Reading Jane Austen Through an Epic Lens: Pride and Prejudice and Emma
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UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles the Orphan-Hero in Italian Renaissance Epic a Dissertation Submitted in Partial Satisfactio
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Orphan-Hero in Italian Renaissance Epic A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Italian by Sarah Sixmith Vogdes Cantor 2020 © Copyright by Sarah Sixmith Vogdes Cantor 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Orphan-Hero in Italian Renaissance Epic by Sarah Sixmith Vogdes Cantor Doctor of Philosophy in Italian University of California, Los Angeles, 2020 Professor Andrea Moudarres, Chair “The Orphan-Hero in Italian Renaissance Epic” investigates a commonplace present in epic poetry from antiquity to the Renaissance: the orphan-hero, a protagonist who grows up without the guidance of biological parents. The study traces this figure from its origins to the early modern period, beginning with classical epic in the introduction and focusing on 16th- and early 17th- century Italian poems in the body of the dissertation, namely Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1532), Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581), Tullia d’Aragona’s Il Meschino (1560), Moderata Fonte’s Floridoro (1581), Margherita Sarrocchi’s Scanderbeide (1623), and LucreZia Marinella’s L’Enrico (1635). Through analysis of these works, I address the following critical questions: 1) What links orphanhood and heroism? 2) Why might poets deem this tradition worthy of continuation? 3) Do modifications to the orphan-hero by different Renaissance authors reveal or emphasiZe shifts in thinking during the period? In particular, to what extent do the female authors fashion their orphan-heroes to fit an early modern feminist purpose? ii I propose that the vulnerability inherent in the parentless state is significant to the subsequent development of heroic qualities in Renaissance epic heroes. -
Elegy with Epic Consequences: Elegiac Themes in Statius' Thebaid
Elegy with Epic Consequences: Elegiac Themes in Statius’ Thebaid A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the Department of Classics of the College of Arts and Sciences by Carina Moss B.A. Bucknell University April 2020 Committee Chairs: Lauren D. Ginsberg, Ph.D., Kathryn J. Gutzwiller, Ph.D. Abstract This dissertation examines the role of elegy in the Thebaid by Statius, from allusion at the level of words or phrases to broad thematic resonance. It argues that Statius attributes elegiac language and themes to characters throughout the epic, especially women. Statius thus activates certain women in the epic as disruptors, emphasizing the ideological conflict between the genres of Latin love elegy and epic poetry. While previous scholarship has emphasized the importance of Statius’ epic predecessors, or the prominence of tragic allusion in the plot, my dissertation centers the role of elegy in this epic. First, I argue that Statius relies on allusion to the genre of elegy to signal the true divine agent of the civil war at Thebes: Vulcan. Vulcan’s erotic jealousy over Venus’ affair with Mars leads him to create the Necklace of Harmonia. Imbued with elegiac resonance, the necklace comes to Argia with corrupted elegiac imagery. Statius characterizes Argia within the dynamic of the elegiac relicta puella and uses this framework to explain Argia’s gift of the necklace to Eriphyle and her advocacy for Argos’ involvement in the war. By observing the full weight of the elegiac imagery in these scenes, I show that Argia mistakenly causes the death of Polynices and the devastation at Thebes as the result of Vulcan’s elegiac curse. -
Classical Reception in Contemporary Women's
CLASSICAL RECEPTION IN CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S WRITING: EMERGING STRATEGIES FROM RESISTANCE TO INDETERMINACY by POLLY STOKER A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology School of History and Cultures College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham April 2019 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT The reader who rewrites remains a vital interlocutor between the classical past and the modern classicist. However, the neglect of the female reader in classical reception studies is an omission that becomes ever more conspicuous, and surely less sustainable, as women writers continue to dominate the contemporary creative field. This thesis makes the first steps towards fashioning a new aesthetic model for the female reader based on irony, ambivalence, and indeterminacy. I consider works by Virginia Woolf, Alice Oswald, Elizabeth Cook, and Yael Farber, all of whom largely abandon ‘resistance’ as a strategy of rereading and demand a new theoretical framework that can engage with and recognize the multivalence of women’s reading and rewriting. -
Motherhood and the Ovidian Epic Subject
