Browsing by Author "Chandler, Clive"
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- ItemOpen AccessA commentary on book 6 of Achilles Tatius Leucippe and Clitophon(2022) Bentel, Berenice; Chandler, CliveAchilles Tatius' novel, Leucippe and Clitophon (2nd c. CE), is a product of the literary experimentation in prose fiction during the Greek intellectual renaissance under the Roman Empire known as the Second Sophistic. For all appearances, the story follows the usual narrative course of the ancient Greek erotic adventure novels: boy meets girl, love occurs at first sight, and Fate attempts to keep them apart, triggering an odyssey of bizarre escapades and daring exploits that reaches its inevitable happy conclusion with their reunion and marriage. Achilles Tatius, however, takes each of these tropes far beyond their usual scope, displaying a ludic (and at times ludicrous) panache for defying the genre. This thesis provides the first extensive literary and philological commentary devoted exclusively to the Sixth Book of the novel. I examine both Achilles' unconventional approach to genre and storytelling, and his play on prevailing theories of psychology, physiology, and philosophy to enrich and enliven his narrative.
- ItemOpen AccessBattle narrative in Virgil and Ovid(2015) Christie, Camilla Rose; Chandler, CliveThe intent of this thesis is to examine the stylistics of Latin epic narrative as used to narrate and describe extended battle sequences, and to explore the way in which Latin authors working during the Augustan Era engaged with Homeric techniques of oral narrative while composing written epic. A total of six extended battle sequences from the Aeneid of Virgil and the Metamorphoses of Ovid are examined and analysed with regard to their use of word order, simile, catalogue, and other such stylistic features. The overall aim is to consider Ovid’s literary debt to his immediate epic predecessor Virgil, together with the debt of both poets to Ancient Greek epic narrative, in such a way as to explore the various techniques of generic allusivity practised by both poets on a stylistic level. The first chapter provides a brief overview of Homeric technique, defines the distinction between primary and secondary epic, and serves as an introduction to Virgilian and Ovidian concerns. The second chapter contains analysis of Virgil’s Aeneid. Battle sequences from Book 2, Book 9, and Book 10 are examined and discussed from a stylistic perspective, and the extent to which Virgil has drawn on and reformulated Homeric epic technique is established. Book 2 is examined for the manner in which it engages with and reconstructs Homeric ideals of heroism. Book 9, constituting as it does the first instance within the second half of the Aeneid of Homeric battle narrative, is analysed as a transitional episode, and its motifs of literary and cultural inheritance discussed. Book 10 provides an extended example of Homeric battle narrative. The third chapter engages with Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Extracts of notably epic tone from Book 5, Book 8, Book 12 are discussed in such a way as to highlight their literary allusivity, and in particular their contrast with the Virgilian model of adapting epic technique. Book 5 is examined as an introductory example of extended Ovidian battle narrative. The analysis of Book 8 demonstrates how epic narrative may be enriched by the intrusion of alternate poetic genres. Book 12 is contrasted with Book 2 of the Aeneid, and the manner in which it, too, engages with Homeric ideals of heroism, is discussed. The thesis concludes that while both poets utilised and expanded upon specific stylistic elements of Greek epic narrative, they did so in a notably different fashion. Ovid contrasts sharply with his predecessor Virgil and often incorporates elements of alternate genres in order to establish his own allusive technique.
- ItemOpen AccessA catalogue of shapes: a composite object portrait of an oral-formulaic Homer(2015) Von Solms, Charlayn Imogen; Arnott, Bruce Murray; Chandler, CliveThe thesis identifies an equivalence between two seemingly disparate art-forms - Homeric poetry (the Iliad and the Odyssey) and sculptural assemblage. The synthesis of form and content achieved by the re-organization, manipulation, and transformation of pre-existing components in the theory of an oral-formulaic Homer is explored by means of a practical application of sculptural assemblage. The thesis proposes that Homeric poetics and sculptural assemblage are sufficiently similar in terms of structure, methodology, and interpretive processes, to enable a sculptural evocation of the participatory interpretive aspects of Homeric composition in performance that is comprehensible to a contemporary audience. The development of an iconography of an oral-formulaic Homer is expressed in a series of twelve sculptural assemblages entitled A Catalogue of Shapes 2010-13. These sculptures are composite object portraits of twelve Homeric characters. The creation of this catalogue of characters was informed by core structural, compositional, and conceptual aspects of the Iliadic Catalogue of Ships as a reflexive site of artistic self-awareness. A Catalogue of Shapes therefore represents a composite object portrait of an oral-formulaic Homer. The representational system underlying A Catalogue of Shapes incorporates complex connotative allusions achieved by the manipulation of symbolically-invested materials, objects, and forms to reflect the compositional strategy underlying Homeric poetics. As an 'aesthetic translation' this series of sculptural assemblages comprises the creative and contextual re-interpretation of attributes characteristic of the form and content of an existing text/artwork, by means of creating another. It is both an autonomous artwork and an extension of an existing creative tradition.
