Browsing by Subject "Latin literature"

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The atrium and models of space in Latin literature
(2011-05) Dibiasie, Jacqueline Frost; Taylor, Rabun M.; Riggsby, Andrew M.
This report examines all the occurrences of the atrium in Latin literature and the context for each occasion. It begins with an overview of the etymology of atrium and the development of the atrium-house plan then analyzes the use of the word atrium in terms of theories of spatial conception. The results are that the atrium as a cognitive model is restricted to an upper class, elite mindset and that the space appears to be more multifunctional in nature than is usually thought.
Delusions of grandeur : humor, genre, and aesthetics in the poetry of Statius
(2019-08-15) Bolt, Thomas James; Chaudhuri, Pramit (Classicist); Lushkov, Ayelet H; Riggsby, Andrew M; Coffee, Neil; Keith, Alison
In this dissertation, I examine humor in Roman literature with a focus on Statius’ Thebaid, Achilleid, and Silvae. I demonstrate that humor is a prevalent feature of Statius’ poetry and takes forms ranging from humorous irony to hyperbolic parody of epic conventions. By instilling humor in his poetic program, Statius challenges several central facets of epic, such as its aesthetic grandeur and lofty idiom; at the same time, he revitalizes and complicates notions about epic’s generic totalizing impulse. What emerges from Statius’ poetry is an aesthetic that embraces polyvalent and diverse registers as well as complex interactions between the humorous and serious tones that both vie for attention. In the Introduction and Chapter 1, I outline the problems, theoretical and practical, that humor presents an epic poet. I then sketch out definitions and methodology before analyzing salient examples of humorous irony and wordplay in the Thebaid and Achilleid so as to show humor’s variety and breadth in the Statian epics. In Chapter 2, I turn to satire, the quintessential humorous hexameter genre. I argue that the tight interrelationship of the epic and satiric traditions allows Statius to take humorous literary strategies from satire and employ them in epic with ease. In Chapter 3, I investigate one of these strategies, parodic quotation, and argue that Statius employs it to render his epic contemporaries and the canon absurd through humorous de- and re-contextualization. In Chapter 4, I consider Statius’ use of the sublime, an influential ancient aesthetic concept. I demonstrate that Statius consistently renders sublimity humorous, thus destabilizing the sublime’s straightforward loftiness and complicating ideas of epic grandeur. By way of conclusion, I consider the political realities of literary humor in the late first century CE through analysis of the Silvae, a collection whose associations with contemporary politics are overt, before briefly reflecting on the legacy of humor in the broader epic tradition.
Explaining the success of Roman freedmen : a pseudo-Darwinian approach
(2014-08) Sibley, Matthew John; Galinsky, Karl, 1942-
In Roman society, freed slaves were elevated to a citizen-like status, yet they never had the full rights of their free-born counterparts. Despite the inequality of the system, many freedmen appear to have found great success in the realm of business. This report endeavors to reveal why it was that this group prospered within the Roman economy using a pseudo-Darwinian perspective. Scholarship has, for the most part, tended to avoid Darwinian lines of thought in sociological studies but this report shows the power of this type of thinking. The first chapter clarifies the nature of slavery in the Roman world and the wide variety of experiences that slaves could have. Chapter two considers the different ways that slaves could be manumitted and how a freedman’s status could differ depending on the formality of his release from servitude. The third chapter examines the literary representations of freedmen in the genre of comedy and Petronius’ Satyricon. Chapter four turns to the archaeological evidence and provides a sense of how freedmen represented themselves to the wider community. Lastly, the fifth chapter, using a pseudo-Darwinian model, will show that the image of the successful freedman is not an anomaly of the archaeological record or a trope of Latin literature but an inevitable outcome of the intense selection that slaves underwent.
Propertius and Augustus
(2011-05) Kruebbe, Ashley Dawn; Nethercut, William Robert, 1936-; Hubbard, Thomas K.
Propertius, affected at an early age by Augustus' quest for power and the submission of the conquered, had attitudes critical of Augustus, but he felt pressure to veil his true opinions by flattering the Emperor in his poetry for the sake of self-preservation. Many of his poems praise the military accomplishments of Augustus, but they also contain signals that Propertius is not expressing his true attitudes on the surface. Propertius gives descriptions of military conquest a distasteful flavor, and he rejects outright the Augustan program of pax through the total subjugation of Rome’s enemies, with whom he identifies as a victim of imperial conquest.
The hymn and the hymnal in Horatian lyric
(2021-07-30) Zaramian, Alain; Hubbard, Thomas K.; Armstrong, David; Athanassaki, Lucia; Barchiesi, Alessandro; Riggsby, Andrew M
This dissertation is a study of Horace’s lyric hymns and prayers. As such, it aims to provide an up-to-date account of one of Horace’s most favored modes of lyric expression. By detailing the traditions of the Greco-Roman hymn in relation to Horace’s lyric, we will notice that these hymnic features structure the poet’s compositional methods even in certain odes not typically identified as hymns (e.g., Odes 1.16, 1.17, 3.3, 3.28). More broadly, my project explores the ways in which Horace’s employment and manipulation of the hymnic form contributes to the larger rhetorical program of his first lyric collection (Odes 1-3), and a decade later in Odes 4, where the form proliferates and still more appreciably interacts with a related poetic mode, the encomium. As for those Horatian odes that are undoubtedly or primarily hymnic, I demonstrate by means of detailed readings how the poet employs the conventions of Greco-Roman hymnody in both expected and unexpected ways.
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, Ida
This 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