Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1916, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

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

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1967, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1917, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Arts and Sciences: Classics

This dissertation investigates Seneca the Younger's complex reception of Roman comedy by focusing on the figure of the so-called seruus callidus (literally, “clever slave”)—one of the comic genre's most popular and enduring stock characters, perhaps best recognized as the eponymous character in Plautus' Pseudolus. Able to control other characters and to direct their own plays-wihtin-the-plays, serui callidi are some of the most efficacious movers and shakers in Roman comedy. The central premise of my dissertation is that Seneca's tragedies reveal a widespread and increasing interest in adopting and adapting language, characterization, and plot(-making skill)s associated with the seruus callidus from his earlier plays (the Phaedra and the Troades) to his late masterpiece, the Thyestes. My study of Senecan tragedy not only generates new knowledge of how ancient tragedy can and did use comedy to enhance tragic ends, but also how an enslaved character from republican Roman comedy had a lasting impact and influence on imperial literature. Following Stephen Harrison's notion of “generic enrichment” (2007), I explore what I call “comic enrichment” in Senecan tragedy, whereby the host genre of tragedy incorporates easily recognizable formal and thematic elements from the guest genre of comedy which in turn open new horizons and imbues new dramatic energy through these guest elements. In Chapter 1, I argue that Seneca encodes the unnamed figure of the Nurse with the persona of the “clever slave” as she attempts to break out of the tragic world of the plot; the Nurse is recognizable engaged with the comic mode and with the love plots of New Comedy from the start of the play, creating a productive yet disturbing tension between two dramatic forms that unravels at the play's tragic end. In Chapter 2, Seneca innovates further by crafting the Andromache of the Troades as a trickster in the guise of a seruus callidus in competition with Ulysses—ancient literature's tricks (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel Markovich Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Sanjaya Thakur Ph.D. (Committee Member); Kathryn Gutzwiller Ph.D. (Committee Member); Lauren Ginsberg Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Classical Studies

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Arts and Sciences: Classics

“The Telemachus Complex: Becoming Good Heirs on the Tragic Stage” applies to Greek tragedies psychoanalytic theory (the “Telemachus Complex” codified by Massimo Recalcati in response to Freud's own Oedipal Complex). This framework explains inheritance as an “act of reclamation”: sons need to exercise an active role in negotiating the symbolic debt connecting them to their fathers. Their “movement forward” to reclaim their position stems primarily from an individual choice, which should neither dismiss or recreate the memory of father's deeds. In the first chapter, I explore how Aeschylus shows the dangers of a firm rejection of the father's example of political authority, as Xerxes demonstrates it in the aftermath of the battle of Salamis throughout the Persians. Next, I concentrate on Aeschylus' Oresteia and argue that Orestes conceives of inheritance primarily as the need to claim his father's wealth and position of power in Argos, following closely in Agamemnon's footsteps, while the gods (Apollo, Athena) are reinforcing the leading role fathers exercise in their sons' lives, In the second chapter, I investigate how Sophocles offers a different representation of this issue by looking at the ethical implications of a father's example. I focus first on his earlier plays, where fathers impose on their offspring unquestioning obedience (Antigone) and the faithful imitation of their beliefs (Ajax, Trachiniae). These offspring (Ajax, Haemon and Hyllus) cannot deviate from their father's norms, but they should rather conform to them. Sophocles progressively concentrates on the sons' ability to go beyond the complete rejection and the passive duplication of fatherly examples. In the Electra and Philoctetes, Orestes and Neoptolemus offer the best embodiment of a successful heir mastering the “Telemachus Complex”: both these characters act upon their legacy, without being too attached to or too dismissive of their fathers' deeds. The third chapter shows how fili (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kathryn Gutzwiller Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Anna Conser Ph.D. (Committee Member); Lauri Reitzammer Ph.D. (Committee Member); Daniel Markovic Ph.D. (Committee Member); Caitlin Hines Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Classical Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2022, Psychology - Experimental

