Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Media, Music, and Cultural Studies, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 303-332.

Diss. : Regensburg : 1997. / Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral--Universität Regensburg, 1997). German and Latin. Bibliogr.: p. 13-29.

On croyait l’élégie disparue après l’apogée qu’avait connue le genre pendant le Romantisme et après les attaques dont il avait été la cible, les poètes « modernes » ayant choisi de s’affirmer contre les « excès » du lyrisme romantique dont l’élégie était devenue la caricature. Le lyrisme et la poésie de la première personne sont eux-mêmes restés au centre des attaques et des moqueries durant tout le XXe siècle. C’est pourtant à une renaissance du genre que l’on assiste, timide et progressive dans la première moitié du XXe siècle, puis à une véritable recrudescence dans la seconde moitié du siècle. Les noms des plus grands poètes s’associent aux titres de recueils d’élégies : outre les très célèbres Élégies de Duino de Rilke (1923), ce sont par exemple les Élégies de Juan Ramón Jiménez (1908), les Élégies et satires de Karyotákis (1927), les Hollywoodelegien (1942) et les Buckower Elegien (1953) de Brecht, les Élégies de Pierre Emmanuel (1940), de Jean Grosjean (1967), les Élégies d’Oxópetra d’Elýtis (1991), ou encore les trois grands recueils posthumes de Nelly Sachs, Schwedische Elegien (1940), Die Elegien von den Spuren im Sande (1943) et Elegien auf den Tod meiner Mutter (1950). L’élégie, née au VIIe siècle avant J.-C., est bien vivante au XXe siècle. Face à une telle longévité, trois questions se posent, qui structurent notre travail : sous quelles formes et selon quelle(s) définition(s) l’élégie existe-t-elle au XXe siècle ? Comment joue-t-elle des rapports entre modernités et traditions ? Comment se repositionne-t-elle face aux attaques virulentes des détracteurs du lyrisme et par quoi se caractérisent les nouveaux lyrismes qu’elle met en jeu au XXe siècle ? / Elegy is generally believed to have disappeared from European poetry in the XXth century, after a period of apogee during the Romanticism and after the hard criticism that the “modern” poets, who rejected the “excessive” romantic lyricism, leveled at the elegiac poets. Elegy was considered by the former as the emblem of a romantic out-of-date lyricism. Lyricism and the poetry expressed in the first person remained also the target of the attacks and mockery from a part of the XXth century poets and literary critic. Yet a real revival of the genre happens since the very beginning of the XXth century, hesitant and gradual during the first half of the century, then more abundant and obvious in the second part of the period. The names of major European poets of this century are linked with the genre of elegy, and the titles of their works show it: Juan Ramon Jiménez’s Elegías (1908), Rilke’s Duineser Elegien (1923), Karyotákis’ Elegies and satires (1927), Brecht’s Hollywoodelegien (1942) and Buckower Elegien (1953), Pierre Emmanuel’s and Jean Grosjean’s Élégies (respectively 1940 and 1967), Elýtis’s Oxopetra Elegies (1991), or the three posthumous works of Nelly Sachs, Schwedische Elegien (1940), Die Elegien von den Spuren im Sande (1943) et Elegien auf den Tod meiner Mutter (1950). Born in the VIIth century B.C., the genre of elegy is well alive in the XXth. Such a longevity brings us to three questions which organize our research: which are the shapes of the elegy of the XXth century and on which definition(s) of the genre is it based? Which are the connections and balance between traditions and modernity? How does the genre of elegy outlive the attacks against lyricism and what are the characteristics of the new lyricisms which it gives birth to?

The reputation of the Florentine politician, political thinker, and writer Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) has been largely shaped by his controversial political treatises, The Prince and Discourses on Livy. However, Machiavelli left us a broader and diverse corpus of writings. This dissertation focuses on what is perhaps the least-known portion of this corpus: Machiavelli’s poetry. Traditionally, scholars of Machiavelli have considered his engagement with poetry as a narrow and marginal component of his intellectual biography. Conversely, this project showcases how Machiavelli’s poetic activity, which he pursued throughout the vast majority of his adult life, intersected a broad spectrum of human and intellectual concerns, cultural practices, and social interactions. In light of this, poetry provides a unique opportunity to reassess the figure of Machiavelli across its full range of dimensions. Concurrently, Machiavelli’s poetic writings offer valuable insight into the manifold roles that poetry could play in the cultural and social world of Renaissance Florence. To illustrate the scope of Machiavelli’s poetic activity, this dissertation analyzes selections of Machiavelli’s political, amorous, and comic poems. In Chapter 1, devoted to Machiavelli’s political poetry, I address the three poems On Fortune, On Ingratitude, and On Ambition (also known as the Capitoli on account of their meter). I begin by assessing how Florence’s tradition of civic and poetic rhetoric influenced Machiavelli’s three poems, which allows me to then elucidate how the poems fit into Machiavelli’s anthropological-political laboratory. Indeed, my analysis shows how a rhetorically-informed approach facilitates the task of interpreting Machiavelli’s political thought across prose and poetry. In Chapter 2, I look at Machiavelli’s love poetry in relation to notions of desire, gender, and sexuality. Specifically, I focus on two poems that appear to voice homoerotic desire as well as on the two poems that Machiavelli addressed to the Florentine courtesan, virtuosa, and poet Barbera (b. 1500). My analysis highlights two complementary functions that the practice of love poetry had for Machiavelli and his contemporaries. On the one hand, love poetry was a vehicle for articulating reflections on love, gender, and sexuality. On the other, the practice of love poetry facilitated an array of homosocial and mixed-gender interactions. In Chapter 3, I move on to consider Machiavelli’s comic poetry. In particular, I analyze Machiavelli’s three sonnets to Giuliano de’ Medici and his two political epigrams. In so doing, I foreground how Machiavelli’s comic poetry intertwined humor and gravity by leveraging four ingredients: wordplay, parody, satire, and gallows humor. As part of my analysis, I also call attention to the role that those ingredients played in some literary and social practices of the Italian Renaissance.

