Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, History (Arts and Sciences)

This thesis essays to study and interpret a small body of poems from Southern Gaul which respond to the breach of the Rhine frontier and subsequent crises from 406-418 AD. After demonstrating contemporary literary conventions in both secular and Christian discourses, the paper will survey how the poems in question came to terms with recent catastrophe and thereby rearticulated differing ideas of empire and meta-history which drew upon the Latin Epic tradition but deployed them in a context that was increasingly Christian and destabilized. While this will shed limited light on the political events, it will primarily serve to situate the beginnings of the Fall of the Western Empire in their intellectual context and indicate how they served as agents of the transformation of the Classical World and the draining of the secular.

Committee: Jaclyn Maxwell (Committee Chair); Kevin Uhalde (Committee Member); Neil Bernstein (Committee Member) Subjects: Classical Studies; Education History; European History; History; Medieval History; Medieval Literature; Middle Ages; Religion; Religious History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, English

The makers of commercial popular culture often incorporate folklore into their works. Although their definition of folklore is generally restricted to pre-modern narratives and beliefs that form only a small part of what folklore is, their works relate to traditional content in a more expansive way. This dissertation examines a contemporary television genre that not only incorporates traditional content but, I argue, functions as folklore in its own right by negotiating truth and belief, constructing social Others, and, at the meta-level, constituting an archive. Since the 1990s, serial narratives in which everyday people investigate and solve supernatural disturbances in a procedural format have become a mainstay of North American television and streaming media. Such programs, including The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, have generally lacked a cohesive genre designation. I argue for “supernatural procedural” as the genre's preferred term and trace its history from predecessors in Victorian-era occult detective fiction to early forms in 1970s television, through solidification in the 1990s into its current permutations. I outline conventions that include, among others, realistic worldbuilding, a blend of episodic and serial storytelling, and, notably, a tendency to engage with folklore. Employing an approach blending folkloristics and popular culture studies, I argue that specific characteristics of the supernatural procedural allow series to function as televisual folklore: folklore not just adapted by, but actually occurring within the television medium. This emphasis contributes to newer avenues in folklore studies, which has only recently begun seriously analyzing television, and popular culture studies, where folkloristic perspectives are often overlooked. This work considers the abovementioned series at length alongside subsequent programs like Supernatural and Grimm, using supporting analysis from Lucifer, Evil, SurrealEstate, and Wellington Pa (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dorothy Noyes (Advisor); Angus Fletcher (Committee Member); Merrill Kaplan (Committee Member); Jared Gardner (Advisor) Subjects: Film Studies; Folklore; Mass Media

MA, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

In this paper I explore Vergil's depiction of his female figures in the light of the optimistic and pessimistic debate. I argue that Vergil depicts his female characters as controlled by furor, as juxtaposed to Aeneas' virtus, in order to use his female characters as a narrative and symbolic foil who work to prevent the success of Aeneas' mission. Specifically, I argue that Vergil uses elegiac and tragic conventions and adapts the depiction of females from his literary predecessors Homer, Apollonius, Callimachus, and Catullus (amongst others) to create a female figure that is representative of furor and the East, so that Aeneas' rejection of these figures symbolically represents the triumphs of Augustus and Rome. I further argue that any sympathy and ambiguities Vergil ascribes to these female characters, while they allow the reader to connect to these characters and the literary work on more than one level, still serve the political purpose of creating a more realistic connection between Aeneas and Augustus, who was facing the task of needing to reinvent himself to a Roman people he had recently disenfranchised from their land and whom he had fought in a violent civil war.

Committee: Jennifer Larson (Advisor); Sarah Harvey (Committee Member); Brian Harvey (Committee Member) Subjects: Classical Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, Instructional Technology (Education)

This qualitative study explores faculty responses to student plagiarism in relation to the use or non-use of plagiarism detection software. The faculty participants responded to intentional and unintentional student plagiarism through a teaching lens by teaching students academic writing skills and/or life lessons on personality integrity. Pedagogical interventions were used by the participants to deter student plagiarism, including those participants who also chose to utilize plagiarism detection software. Participants using plagiarism detection software provided their students with opportunities to revise intentionally or unintentionally plagiarized work. Exploration of faculty perceptions on plagiarism detection software showed similarities among participants when grouped by academic discipline. Plagiarism is complicated by differences in disciplinary writing conventions and concepts such as intertextuality, text overlap, and patchwriting. Further qualitative research is needed on faculty perceptions of student plagiarism, as well as discipline-specific practices and expectations.

