude toward recent history, and particularly toward the Latins of Outremer, may be used to demonstrate that he wrote the Chronicle no later than 1137.

My thesis examines the function and development of the cult of saints in Coptic Egypt. For this purpose I focus primarily on the material provided by the texts forming the Coptic hagiographical tradition of the early Christian martyr Philotheus of Antioch, and more specifically - the Martyrdom of St Philotheus of Antioch (Pierpont Morgan M583). This Martyrdom is a reflection of a once flourishing cult which is attested in Egypt by rich textual and material evidence. This text enjoyed great popularity not only in Egypt, but also in other countries of the Christian East, since his dossier includes texts in Coptic, Georgian, Ethiopic, and Arabic. This thesis examines the literary and historical background of the Martyrdom of Philotheus and similar hagiographical texts. It also explores the goals and concerns of the authors and editors of Coptic martyr passions and their intended audience. I am arguing that these texts were produced in order to perform multiple functions: to justify and promote the cult of a particular saint, as an educational tool, and as an important structural element of liturgical celebrations in honour of the saint. Another aim of this work is to stress the entertainment value of such texts. I explore the sources used by Coptic hagiographers for creating such entertaining stories, as well as the methods they used to re-work certain theological concepts and make them more accessible to the audience. The thesis begins with description of the manuscript tradition of Philotheus and a brief outline and comparison of its main versions. The second chapter discusses the place of the Martyrdom of Philotheus in Coptic hagiography and its connection to the so-called cycles. The next two chapters explore the motifs and topoi characteristic of Coptic martyr passions, especially the legend of Diocletian the Persecutor and the image of Antioch as the Holy City in Coptic hagiography, as these two motifs appear in one way or another in the majority of the martyr passions. Chapter 5 is dedicated to one of the focal points in the Martyrdom - the miracle of resurrection and the tour of hell – and its literary and theological background. Chapter 6 discusses representations of magic and paganism in Coptic hagiography and some of the concerns of Coptic hagiographers. In the last chapter I explore the geography of the cult, its iconographic and hymnographic dimensions and the transformation of the perception of the saint; the second part of this chapter discusses the questions of performance, authorship and audience.

This thesis explores Hellenistic and imperial Greek texts that represent or discuss the river Nile. The thesis makes an original contribution to scholarship by examining such texts in he light of the history of Greek discourse about the Nile and in the context of social, political and cultural changes, and takes account of relevant ancient Egyptian texts. I begin with an introduction that provides a survey of earlier scholarship about the Nile in Greek literature, before identifying three themes central to the thesis: the relationship between Greek and Egyptian texts, the tension between rationalism and divinity, and the interplay between power and literature. I then highlight both the cultural significance of rivers in classical Greek culture, and the polyvalence of the river Nile and its inundation in ancient Egyptian religion and literature. Chapter 1 examines the significance of Diodorus Siculus' representation of the Nile at the beginning of his universal history; it argues that the river's prominence constructs Egypt as a primeval landscape that allows the historian access to the distant past. The Nile is also seen to be useful to the historian as a conceptual parallel for his historiographical project. Whereas Diodorus begins his universal history with the Nile, Strabo closes his universal geography with Egypt; the second chapter demonstrates how Strabo incorporates the Nile into his vision of the new Roman world. Chapter 3 presents a diachronic study of Greek discourse concerning the two major Nilotic problems, the cause of the annual inundation and the location of the sources. It examines first the construction of the debates, and second the transformation of that tradition in Aelius Aristides' Egyptian Oration. The functions of the Nile in Greek praise-poetry are the subject of chapter 4; it is shown that the Nile and its benefactions are used by poets to lay claim to political, religious or cultural authority, and to situate Egypt within an expanding oikoumene. The fifth and final chapter turns to Greek narrative fictions from the imperial period. The chapter demonstrates that the Nile is more familiar than exotic in these texts. It is shown that Xenophon of Ephesus and Achilles Tatius play with the trope of 'novelty' in this very familiar literary landscape, while Heliodorus articulates a more profound disruption of the expected Egyptian tropes, and ultimately replaces Egypt with Ethiopia as a new Nilotic environment.