This thesis examines the hair imagery that runs through the works of Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid. Comparative analysis of the elegists’ approaches to the motif, with particular emphasis on determining where and how each deviates from the cultural assumptions and literary tradition attached to each image, sheds light on the character and purposes of elegy as a genre, as well as on the individual aims and innovations of each poet. The Introduction provides some background on sociological approaches to the study of hair, and considers the reasons why hair imagery should have such a prominent presence in elegy. Chapter 1 focuses on the elegists’ engagement with the idea of cultus (‘cultivation’), and their manipulation of the connotations traditionally attached to elaborate hairstyles, of sophistication on the one hand, and immorality on the other, to suit an elegiac context. Chapter 2 looks at how the complexities of the power relationship between the lover and his mistress play out in references to violent hair-pulling. Chapter 3 focuses on the sometimes positively and sometimes negatively spun image of grey-haired lovers, as a reflection of the lover-poet’s own contradictory wishes for his relationship with his mistress; it also considers grey hair as a symbol of physical mortality, as contrasted with poetic immortality. Chapter 4 examines the use of images of loose hair (especially images of dishevelled mourning) to suggest connotations ranging from the erotic to the pathetic, and focuses on the effects the elegists achieve by using a single image to communicate multiple implications. The Conclusion considers the ‘afterlife’ of elegiac hair imagery: the influence that their approaches had on later authors’ handling of similar images.

Im Mittelpunkt der Dissertation „Politik der kleinen Form“ steht die Frage nach der Politizität ‚kleiner‘ Formen in augusteischer Zeit: also der sogenannten Liebeselegie des Properz, Tibull und Ovid sowie der erotischen Dichtung des Horaz. Auf der Grundlage einer Analyse der Gattungs- und Formpolitik ihrer Paraklausithyra und Recusationes wird eine neue Interpretation aufgezeigt. Jenseits von inhaltszentrierten Lesarten, die immer nur den Subversions- oder Affirmationscharakter von Literatur herausarbeiten, schlägt diese Dissertation einen dritten Weg vor: den der Ambivalenz und des Paradoxons. / At the centre of the dissertation „The Politics of Small Forms“ is the question of the politicity of ‘small forms’ in Augustan times: of the so-called love elegy of Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid as well as of the erotic poetry of Horace. On the basis of an analysis of the genre and form politics of their paraclausithyra and recusationes a new interpretation is pointed out. Beyond content-centered readings, which work out either the subversive or the affirmative character of literature, this dissertation suggests a third way: that of ambivalence and paradox.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Media, Music, and Cultural Studies, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 303-332. / Carnal transcendence and sexual difference -- An amorous exchange -- Angels playing with placentas -- Fluid subjects -- Poetics -- Oneiric spaces -- Conclusion. / Carnal transcendence imagines a world in which the carnal has the weight and value of transcendence, and the divine is as liveable and readily evoked as the carnal. Carnal transcendence offers a means of thinking through difference in the work of Luce Irigaray, who asks: "why and how long ago did God withdraw from carnal love?" (1991a, p 16). This thesis argues that Irigaray enables her readers to explore the relationship between carnality, transcendence and difference, but resists elaborating it in her work. Carnal transcendence as difference risks remaining an exercise in rhetoric, rather than the transformative and creative philosophy that Irigaray imagines. -- Irigaray's resistance to the carnal is evident in her arguments for sexual difference, which offers our "salvation" if we think it through, and heralds "a new age of thought, art, poetry, and language: the creation of a new poetics" (1993a, p 5). Note the language of transcendence used here. When considered in the light of carnal transcendence, sexual difference imagines a differently sexed culture. This thesis argues that Irigaray's writing is contradictory on this point: it articulates the plurality of women's sexuality, but emphatically excludes theories of sex and gender that emphasise multiplicity. This thesis challenges these limitations by exploring the possibilities of the "other" couple in Irigaray's writing-mother and daughter - for thinking through carnal transcendence as difference. -- This thesis not only explicates a theoretical model for carnal transcendence as difference; it also attempts to put into practice a poetics - a playful rewriting of theory. This celebrates the carnality of Irigaray's writing - evident in her complex imagery of the two lips, mucus, the placenta and angels-and enables an exploration of the philosophical space of the "new poetics" that Irigaray is attempting to engender. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 332 p. ill (some col.)

Thesis (Revise). / Includes bibliographical references (p. [339]-349) and index.

Thesis (Revise). / Includes bibliographical references (p. [339]-349) and index.

Thesis (doctoral)--Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, 2005/2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [197]-200) and index.