Philosophers have long questioned the nature of morality and our moral sensibilities. Definitive answers have been difficult to come by. In response, psychologists have gathered mountains of empirical data to understand how these sensibilities are realized as moral beliefs or as moral judgments. Traditionally, researchers have required people to provide judgments about what is morally appropriate within morally charged hypothetical situations. Known as moral dilemmas, people's judgments are taken to be informative about their underlying ethical beliefs. While this common practice has produced powerful insights about our moral sensibilities, some have questioned whether the collected data is predictive of our real-world behaviors in morally significant situations. Thus, researchers have called for investigations that measure moral behavior, or at least associate behaviors, with moral judgments. While some investigations have used creative methods to target behavior, many have taken to studying people's behavior in games, associating it with their moral judgments or beliefs. In this quickly growing area that studies moral behavior in games, researchers have yet to investigate how people's moral judgments predict behavior in games that simulate the tragedy of the commons. The particular importance of commons dilemmas comes to light when considering not only some influential arguments of past thinkers about the superiority of rational moral theories but also, the growing threat commons dilemmas pose to an ever-more globalized world, where viral pandemics and climate change have exerted increased pressure on human society. In recognition of these facts, a new package of research was initiated to investigate whether certain types of moral responders (and patterns of moral judgment) predict behavior in game situations that simulate commons dilemmas. Within this package, two pilot studies and three experiments were performed to test two key premises. First, do moral judgmen (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Jasper PhD (Committee Chair); Stephen Christman PhD (Committee Member); Jason Rose PhD (Committee Member); Andrew Geers PhD (Committee Member); John Sarnecki PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Experimental Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Greek and Latin

Animalization classifies women as non-human animals who must be tamed and controlled by marriage and motherhood. Our earliest written sources, like Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days (7th c. BCE) and Semonides' Fragment 7 (7th c. BCE), describe women's body parts in animal terms to manipulate the actions and behavior of female characters for a male audience. Animalization continues to affect the treatment of women and animals today, particularly regarding voice, agency, and bodily autonomy. Using Julia Kristeva's (1985), Donna Haraway's (1985), and Carol J. Adams' (1990) theories, I propose a woman-as- animal spectrum where female-presenting individuals slide between neutral/domesticated/sacrificial animals and bestial/wild/hybrid monsters. Using this spectrum, I investigate the animalized female body in classical literature through women's skin, mind, and reproductive system and end with a discussion of how contemporary authors and artists are reclaiming animalization today. Because women develop from monsters in ancient cosmogonies, I argue in chapter 1, “Skin,” that Io, Callisto, Ocyrhoe, and Scylla in Ovid's Metamorphoses (1st c. CE) experience species dysphoria, anxiety and depression because their interior and exterior experiences do not match. Hindu and First Nations stories, however, show that women do not have to suffer when transforming into animals with whom they share a close kinship. In chapter 2, “Mind,” I explore three animal metaphors (snakes, dogs, and lions) through four women from Greek tragedy (5th c. BCE): Agave in Euripides' Bacchae, Creusa in Euripides' Ion, Clytemnestra in Aeschylus' Oresteia, and Medea in Euripides' Medea. I then move to Roman tragedy (1st c. CE), where I argue that Seneca's Medea and Phaedra present the title characters as uniquely Roman manifestations of the woman-as- animal spectrum. I end by suggesting how tragic women can harness hybridity as a tool for promoting their own and their children's agency. In c (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Thomas Hawkins (Committee Chair); Dana Munteanu (Committee Member); Julia Hawkins (Committee Member) Subjects: Ancient Languages; Animals; Classical Studies; Comparative Literature; Gender Studies; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2018, English-Literature

Shakespeare's Othello, the powerful tragedy of societal distortions of the black male narrative brought to bear on interracial frameworks, has resonated in varying contemporary adaptations. The narrative of Othello inspired both the legendary theatrical performance of Paul Robeson and Richard Wright's literary adaptation in his novel Native Son. This thesis examines both the embrace of Othellophilia and the ways in which it complicates the racial context of the United States by capturing the myth as an allegory suited to the American context. I will evaluate how these ideologies drew black actor and intellectual, Paul Robeson, into its gravitational pull. Robeson's interpretation of Othello lends itself to comparison of his contemporary, writer Richard Wright and his literary character, Bigger Thomas. The white female liberal's cultural voyeurism and accountability is evaluated through contemporary adaptations of Othello. This thesis concludes with an analysis of a caricature drawing appearing in a London magazine in 1937. Artist Frederick Joss confirms the collective psyche of control and racialism in Britain's Colonial Empire, reinforcing the Othello myth.

