My dissertation is about the location of Hesiod's poetics in the spaces of the farm. One of my main assertions is that the farm consists of three spaces, those of cultivated, grazed, and wild nature. I argue that the poet and farmer exploit and fortify these productive zones in analogous ways. The farm is revealed to be a "poetic landscape" insofar as the processes of poetry, by their alignment with the georgic functions, are bound up in the farm's three spaces. Scholars in this area have focused either on the analogies between poetry and farming or on the space of the farm but they have not combined these two investigations (Chapter One). My thesis breaks new ground by converging these avenues of research. With the notion of the three spaces I make another contribution to scholarship by revealing in Hesiod's understanding of the farm a complexity that has gone unrecognized in previous related studies. Chapter Two further advances research by the explication of an ancient foundation for the three-fold aspect of the farm, namely a traditional view of the history of food acquisition, which is evident in the writings of Varro (De re rustica) and Dicaearchus (Bios Hellados, attested in Porphyry's De abstinentia ab esu animalium). In the third and fourth chapters, on the Theogony proem, I argue that the shepherd-farmer's and poet's analogous use of certain resources of Mt. Helicon situates Hesiod's poetics in the wild and grazed spaces of the farm. Part of my analysis establishes that poetry for Hesiod is a water-based pharmakon which heals the audience. Chapter Five, on the first half of the Works and Days, examines the role of justice and festivals in the poetry-farming analogies, which, in this case, involve all three spaces of the farm. In the sixth and final chapter, which addresses the agricultural calendar of the Works and Days, I refocus attention on water, particularly dew, as poetry's healing ingredient, but now one that binds the poetic process to the farm's cultivated space. My emphasis on water in the framework of the thesis makes another contribution to the relevant scholarship. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Classics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2016. / December 9, 2016. / agriculture, analogy, farm, Hesiod, poetry, space / Includes bibliographical references. / Francis Cairns, Professor Directing Dissertation; Dennis Moore, University Representative; Laurel Fulkerson, Committee Member; Svetoslava Slaveva-Griffin, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_507969 |
| Contributors | Blume, Charles E. (authoraut), Cairns, Francis (professor directing dissertation), Moore, Dennis D. (university representative), Fulkerson, Laurel, 1972- (committee member), Slaveva-Griffin, Svetla (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college), Department of Classics (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (393 pages), computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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