Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1921. / Vita: p. 227 (mounted on back cover). Bibliography: p. 219-225.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1921. / Vita: p. 227 (mounted on back cover). Bibliography: p. 219-225.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1931. / On cover: University of Pennsylvania. Bibliography: p. 146-159.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Divinity School, December 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 306-322). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2004. / Advisor: Paul Murgatroyd.

This thesis is a systematic study of the representations of Telamonian Ajax in archaic and classical Greece. Its aim is to trace, examine, and understand how and why the constitutive elements of his myth evolved in the way they did in the long chain of its receptions. Particular attention is paid to the historical, socio-cultural and performative contexts of the literary works and visual representations I analyse as well as to the audience for which these were produced. The study is divided into three parts, each of which reflects a different reality in which Ajax has been received (different with respect to time, place, or literary genre). Artistic representations of the hero, as well as his religious dimension and political valence, are consistently taken into account throughout the thesis. The first part - Ajax from Salamis - focuses on epic poetry, and thus investigates the Panhellenic significance of the hero (rather than his reception in a particular place). It treats the entire corpus of early Greek hexameter poetry that has come down to us in written form as the reception of a common oral tradition which each poem has adapted for its own purpose. I establish that in the larger tradition of the Trojan War, Ajax was a hero characterised by his gift of invulnerability. Because of this power, he is the figure who protects his companions - dead or alive - par excellence. However, this ability probably also led him to become over-confident, and, accordingly, to reject Athena's support on the battlefield. Hence, the goddess's hostility towards him, which she demonstrated by making him lose the reward of apioteia (Achilles' arms). His defeat made Ajax so angry that he became mad and committed suicide. I also show how this traditional Ajax has been adapted to fit into the Iliad's own aesthetics. The second part - Ajax in Aegina - concentrates on the reception of Ajax in the victory odes of Pindar and Bacchylides for Aeginetan patrons. I argue that in the first part of the fifth century, Ajax becomes a figure imbued with a strong political dimension (especially with regard to the relationship between Athens and Aegina). Accordingly, I show how the presence of Ajax in Pindar's and Bacchylides' poems is often politically charged, and significant within the historical context. I discuss the influence this had on his representation. Finally, the third part moves to Athens, as I consider Ajax's reception during three distinct periods: the sixth century, the first half of the fifth century, and finally the rest of the classical period. I equally insist on the political dimension of the figure. I demonstrate that his figure undergoes a shift of paradigm in the early fifth century, which deeply affects his representation. By following in the footsteps of Ajax, this study prompts a series of reflections and comments on each of the works in which the hero features as well as on the relationship of these works to the historical context in which they were produced.

This dissertation focuses on an aspect of the Iliad that at first might seem particularly formulaic, archaic, and, since Parry, characteristic of orality. When reporting messages, characters frequently repeat large portions of their messages verbatim. In contrast to other speakers, who reveal themselves through speech, messengers are supposedly constrained to repeat the messages that have been dictated to them. The Iliadic messenger has even been described as a “tape recorder” (Létoublon), or a voice “uniquely marked as ‘transparent’” (Barrett). Messengers in the Iliad have been thought to be defined and limited by the convention of verbatim repetition. Despite this prevailing view, I demonstrate, in example after example, the flexibility and expressiveness of messengers in the Iliad. The motif of messages draws attention to the choices messengers make, highlighting their emphases, omissions, and priorities. In diverging from their models and contextualizing their reports, messengers mediate and interpret their messages. These reports point to the poem’s concern with the dynamics of effective (or failed) communication. The Iliad dramatizes communication through messages, e.g., between Zeus and mortals, between the men on the battlefield and women in the city, between intimate conversations and public representations, between an isolated warrior and his community. Beginning with professional messengers, I show how heralds tailor their messages to their audiences, sometimes providing a buffer between kings and others (chapter 1). Iris, the divine messenger, uses a wide variety of approaches, demonstrating that a “faithful” report requires sensitive adaptation. Her interactions offer windows into the characters she addresses (chapter 2). Turning to major characters, I show how Hektor and Priam reveal themselves: Hektor projects a heroic image of Paris and himself, while representing less heroic, private speeches; Priam shows his doubts about divine communication and asserts his own desires (chapter 3). Thetis re-orients the directives she brings, adapting them to her relationships and priorities, thereby revealing divine and human perspectives (chapter 4). Finally, Odysseus and Patroklos are unsuccessful messengers, who both omit great portions of the speeches they report in their efforts to persuade Achilles, and who both fall short of their commissioners’ hopes for their messages (chapter 5). / 2020-11-13T00:00:00Z

