Browsing by Subject "Historiography"
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Item Ananda Coomaraswamy's role in making a place for Indian art at the MFA Boston(2023-04-21) Birch, Ellen; Leoshko, JanicePerhaps the most widely recognized historian of Indian art, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy is often assigned a foundational role in the development of Indian art history and the acceptance of Indian art into western fine arts collections. The first museum curator in America specifically dedicated to Indian art, Coomaraswamy worked at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MFA) from 1917-1947 – a period of rapid change for American art museums. Much as museum histories have often overlooked the stories of educators, Coomaraswamy’s role as a curator has thus far overshadowed his engagement with education-focused work. Over the course of his long career at the museum, Ananda Coomaraswamy contributed 61 articles to Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, a bimonthly periodical published by the MFA between 1903-1983 and distributed among museum members and visitors. In an effort to achieve a more holistic understanding of Coomaraswamy’s practice at the museum – particularly as it concerned engaging museum audiences – this thesis considers his Bulletin articles as a discrete body of work that fulfilled scholarly and outreach-focused functions.Item Bodies of evidence: the rhetoric of simulated history(2007) Wright, Jaime Lane; Brummett, Barry, 1951-The past and the present are never involved in a fixed relation; they are, in fact, constantly shaping and affecting one another. As we seek to learn more about the past, our perceptions of the present change, and, as we seek to understand more about the present, our approaches to (and explorations of) the past alter. There is a mutually reinforcing rhetorical force to historical investigations and their connections to contemporary ends. Claims about the past set boundaries; when one person (or family or nation) makes a statement about history, rhetorical, social and political lines are drawn. Maneuvering within and between and around those boundaries is the rhetorical practice of historiography; the results of those rhetorical maneuvers are the political practice of historiography. Claims about the past are used to do many things, and this dissertation is about those rhetorical uses and the boundaries that they establish. This dissertation is about the epistemological power of historical rhetoric, the social and political work done in the present by knowledge claims we make about the past. Different ways of talking about the past are both a rhetorical practice (a way to construct believable histories) and a source of knowledge. It is important for rhetorical critics to recognize that the constructions of history are doing something at the same time that they are becoming something for others to use rhetorically, politically, and socially. In this dissertation, I explore four different rhetorics of history: Experienced History, Professional History, Collective Memory, and Simulated History. Suggesting that effective persuasive arguments are shaped and predicted by the cultures from which they stem, I investigate and compare these knowledge claims about the past. Using four rhetorical dimensions (Materiality, Perspective, Standards of Practice, and Silences), I examine how knowledge claims about the past differ, how the methods work rhetorically, and how those different rhetorical powers create distinct understandings of the past.Item Challenging the 'Shiʿi Century': the Fatimids (909-1171), Buyids (945-1055), and the creation of a sectarian narrative of Medieval Islamic history(2013-08) Baker, Christine Danielle; Spellberg, Denise A.; Aghaie, Kamran S; Frazier, Alison; Moin, A. Azfar; Mulder, StephennieThis dissertation focuses on two Shiʿi dynasties of the tenth century, the Fatimid caliphate (909-1171) of Egypt and North Africa and the Buyid Amirate (945-1055) of Iraq and Iran. It traces their rise to power from eighth and ninth-century missionary movements, the ways in which they articulated their right to rule, and reactions to their authority. By bringing the Fatimids and Buyids into a comparative framework, the goal of this dissertation is to challenge the notion of the ‘Shiʿi Century,’ a term used to describe this era, as a label that has needlessly narrowed analyses of this period into binaries of Sunni versus Shiʿi and privileged the urban, elite, Sunni textual tradition over experiences of medieval Muslims that are often discredited as ‘heterodox.’ This dissertation focuses on three aspects of Fatimid and Buyid history that have never been studied together. First, it explores the role of eighth- and ninth-century non-Sunni missionary movements in the conversion and Islamization of the non-urban peripheries of the Middle East, which led to the rise to power of the Fatimid and Buyid dynasties. Second, it analyzes the pragmatic ways that these two Shiʿi dynasties combined multiple forms of authority to articulate their legitimacy in a way that appealed to the heterogeneous populations of the tenth-century Middle East. Third, it compares tenth-century reactions to the rise of these two Shiʿi dynasties with depictions of them from the eleventh century and later, arguing that it was only in retrospect that the story of the tenth century was rewritten ex post facto as a sectarian narrative. By comparing