The broad objective of this dissertation is an interdisciplinary study uniting historical linguistics, classical philology, and comparative poetics in an attempt to investigate archaic Greek poetic texts from a diachronic perspective. This thesis consists of two parts. The first part, “Etymology and Poetics”, is devoted to several cases where scantiness of attestation and lack of semantic information render traditional philological methods of textual interpretation insufficient. In such cases, the meaning of a word has to be arrived at through linguistic analysis and verified through appeal to related poetic traditions, such as that of Indo-Iranian. Chapter 1 proposes a new interpretation for the enigmatic word ἀάατο̋, the Homeric epithet of the waters of the Styx, which is shown to have meant ‘sunless’. Chapter 2 deals with the word ἀριδείκετο̋, argued to mean ‘famous’: this solution finds support in the use of the root *dei̯k- in the poetic expression “to show forth praise”, found in Greek choral lyric and the Rigveda. Chapter 3 investigates the history of the verbs ἰάπτω ‘to harm’ and ἰάπτω ‘to send forth (to Hades)’. Chapter 4 improves the text of Pindar (O. 6.54), restoring a form ἀπειράτωι. Chapter 5 discusses the difficult word ἀμαυρό̋, establishing for it a meaning ‘weak’ and proposing a new etymology. Finally, Chapter 6 places Alc. 34 in the context of comparative mythology, with the object of reconstructing the history of the Lesbian lyric tradition. The second part, “Grammar of Poetry”, shifts the focus of the inquiry from comparative poetics to the language of early Greek poetry and its use. Chapter 7 addresses the problematic Homeric aorist infinitives in -έειν, showing how these artificial forms were created by allomorphic remodeling driven by metrical necessity; the problem is placed in the wider context of the debate about the transmission and development of Homeric epic diction. The metrical and linguistic facts relating to the distribution of infinitives are further discussed in Chapter 8, where it is argued that the unexpected Aeolic form νηφέμεν in Archil. 4 should be viewed as an intentional allusion to the epic tradition, specifically, the famous midsummer picnic scene in Hesiod. / Linguistics

The dissertation charts the momentous shift in the thinking of war that takes place in Europe around 1800. Against the background of the Napoleonic Wars, it examines the discourse on war in literature, military theory, philosophy, cartography, mathematics, and pedagogy. It argues that across these fields and disciplines, war is constituted as a world in itself, but a destabilized world governed by chance and contingency. As one theorist states, the complexity of warfare has risen to such a degree that war has become an empire of chance – 'l'empire du hazard.' Centered on the notion of the 'state of war,' the dissertation maps out the attempts to describe this complex epistemic regime as well as the inventions devised to manage it. These inventions are inextricably linked to a reconfiguration of the poetics of war. Across traditional genre boundaries, in treatises, in novellas and novels, but also on sketches, maps, and in games, war becomes just as much a poetological problem as an epistemological one. Having to reconstruct the state of war with symbolic means, the operational logic of war games, the topographical image of the military map, and the structure of a text all reveal so many conceptions of the phenomenon of war. I show how these different media are refashioned into technologies of experience that simulate the matrix of war virtually in order to immerse individuals into this symbolic world. Against the tradition of speculative philosophy that flourishes around 1800, one can detect the emergence of an empirically minded thought that turns its attention outward to the concreta and the flux of the empirical world. Comparing the various fields that comprise the discourse on war, the dissertation traces the contours of a new world picture and the outline of a modern world-oriented subject who is fit to inhabit it.

In this paper I explore the role of ambiguity in the creation of meaning in the Urdu ghazal. Ghazal, the predominant genre of Urdu poetry, consists of a series of thematically unrelated yet metrically and prosodically related couplets, each densely packed with multiple and complex meanings. Ambiguity, both lexical and grammatical, is a key technique in the poetics of this genre. Here I not only analyze the different ways ambiguity manifests itself but also the way it has historically been and continues to be mobilized by poets and practitioners of the genre to further imbue each couplet with culture-specific, socially relevant meanings. Breaking with previous approaches to Urdu poetry and poetics, I examine ambiguity in the ghazal with reference to theoretical traditions in linguistic anthropology of ethnopoetics, performance and verbal art, and ethnographic examination of poetic praxis. Finally, addressing various phenomenologies of language, I propose a phenomenological turn in the study of this poetry in order to better theorize processes of meaning creation on both an individual and wider ethnographic level. / text