Committee: Hillary Nunn Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1981, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Philosophy

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2016, Arts and Sciences: English and Comparative Literature

How similar is the Classical private interior which birthed the public archetype of the vir bonus to the idea of identity which we now label “modern' and to which Shakespearean characters lay claim when they assert selfhood by name: “always I am Caesar”; “I am Antony yet”? Over the last 15 years or so, the emergent field of Classical scholarship which has followed the cultural materialist and New Historicist turn in English studies has led to a reconsideration of such questions. Taking advantage of these new lines of inquiry, this discussion examines the extent to which Early Modern identity, as revealed in the works of sixteenth and seventeenth-century tragedians, takes its psychological scaffolding from Classical models, originating with the archaic Greek heroes of Homer and modified by the rhetorical and theatrical tropes of writers and statesmen from the Roman Republic and Imperiate, such as Cicero, Seneca, and Quintilian. Each strand of the argument considers how Classical writers understood their own identities, both idealized and actual. Given that the influence of the Graeco-Roman psychological interior on its Renaissance successor is mediated by intervening centuries of Catholic ideology and Mediaeval appropriation, the avenues of reception for Classical thought in the Renaissance are considered as part of the argument.

Committee: Jonathan Kamholtz Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Julia Carlson Ph.D. (Committee Member); Michael Griffith M.F.A. (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Master of Arts (M.A.), Xavier University, 2016, English

The fate of most young women in sixteenth and early seventeenth century England, as well as in Shakespeare's comedic plays, is marriage. In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom observes that, “If there were an Act VI to Shakespeare's comedies, doubtless many of the concluding marriages would approximate the condition of Shakespeare's own union with Anne Hathaway” (88). It is impossible to know the extent to which Shakespeare's married life influenced his work, but there are certainly hints that the marriages which supply his comedies' happy endings might prove less than blissful. If Shakespeare's comedies present difficult (though perhaps somewhat typical) marriages as the happiest ending and best case scenario available to his young, female heroines, then his tragedies offer a much darker look at the worst that may befall such young women. The following work is an analysis of four of Shakespeare's best known, tragic female characters: Juliet of Romeo and Juliet, Ophelia of Hamlet, Desdemona of Othello, and Cordelia of King Lear. It aims to explore the reasons that these young women are failed dramatically by the patriarchal social systems responsible for ensuring their well-being

Committee: Graley Herren Ph.D. (Advisor); Niamh O'Leary Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Womens Studies

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2015, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Ethan Allen Hawley receives the gift of redemption throughout John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent (1961). Many forms of redemption occur throughout the novel, but Steinbeck does not blatantly present all of them. Raymond L. Griffith's 1972 dissertation uses the term “duality” to discuss, as stated, the “validity of perfection and the impossibility of perfection” contained in Steinbeck's works. My thesis specifically uses the term duality to explicate the various “hardship versus redemption” dualities that exist in Winter. Ethan lives a life of duality throughout the majority of the novel. Ethan's dual lives involve his behavior and rationale while in nature settings and his behavior and rationale while in socioeconomic settings. Ethan experiences this duality but never acknowledges this duality of place. Other “hardship versus redemption” dualities exist in the novel, such as Ethan receiving his grandfather's and aunt's teachings and then Ethan teaching his own children; Ethan's brotherly encounters; Steinbeck's inclusion of Christian ideas; and Steinbeck's correlation to and also divergence from William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. Ethan's duality of place finally unites at the novel's conclusion. Ethan's secret Place in nature induces a confrontation with reality and a humanistic response to socioeconomic hardship. Steinbeck concludes the novel with the subtle assertion of the redemptive hope of nature to induce strength.

Committee: Adam Sonstegard Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Julie Burrell Ph.D. (Committee Member); James Marino Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Ecology; Economics; Ethics; Pedagogy; Personal Relationships; Religion

Bachelor of Arts, Ohio University, 2015, Classics and World Religions

The Athenian playwright Euripides has often been labeled a misogynist, both by some of his contemporaries and some modern scholars. In my thesis I attempt to show that this claim is unfounded. I examine the evidence that has been brought forth by scholars for Euripides' misogynistic reputation. Then, I look closely at Euripides' works Medea, Hippolytus and Phaedra, particularly focusing on how Euripides changes the characterization of the women from myth and previous tragedies, and fashions their thoughts, feelings, and struggles to resemble those of 5th century B.C. Athenian women. A close reading of these works makes clear that Euripides was aware of tensions in Athenian society between men and women, brought about by their subordinate position to men in Athenian society, and was attempting to make his audience acknowledge and understand their struggles. He was not offering solutions for the tensions he observed, rather he was provoking his audience to question their assumptions and conceptions about women and possibly make a change in society.