the Fatimids and the Buyids and focusing on contemporary Sunni depictions of these dynasties, this dissertation concludes that the significance of the Shiʿi identity of these two dynasties has been exaggerated. Rather than being only Shiʿi anomalies, these dynasties fit into existing processes in the development of Islamic society.Item Figuring feminist histories of rhetoric(2017-07-31) Frank, Sarah Noble; Davis, D. Diane (Debra Diane), 1963-; Ferreira-Buckley, Linda; Boyle, Casey; Gunn, Joshua; Ballif, MichelleWhile feminist revisionary historiography in rhetorical studies is often identified by its efforts to recover neglected women rhetors for the rhetorical canon, the feminist revisionary histories and historiographies of rhetoric produced during the last three decades also, and more importantly, constitute a powerful critical apparatus that has radically shifted epistemological, methodological, and rhetorical standards for historical research in the discipline. Recently, however, scholars have complained that the critical potential of feminist revisionary scholarship is being curtailed as feminist historians increasingly prioritize representation and preservation over disciplinary critique. In response to this contemporary situation, I argue that it is necessary to trace the shifting role of representation in feminist revisionary historiography during the last three decades. This dissertation tracks the role of representation in feminist histories of rhetoric through four groundbreaking methodological metaphors, each of which functions both to critically revise the epistemological, methodological, and rhetorical conditions for feminist historical research, and to institute new constraints on feminist historical discourse. The first chapter, “Voices of the Past,” describes the emergence of feminist the feminist revisionary intervention and, by offering historical context to the inaugural feminist methodological metaphors of “speaking for” and “listening,” argues that the feminist commitment to representation as a mode of critique is no longer sufficient to articulate existing disciplinary presuppositions and constraints. The second chapter, “Disorienting Orientations on the Map of Rhetoric,” tracks the methodological shift from the recovery of marginalized women rhetors toward the revision and “remapping” of dominant disciplinary narratives, and shows how the spatial logic of orientation constrains contemporary feminist historical production. The third chapter, “Welcome to the House of Rhetoric,” focuses on architectural metaphors and suggests that contemporary feminist historians ought to rethink the dynamics of power and historical access outside of normative vertical and spatial metaphors, and especially within pedagogical spaces. The text concludes with “Haunting Feminist Historical Methodologies,” where I argue that the metaphor of haunting provides contemporary feminist historians with the necessary epistemological, methodological, and rhetorical resources to both revive the critical potential of revisionary methodologies and to imagine ethical feminist histories that would refuse the constative and performative representational imperativeItem Harboring narratives : notes towards a literature of the Mediterranean(2015-08) Lovato, Martino; Tissières, Hélène; Ali, Samer; Bonifazio, Paola; El-Ariss, Tarek; Harlow, Barbara; Bouchard, NormaThrough the reading of several novels and movies produced in Arabic, French, and Italian between the 1980s and the 2000s, in this dissertation I provide a literary and transmedia contribution to the field of Mediterranean studies. Responding to the challenge brought by the regional category of Mediterranean to singular national and linguistic understandings of literature and cinema, I employ a comparative and multidisciplinary methodology to read novels by Baha’ Taher, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Abdelmalek Smari, and movies by film directors Merzak Allouache, Abdellatif Kechiche, and Vittorio De Seta. I define these works as “harboring narratives,” as they engage with the two shores of the Mediterranean in a complex process of interiorization and negotiation, opening routes of meaning across languages, societies and cultures. As they challenge constructions of otherness that materialize in present-day conflicts in the region, the works of these novelists and filmmakers give voice to a perspective on the Mediterranean radically different from that upheld by the “paradigms of discord.” Whereas according to these paradigms there is nothing in the Mediterranean but an iron curtain, these works present migration and conflict, historiography and religion, intimacy and translation as experiences shared across countries and societies in the region. By following routes of meaning that draw together the linguistic, the geographical, the economic, the historical, and the religious, I study how these novelists and filmmakers establish relationships between “horizons of belonging” and “elsewhere,” selfhood and otherness. In so doing, I respond to Kinoshita and Mallette’s call for challenging the “monolingualism” inherent in our contemporary ways of reading linguistic and literary traditions. As I show how the routes of meaning opened by these novelists and filmmakers across the region lead to hope that one day we will rejoice in sharing a common Mediterranean shore, however, I caution against easy enthusiasms. These novelists and filmmakers urge us to