Residents of the region just north of the U.S.-Mexico border experience migration and smuggling activities through constantly changing found objects on the desert landscape--a pair of shoes neatly arranged on a trail; a cross hung in a tree; a can of food balanced on a rock. Consideration of some found objects as placed objects, set down with apparent care by travelers unseen and unmet, demonstrates how the objects uniquely inform the perceptions and practices of residents who find them. Such finders speculate about the lives and movements of others by utilizing the objects as metaphoric figures of practice, tools that uniquely but only partially help them bridge knowledge gaps among multiple constantly changing variables in their everyday lives. The finding-speculating dynamic confounds a direct and easy association of found items with trash, of migrants with threat, and of a border wall with hopelessness. Residents instead craft a sophisticated and practical cultural memory of place in a region that is inhabited differently by day than by night, where tragedy, grace, danger, and hope fuse in unexpected ways. The objects and events that erupt into rural border life inspire a poetics that matches the territory. In a landscape of uncertainty, placed objects secure and extend situational understandings beyond common conceptual frames of epidemic, normalized patterns of violence and collateral damage that are often considered necessary conditions of life in the region.

Cette thèse vise à suggérer l’existence d’un partage d’une théorie poétique commune entre l’école d’Aristote d’une part et le grammairien Aristarque de Samothrace d’autre part. À partir d’un examen des textes et des fragments de la critique littéraire hellénistique, deux aspects fondamentaux de la poétique péripatéticienne font l’objet d’une comparaison avec Aristarque, soit : 1) la prise de position interprétative qui tient compte de la nature fictionnelle du discours poétique et le soustrait aux critères de vérité traditionnellement imposés par les lecteurs anciens, notamment à l’intérieur de la tradition allégorique ; et 2) la reconnaissance de l’autonomie relative du contenu de l’œuvre poétique face à l’auteur, particulièrement dans le rapport qu’entretient ce dernier avec ses personnages. / This thesis sets out to examine two points of contact in the poetics of the Peripatetics and Aristarchus, namely : 1) the exegetical attitude that takes account of the fictionality of poetry, thus exempting it from the constraints of truthfulness that ancient readers traditionally imposed on it, especially within the allegorical tradition; 2) the perception of the content of a work of poetry as being autonomous from its author, especially with regard to the relation between the poet and his characters. / Thèse réalisée en cotutelle avec l'Université Paris IV-Sorbonne

This thesis is a study of the formation and development of Ciaran Carson’s poetics from his debut in the 1970s up to and including his fourth principal collection of poems, First Language, published in 1993. Examining Carson’s recourse to different kinds of rewriting, made manifest as intertextuality and translation, it aims to account for the thematic formulation and formal realization of this poetics. The poetics is elicited from two distinct groups of poems. The first group comprises poems, given in the consecutive volumes The Lost Explorer (1978), The Irish for No (1987), Belfast Confetti (1989) and First Language, in which textile techniques serve metaphorically as poetic techniques. These poems are read as formulating a poetics which is formally realized in a second group of poems in which rewriting is the dominant technique. By examining the textile/textual metaphors, and their gradual reconfiguration, and the different manifestations of rewriting in Carson’s work the thesis seeks to describe and demonstrate some of the main principles and expressions of this poetics and its development over time. The thesis sees rewriting as integral to Carson’s poetic method: Earlier texts are deliberately drawn upon and made a constitutive part of a new poem. To account for the textual relations and their effect on meaning-making perspectives are borrowed from theories of intertextuality, especially intertextuality as conceptualized by Gérard Genette and Laurent Jenny, as well as from contemporary translation studies and poetics. A theoretical framework is also provided by the textile/textual metaphors which are employed as analytical tools. It is argued that rewriting is not an end in itself but an important means for the poet to articulate his views on both aesthetic and historical issues. The thesis relates the practice of rewriting to a prominent concern in Carson’s work: the relation between form and material and how to adequately express the complicated experiences associated with Northern Ireland in poetic form. The thesis contends through detailed analysis of Carson’s strategies of rewriting that his persistent recourse to recycling discloses his attentiveness to his own poetic expression and that his poetics should be seen as both an aesthetics and an ethics – an evolving response along both aesthetic and ethical lines to the complexities of his situation and his role as a poet. / Avhandlingen är en studie av den nordirländske poeten Ciaran Carsons poetik, dess framväxt och utveckling till och med Carsons fjärde diktsamling, First Language, som publicerades 1993. Genom en undersökning av Carsons användning av olika slag av omskrivning, manifesterade som intertextualitet och översättning, syftar avhandlingen till att ge en redogörelse för hur Carsons poetik har tematiskt formulerats och formellt realiserats. Carsons poetik friläggs genom ett närstudium av två grupper dikter. Den första gruppen består av dikter från samlingarna The Lost Explorer (1978), The Irish for No (1987), Belfast Confetti (1989) och First Language, där textila tekniker tjänar som metaforer för poetiska tekniker. Dessa dikter läses som formuleringar av en poetik som förverkligas i en andra grupp dikter där omskrivning är den huvudsakliga tekniken. Genom att undersöka dikternas textila/textuella metaforer och deras gradvisa omvandling samt olika manifestationer av omskrivning i Carsons verk, söker avhandlingen beskriva och demonstrera några av de huvudsakliga principerna i Carsons poetik, liksom de uttryck dessa tar sig, samt hur dessa principer och uttryck förändras över tid. Avhandlingen ser omskrivning som en väsentlig del av Carsons poetiska metod. Tidigare texter får tjäna som underlag för en ny dikt. När det gäller textuella relationer och deras betydelseskapande kraft stöder jag mig på teorier om intertextualitet, främst Gérard Genettes och Laurent Jennys, liksom på perspektiv hämtade från samtida översättningsteori och poetik. Teoretiska perspektiv ges också av de textila/textuella metaforer som används som analytiska redskap. Omskrivning är dock inte ett mål i sig för Carson, utan ett viktigt sätt för poeten att artikulera sin syn på både estetiska och historiska frågor. I avhandlingen relateras omskrivningens praktik till något som upptagit Carson i hela hans författarskap: förhållandet mellan form och material och hur de komplexa nordirländska erfarenheterna ska kunna ges ett adekvat poetiskt uttryck. Utifrån en detaljerad analys av Carsons omskrivningsstrategier hävdas att hans genomgående bruk av återanvändning återspeglar en höggradig medvetenhet om det egna poetiska uttrycket. Hans poetik ska ses som både en estetik och en etik – ett sätt att fortlöpande återknyta, längs både estetiska och etiska linjer, till den komplexa situation han befinner sig i och till hans roll som poet.