Matermorphoses: Motherhood and the Ovidian Epic Subject Mairéad McAuley University of Cambridge [email protected] nec perit in toto quicquam, mihi credite, mundo, sed variat faciemque novat, nascique vocatur incipere esse aliud, quam quod fuit ante. Ovid Met. 15. 254-2561 Rather than treating women as somehow exceptional, I start from the question of what would have to change were we to take seriously the notion that a ‘person’ could normally, at least always potentially, become two. What would happen if we thought identity in terms that did not make it always spatially and temporally oppositional to other entities? Could we retain a notion of self-identity if we did not privilege that which is self-contained and self-directed? Christine Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman2 1 — I am grateful to the journal’s editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful sugges- tions in improving the argument of this paper. I would also like to thank Andrea Doyle, Lawrence Hamilton and the audience of the University of Johannesburg’s Greek and Latin Studies Seminar for feedback on an earlier version. 2 — Battersby (1998) 2. Elsewhere Battersby argues: ‘We need to think individuality differ- ently, allowing for the potentiality for otherness to exist within it as well as alongside it. We need to theorise agency in terms of potentiality and flow. Our body-boundaries do not contain the self; EuGeStA - n°2 - 2012 124 MAIRÉAD MCAULEY Ovid’s Metamorphoses; my mother gave it me. Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus 4.1.42 In Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, the association of women with the Latin language and with Ovid’s Metamorphoses is figured explicitly through Lavinia, daughter of Titus, who is raped and then mutilated by attackers who have read Ovid’s story of Philomela. -
Navigating the Routes of Female Mobility in the Urania
University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2013-04-12 The Shepherdess in the Garden: Navigating the Routes of Female Mobility in the Urania Swain, Jessica Swain, J. (2013). The Shepherdess in the Garden: Navigating the Routes of Female Mobility in the Urania (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28377 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/600 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca University of Calgary The Shepherdess in the Garden: Navigating the Routes of Female Mobility in the Urania by Jessica Swain A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARMENT OF ENGLISH CALGARY, ALBERTA APRIL 2013 © Jessica Swain 2013 ABSTRACT This thesis examines Urania’s navigation of the various garden spaces represented in Part One of Lady Mary Wroth’s pastoral romance The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania. This project seeks to show that the early modern pleasure garden in England may have been a cultural discourse that informed the portrayal of female subjectivity in the Urania. Since Urania is a pastoral figure in a text that predominantly adheres to the generic conventions of the chivalric romance, her experience of and movement through garden spaces engenders the interaction between the pastoral and romance genres in the Urania. -
The Weaving Imagery in the Homeric Centos Anna Lefteratou
From Haimorrhoousa to Veronica? The Weaving Imagery in the Homeric Centos Anna Lefteratou Κύριε, ἡ ἐν πολλαῖς ἁµαρτίαις περιπεσοῦσα γυνή, τὴν σὴν αἰσθοµένη θεότητα, µυροφόρου ἀναλαβοῦσα τάξιν, ὀδυροµένη µύρα σοι, πρὸ τοῦ ἐνταφιασµοῦ κοµίζει. Οἴµοι! λέγουσα, ὅτι νύξ µοι, ὑπάρχει, οἶστρος ἀκολασίας, ζοφώδης τε καὶ ἀσέληνος, ἔρως τῆς ἁµαρτίας. O Lord, the woman who had fallen into many sins perceived Thy divine nature, taking upon herself the duty of a myrrh-bearer, weeping, brings you myrrh before your burial, saying: “Woe is me! For with me is darkness, the sting of licentiousness, murky and moonless the lust of sin.” Cassiane, Hymn, 9th cent.1 N THE SIXTH BOOK of the Iliad, Hector famously tells Andromache she should stop worrying about the outcome I of the war and mind her female business, “her distaff and her loom, and order her handmaids” (490–493). The obedient Andromache goes to her chambers where she weaves a beauti- ful purple double cloak for Hector and orders her handmaids to prepare a hot bath for him. But her work is interrupted by the cries of the onlookers on the walls of the city who witness Hector’s death at the hands of Achilles. Andromache arrives on the wall only to see Hector’s corpse being dragged behind Achilles’ chariot. Her cloak will become a shroud for her dead beloved and the hot bath turns into ritual cleansing at the end of the poem.2 As early as Homer, women, mortal and god- 1 W. Christ and M. Paranikas, Anthologia Graeca Carminorum Christianorum (Leipzig 1871) 104. -
The Transvestite Achilles: Gender and Genre in Statius’ Achilleid P