respond to the challenge of the present-day conflicts they address in their works, and a shared Mediterranean shore will eventually appear on the horizon only after we overcome monolingual conceptions of selfhood and otherness, setting sail towards a shore we have never seen.Item Hidden truths in flights of fancy : sex, power, and the cinematic staircase, 1932-1955(2018-07-25) Gill, Robert Scott; Long, Christopher (Christopher Alan), 1957-; Beneš, Miroslava; Cleary, Richard; Lopez, Sarah; Davis, JanetThis dissertation explores the meanings of the residential staircase as revealed in the motion pictures of Hollywood’s Golden Age. It seeks to show how the staircase contributed to the colorful psychosexual power struggles that unfolded on the screen, in the process demonstrating how the convergence of narrative, psychology, form, and action can result in another way of reading architectural history. Architectural historians often examine their subject at a scale writ large: as part of an urban fabric or an intellectual or social movement, for example, or, at a minimum, as a single constructed enterprise. The quest for meaning customarily follows a trail of documentary evidence that points decisively to a conclusion. This dissertation takes a path less traveled. The argument posited is that a single architectural element—the staircase—is a telling repository of architectonic significance whose messages, in the absence of chronicled proof, can be uncovered through the medium of the motion picture. By observing the filmic stair in action, and endeavoring to understand the process of its making within the context—sociological and psychological—of the era, one can see how the intersection of the static object with the dynamic human presents a more nuanced reading of the built environment. This is a pursuit of architectural history through the cinematic lens—that is, an appreciation of the real through the reel. This paper is situated within the time of the Motion Picture Production Code, years when movie censors restricted what could be depicted on the screen. These proscriptions led filmmakers to look elsewhere for ways to project, however subtly, what audiences still wanted: stories replete with sex, duplicity, murder, and more. The staircase provided such a vehicle. This study is structured as an investigative triptych. A contextual snapshot of the contemporary movie industry precedes an exegesis of relevant perceptual psychology, which is then applied in an analysis of stair typologies within a sample of case-study films. The approach relies to an extent on a subjective and speculative connecting of the dots. As such, it pushes the limits of orthodox historiography as it opens a different channel through which to view and understand the meanings, and history, of architecture.Item I don’t want to set the world on fire…or do I? : playing (with) history in Fallout 3(2010-12) Gonzales, Racquel Maria; Kackman, Michael; Kumar, ShantiWhile considering the role of media in shaping and examining histories, we must also grapple with formal limitations in approaching and understanding the past. The thesis aims to bring video games into critical conversations regarding history, memory, and nostalgia by considering the similar and unique perspectives the medium can bring alongside film, television, radio, and literature. Player positionality and interactivity within the unconventional, non-linear game storytelling form allows for different engagements with history. Focusing on the futuristic, post-apocalyptic role-playing game Fallout 3 (2008), this study interrogates the game’s nuanced presentation of genre as a cultural mediation of the past, the negotiation of memory with history, and our problematic assumptions about technology and narratives of progress. While the study finds games may provide rewarding and potentially critical explorations of history, the self-reflexive nature of video gaming emphasizes the medium’s possibilities, limitations, and implications as a cultural product shaped by the very forces constructing history.Item Insurgent historiographies of planning in marginalized communities : competing Holly Street Power Plant narratives and implications for participatory planning in Austin, Texas(2011-05) Wirsching, Andrea Christina; Sletto, Bjørn; Paterson, Robert G.I am interested in investigating community perceptions of planning processes in marginalized communities. More specifically, through this project I will draw on the concept of insurgent historiography (Sandercock, 1998) to examine community members’ perceptions of planning processes, in particular for environmental justice mitigation in diverse communities. I will explore this topic through the case of the Holly Street Neighborhood and Holly Street Plant Redevelopment in Austin, Texas. Constructed in the 1950’s, the Holly Street Power Plant has served as a symbol of the trials and tribulations of marginalized communities in East Austin: institutionalized segregation, industrialization, and their disproportionate effects on minority communities in Austin. During its time in operation, the plant was reported to have had numerous spills and other detrimental events. