Christopher Marlowe’s narrator-lover in Ovid’s Elegies increasingly embodies an epitome of conventional ideology. As I study Ovid’s Elegies and Marlowe’s poetics of subjectivity, I specifically address how the narrator’s inability to find the truth about himself, about love, and about the value of poetry reveals his gross misconceptions of his own contrived and illusory subjectivity, particularly the way in which his ill-conceived notions misrepresent love and poetry. That is, he cannot discover from his experience a personal identity and subjectivity. Without the ability to define himself, to embody feelings more substantive than his desire for sexual gratification and masculine conquest, the narrator cannot achieve self-knowledge, let alone self-mastery. In short, he lacks virtus. While Marlowe’s narrator repeatedly enters a liminal space wherein he recognizes a necessary advancement toward virtus within the symbolic order, he invariably collapses back upon his imaginary order, and he volitionally maintains a state of psychic stasis.

Hester Pulter’s (1605-1678) work was discovered in 1996 in the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds. Pulter composed her poetry in the 1640s-1650s, but her works were not compiled until the 1660s. Overall, her manuscript contains one hundred and twenty poems and emblems in addition to an unfinished prose romance. Pulter recalls her personal life in her poems, and the collection includes her elegiac and lyrical poems on different topics such as politics, religion, childbirth, and the death of her children. In her elegiac poetry, Pulter explores of the experience of childbirth and sickness through a set of conventional Christian ideas about death. However, Pulter’s elegiac poetry also breaks away from Christian conventions, often through the use of astronomical imagery. In this thesis, I argue that Pulter’s grief and consolation strategies sometimes differ from her contemporaries; however, she eventually finds consolation using imagery drawn from her knowledge of the new astronomy, allowing her to reconstruct her identity. Through comparing Pulter with her contemporaries such as George Herber, Katherine Philips, and John Donne, Pulter’s poetry, which has been unstudied until recently, provides an example of a woman writer who is familiar with the seventeenth century poetical conventions; however, she is able to alter them to what is relevant to her condition.

Standard commentaries on the elegies of Propertius tend either to ignore or to pay curt lip service to literary criticism. Linguistic and textual problems are often discussed, translations of difficult passages and explanations of logical transitions are sometimes offered, parallel passages are frequently cited, allusions and exempla are usually explained and occasional reference is made to metrical and stylistic devices. The possible background situations to the elegies are often ignored or inadequately explored; exempla are rarely interpreted within the context of the poem as a whole, the rich resonance of Propertius' style, language and imagery is hardly ever appreciated and the technique of line-by-line commentary adopted by all standard commentaries tends to dismantle the poem into a number of component parts, a process which often obscures the overall 'message' or point of the poem and blunts its impact. Consequently, I have chosen the running commentary format for this thesis, in the belief that this format (with extensive use of footnotes) more adequately enables the literary critic to interpret the multi-faceted complexity of Propertius' elegies without destroying the poem's coherence or losing sight of its overall point. Introductory essays are provided before each commentary: these deal with major problems raised by the poem, discuss other critical opinions without paying too much attention to the more lunatic theories, provide a general estimate of the poem and prepare the way for the running commentaries, which offer a detailed appreciation of the elegy. Five elegies (1.2; 1.20; 2.2; 2.26A; 2.29A) have been selected for literary analysis. Each of these poems is characterised by a complex and varied use of mythology, and I have attempted to demonstrate that the exempla are not merely decorative baubles designed to show off the poet's doctrina but are an integral part of the poem, reflecting the poem's central themes and issues. Furthermore, all the elegies reveal Propertius' imaginative, sophisticated, elegant, versatile and often witty approach to love. For the purpose of this thesis, I have used the text of W.A. Camps (Cambridge, Book I 1961, Book II 1967). Textual problems have not been ignored but such are their number and complexity in Propertius that I decided that detailed textual criticism was beyond the scope of this commentary. In addition to this, because of the highly subjective and often controversial nature of some aspects of literary criticism, I have frequently used tentative expressions such as 'might', 'perhaps' and 'seems'. Such expressions also avoid the pitfalls of the historical/documentary fallacy. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1984.