Committee: Greg Kessler (Committee Chair); Yuchun Zhou (Committee Member); Jesse Strycker (Committee Member); Danielle Dani (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Educational Technology

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2019, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

This thesis, written in English, is a comparative analysis of Walter Benjamin's and Annie Ernaux's readings of 'A la recherche du temps perdu' by Marcel Proust. While Benjamin emphasizes Proust's storytelling capabilities and commends Proust for his descriptions of involuntary memory, Ernaux works more critically to reimagine a writing process removed of spontaneous experience. To develop this point, we apply Benjamin's definitions of `storyteller' and `experience'; to Ernaux's Les Annees (2008), an autobiography written almost entirely without the first-person singular pronoun. Using Benjamin's terminology, we question the relationship between writing and collectivity, not only asking `how is Les Annees a collective autobiography,' but also `how can one write collectively?' We conclude by unraveling the mechanics of the `collective image' at work in Les Annees: Ernaux's collective image does not speak for all people, nor does it claim to be an objective rendition of the past; rather, writing such an image is an ethical exercise, a social engagement with one's community and one's selves.

Committee: Audrey Wasser Dr. (Advisor); Elisabeth Hodges Dr. (Committee Member); Jonathan Strauss Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Comparative Literature; Literature; Modern Language; Modern Literature; Technology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, EDU Teaching and Learning

This study explored the ways in which seventh and eighth grade students in three small-group book discussions used and responded to Critical Companions, texts used to supplement and support students' critical reading of young adult novels. The Critical Companions were written from the perspective of a variety of critical literary theories with the intention of raising questions around dominant ideologies and hegemonic beliefs relevant to the novels they accompanied (the focal texts). In order to examine how participants used the Critical Companions in conjunction with the focal texts, this study foregrounded the role of intertextuality in the social construction of knowledge. This study examined the cultural resources participants brought to the discussion as intertexts and how those various intertexts were highlighted or ignored during discussion. A major premise underlying this research was that intertextuality is socially constructed and that, by privileging or ignoring certain references, participants in the discussions established the cultural ideology of the book clubs.

Committee: Ian Wilkinson (Advisor); Michelle Abate (Committee Member); Mollie Blackburn (Committee Member); Caroline Clark (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Literacy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, Greek and Latin

This dissertation explores Euripides' use of the deus ex machina device in his extant plays. While many scholars have discussed aspects of the deus ex machina my project explores the overall function not only of the deus ex machina within its play but also the function of two other aspects common to deus ex machina speeches: aitia and prophecy. I argue that deus ex machina interventions are not motivated by a problem in the plot that they must solve but instead they are used to connect the world of the play to the world of the audience through use of cult aitia and prophecy. In Chapter 1, I provide an analysis of Euripides' deus ex machina scenes in the Hippolytus, Andromache, Suppliants, Electra, Ion, Iphigenia in Tauris, Helen, Orestes, Bacchae, and Medea. I argue that in all but the Orestes the intervention does not have a major effect on the plot or characters and I identify certain trends in the function of deus ex machina scenes such as consolation, enhancing Athenian pride, and increasing experimentation in the deus ex machina's role in respect to the plot of the play and the wider world of myth. In Chapter 2, I examine cult aitia in Euripides' Hippolytus and Iphigenia in Tauris and argue that Euripides uses cult aitia in plays with strong religious or cultic themes in order to connect the world of the play with the world of the audience through ritual. I also argue against the idea that there is perfect correspondence between the aitia represented in Euripides and real life cult practice instead contending that differences between the aitia in Euripides and our evidence for real cult practice may stem from Euripides referencing real cults but modifying certain aspects in order to better suit his literary motives. In Chapter 3, I examine Euripides' use of prophecy in his Electra, Helen, and Orestes. Using intertextuality and concepts from media studies I argue that Euripides uses prophecy to connect the world of the play to the world of the audience (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dana Munteanu (Advisor); Sarah Johnston (Committee Member); Hawkins Thomas (Committee Member) Subjects: Classical Studies; Literature; Theater