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry lists 17 reported events related to the facility (2009). However, a Public Health Assessment conducted by the Texas Department of Health concluded that there was “no apparent public health hazard” associated with the site (Agency for Toxic Substances and Diseases Registry, 2009). After years of protest, civil lawsuits and investigations, Austin City Council voted to close the Holly Plant in 1995. It was finally taken completely offline in 2007 after approval from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, shifting the community discourse to that of justice and healing: site remediation, decommission and demolition, and redevelopment. By utilizing ethnography and other qualitative research methods, I will document subjugated types of knowledge and memories of this planning process, and, drawing on concepts of insurgent historiography and difference, construct an alternative, insurgent historiography of the Holly redevelopment. I will conclude by discussing the implications of revealing insurgent historiographies for planning in diverse, marginalized communities, and how unlocking such narratives have the potential to improve community participatory planning.Item Language history as a history of diversity : a study of language history from below of Early New High German(2017-12) Fuchs, Katrin, Ph. D.; Pierce, Marc; Boas, Hans; Hess, Peter; Blockley, Mary; Hinrichs, LarsThis dissertation analyses the accuracy of the orthographic descriptions found in traditional Early New High German grammars. The analysis is based in the assumption that these language overviews have too narrow a focus in their data selection, as they rely solely on upper class and literary documents. The question of whether a comparison of the feature descriptions in these grammars with a corpus of a non-traditional genre written by people from other social classes may yield different results is posed. Furthermore, it is asked what potential reasons might exist for this narrow selection of data. The general discussion follows the research frame of “language history from below” (Elspa[beta] 2005), which aims to include material from other genres, social classes, and women to draw a more accurate and dynamic picture of language history. The present study is based on a corpus of witch hunt interrogation records (Hexenverhörprotokolle, Macha et al. 2005), which were written by scribes of intermediate social status. The records stem from West Middle German and West South German regions and were created between 1580 and 1660. This time frame largely overlaps with the presumed end phase of an internal standardization process of the German written language, which is also the focus of this dissertation in order to make a direct comparison possible. Six orthographic features that are well-documented and should show a strong tendency towards standardization within the time frame were investigated. These investigations revealed that certain deviations between the feature discussions in the Early New High German grammars and the results of this dissertation exist. However, the too narrowly focused data selection of these grammars was not the only factor contributing to these deviations. Other possible explanations are a general reluctance to discuss idiolectal variation and orthographic variation not based on sound change. These could exist due to a long-standing focus on national and spoken language. In general, it was shown that it is important to include more diverse data in the investigation of language history in order to incorporate the entirety of language use across all social classes.Item "Listen to the stories, hear it in the songs" : musical theatre as queer historiography(2010-05) Dvoskin, Michelle Gail; Canning, Charlotte, 1964-; Wolf, Stacy Ellen; Dolan, Jill; Kackman, Michael; Kearney, Mary; Paredez, DeborahThis dissertation takes musical theatre seriously as a historiographic practice, and considers six musicals that take the past as their subject matter in order to interrogate how these works craft their historical narratives. While there have been studies of historical drama and performance, musicals have generally been left out of that conversation, despite (or perhaps because of) their immense popularity. This project argues that not only can musicals “do” history, they offer an excellent genre for theorizing what I call “queer historiography.” While sexuality remains one category of analysis, I use “queer” to signify opposition, not simply to heterosexuality, but to heteronormativity, and normativity more broadly. Musicals’ queer historiography, then, is a way of engaging past events that challenges normativity in form as well as content; a way of productively challenging not only what we think we know about the past, but how we come to know it. Each chapter uses a different theoretical lens to guide close readings of a pair of thematically linked musicals. The first chapter considers 1776 (1969) and Assassins (1991, 2004) as challenges to official narratives of United States history. My primary lens in this chapter is form, as I analyze how musicals’ structures influence their queer historiographic potential. Chapter 2 examines two musicals that offer histories of U.S. popular culture, Gypsy (1959) and Hairspray (2002), considering how the placement of divas at the center of each show enables a historiography that is feminist as well as queer, challenging ideas about gender and sexuality while making women central to the histories they represent. In the third chapter I look to two musicals, Falsettos (1992) and Elegies: A Song Cycle (2003), which present histories of trauma while featuring overtly gay, lesbian, and queer characters. I use these