In the ancient and medieval period, in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East, writers often use the metaphor of an eye or mirror interacting with the light of the sun to explain humanity’s ability to participate in the presence (or glory) of the divine. In this dissertation, I focus on a particular type of mirror imagery, what I call “the mirror of glory,” from the 2nd to 4th centuries in Greek and Syriac literature, from the extracanonical Odes of Solomon and Acts of Thomas to Plotinus’s Enneads to the writings of Athanasius (d. c. 373) and Ephrem (d. c. 373). I conclude with parallel themes in the later east-Syriac tradition and early Sufism, from John of Dalyatha (d.c. 780) of present-day Iraq to the Qur’anic commentaries attributed to Ja‘far al-Sādiq (d. 148/765). In all these texts, I argue the “mirror of glory” articulates and enacts, for the reader, a convergence in the meeting of gazes between oneself, the divine, and other glorified beings (such as angels), where seers and seen and speakers and spoken to merge in a regenerative encounter. Through examining these writers’ optical theories when possible, I demonstrate how this mirror imagery is predicated upon a link between the soul and the senses. In the highest stages of giving glory, these writers describe an embodied reflexivity that is neither singular (I and I), nor double (I and Thou), but collective (I and We)—a self-vision that parallels the communal quality of the ritual context in which giving glory often occurs. In this way, I bring sources from the eastern Mediterranean and Near East into conversation with western genealogies of “knowing thyself” and demonstrate how intrinsically linked our understanding of the senses is to the way we know and the way we imagine communion and empathy.

Thesis (M.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1999. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2852. Typescript. Abstract appears on leaves [i]-ii. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-108).

Thesis--Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1972. / Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 700-733).

For Milan Kundera, the question of identity is one of the essential questions around which a novel is constructed. The novelist attempts to define the issue by exploring the existential themes that are tied to it. These themes are examined from different angles with the aid of what the author calls "motifs". Our study is centered on one of those motifs, that of the mirror, through which the author explores the "enigma of the ego". The typological analysis of this motif in Kundera's ten novels brings out in the characters two fundamental attitudes with regard to their identity. The first consists in clinging to it, which results in the character's disquiet, while the second consists in freeing oneself from it, which leads to a better understanding of reality as well as to a certain form of wisdom.

Anne de France, or Anne de Beaujeu by marriage, was present in history books long before she was the subject of literary studies. Regent of France's kingdom during her brother's, Charles the VIII's, minority (1484--1491), we know her mostly for successfully having measured herself up to her political opponents by calling the Etats Generaux and ruling the kingdom with calculating tactfulness. However, she also leaves a literary legacy, her Enseignements, which she writes for her only daughter Susanne in 1504 or 1505, and which are published in 1521 in Lyon by the editor and bookseller Le Prince. / Having not enjoyed great literary fortune, this text contains many interesting attributes. To this effect, a rhetoric reading of the Enseignements can and must be done. Even though the text recycles many of the period's conventions, a study of the argumentative devices, most notably through the interaction of the exempla and the counter-exempla , generates a certain virtue ethic that is especially noticeable through the analysis of the identity defining instance, "je".

Thesis--Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1972. / Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 700-733).

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Honors Project--Smith College, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 65).