Cambridge University Press 0521851459 - The Transvestite Achilles: Gender and Genre in Statius’ Achilleid P. J. Heslin Frontmatter More information the transvestite achilles Statius’ Achilleid is a playful, witty, and allusive epic in the manner of Ovid. As we follow Achilles’ metamorphosis from wild boy to demure girl to passionate lover to fierce hero, the poet brilliantly illustrates a series of contrasting codes of behavior: male and female, epic and elegiac. This first full-length study of the poem addresses not only the narrative itself, but also sets the myth of Achilles on Scyros within a broad interpretive framework. This exploration ranges from the reception of the Achilleid in Baroque opera to the anthropological parallels that have been adduced to explain the myth of Achilles’ transvestism. The expansive approach of this study, which contributes to discussions of Latin intertextuality, the early reception of Ovid, psychoanalytic perspectives on ancient literature, and theorizations of gender in antiquity, makes it essential reading not only for students of Statius, but also for students of Latin literature and of gender in antiquity. p. j. heslin is a lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham. © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521851459 - The Transvestite Achilles: Gender and Genre in Statius’ Achilleid P. J. Heslin Frontmatter More information The Transveite Achilles Gender and Genre in Statius’ Achilleid p. j. heslin © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521851459 - The Transvestite Achilles: Gender and Genre in Statius’ Achilleid P. J. Heslin Frontmatter More information CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru,UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York http://www.cambridge.org Information on this title: http://www.cambridge.org/9780521851459 c P. -
Victorian Women Writers, Radical Grandmothers, and the Gendering of God
Literature, Religion, and Postsecular Studies Lori Branch, Series Editor Victorian Women Writers, Radical Grandmothers, and the Gendering of God GAIL TURLEY HoustoN THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PREss | COLUMBUS Copyright © 2013 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Houston, Gail Turley, 1950– Victorian women writers, radical grandmothers, and the gendering of God / Gail Turley Houston. p. cm. — (Literature, religion, and postsecular studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1210-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8142-9312-6 (cd) 1. English literature—Women authors—History and criticism. 2. English literature—19th century—History and criticism. 3. Women authors, English—19th century. 4. Religion and literature. 5. Religion in literature. 6. Goddess religion in literature. 7. Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855—Criticism and interpretation. 8. Jameson, Mrs. (Anna), 1794–1860—Criticism and interpretation. 9. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 1806–1861—Criticism and interpre- tation. 10. Nightingale, Florence, 1820–1910—Criticism and interpretation. 11. Eliot, George, 1819–1880—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. II. Series: Literature, religion, and postsecular studies. PR115.H68 2013 820.9'928709034—dc23 2012032539 Cover design by Mia Risberg Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Garamond Pro and Delphin Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American Na- tional Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For my grandmothers Divinity is what we [women] need to become free, autonomous, sovereign . -
Forms of Consolation in Early Modern English Poetry by Leila Ruth
Forms of Consolation in Early Modern English Poetry by Leila Ruth Watkins A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Language and Literature) in the University of Michigan 2014 Doctoral Committee: Professor Michael Schoenfeldt, Chair Professor Linda Gregerson Professor Webb Keane Professor Theresa Tinkle Associate Professor Douglas Trevor Acknowledgements I could not have written this particular dissertation without the unique insight and skillful guidance of my committee members. Among their many contributions, Linda Gregerson’s uncanny ability to interpret and rephrase some of my more cumbersome thoughts lent this manuscript what elegance it possesses. Doug Trevor’s encyclopedic knowledge of Milton, early modern theology, and political theory encouraged me to keep the project grounded in its historical and cultural contexts. Theresa Tinkle’s careful reading, insistence on clarity, and experience in medieval studies aided me in making the project legible to a broader range of readers, and Webb Keane’s anthropological expertise helped me to think about its interdisciplinary implications. I would like to thank especially my wonderful chair, Mike Schoenfeldt, for six years of enthusiastic support, candid advice, and extensive conversation about early modern poetry and emotion. This dissertation is deeply informed by his scholarly work, but it is also profoundly influenced by his intellectual generosity and kind personality. I am grateful to the Rackham graduate school, the University of Michigan English department, the University of Michigan department of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, the Mellon Academy for Advanced Studies in the Renaissance, the Newberry Library, and the D’Arms Graduate Student Research Fellowship for contributing crucial financial assistance that made it possible to complete this project, conduct relevant archival research, and present portions of the dissertation at national conferences. -
Reviving Kalliope: Four North American Women and the Epic
