The Naturalist is a collection of poems with a critical preface. In this preface, titled "'Death is the mother of beauty': The Contemporary Elegy and the Search for the Dead," I examine contemporary alterations and manifestations of the traditional genre of elegy. I explore the idea that the contemporary mourner is aware of the need to search for meaning despite living in a world without a centrally believed mythology. This search exposes the mourner's need to remain connected to the dead and, by proxy, to grace. I conclude that the contemporary elegy, through metaphorical figuration, personal memory, and traditional symbolism, simultaneously employs and denies the traditional elegiac conventions of apotheosis and resurrection by reconceiving them as methods not of achieving transcendence but of embracing desire with an acceptance of the inability to transcend. The poems of The Naturalist are a collection of elegies that reflect many of the ideas brought forth in the preface.

Thesis--Zürich. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 4-7).

Thesis--Zürich. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 4-7).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago. / Includes bibliographical references.

In making the point that no story is complete, O'Hagan undermines to varying degrees several dominant and interconnected Western ideologies: idealism, Christianity, patriarchy, class and capitalism. He also shows how a borrowed indigenous myth can be adapted to immigrant needs in a way that will distinguish Canadian novels from others.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1934. / Lithographed. "Private edition, distributed by the University of Chicago libraries." "A list of Propertius manuscripts": p. 62-68.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This dissertation contains two parts: Part I, "Self-Elegy as Self-Creation Myth," which discusses the self-elegy, a subgenre of the contemporary American elegy; and Part II, For the Ruined Body, a collection of poems. Traditionally elegies are responses to death, but modern and contemporary self-elegies question the kinds of death, responding to metaphorical not literal deaths. One category of elegy is the self-elegy, which turns inward, focusing on loss rather than death, mourning aspects of the self that are left behind, forgotten, or aspects that never existed. Both prospective and retrospective, self-elegies allow the self to be reinvented in the face of loss; they mourn past versions of selves as transient representations of moments in time. Self-elegies pursue the knowledge that the selves we create are fleeting and flawed, like our bodies. However by acknowledging painful self-truths, speakers in self-elegies exert agency; they participate in their own creation myths, actively interpreting and incorporating experiences into their identity by performing dreamlike scenarios and sustaining an intimate, but self-critical, voice in order to: one, imagine an alternate self to create distance and investigate the evolution of self-identity, employing hindsight and self-criticism to offer advice; two, reinterpret the past and its role in creating and shaping identity, employing a tone of resignation towards the changing nature of the self. This self-awareness, not to be confused with self-acceptance, is often the only consolation found.

This dissertation is a study of the rhetorical uses of evaluative language in Greek lyric and elegiac poetry and inscribed epigram of the period from the seventh to the fifth century B.C.E. The discussion focuses on the poets' evaluations of human worth in three areas, each of which forms a separate chapter: martial valour, the relationship between physical appearance and inner virtue, and political or social values. Within each chapter, particular aspects of the subject under discussion are treated under separate headings. Although the literary material has been treated in various ways in the past, the inclusion of inscribed epigram alongside the other literature in this case offers evidence from a related but distinct branch of poetic tradition for the development and expression of these values; divergences between the literary and the inscriptional tradition can be quite marked, as can the different approaches taken by poets of various genres within the literary material. The attempts of previous scholarship to define clear and consistent systems or codes of value represented in the poetry and to trace their development over this period have been generally unconvincing, but the poets' deployment of evaluative language does show some discernible patterns which appear to be related more to genre and poetic tradition than to the purely chronological processes of development that have been proposed by other scholars.

O trabalho analisa as possíveis relações intratextuais entre as primeiras quatorze epístolas que formam o corpus das Heroides de Ovídio. Estas relações permitem ao leitor entendêlas não apenas como um mero conjunto de monólogos travestidos em um formato epistolar (Auhagen, 1999, p. 90), mas como peças que ganham significado à luz de outras. As relações surgem em função do caráter exemplar das heroínas, paradigmático de um determinado tipo de comportamento. No diálogo intratextual, a exemplaridade permite a configuração mútua destas mulheres e suas epístolas. Considerando que o próprio Ovídio, no livro 3 da Ars amatoria, recomenda a suas discípulas ler sua coleção de epístolas e que ele se refere a essas mulheres em diferentes ocasiões como exempla do fracasso na ars amandi, o corpus pode ser entendido como uma série de exempla para o leitor, complementares ao propósito didático da Ars amatoria. Em razão da falta de uma ars amandi, a maioria das heroínas fracassam ao tentar convencer seus amantes a voltar. Portanto, o leitor recebe as epístolas como um grande exemplum daquilo que não deve ser feito e como justificativa da necessidade de um praeceptor. A confluência dos gêneros elegíaco e epistolar possibilita que as epístolas sejam um meio apropriado para transmitir um exemplum, por causa do caráter didático de ambos os gêneros. / This research analyses the possible intratextual relation between the first fourteen epistles of Ovids Heroides. These relations allow the reader to understand them not only as unconnected monologues brought together under the form of epistles (Auhagen, 1999, p. 90), but also as collection of poems that have meaning when read in the light of the others. The relations emerge because of the heroines exemplary character, paradigmatic of a certain behavior. In the intratextual dialogue, the exemplarity enables the mutual configuration of the women and their epistles. Considering that Ovid himself, in the third book of his Ars, recommends to read his collection of epistles and that he also refers to these women as exempla of failure in the art of love, the whole collection can be understood as a series of exempla that complement the didactic purpose of the Ars amatoria. Because of their lack of ars amandi, most of the heroines fail in trying to convince their lovers to come back to them. Therefore, the reader receives the epistles as an exemplum of what should not be done and as a justification for the need of a praeceptor. The overlapping of the elegiac and the epistolary genres enables the letter to be an appropriate mean to convey an exemplum, due to the didactic features of both genres.