M.M., University of Cincinnati, 2016, College-Conservatory of Music: Music History

Anabaptism is one of the smaller, less well-known movements of the sixteenth-century Reformation. Very little musicological research regarding this separatist group has been done, partly due to their small size, lack of engagement in the contemporary religiopolitical landscape, and the near non-existence of musical notation within the movement's musical repertoire. The largest extant collection from the first half-century of Anabaptism, Etliche Schone Christliche Geseng/wie sie in der Gefengkniß zu Passaw im Schloß von den Schweitzer Brudern durch Gottes gnad geticht und gesungen worden, was published anonymously in 1564 and expanded in 1583 with the additional title of “Ausbund, das ist.” The collection is comprised entirely of contrafacts. Scholars have identified the origins of most of the source tunes that Etliche Geseng references, though they have not frequently considered the relationships that exist between models and contrafacts aside from shared melodies. Expanding on Rebecca Wagner Oettinger's categories of intertextual relationships as presented in her book Music as Propaganda in the German Reformation, one is able to gain insight into the musical lives and cultural awareness of the Etliche Gesengauthors. Patterns identified through the study of intertextual relationships even have the potential to indicate the origins and perhaps even the subject matter of model songs that are no longer extant.

Committee: Stephanie Schlagel Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Matthew Peattie Ph.D. (Committee Member); Mary Stucky M.M. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2016, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

In this study, I explore the manner in which contemporary artistic reimaginings of the Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata with a characteristically Western bent intervene in the dominant discourse on the epic. Through an analysis of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's The Palace of Illusions (2008), Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel (1989), and Peter Brook's theatrical production The Mahabharata (1989 television mini-series), I argue that these reimaginings represent a tendency to challenge the cultural authority of the Sanskrit epic in certain important ways. The study is premised on the recognition that the three works of art in question respond, some more consciously than others, to three established assumptions regarding the Mahabharata respectively: (1) the Sanskrit epic as a product of divine authorship; (2) the Sanskrit epic as history; and (3) the Sanskrit epic as the story of a particular race. In their engagement with the epic, these works foreground the concepts of the author, history, and race respectively in such a manner that the apparent stability and unity of those concepts disappear and that those concepts become sites of theoretical reflection. In this sense, the three works could ultimately be seen as theoretical statements or discourses on those concepts. Given that the concepts in question are inextricably linked to the Sanskrit epic and the dominant discourse on the epic, the success and importance of each of the contemporary works as an approach that challenges the cultural authority of the Mahabharata depends upon the extent to which it complicates the concept that it engages with and foregrounds that concept as a site of theoretical reflection.

Committee: Vladimir Marchenkov (Committee Chair); William Condee (Committee Member); Brian Collins (Committee Member); Ghirmai Negash (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Literature; Asian Studies; Comparative Literature; Fine Arts; Literature; South Asian Studies

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2015, Arts and Sciences: Romance Languages and Literatures