REVIVING KALLIOPE: FOUR NORTH AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE EPIC TRADITION by BRITTA SPANN A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department ofEnglish and the Graduate School ofthe University ofOregon in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the degree of Doctor ofPhilosophy September 2009 11 University of Oregon Graduate School Confirmation of Approval and Acceptance of Dissertation prepared by: Britta Spann Title: "Reviving Kalliope: Four Nort~ American Woman and the Epic Tradition" This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the Doctor ofPhilosophy degree in the Department ofEnglish by: Karen Ford, Chairperson, English Paul Peppis, Member, English Steven Shankman, Member, English P. Lowell Bowditch, Outside Member, Classics and Richard Linton, Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies/Dean ofthe Graduate School for the University of Oregon. September 5, 2009 Original approval signatures are on file with the Graduate School and the University of Oregon Libraries. 11l © 2009 Britta Leigh Spann IV An Abstract ofthe Dissertation of Britta Leigh Spann for the degree of Doctor ofPhilosophy in the Department ofEnglish to be taken September 2009 Title: REVIVING KALLIOPE: FOUR NORTH AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE EPIC TRADITION Approved: ------: _ Dr. Karen J. Ford In English literary studies, classical epic poetry is typically regarded as a masculinist genre that imparts and reinforces the values ofdominant culture. The Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, after all, were written by men, feature male heroes, and recount the violent events that gave rise to the misogynistic societies ofancient Greece and Rome. Yet, in the twentieth century, women poets have found inspiration for their feminist projects in these ostensibly masculinist poems. -
Examining Female Epic in the Poetry of Felicia Hemans and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Unscrupulously Epic”: Examining Female Epic in the Poetry of Felicia Hemans and Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Christine W. Robertson A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in English Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2007 © Christine W. Robertson 2007 AUTHOR'S DECLARATION I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Abstract Virginia Woolf once remarked that, “[t]here is no reason to think that the form of the epic ... suit[s] a woman any more than the [masculine] sentence” (Woolf 84). This thesis represents an attempt to explore what the epic genre, as imagined and written by women, might look like in regards to the verse of fellow women poets Felicia Hemans and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Despite the persistent critical misconception that women’s poetry of the Romantic and Victorian periods is comprised mainly of light, lyric verse and tends to lack that “great effort” – for example, the epic poem – which often appears in the work of their male contemporaries, this thesis will argue conversely that Hemans and Barrett Browning do assume certain aspects of traditional epic poetry – a genre “almost coterminous” with masculinity (Schweizer 1) – in their work, while also managing to transform the genre in order that their work might successfully embody a more feminine perspective. The first chapter of the thesis examines the ways in which these two women poets are able to bridge the private and public spheres by transforming the quintessential role of the female poet as record-keeper into that of the poet as prophet and visionary in their political poetry. -
Gender and Genre
Cambridge University Press 0521554195 - Engendering Rome: Women in Latin Epic A. M. Keith Excerpt More information CHAPTER Introduction: gender and genre From Homer to Claudian, classical Greek and Latin epic poetry was composed by men, consumed largely by men, and centrally concerned with men. The ancients knew of no female epic poets. The Greek ‘singer of tales’ was a man, whether a fictional character in the Homeric poems themselves (such as Phemius or Demodocus), an exponent of Homeric poetry (such as one of the Homeridae, a Chian guild of bards who recited Homeric poetry in the classical period, or the fictional Ion of the epony- mous Platonic dialogue), or one of the mythological or historical singers of non-Homeric epic (such as Orpheus, Hesiod, Panyassis, and Apollonius Rhodius). Ancient and modern critics alike have therefore assumed that behind the name of Homer there lies either a single master poet or a succession of male singers. A signal exception to this consensus is Samuel Butler, who argued in The Authoress of the Odyssey () that the poem must have been written by a woman, so numerous, so sensitive, and so varied are the depictions of female characters in the Odyssey. Lillian Doherty has shown that ‘what he mistook for evidence of female authorship is actu- ally evidence for the inclusion of females in the implied audience of the poem’,1 but his work gave renewed attention to the integral importance of female characters in the world of Homeric epic, a subject which has been the focus in recent decades of much provocative scholarship.2 Homer’s ancient commentators long ago saw in the web Helen weaves in 1 Doherty (), n.