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Hindu religious culture has a rich and long-standing performance tradition containing many genres and regional types that contribute significantly to an understanding of the living vitality of the religion. Because the field of religious studies has focused on texts, the assumption exists that these are primary, and performances based on them are mere enactments and therefore derivative. This thesis will challenge this common assumption by arguing that performances themselves can be constitutive events in which religious worldviews, social histories, and group and personal identities are created or re-negotiated. In this work, I examine the history of performance cultures (understood both as genres and the groups that develop and perform them) in the Telugu-speaking regions of South India from the sixteenth century to the present in order to elucidate the cross-fertilization among various performance spheres over time. / My specific focus is on the figure of Satyabhama (lit. True Woman or Woman of Truth), the favourite wife of the god Kṛṣṇa. Satyabhama represents a range of emotions, which makes her character popular with dramatists and other artists in the Telugu-speaking regions of South India where poets composed hundreds of performance-texts about her, and several caste groups have enacted her character through narrative drama. / The dissertation is composed of four substantive parts - text, context, memory, and mimesis. The first part explores the figure of Satyabhama in the Mahabharata and in three Sanskrit Puraṇic texts. The second examines the courtly traditions of poetry and village performances in the Telugu language, where Satyabhama is innovatively portrayed through aesthetic categories. The third is based on ethnographic work with women of the contemporary kalavantula (devadasi) community and looks at the ways in which they identify with Satyabhama and other female aesthetic archetypes (nayikas). The final section is based on fieldwork with the smarta Brahmin male community in Kuchipudi village, where men continue to perform mimetic representations of Satyabhama through a performative modality known as stri-veṣam ("guise of a woman").

Richard Wagner, in writing the text which would become the libretto of his four operas comprising the Ring was influenced greatly by German Mythology as well as old Norse writings. His main sources are the Volsungensaga, the Thidreksaga and the Nibelungenlied. Certain portions of the Ring follow closely the events described in some of the sagas, other portions have been changed and elaborated to achieve theatrical effect. I have endeavoured to explain the differences between the sources and the finished masterpiece. Whether his version of the tales was to ensure good theatre or whether he felt that he was improving on the originals is a moot point. The similarities are sufficient to prove that he had totally immersed himself in the literature available and no doubt felt himself to be a worthy protagonist of this culture. There is no doubt that his music is a masterpiece which may be enjoyed with or without any depth of knowledge of its origins.

This thesis is one step in defining the parameters of archaeology in an aboriginal context. It is designed to be a practical guide for imagining the past from an internalist perspective because archaeological methods offer the opportunity to represent antiquity that is simultaneously rational and familiar. However, an ancillary objective is to utilize symbols from antiquity as markers of modern Indian identity. / Archaeology appeared on the radar of First Nations because their growing populations demand housing and economic opportunities. Recent settlement of land claims has brought large tracts of land under the control of Native people. Archaeological sites, by their very nature, are defined by their geographical location. Artifacts and sites are the products of past human labour and as such are a unique cultural legacy that must be understood within the context of a generalized world history. Internalist archaeology mediates between a local understanding of antiquity and the ancient history of humanity on a global scale. It is a product of the dialogue that began when the world system intruded on the local experience of aboriginal people. Modern prehistory was accessible only by employing archaeological methods and traditional history, as related in story, was relegated to the margins along with its authors. Myths were discounted as plausible sources of explanation for antiquity as archaeologists constructed their theories to explain the data they accumulated during their excavations. Internalist archaeology is an analytical tool that will play a prominent role in rehabilitating oral narratives by deploying methods to search for the signatures they would leave in the archaeological record. It is also a means to examine folklore so as to discover the messages that are encoded in myths. Myths act as mediating devices which connect the high levels of abstraction, those informing the traditional worldview, with lower levels of abstractions, as represented by customs. Ecological messages are encrypted in narratives which are then transmitted between generations. Each generation must decypher the meaning embedded in a myth to benefit from it. For internalist archaeology, mythology is a reservoir of explanation that has been ignored by mainstream research but which can be the basis for this brand of archaeological research. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal / Pour respecter les droits d'auteur, la version électronique de cette thèse ou ce mémoire a été dépouillée, le cas échéant, de ses documents visuels et audio-visuels. La version intégrale de la thèse ou du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

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.

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The performance of my opera/art installation, Ariadne, on April 2 and 4, 1993, in Recital Hall, culminated a year of research, composition, production, and rehearsal upon the Ariadne Project, an interdisciplinary art collaboration. My project brought together the research, creative, and performance skills of many individuals throughout the university community and beyond. Designed as a companion paper to this composition and performance, this paper documents the inception, creation, production, and performance of the Ariadne Project. It also addresses the issues and sources dealt with and assessess the effectiveness of the product and the process. / Department of Art

The story of Gilgamesh has been viewed as an example of several different narrative genres. This thesis establishes how scholarship in English published between 1872 and 1967 has described Gilgamesh as a myth, or denied Gilgamesh status as a myth and discusses new the meanings that the context of myth brings to the story. This thesis represents preliminary work on a larger project of exploring present day artistic meaning making efforts that revolve around Gilgamesh.