My dissertation entitled “Confluences of the Literary Genres in the Central American Literatures: Testimonio, Novels and the “I” Narratives” (“Confluencias de los generos literarios en la literatura centroamericana: testimonio, novela y narrativas del yo”) focuses on three Central American authors: Claribel Alegria, Sergio Ramirez y Gioconda Belli whose texts present a fusion of elements from various literary genres. Thus, I discuss three texts from each author and I demonstrate the literary genres can not be retain within the limits of the framework literary theoreticians and critics established for testimonio, novel and personal narratives. The first chapter is concerned with the theories of the “I” narratives, the novel and the testimonial narratives. Moreover, this chapter discusses the theoretical approaches to the concepts of memory and truth, which are integral to the personal narratives and the testimonio. Nonetheless, this chapter is only an approximation to the theory of the genres already mentioned and does not pretend to exhaust the topic but to offer several guidelines concerning personal narratives, testimonio and novel. In the second chapter, I analyze three books by Claribel Alegria: Cenizas de Izalco (1966), No me agarran viva: la mujer en la lucha (1983), y Luisa en el pais de la realidad (1987). Thus, I examine Alegria's writing through the perspective of the testimonial theory established by Miguel Barnet because all her books contain some testimonial elements. This way I show that Alegria's texts do not comprise a sole genre but her writing employs a variety of elements, which come together to express the cruel reality of the Salvadorian revolution. The third chapter focuses on three texts by Sergio Ramirez. La marca de zorro. Hazanas del comandante Francisco Rivera Quintero contadas a Sergio Ramirez (1989) is written primarily in the testimonial genre, nonetheless, as in Alegria's writing, Ramirez employs elements of the novel. The book Ad (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Nicasio Urbina Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Carlos Gutierrez Ph.D. (Committee Member); Patricia Valladares-Ruiz Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2015, Popular Culture

This thesis examines the process of adapting comic book properties into other visual media. I focus on the DC Animated Universe, the popular adaptation of DC Comics characters and concepts into all-ages programming. This adapted universe started with Batman: The Animated Series and comprised several shows on multiple networks, all of which fit into a shared universe based on their comic book counterparts. The adaptation of these properties is heavily reliant to intertextuality across DC Comics media. The shared universe developed within the television medium acted as an early example of comic book media adapting the idea of shared universes, a process that has been replicated with extreme financial success by DC and Marvel (in various stages of fruition). I address the process of adapting DC Comics properties in television, dividing it into “strict” or “loose” adaptations, as well as derivative adaptations that add new material to the comic book canon. This process was initially slow, exploding after the first series (Batman: The Animated Series) changed networks and Saturday morning cartoons flourished, allowing for more opportunities for producers to create content. References, crossover episodes, and the later series Justice League Unlimited allowed producers to utilize this shared universe to develop otherwise impossible adaptations that often became lasting additions to DC Comics publishing. Concepts developed in this paratextual universe became popular enough to see recursive adaptation in DC Comics ongoing comic book universe and other media, emphasizing the importance of cross-media connections. The continued popularity and success of comic book media is reliant on cross-media synergy and shared universes.

Committee: Jeffrey Brown PhD (Advisor); Becca Cragin PhD (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Comparative Literature; Fine Arts; Literature; Mass Media; Modern History; Modern Literature; Multimedia Communications

PHD, Kent State University, 2014, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies

There may be several potential obstacles that make nourishing active readers and thinkers a challenge and may contribute to passive learning in the content areas. One alternative method of instruction might be engaging students in experiencing intertextuality through authentic literature and meaningful writing in the content area classroom. A mixed methods study with a grounded theory focus was the methodology used to research this phenomenon. Questionnaires, student artifacts, observations, and student and teacher interviews were forms of qualitative data while attitude inventories were collected as quantitative data. Six themes represent the findings: evolution of content knowledge, learning in the content areas is real and relevant, real literature transforms students to being real readers, the evolution of literate behaviors, development of intertextual thinking, and dispositions. The findings were presented with subthemes so as to guide the reader, add to readability, and paint a complete, vivid description of the phenomenon studied.

Committee: William Bintz (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Literacy