"Forests Full of Beasts" analyzes late-Shakespearean thought as represented in "Timon of Athens" and "King Lear," focusing on expressions of madness. Applying an Aristotelian framework, each chapter examines the two plays through a different lens, applying the "Nicomachean Ethics," "Politics" and "Poetics" in turn. Looking at these plays through the "Ethic"s shows that Timon and Lear miss the mark of happiness through excessive action, and their madness is therefore construed as deliberately maintaining unsustainable behaviour. The Politics foregrounds humanity's social nature, and it is in their rejection of society's provisions and friendship that Timon and Lear are seen to be most mad. Following the Poetics' prioritization of plot, both plays are analyzed in terms of the unified whole, and their madness is seen as seamlessly interwoven with the overall action. The conclusion ties these analyses together, understanding Timon's and Lear's madness as the deliberate choice to pursue excessive, antisocial behaviour.

Magistro darbe tyrimas atskleidė, kad magiško(jo) realizmo poetikai romanuose svarbus interdiscipliniškumo aspektas. Biblijos, istorijos, mitologijos faktų pateikimas sumaišo dabartį ir praeitį, tikroviškus ir antgamtinius reiškinius, universalumą ir realybę. Magiško(jo) realizmo poetika atskleidžia netikėtą kultūros ir civilizacijos opoziciją, kur gamta, papročiai, tradicijos priskiriamos būtent kultūros fenomenui, o civilizacija priartinama mokslo ir taisyklių sampratai. Unikali naratyvo forma, laikų, vietų kaita, vardų vartojimas – priartintų stebuklo, neįtikėtinų įvykių galimybę. Visa tai – magiško(jo) realizmo poetikoje skirta skaitytojo įtraukimui į tekstą, jo aktyvinimui ir stebinimui. / The research revealed that the aspect of interdisciplinarity was important for the poetics of magic(al) realism in the novels. Presentation of biblical, historic, mythological facts blended the present and the past, realistic and supernatural phenomena, versatility and reality. The poetics of magic(al) realism revealed an unexpected opposition of culture and civilisation, where nature, manners, traditions were attributed namely to the cultural phenomenon, and the civilization was brought closer to the concept of science and rules. A unique form of narrative, vicissitude of times and locations, usage of names – should anticipate the possibility of a miracle, unbelievable events. In the poetics of magic(al) realism, all that is used for involvement of a reader into the text, his/her activation and causing surprise.

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Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal