The first usage of the ship of state allegory is commonly attributed to the seventh century B.C. poet Alcaeus. While it is true that in his corpus of poetry we see the first explicit usage of such imagery, the possibility that it was employed by earlier poets is strong. This thesis is a detailed examination of five fragmentary poems and commentaries, its purpose being to determine Alcaeus' sources of inspiration for the ship of state allegory and to assess the degree of his originality and his effectiveness in using it. After surveying contemporary literary sources for definitions of allegory, it can be established that the ancients viewed it as a lengthened metaphor or metaphorical sequence, employed to veil the meaning of a text. The expressions chosen by Alcaeus to describe the travails of the ship are then examined to determine whether he has directly imitated or adapted phrases from his literary predecessors and if this is so, to assess the effectiveness of the imitation in terms of an allegorical representation of political strife. Although it is evident that Alcaeus adopts images and expressions previously employed, this study reveals that he is creative in assigning new meaning to certain expressions and that he imitates passages for their power to evoke a particular image. The association with the model is subsequently elaborated upon through the employment of unusual choices in vocabulary, either to sustain dual imagery or predispose his audience to think in figurative terms. Thus the evocation of images from earlier authors coupled with key internal allegorical indicators allows Alcaeus to convey successfully to his closed audience their political plight in the guise of danger at sea. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/10453 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Parker, Sarah J. |
| Contributors | Develin, Robert, |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 114 p. |
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