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2014, Popular Culture

In this thesis, I examine intertextuality present between The Sopranos and Mad Men, particularly in regards to each show's protagonist. Tony Soprano and Don Draper are complex characters, each with their own conflicts, neuroses, and supporting characters, yet both men address a similar question: what does it mean to be a man in 21st century America? Both men deal with complex identities due to their pasts, exacerbated struggles due to their jobs, and most importantly, equally complex women who challenge their authority. While addressing issues of gender, I discuss the linkages present between each show's creator, David Chase and Matthew Weiner, which speaks to the broader thematic overlap between the two dramas. Intertextuality, partially stemming from Weiner's time in the Sopranos writing room under Chase, can help to interrogate television's own auteur, the showrunner. I also analyze the white male antihero archetype as a whole, which has been popular on American television in the past fifteen years, as I trace the major conflicts to Robert Warshow's formulation of the gangster as a tragic hero. For Warshow, though, the gangster ultimately worked as a straightforward morality tale - in these shows, the message of the antihero is deliberately muddled, crafting an intimate portrait of masculinity in crisis. Ultimately, Tony and Don fail to hold on to their past identities and masculinities in the face of their antiheroism, which may help to explain the appeal of the white male antihero archetype.

Committee: Becca Cragin (Advisor); Esther Clinton (Committee Member); Jeremy Wallach (Committee Member) Subjects: Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Mass Media

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Greek and Latin

This dissertation explores the relationships between the dramatic genres of Greek comedy, tragedy and satyr drama in the 5th century BCE. I propose that Athenian tragedians had the freedom to appropriate elements and tropes drawn from comedy into their plays, a process that I call paracomedy. While most scholars do not admit the possibility of paracomedy, I suggest that frequent examples of paracomedy exist in all three major tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides), and I provide numerous examples of paratragedy and paracomedy between Euripides and Aristophanes. In Chapter 1, I demonstrate the extent of paracomedy in tragedy, explore the theoretical background behind these appropriations of genre, and provide a methodology for determining paracomedy based on distinctive correspondences, the priority of the comedic element, and the motivation for adopting features from outside the genre. In Chapter 2, I explore the rivalry between Euripides and Aristophanes concerning plots involving "sword-bearing" and "razor-bearing men", arguing that Aristophanes parodied the "sword-bearing men" escape plot in Euripides' Helen by staging a "razor-bearing man" escape plot in Thesmophoriazusae, and that Euripides responded to this parody by increasing the amount of "sword-bearing men" in his subsequent play Orestes. In Chapter 3, I suggest that the parodos to Euripides' Orestes is modeled on the parodos of Aristophanes' Peace, due to the adoption of the comedic element "varying levels of choral volume in a madness scene". Furthermore, I analyze the evidence from satyr drama, ultimately proposing the possibility of a two-pronged response to Aristophanes in 408 BCE in Euripides' Orestes and Cyclops. In Chapter 4, I analyze the tragedic and comedic traditions of hostage scenes developing from Euripides' Telephus, arguing that in Thesmophoriazusae, Aristophanes innovated the addition of an incineration plot to the hostage scene tradition, which Euripides subsequently adopted int (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Tom Hawkins (Advisor); Fritz Graf (Committee Member); Dana Munteanu (Committee Member) Subjects: Classical Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, EDU Teaching and Learning

This dissertation traces the participation of three students across two instructional units during the teaching and learning of argumentation and argumentative writing. The data is drawn from an ethnographically informed study in a 9th and 10th grade English language arts class within a humanities course. The teacher foregrounded argumentative writing as a product of argumentation and taught argumentative elements (i.e., claim, evidence, warrant) progressively, co-constructing knowledge with her students. Using a micro-ethnographic discourse analysis, the researcher analyzed typical and telling events to trace students; participation and triangulated with students; written products and student and teacher interviews. The investigator found that both the teacher and the students understood argumentation as a set of social and relational practices, that they learned and deployed the language of argumentation, and that they created intertextual links as they developed arguments. The teacher provided learning opportunities through multiple levels of classroom activity. The focal teacher had two years to work toward deep understanding with her students. The findings help complicate argumentation as a social and relational process. The study suggests providing students opportunities for taking up and adapting argumentation in a range of ways that are sensitive to student identities and sensitive to an adaptation to a range of tasks opens up space for students and teachers to create arguments. More so, when argumentation is presented as a way of thinking;a habit of mind;rather than a regime of textual discipline, it becomes another way to interact with others and gain deep understanding of academic content

Committee: David Bloome (Advisor); Caroline Clark (Committee Member); George Newell (Committee Member); Cynthia Selfe (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2011, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Art History