two texts to theorize how musicals might not simply present history as it “really” was, but also as it might have been, thereby offering what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick terms a “reparative reading” of history. In examining each of my six case studies, I analyze specific performances as well as written texts whenever possible.Item News on film : cinematic historiography in Cuba and Brazil(2016-05) Hahn, Cory A.; Salgado, César Augusto; Berg, Charles Ramírez, 1947-; Borge, Jason; Leu Moore, Lorraine; Roncador, SoniaThis dissertation is a comparative project that traces the co-evolution of film realism and communications media in Cuba and Brazil. Beginning with the end of Italian Neorealist-inspired movements in both countries in the late 1950s, I examine the ways in which filmmakers from each tradition incorporate radio, print, and televisual journalism into their cinematic narratives. Foundational directors whose bodies of work span and connect the popular filmmaking booms of the 1960s and 1990s—such as Santiago Álvarez, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Nelson Pereira dos Santos and Eduardo Coutinho—expose the political and technological systems that form public knowledge and guide civic debate. My research dilates on two internationally celebrated periods of film production concurrent with two shifts in news media paradigms: from radio and print journalism to television and from television to the internet. I argue that the renewed interest in news technologies within Cuban and Brazilian films at the beginning of the twenty-first century orients the viewer not to material fact as it is captured on film or coded by digital cameras, but by laying bare the systems of power that control news media content.Item Ox and Laborer: Implications of “For the Scripture Says” in 1 Timothy 5:18(2023) Creel, Alexander; Haimson Lushkov, AyeletThis thesis project argues that, in quoting both the Torah and a Gospel account together in 1 Timothy 5:18, the apostle Paul places them in equal textual and religious authority for his readers, during a time before the entire biblical / New Testament canon was officially established. The main methods used to show this will include research into history, religion, textual criticism, and literary practices of that era; and this via scholarly writings in Classics and Religious studies and biblical commentaries. We examine various ancient texts of the epistle to evaluate potential discrepancies (scribal errors, etc.) and to compare the exact wording of the primary sources (manuscripts of the Gospels, of Paul’s epistle, and of Torah in LXX). We also confer and reference various scholarly texts which analyze what meaning can be derived solely from the text. After compiling and evaluating these primarily literary sources, we also refer to potential historical/cultural factors which impact the meaning and intent of the writings (though this not to say that cultural phenomena and the grammar of language can be fundamentally separated in the first place). And of course, before all of this, it must be shown reasonable that the epistle was written by Paul in the first place. The final product is a mixture of all these types of valuation, organized around different areas of concern for the subject being discussed. The text in question is specifically the verse 1 Timothy 5:18, but more broadly, the goal is to examine the ways in which quotations were used by religiously- and historically-educated figures such as the apostle Paul in order to instruct and write to recipients (here, his apprentice Timothy), and to support specific arguments (here, that those with greater authority who serve responsibly in a religious organization should be recognized for it). This culminates in all the potential implications for his use of these quotations, such as a description of Paul’s overall view of “Scripture” (in the biblical sense); 1 Timothy’s date of composition; and Paul’s understanding of biblical composition in the New Testament era.Item The past in the present and the present in the past : representing history and performing memory on television and in everyday life(2010-05) Rosenheck, Mabel Meigs; Kackman, Michael; Kearney, Mary CelesteMoving from the basic assumption that media and television are vital sites of memory, pivotal spaces in which we learn about the past, this thesis argues that the most productive and progressive representations of the past are those that allow the past to interact with the present. Yet the past is not simply a representation in the present, it is also performed as cultural memory. One of the key concepts here is the idea that if we do indeed find historical knowledge on television and in everyday life as well as in museums and textbooks, then we might apply the concepts, roles and institutions of the museum, concepts like the archive and the curator, to television and historical consciousness in everyday life. Through this logic television programs are archives and audiences are curators, selecting music and fashions from the representation of the past and using them, performing them in everyday life. To explore this, I begin with textual analyses of the television shows American Dreams and Mad Men. Examinations of music and fashion in each show then gives way to inquiries into how the musical and sartorial artifacts contained in each program are brought out into everyday life. While these chapters primarily consider gendered