- ItemOpen AccessFauna in archaic Greek and Kalanga oral wisdom literatures(2016) Moyo, Madhlozi; Chandler, CliveAnimals play an important role in the communication of wisdom. In songs, proverbs, aphorisms, riddles and other oral modes of communication, animals sometimes play the roles of human beings. Homeric similes, Hesiodic and Aesopic fables, and numerous oral figures of speech in Greek lyric poetry often incorporate animals in their figurative language. Likewise, Kalanga folktales, proverbs, and other didactic modes attest to the importance of animals within this culture as vehicles to teach moral lessons. This tendency is visible among many cultures across the world. As such, the broad concerns of this thesis are to compare the way Archaic Greek and Kalanga wisdom literatures resort to animal imagery in the dissemination of moral lessons. The study evaluates the way animals are deployed as metaphors to signify and express human actions and human attitudes in oral thought. In a narrow sense, I study the deployment of animals insofar as they shed light upon the human attributes of cleverness and stupidity; the use of animals' characters in political commentary; as well as in the economic and erotic didactics in Archaic Greek and Kalanga oral wisdom literatures. Judging from the frequency of their appearance, it seems that animals are one of the preferred ways through which people offer insights into themselves. Commenting on the human habit of integrating animals into one's religious and moral views, Peter Lum says 'The animal world seems to the mind of primitive man to be only a very short step from the human.' This dissertation seeks to arrive at answers to a number of questions through a comparative study of selections from the two traditions. What are the premises and presuppositions behind the deployment of each animal in such literature? What are the bases for building a human character on an animal? How do we compare and contrast the human and animal natures? And, what makes an animal assume a specific role, and not another, in folklore? What ecological and ethical concerns can be observed in this type of literature? Most importantly, what similarities are there between Greek and Kalanga oral modes of expression? By revealing similarities in animal imagery between two diverse wisdom traditions, this work explores what may be described as a natural, cross-cultural basic component of didactic poetry: a common denominator that gets to the root of archaic wisdom. Furthermore, as a poetic element seemingly rooted in the realities of agrarian society, such symbolism leads us to consider whether the moral authority it represents is purely poetic or whether it actually holds cultural capital. This exercise entails using the dynamics of a living tradition to understand more about one we access through texts and commentaries.
- ItemOpen AccessFunction and meaning of metamorphosis in the Lais of Marie de France(2007) Van Heerden, Helga Dieta; Chandler, Clive; Sienaert, EdgardThe primary object of this dissertation is to explore the concept and the manifestations of Metamorphosis, with special reference to the Lais of Marie de France. In Chapter 1 the all-pervasive nature of Metamorphosis is examined. Attention is focused on the fact that Metamorphosis occurs in all spheres: it may be seen in Nature, in physical development and in many less visible forms such as emotional, attitudinal and moral transformations and transgressions in which it plays a fundamental role. Chapter 2 focuses on the Twelfth Century Renaissance. This chapter serves to emphasize a further aspect of Metamorphosis, that of social change and intellectual development. It thus situates Marie de France in a historical context and clarifies the Zeitgeist to which she was exposed, which influenced her writing and which she in turn influenced. In Chapter 3 I analyze the individual Lais. Marie de France's approach to her material is that her interest lies in the exploration of the emotional, spiritual, moral and attitudinal Metamorphosis which her characters undergo. The analysis reveals the beginnings of a change in genre. A further Metamorphosis of these tales becomes evident when an addition is made to the purely anecdotal material: the authoress adds a Christian dimension and inserts a subtle moral message. In Chapter 4 the findings of the analyses of the individual lais are grouped in order to gain a more precise understanding of the kind of Metamorphosis the various topoi have undergone in the course of the tale. Chapter 5 is devoted to the elucidation of the narratological Metamorphosis the traditional tales undergo in the process.