During the Edo Period (1600-1867), a fresh conception of the Tale of Genji, a novel by Lady Murasaki (c. 1000), arose in the realm of woodblock prints or ukiyo-e (prints of the floating world). This new conception represented the romantic escapades of the shining prince Genji, the epitome of courtly elegance, as the quintessential playboy. By tracing the transposition of Genji from high court culture to the floating world of Edo, I illuminate how Edoites preferred him as a philanderer in the pleasure quarters. This contemporary Genji peaked with An Imposter Murasaki and a Rustic Genji (Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji, 1829–1842) authored by Ryutei Tanehiko (1783 – 1842) and illustrated by Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1864). The wide distribution of Kunisada's Rustic Genji prints bolstered the new conception of Genji to iconic proportions. Through the concept of intertextuality, I contextualize Rustic Genji media, explaining its allure in nineteenth-century Edo. By analyzing Rustic Genji's images and story, I contribute to the rectification of a marginalized area of scholarship.

Committee: Mikiko Hirayama PhD (Committee Chair); Betsy Sato PhD (Committee Member); Theresa Leininger-Miller PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Arts and Sciences : Classics

With over 3,400 lines of poetry and no single monograph dedicated to her literary productions, Aelia Eudocia is an understudied poet. This project, the first of its kind, explores Eudocia's three poems as a unified whole and demonstrates how they exemplify the literary and cultural concerns of the fifth century. Since her poems are each apparently unique, I approach them first in isolation and tease out their social background, literary dependencies, and possible interpretive strategies for them before painting a broader picture of Eudocia's literary contribution. The first of her surviving poems is a seventeen line epigraphic poem from the bath complex at Hammat Gader, which acclaims the bath's furnace for its service to the structure's clients but, at the same time, illustrates the religious competition that surrounded late antique healing cults, of which therapeutic springs were part. Next is the Homeric cento, which borrows and reorders lines from the Iliad and Odyssey to retell parts of the biblical narrative. Eudocia's attempt at this bizarre genre underscores the interplay between the Homeric poems, and the classical culture they represent, and the biblical story, with its theology and ethics. Last is the Martyrdom of Saint Cyprian, the first verse hagiography of its kind, which, because of the disparate sources available to Eudocia, is divided into two sections. The first part relates the conversion of Cyprian, an Antiochene magician, a story, I suggest, that depends on the Christian apocrypha, particularly for the development of its heroine, Justa. The second part recounts, in a speech by Cyprian himself, how he learned magic and why he converted. This section provides a glimpse into the ways late antique Christians understood paganism and the rhetoric they used to limit its hold in the later Roman empire. The big picture of Eudocia's poetry is that of a corpus, which uses Homeric language to convey fifth century, Christian concerns, and of a poet who can a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Peter van Minnen PhD (Committee Chair); William Johnson PhD (Committee Member); Susan Prince PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Classical Studies

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2008, College-Conservatory of Music : Music (Musicology)

The first quarter of the sixteenth century witnessed tightening connections between rhetoric, poetry, and music. In theoretical writings, composers of this period are evaluated according to their ability to reflect successfully the emotions and meaning of the text set in musical terms. The same period also witnessed the rise of the five- and six-voice chanson, whose most important exponents are Josquin des Prez, Pierre de La Rue, and Jean Mouton. The new expanded textures posed several compositional challenges but also offered greater opportunities for text expression. Rhetorical analysis is particularly suitable for this repertory as it is justified by the composers' contacts with humanistic ideals and the newer text-expressive approach. Especially Josquin's exposure to humanism must have been extensive during his long-lasting residence in Italy, before returning to Northern France, where he most likely composed his multi-voice chansons. The present dissertation explores the musico-rhetorical resources that demonstrate how composers read and interpreted contemporary poetic texts in conjunction with their efforts to accommodate larger textures in the secular domain. Musical rhetoric is thus understood as the totality of musical gestures that aim to secure a successful delivery of musical speech. Musico-rhetorical analysis of the repertory demonstrates that composers of the time read more in the poetry they set than the rhyme scheme and the syntax of the verses. They responded, albeit by various and subtle musical means, to the semantic implications of the text, its bawdy, serious, or mixed register, to the changes from indirect speech to personal declaration or third-person address, to the sonorous quality of the verse and its projection through the expanded polyphonic fabric, and to the resonances of the text with other texts or musical settings. Especially in chansons in the courtly register, composers frequently employed gestures derived form classical rhetoric (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stephanie P. Schlagel PhD (Committee Chair); Miguel Roig-Francoli PhD (Committee Member); Edward Nowacki PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2010, Greek and Latin