This thesis focuses on the production, circulation, and reception of contemporary Middle Eastern literatures in Britain and the United States. I'm particularly interested in the novel form, and in assessing how both translated Middle Eastern novels and anglophone novels by migrant writers engage with dominant Anglo-American discourses of politics, gender, and religion in the region. In negotiation with Edward Said's Orientalism, I develop a materialist postcolonial critical model to analyse how such discourses undergird publishing and marketing strategies towards novels by Ibrahim Nasrallah, Hisham Matar, Yasmin Crowther, Orhan Pamuk, and others. I argue that as Middle Eastern novels travel, whether via translation or authorial acts of migration, across cultures and languages, they are reshaped according to dominant audience expectations. But, I continue, they also retain traces of their source cultures which must be brought to the surface in critical readings. Drawing on the work of David Damrosch, Pascale Casanova, Franco Moretti, and Aamir Mufti, I thus develop a reading practice, what I call 'post-Orientalist comparatism', that allows me to read past the domesticating strategies framing these novels and to newly reveal their more local, thus potentially transgressive, takes on Middle Eastern socio-political issues. I cumulatively suggest that Middle Eastern novels in English formally embody a dialectic of 'East' and 'West', of the local and the global, thus have important implications for our understanding of the English and world novel traditions. I conceive of my thesis as a dual intervention into the fields of postcolonial studies and world literature. I am primarily concerned to reorient postcolonial theory around questions of Middle Eastern literary and cultural production, areas that have been traditionally neglected due to an entrenched, but unsustainable, anglophone bias. To do so, I turn to the work of Edward Said, and rethink the foundational problematic of Orientalism with an eye towards political, material, and cultural developments since 1978, the year in which Orientalism was first published, and towards the unique transnational positionality of the genre of the Middle Eastern novel in English. I also turn to theorists of world literature such as David Damrosch in order to develop a reading practice thoroughly attentive to issues of circulation, but, along the lines set out by Aamir Mufti, seek to interrogate their work for its occlusions of the impact of orientalist discourse in the historical development of the category of 'World Literature'. My thesis thus not only draws on postcolonial and world literary theory to analyse its object, the Middle Eastern novel in English, but also demonstrates how proper attention to this object necessitates a theoretical recalibration of these fields.

The dissertation examines the foundations of modern Arab national thought in nineteenth-century works of Buṭrus al Bustānī (1819-1883) and Aḥmad Fāris al Shidyāq (1804-1887) in which occurred an intersection of language-making practices and a national pedagogic project. It interrogates the centrality of language for Arab identity formation by deconstructing the metaphor "language is the mirror of the nation," an overarching slogan of the nineteenth century, as well as engaging with twentieth-century discussions of the Arab nation and its Nahḍa. The study seeks to challenge the conventional historiography of Arab thought by proposing a re-theorisation of the Arab Nahḍa as an Enlightenment-Modernity construct that constitutes the problematic of the Arab nation. The study investigates through literature and literary tropes the makings and interstices of the historical Arab Nation: the topography of its making. It covers a series of primary understudied sources: Bustānī's enunciative Nafīr Sūriyya pamphlets that he wrote in the wake of the 1860 civil wars of Mount Lebanon and Damascus: his translation of Robinson Crusoe, dictionary, and encyclopaedia. As well as Shidyāq's fictional autobiography, linguistic essays and treatise, and travel writings on Europe. The dissertation engages with these works to show how the 'Nahḍa' is a constituted by inherently contradictory and supplementary projects. It forms a moment of fracture in history and temporality – as does the Enlightenment in Europe – from which emerges a seemingly coherent national narrative.