This dissertation focuses on three of Busoni’s late orchestral works known as “orchestral elegies”: Berceuse élégiaque (Elegie no. 1, 1909), Gesang vom Reigen der Geister (Elegie no. 4, 1915), and Sarabande (Elegie no. 5, 1918-19). The study seeks to provide a better understanding of Busoni’s late style as a crucial bridge from late nineteenth-century chromaticism in the works of Liszt, Wagner, and others to the post-tonal languages of the twentieth century. At the heart of this study lies a particular concept that forms the basis of many characteristic features of Busoni’s late style, namely the concept of polyphonic harmony, or harmony as a cumulative result of independent melodic lines. This concept is also related to a technique of orchestration in which the collective harmony is sounded in such a way that the individual voices are distinct. In the highly personal tonal language of Busoni’s late works, passages often consist of a web of motives weaved throughout the voices at the surface level of the music. Linear analysis provides a means of unravelling the dense fabric of voices and illustrating the underlying harmonic progressions, which most often consist of parallel, primarily semitonal, progressions of tertian sonorities. Chapter 1 provides a backdrop for this study, including a brief summary of Busoni’s ideas on the aesthetics of music and a summary of his influence and development as a composer. Chapter 2 addresses the concept of polyphonic harmony in more detail, some theoretical ideas related to it, and characteristics of Busoni’s late style that reflect this concept. Chapter 3 is dedicated to analytical methodology, addressing concepts which emerge from various linear approaches to the analysis of some twentieth-century music. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are each dedicated to a specific work, the purpose being to illuminate through linear analysis compositional characteristics and techniques related to the concept of polyphonic harmony, including the flexibility between the melodic and harmonic realms, chord misalignment, overlap, and superposition.

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Les œuvres d'Ion de Chios, un auteur polygraphe du Vème siècle avant notre ère, présentent d'une part la particularité d'appartenir à des genres littéraires différents et d'autre part celle d'être parvenues jusqu'à nous sous forme fragmentaire. Il s'agit uniquement de citations chez des auteurs contemporains ou postérieurs. Étudier ses fragments nécessite tout d'abord de présenter le contexte historique dans lequel ces œuvres furent produites, notamment en interrogeant la pluralité des liens (politique, militaire, économique, commercial, juridique, ou encore cultuel et culturel) tissés par l'île de Chios avec les différentes cités grecques, à commencer par Athènes. Partant, il devient possible de retracer la vie de l'auteur dans le monde grec du Vème siècle, ses voyages et ses rencontres, et surtout de mettre en avant le rôle qu'il joua dans la mise en place de l'impérialisme athénien. Il convient ensuite d'établir la traduction et l'analyse des différents fragments : drames, élégies et poèmes lyriques, traités philosophiques, récit de fondation et récit de voyages. En étudiant ainsi les différents genres pratiqués par Ion, nous montrons non seulement les apports et les écarts d'Ion à la tradition littéraire dans laquelle il s'inscrit, mais nous révélons aussi la cohérence de l'ensemble de son œuvre. Les analyses stylistiques et littéraires rencontrent alors des enjeux sociaux et politiques. Ces fragments appartenant exclusivement à la tradition indirecte des textes, les intentions des citateurs doivent aussi être prises en compte. Cela nous amène à proposer, pour finir, un aperçu de la réception d'Ion de Chios dans l'Antiquité, de la période classique à la renaissance byzantine. Force est de constater le rôle de modèle qu'Ion de Chios joua, non seulement pour les auteurs hellénistiques - Callimaque en témoigne -, mais aussi ceux de la Seconde Sophistique, Athénée ou Plutarque. / The works of Ion of Chios, a polymath writer of the fifth century B.C., have two particularities : firstly, they belong to different literary genres, secondly, they are uniquely fragmentary works, quotations quoted either by contemporary authors or by authors who lived after him. To study this fragments, we first need to present the historical context in which this works were written, in particular by showing the different kinds of links (political, military, economic, commercial, juridical or even cultic and cultural) between Chios island and the other Greek poleis and, first of all, between Chios and Athens. Thanks to this first analysis, it becomes possible to recount the life of Ion of Chios, his trips and his encounters, and, most of all, to reveal the major role he played (with his family) in the rising Athenian empire. Then, we have to establish the translation and the commentary of the different fragments : tragedies, elegies and lyrical pieces, philosophical treatise, philosophical logos, story of foundation, journeys. By considering the different literary genres that Ion wrote, we not only show the tribute and the contribution of Ion to literary tradition, but also the consistency of most of his works. Here, poetic and stylistic analysis meet historical and political issues. These fragments belonging exclusively to the "indirect tradition" of the text, we have to examine the intentions of the authors who quoted Ion of Chios. This search leads us to finally give an insight of the reception of Ion of Chios in Antiquity, from the classical period to the Byzantine Renaissance. It is here necessary to acknowledge the major role of Ion in literary history : he was not only a a leading figure and a role model for Hellenistic poets (Callimachus is the best example), but also a paradigm for the writers of the Second Sophistic, like Athenaeus or Plutarchus.

