Diss. / Romanized record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Halle. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

This thesis will explore how social and political conditions in archaic Greece affected the composition of poetry for female choral performance. My primary source material will be the poetry of Alcman and Sappho. I examine the evidence suggesting that poems by both Alcman and Sappho commented on political issues, using this as a basis to argue that women in archaic Greece may have had a more vocal public presence that has previously been imagined. Rather than viewing female performance as a means of discussing purely feminine themes or reinforcing the idea of a disempowered female gender, I argue that the poetry of Alman and Sappho gives parthenoi an authoritative public voice to comment on issues in front of the watching community. Part of this authority is derived from the social value of parthenoi, who can act as economically and socially valuable points of exchange between communities, but I shall also be looking at how traditional elements of female performance genre were used to enhance female authority in archaic Sparta and Lesbos. Once this has been established, this thesis will proceed to examine how public female performance dealt with major political and social issues in the archaic world. I shall argue that the performance of parthenoi did focus on primarily feminine concerns such as marriage, desire, and abduction, but that it could also be an opportunity to discuss much broader political themes that were of major importance to the entire polis. Alcman and Sappho use their poetry as a vehicle to comment on the society in which their poetry was composed, both discussing threats to order and representing solutions for a stable society. The content of female performed poetry was often composed as much for a male audience as for the performers themselves, using traditional female performance as a means of commenting on the current political climate. Through arguing these factors, the intention of this thesis is to suggest a much more prominent public role for archaic Greek females than has previously been recognised.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Fachbereich 9 Klassische philologie und Kunstwissenschaften--Frankfurt am Main--Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, 1999. / Bibliogr. p. 281-294. Index.

No description available.

My dissertation explores several topics recurring throughout Ovid’s single Heroides. When, how, and why does Ovid restructure tragic, epic, or pastoral stories into elegy? How do his heroines deal with their lovers starting relationships with new women, and what method of coping with abandonment is the most effective? What is the role of magic in the Heroides, what rules does it follow, and who uses it successfully? How does Ovid capitalize on the connection between elegy and lament, and which heroines does he use to do so? Finally, what is the role of writing in the Heroides, how does Ovid use the character of Sappho in the collection, and how does the Sappho epistle help readers interpret the rest of the Heroides? The letters of Briseis (3), Phaedra (4), Hermione (8), and Oenone (5) transform previously epic, tragic, and pastoral worlds and inhabitants into elegiac contexts to show how they wish their men to accept the role of the elegiac lover. Ovid uses these reclassifications to explore the boundaries of elegy and show how thorough knowledge of audience and the genre are necessary for success. Oenone (5), Hypsipyle (6), Deianira (9), and Medea (12) each see their lovers replace them with another woman; Ovid uses their different methods—emulating the new woman’s qualities, attempting to regain the lover’s affection, and seeking revenge—to discover which approach will achieve its desired purpose. Ovid’s construction of magic as a practical tool is established in the letter of Medea (12), and can be applied to the epistles of Deianira (9), Hypsipyle (6), and Laodamia (13) to interpret the magical practices in those epistles. Ovid explores a different facet of the elegiac genre by using the traditional link between elegy and epitaph in the letters of Phyllis (2), Dido (7), and Hypermnestra (14), but alludes to it in the epistles of Canace (11), Ariadne (10), and Deianira (9) to bridge the gap between literary characters and his readers’ reality. Finally, the Sappho epistle (15) provides a tool for interpreting both the individual letters of the Heroides and Ovid’s own concerns. By using the famous poetess as one of his heroines, Ovid connects himself and his reputation to hers. His character Sappho provides a lens through which we can examine all of the heroines who are at a crisis point, a metaphorical cliff’s edge, as they write.

A criminal is thrown from a high cliff into the sea. He has been covered in feathers, live birds attached to him to slow his fall. Fishermen wait below, hopeful of being able to carry him safely away. The people are punishing the criminal with death, yet simultaneously rooting for his survival. This startling image from Strabo, with its delicious ironic tension, is the center‐piece of “Civic Poetics.” The thesis consists of a cycle of poems imagining life in a city where this bizarre ritual is performed, coupled with a number of essays written for several Religious Studies courses on related themes. The interplay of poetry and essay aims to illuminate the experience of my own journey from criminal outsider to re‐integrated citizen. The lenses of (1) my own experiences in 21st century Atlanta and (2) poetic imaginative reconstruction of this ancient ritual reveal a startling picture: a criminal’s relations with the divine, as mediated by his state, and a state’s relations with the divine as mediated by its criminals.

Diss.--Frankfurt am Main. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 5-8.

A criminal is thrown from a high cliff into the sea. He has been covered in feathers, live birds attached to him to slow his fall. Fishermen wait below, hopeful of being able to carry him safely away. The people are punishing the criminal with death, yet simultaneously rooting for his survival. This startling image from Strabo, with its delicious ironic tension, is the center‐piece of “Civic Poetics.” The thesis consists of a cycle of poems imagining life in a city where this bizarre ritual is performed, coupled with a number of essays written for several Religious Studies courses on related themes. The interplay of poetry and essay aims to illuminate the experience of my own journey from criminal outsider to re‐integrated citizen. The lenses of (1) my own experiences in 21st century Atlanta and (2) poetic imaginative reconstruction of this ancient ritual reveal a startling picture: a criminal’s relations with the divine, as mediated by his state, and a state’s relations with the divine as mediated by its criminals.

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / The poems of The Stratofortress include adaptations into English of two Greek poets: Sappho, circa 650 BCE, whose poems were composed in the Ancient Greek dialect of her birthplace, the island of Lesbos, Greece; and Constantine P. Cavafy, who lived from April 29, 1863 to April 29, 1933, wrote his poems in Modern Greek, and lived most of his life in Alexandria, Egypt. My adaptations of Sappho’s fragments from the Ancient Greek are presented as songs, and numbered according to the standardized textual organization of the most reliable and commonly referenced scholarly editions of her fragmentary compositions (Lobell and Page, D.A. Campbell, E. Voigt, G. Nagy, D. Yatromanolakis). / 2031-01-01T00:00:00Z