Ovid's version of the Philomela legend provides a pertinent analogue from which to examine how verbalizing in silence creates a powerful textual and textural eloquence. The women writers considered in this project--Harriet Jacobs (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl), Kate Chopin (The Awakening), Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God), Alice Walker (Meridian and Possessing the Secret of Joy), and Maxine Hong Kingston (Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts)--explicitly or implicitly have predicated their works on this legend. Their writing offers a means for inferring a definition of voice that includes text, texture, and silence as its major qualities. But voice does not develop in a vacuum, and the tension existing between speaker and audience constitutes a necessary sounding board for its evolution. These works do not rely on the gods to intervene to save or to punish a character for taking revenge against the source of her enforced silencing. These characters develop the confidence to speak out as they do because of their verbal interplay with their audiences. Philomela's artistry gains power from its text because her audience--her sister, Procne--"reads" the "words" which the pictures in Philomela's tapestry convey to her. For a woman's voice to exert an impression, however, the writer must draw from the cultural context within which those words acquire meaning. Additionally, silence becomes a language tool in its own right since it prompts or inhibits dialogue. This project focuses on the longer silences predominant in a sisterhood sensitive to deciphering unspoken nuances and drawing inferences. The women writers considered here approach their relationships with their respective audiences from at least two vantage points. Sometimes they appeal to an audience in the text itself; at other times, they envision "ideal" listeners. In either case, the writer focuses on audience response to stimulate her creativity in weaving a text from the context of her experiences. Text, texture, and silence overlap and enrich the voices which result, voices which echo Philomela's protest against imposed silence. These women writers use their audiences as sources of inspiration to reveal the underlying strength, creativity, and courage which introspection generates.

This dissertation traces the literary and cultural phenomenon of “bad readers” across a range of Greek and Latin texts from the late first to late second centuries CE. By jointly engaging the framework of book history with the insights of feminist, queer, critical theory, it offers a methodology for understanding why certain readerly embodiments and modes are stigmatized for deviating from the hegemonic norm, and how the contested space of reading intersects with negotiations of power, embodiment, and identity. I argue that “bad readers” are not “bad” in any inherent or universal sense, but rather that “bad readers” intersect with particular literary, cultural, and ideological agendas. I also show how “bad readers” help illuminate the broader material, social networks that are adumbrated by books as objects in antiquity, thus contributing to recent work that has emphasized the importance of situating “reading” within its ancient, sociocultural context. At the same time, this study lays bare how such work has also tended to leave the question of modern readerly poses and politics to the side. Ultimately, this study shows how literary representations of “bad readers” offer a powerful locus for telling a different story about books and reading in the ancient Mediterranean, as well as a lens for theorizing how certain hermeneutic modes in the discipline today participate in and reproduce hierarchies of power.

Challenging the common notion that mythological comedies simply burlesque stories found in epic and tragedy, this dissertation shows that comic poets were active participants in creating and transmitting myths and argues that their mythical innovations influenced accounts found in tragedy and prose mythography. Although no complete Greek mythological comedy survives, hundreds of fragments and titles reveal that this type of drama was extremely popular; they were staged in Greece, Sicily, and Southern Italy and make up about one-half of all comedies produced in some periods. These fragments, supplemented by Plautus' Amphitruo (the only nearly complete mythological comedy), vase-paintings, and ancient testimonia, shed light on the vibrant tradition of comic mythology. In chapter one, I argue that ancient scholars' and prose mythographers' citations of comedies invite us to view comedians as authoritative myth-makers. I then survey the development of mythological comedy throughout the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. The plays' titles reveal common mythical topics as well as a number of comic myths that survived independent of the tragic tradition. In chapter two, I argue that Cratinus' Dionysalexandros and Epicharmus' Odysseus the Deserter are wildly innovative comedies that challenge previous accounts for mythological authority. In chapter three, Epicharmus' Pyrrha and Prometheus, Pherecrates' Antmen, and Cratinus' Wealth Gods are studied to show how comedians created new stories by fusing myths together and by combining myth and historical reality. In chapter four, I look at the affairs of Zeus to show the dramatists' different approaches to the same mythical material. While tragedians tend to focus on the suffering of Zeus' victims, comedians feature Zeus' humorously outlandish and usually harmless seductions. In chapter five, on the Amphitruo, I show how Plautus has transformed a myth about the birth of Heracles into a story about Jupiter's long-term affair with a pregnant woman. In chapter six, I enter the debate about comedy's influence on tragedy and argue that mythical variants invented by the comic poet Cratinus have been incorporated into Euripides' Trojan Women and Helen, which demonstrates that, as early as the fifth century, comic poets were seen as mythological authorities. / 2017-06-30T00:00:00Z