Notre travail rend compte de la double articulation d’analyse d’Antoine Berman dans Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne. La méthode bermanienne intègre tant une histoire, événementielle et individuelle, des traductions qu’une analyse des textes à la lumière de leurs entours (paratextes, projets de traduction, etc.). Dans une première partie, nous tenterons de décrire à l’aide d’un panorama historique l’importation de la poésie de Rilke en traduction française, des premières versions du début du XXe siècle aux dernières traductions des Élégies de Duino. Nous nous attacherons à l’identité des différents (re-)traducteurs et à l’horizon général de leur travail. Dans une seconde partie, nous comparerons plusieurs versions françaises de la première Élégie de Duino, oeuvre poétique de Rilke la plus retraduite en français. A travers différents critères touchant à la forme et au sens, nous saisirons l’apport de ces traductions et le lien qui les unit, afin de constater in fine si les comportements socio-culturels observés dans la première partie se matérialisent aussi dans la pratique des (re-)traducteurs duinésiens / This dissertation rests on the double articulation of Antoine Berman’s analysis of translation in Toward a translation criticism: John Donne. Indeed, Berman’s method integrates as well a macroscopic and individual history of translations as an analysis of texts, considering their peripheral features (paratexts, translation projects, etc.). In the first part, we will depict through a historical panorama the import of Rilke’s poetry in French, from the first versions of the early 20th century to the latest translations of the Duino Elegies. We will thereby give heed to the identity of the different (re-)translators and to the general horizon of their translations. In the second part, we will compare several French versions of the first Duino Elegy, Rilke’s most retranslated poetical opus in French. Through various criteria dealing with form and sense, it will be a question of comprehending what these translations bring and the kind of bond holding them together. We intend eventually to find out whether the sociocultural behaviors we noticed in the first part are also observable in the practices of the Duinesian (re-)translators.

Part 1: ‘True Receivers': Rilke and the Contemporary Poetics of Listening In this part of this thesis I argue that a contemporary ‘poetics of listening' has emerged in the UK, and explore the writing of three of our most significant poets - John Burnside, Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson - to find out why they have become interested in the idea of the poet as a ‘listener'. I suggest that the appeal of this listening stance accounts for their engagement with the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, who thought of himself as a listening ‘receiver'; it is proposed that Rilke's notion of ‘receivership' and the way his poems relate to the earthly (or the ‘non-human') also account for the general ‘intensification' of interest in his work. An exploration of the shifting status of listening provides context for this study, and I pay particular attention to the way innovations in audio and communications technology influenced Rilke's late sequences the Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. A connection is made between Rilke's ‘listening poetics' and the ‘listening' stance of Ted Hughes and Edward Thomas; this establishes a ‘listening lineage' for the contemporary poets considered in the thesis. I also suggest that there are intriguing similarities between the ideas of listening that are emerging in contemporary poetics and Hélène Cixous' concept of ‘écriture féminine'. Exploring these similarities helps us to understand the implications of the stance of the poet-listener, which is a counter to the idea that as a writer you must ‘find your voice'. Finally, it is proposed that ‘a poetics of listening' would benefit from an enriched taxonomy. Part 2 of the thesis is a collection of my poems entitled ‘Small Weather'.