Committee: Tom Carpenter Dr. (Advisor); Lynne Lancaster Dr. (Other) Subjects: Classical Studies

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2014, Art

I have been working with bubble wrap for two years. I think how we let ourselves be seen is very important to how we live our daily lives. This thesis is about making people question themselves and their own reality. The Specter of Sentimentality is an art installation that is intended to make the viewer question how they see themselves. While walking through the installation the viewer begins to see themselves in different perspectives and my intention is to lead the viewer to question if they are wearing a metaphorical layer of bubble wrap. This installation is meant to make people think about how they see others and what inner struggles they might be going through.

Committee: Richard harned (Advisor) Subjects: Fine Arts

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2014, English

In this paper, I investigate the possibility of servants participating in early modern dramas and the implications such performances had on class relations of that time. I argue that servants did likely perform in these dramas, using the voices of various characters to create a complex social commentary on the period's strict social structure. Through a close examination of early modern literacy rates, household politics, and private dramas, I determine that it is likely servants were capable of not only reading, but also performing in private dramas. Then, with a critical reading of Elizabeth Cary's biography and play, titled The Tragedy of Mariam, I show that early modern women often used private dramas to express their opinions of social and political issues publicly, specifically regarding gender politics. These two main points then allow me to come to my final argument. I conclude that servants might have used characters' lines to voice their own opinions regarding the constraints of class politics, allowing these servants to speak freely to the upper class that had authority over them.

Committee: Elizabeth Mackay PhD (Advisor); Ari Friedlander PhD (Committee Member); Margaret Strain PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: British and Irish Literature; Education History; Gender; History; Literacy; Social Structure

Master of Arts in English, Youngstown State University, 2013, Department of Languages

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is often regarded as quietist in its supposed acceptance of the horrors of war and the futility of human action. But in reading this novel from a Nietzschean perspective informed by The Birth of Tragedy and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, what is initially seen as fatalism is a recognition of the tragic nature of reality, reflecting the Silenian notion that if one must be born, it is best to die soon. In the recognition of this tragic worldview, Vonnegut's novel can be read as the sort of New Attic Tragedy that Nietzsche so values, with the narrator's acknowledgement of the artifice of the text a reproduction of the Dionysian chorus, which, in an absurd universe, provides metaphysical comfort to the audience. Furthermore, the similarities between the non-linear Tralfamadorian conception of time echoes Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, which both reinforces the tragic worldview and reconciles the narrator's trauma with Silenian reality through the redemptive creation of an eternally recurring art that evidences amor fati.

Committee: Scott Leonard Ph.D. (Advisor); Steven Brown Ph.D. (Committee Member); Stephanie Tingley Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: History

BA, Oberlin College, 1975, English

The purpose of this essay will be to suggest a reading of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello which I don't believe has received sufficient attention. The interpretation I will present is not meant to be suggested as the only valid reading of the plays, but as a reading which should be considered along with many other valid readings, in attempts to gain insight into these three major tragedies, and to understand their points of similarity.

Committee: Robert Pierce (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Greek and Latin

Abstract In this dissertation I examine how Greek tragedy received the epic concept of kleos. Although kleos in epic and epinician poetry has a specific social and ideological function, its usage in Attic drama exhibits its incompatibility with the pragmatic environment of a polis and reflects the difficulties such a value provokes when measured in circumstances similar to those of fifth century Athens, namely within a democracy where no one is allowed to enjoy a rarefied status and where familial and city law is part of the audience's quotidian court experience. Although the word kleos is encountered in the plays of all three great tragedians, I argue that we can observe a different approach between the usage of Aeschylus and Sophocles and that of Euripides. The concept of kleos occurs many more times in Euripides' tragic corpus and in the majority it is claimed by female characters. However, since in epic and epinician poetry kleos is normally connected with men, namely bravery, warrior prowess, physical abilities and admirable achievements either on the battlefield or at athletic Games, I chose to base my argument on male tragic characters. My first study case is Orestes, who is presented in the Odyssey as an exemplum of kleos and who is connected with a kleos discourse in the relevant plays of all three tragedians. The other two characters that I take as my study cases are Ajax and Heracles in the homonymous plays of Sophocles and Euripides, because both of them are extraordinary heroes of the past whose exploits and manliness became exemplary in the literary tradition. After a close examination of the connection of Orestes with kleos in Aeschylus' Choephori, Sophocles' Electra and Euripides' Orestes I argue that although Orestes was inherited by the Homeric tradition as a highly positive example and although within the tragic plays it is apparent that the tragic community and his sister Electra expect him to take revenge for his father' s murder and ensure (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Tom Hawkins (Advisor); Benjamin Acosta-Hughes (Committee Member); Fritz Graf (Committee Member) Subjects: Classical Studies

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