In response to recent scholarship on the function of the prologue to Apuleius' Metamorphoses and the exordium of the Apologia, this thesis employs the intersection of these approaches in analysis of Apuleius' Florida, a collection of rhetorical fragments. Although most of the fragments are incomplete, some can be identified as exordia which still retain some or all of their contextualizing narrationes; these fragments can be analyzed similarly to the exordium of the Apologia in that the themes introduced in the exordium can be traced intratextually throughout the course of the speech. Florida 1, although its narratio has not survived and thus cannot be analyzed as an introductory exordium, does occupy the position of the praefatio to the collection as it has survived in textual form. Florida 1 therefore occupies the same role for the collection as a whole as the prologue does for the Metamorphoses, preparing the reader for the literary text to follow. An analysis of the introductory passages to Apuleius' Florida must take into account the text's unusual plurality of introductions both in number and form, necessitating an approach that incorporates both the rhetorical and the literary. Analysis of these passages principally demonstrates Apuleius' didacticism and dialogism, the foundations of which are the relationship which he cultivates with his audience, his own text, and other texts. Apuleius characterizes his relationship with his audience most prominently by means of captationes benevolentiae, statements generally dismissed by scholars as the means by which an orator ingratiates himself to his audience. Apuleius' addresses to his audience, however, demonstrate the cultural and intellectual exchange which is the foundation of their relationship. He often presents his speech as a means of intellectual repayment to the city of Carthage, creating an intimate link between his audience, his speech, and education. In this manner, Apuleius invites his audience to partic (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Fletcher Ph.D. (Advisor); Tom Hawkins Ph.D. (Committee Member); Anna McCullough Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Classical Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2005, Spanish and Portuguese

This dissertation proposes a new approach to the poetics of the late Spanish poet Jose Angel Valente (1929-2000), a member of the “Generation of the 50's”. Its purpose is to evaluate mystical influences as a projection of an ontological state, a necessity of being to explore its own immanence. The historical context is the divide between modernity and postmodernity in a movement toward an ideal notion of premodernity. Valente develops an immanent and transcendent inner voyage which is not just a reaction against the age of mechanical or technological reproduction, but a way of establishing a new epistemological analysis in order to examine more effectively the traditional notion of “reality”. His is an antirationalist thought that seeks to fill in the gaps in the traditional rationalistic and positivistic modes of analysis. Thus, his attitude is the same as the one practiced by mystics of all eras, who have always tried to avoid established ways of thought, whether religious, social or linguistic. All of Valente's essays, critical works and books of poetry are permeated by mystical intertextualities and by the literary and philosophical commentaries of three mystical traditions which have been deeply rooted in Spain: the Jewish Cabala (Abraham Abulafia, Moses de Leon, Moses Cordovero…), Muslim Sufism (Ibn ‘Arabi, the Avicena brothers…), and the Christian Catholics (San Juan de la Cruz, Santa Teresa de Jesus, Miguel de Molinos…). These influences, moreover, were profoundly stimulated by the authority of the noted Spanish philosopher Maria Zambrano, whose ideas about “diafanidad” or “poetic reason” are basic to understanding his poems. Study of these influences on his poetry is essential so as to understand his evolution from an initial desire for poetic communication in history to a search for a new mode of mystical expression and knowledge in what I call “ultrahistory”. Namely, Valente is searching human transcendence in the innermost parts of his own shattered imma (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stephen Summerhill (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, Modern