histories and feminist cultural memories, I conclude with a consideration of racial histories, silenced memories and how unique juxtapositions can point to alternative archives and repertoires.Item Translating the discipline : on the institutional memory of German Volkskunde, 1945 to present(2015-05) Randall, Amanda Ziemba; Arens, Katherine, 1953-; Hake, Sabine; Hoberman, John; Pierce, Marc; Nonaka, AngelaThis study examines how Europeanist ethnologists (Volkskundler / Europäische Ethnologen) in Germany (East, West, and reunified) have reconstructed their discipline’s history from the end of World War II to the present. In this treatment, historiography is understood not simply as a discourse, but as a narrative performance by and for parties invested in the discipline. These performances, it will be shown, have real implications for the field’s organizational and epistemic structuring, and vice versa—a symbiosis referred to here as “institutional memory.” The project’s goal is not to produce another history of the discipline, but rather to trace how institutional memory is rewritten or translated (in André Lefevere’s sense) across historical ruptures and in conversation with other social fields (in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense). By mapping the disciplinary identities performed by the field’s authorized parties in monographs, articles, programmatic statements, and interviews conducted with three generations of Volkskundler / Europäische Ethnologen, the analysis reveals to what extent the field’s institutional memory aligns with postwar Germany’s ongoing struggle to connect its past with its current national and global identities. Part I considers how the trope of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (overcoming the past) came to dominate institutional memory in West German and post-reunification Volkskunde / Europäische Ethnologie. Parts II and III then consider latent and emergent boundary issues that had been eclipsed by the long shadow of the National Socialist past. Part II examines the dynamics of East German Volkskunde’s institutional memory and the challenge of gathering the two national traditions into a unified institutional memory after national reunification in 1989/90. Part III considers patterns of interdisciplinary and international boundary-crossing and -reinforcement shown to be both latent across the field’s postwar institutional memory and emergent as the field continues to translate its identity in confronting new external pressures. By considering narrative performances of boundary problems as sites of institutional memory in their own right, the final analysis reveals how the preoccupation with the effects of the Nazi era is in fact only one of several possible, concurrent translations of a centuries-old anxiety over the field’s legitimacy as an independent and institutionalized scientific discipline.Item Triumphal literature, or a literary triumph? : Caesar’s Commentaries and the Roman triumphal procession(2023-07-24) Welch, David George, Jr.; Riggsby, Andrew M.; Haimson Lushkov, Ayelet; Chaudhuri, Pramit; Damon, Cynthia; Ostenberg, IdaThis dissertation examines the relationship between Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War and the Roman triumphal procession. I use the modern theory of intermediality, which posits the possibility of relationships of influence between works of different media, to argue that the Commentaries’ uniqueness in the ancient literary canon can be in part explained by recognizing the significant influence they draw from the triumph. The institution of the triumph meets modern theorists’ criteria for the “historical work,” and there was a long tradition of various forms of writing accompanying individual triumphs – this combination of factors meant that a literary production could not only easily imitate the communicative strategies of the triumph, but we might even say it could expectedly do so. In analyzing such a relationship between the triumph and Caesar’s Commentaries, I divide the subjects presented by these media into two broad categories – the vanquished foe and the victorious Romans. The treatment of the enemy focuses on leveraging their defeat for political clout. The threat posed by the various enemies, whether that be physical or ideological, was the object of concerted emphasis in both media and, in an entirely different vein, more neutral objects of ethnographic interest like local flora and fauna became the objects of lengthier treatments as time progressed. In presenting the victorious Romans, both media focus on instilling a sense of community in their various audiences. While the triumph accomplished this by leaning on the unifying forces of the Romans’ shared history and the fact that the Romans were all physically gathered together on the day of the procession, the Commentaries use the linguistic directness afforded to literary media to more directly remind their readers of their commonality with the Roman army. I conclude by discussing the impact that the environment of aristocratic competition had on the incorporation of triumphal elements in the Commentaries. I propose that Commentaries were a natural next step in the evolving field of Republican aristocratic competition, and that their inherently Republican nature guaranteed their lack of literary successors, given their publication in the final years before the fall of the Republic and the establishment of the principate