- ItemOpen AccessLuxury as a theme in Latin love elegy(1991) Chandler, Clive; Whitaker, Richard AThe territorial expansion of Rome in the second and first centuries B.C. was accompanied by an influx of foreign luxuries and fashions into Italy. Roman,society and literature responded to this influx ambiguously, but the overall tone was one of disapproval. The association of luxury with women, attested dramatically at the rescinding of the lex Oppia, was firmly established in erotic literature by the latter part of the first century B.C. Latin Love Elegy provides an opportunity for studying the response of a particular genre to the phenomenon of luxury in an erotic context. After a general introduction to the role of luxury in the economic life of Republican Rome, the literary response to luxury is investigated with special emphasis on erotic literature. Following this, the elegies of Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid are analysed sequentially and in detail with respect to how these poems treat luxury. It is found that luxury in Latin Love Elegy retains the ambiguity associated with it outside erotic literature, and functions as a rhetorical tool in the process of seduction. ,The attitude of the elegiac persona to luxury sheds light on the fictional lover, and demonstrates how the elegists accommodate in their poetry traditional and contemporary views of a real phenomenon.
- ItemOpen AccessMadness in Lucretius' De rerum natura(2012) Shelton, Matthew James; Chandler, CliveIn the following thesis I examine the experience and etiology of madness in Epicurean philosophy and focus on Lucretius’ accounts of epistemology, disease and emotion in De rerum natura. I situate my general argument within Lucretius’ accounts of the physical and cognitive aspects of emotional disorder.
- ItemOpen AccessPhilodemus on Rhetoric books 1 and 2 : translation and exegetical essays(2000) Chandler, Clive; Whitaker, RichardThis thesis attempts to elucidate Philodemus' approach to one aspect of paideia, that of rhetoric as treated in the first two books of his On Rhetoric, and to account for this approach within the broader tradition of Epicurean thiking on this discipline. As a preliminary to the investigation of this topic a complete English translation is provided of the most recent edition of the text (Longo Auricchio [1977]). The subsequent study takes the form of series of three essays which seek to clarify Philodemus' conception of the problem and through a close reading, to provide an exegetical commentary on the most important features of Philodemus' approach, especially the way he manages citations from the works of the Founders of Epicureanism in support of his own views.
- ItemRestrictedPhilodemus, on rhetoric, books 1 and 2: A translation(2004) Chandler, CliveThe following is a preliminary translation of the 1977 papyrological edition by Francesca Longo Auricchio of the first two books of Philodemus' On Rhetoric (Book I: PHerc. 1427; Book 2: PHerc. 1674 and PHerc. 1672). I have occasionally integrated Longo Auricchio's own subsequent improvements in the constitution of the text and some of those by David Blank, who is currently working on a new edition of these texts. In this translation, words and phrases within square brackets indicate (unless otherwise specified) conjectures and supplements made in Longo Auricchio's edition, words and phrases within rounded brackets indicate interpretative additions posited by Longo Auricchio or myself to complete the sense of a fragmentary passage.
- ItemOpen AccessThe typical and connotative character of Xeinoi situations across the Apologue: Three studies in repetition(2017) Williams, Hamish; Chandler, CliveThis dissertation engages in a close reading and analysis of the Apologue of Homer's Odyssey; specifically, I am concerned with characterizing the nature of xeinoi situations or interactions in these books - that is, the relationship between the Ithacan travellers and the various inhabitants whom they encounter in these four books. There is a significant amount of scholarship on the nature of these encounters in the Apologue, and as my first chapter explores, many of these are often hinged upon certain polarities: hospitality versus inhospitality, civilized versus savage, masculine versus feminine. My study is greatly indebted to these; however, this dissertation explores new avenues of interpreting these encounters. I have adopted an approach to the Odyssey, which is based upon the importance of repetitions and their connotations, what has been termed 'traditional referentiality'. The Homeric poems are defined by an aesthetic of repetition: certain 'units' (which may be isolated words, phrases, actions, scenes, etc.) are given prominence in the narrative through their frequency; when these units are examined with respect to their contexts, the particular units gain associative or 'connotative' meaning from their implementation. In my second, third, and fourth chapters, I explore how the xeinoi situations in the Apologue are pervaded by certain typical units - namely, (i) mountains, (ii) acts of eating, and (iii) acts of trickery - and then, importantly, how these units garner connotative senses of, respectively, (i) isolation, (ii) danger, and (iii) success, which characterize the relationships in these four books. While some of these typical units have received scholarly treatment in the Odyssey as a whole, their specific importance to the Apologue has not been studied extensively, nor have the connotative resonances of these repeated units been fully explored. The importance of these connotations is elaborated on in the conclusion, where I examine how the meaning derived from these xeinoi encounters interplays with the surrounding story of the Odyssey.