Browsing by Author "Mulligan, Bret"

Now showing 1 - 13 of 13
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    Aeneas in the New World: Reshaping the Interpretive Motif in Barlow's Columbiad
    (2010) Carroll, Thomas Eliot; Mulligan, Bret
    Barlow's Columbiad evokes Virgil's Aeneid by using the motifs of revelation and interpretation to explore the role of the past in informing the present. Virgil creates an opposition between Aeneas, who receives prophecies and signs but is prevented from interpreting them by his shock and fear, and his father Anchises, who interprets the prophecies and guides the Trojans. Aeneas learns to use his father's interpretive ritual but must utilize this technique to craft forward-looking interpretations and lead his people into the unknown, in order to fulfill his destiny. This combination of traditional ritual with a progressive outlook reflects symbolically the new political circumstances of Virgil's Rome. In the Columbiad, Columbus views scenes from early American history, and presents Hesper with the problems and criticisms he sees in the nation's development, relying on Hesper to explain them. Through their intermittent dialogue, the two advocate cyclical and linear models of historical development, respectively. Hesper's interpretation of mankind's progressive improvement prevails, reflecting Barlow's vision of post-revolutionary America as distinct from and improving upon its Old World predecessors. The two epics' common motif reveals the complexity of Columbus' character and reinforces Barlow's democratic message.
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    Amazons in the Amphora: Traces of the Defeated Other in Wonder Woman Comics
    (2010) Pollack, Lara; Roberts, Deborah H.; Mulligan, Bret
    References to the Amazons, a mythical race of warrior women, are widespread in ancient literature. They were generally represented as a defeated Other in their relations with the Greeks, reaffirming the patriarchal nature of Greek society. Amazons have also been received into modern literature, with the most prominent example being Wonder Woman, a comic book character created by William Marston in the early 1940s. Wonder Woman has generally been hailed as a feminist icon. The widespread representation of bondage and other sadomasochistic elements throughout the Wonder Woman comics, however, argue that she and other female characters are still represented as a defeated Other, retaining traces of the misogyny widespread in ancient accounts of Amazons.
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    Canine Connections: Perceptions of Dogs and Dog Symbolism in Homer and Hesiod
    (2023) Neuschotz, Alexander J.; Mulligan, Bret
    This thesis traces the discussion of dogs in Homer and Hesiod first from a narrative point of view, including their role in what I call canine-based tonal transitioning, wherein they draw the focus away from any preceding dominant emotion or theme in order to establish a tone that is consistent with episodes to follow; their narrative significance; their capacity for foreshadowing; and their reflective properties. These reflective properties naturally lead into a treatment of dogs in the context of moral judgements, including the role of gender on which aspects of dogs are emphasized in human comparisons, and a consideration of the use of canine traits in insults and compliments. In particular, this thesis considers the consequences of Pandora, the first woman, being said to have a “bitchy” mind. Lastly, this thesis combines the preceding discussions, along with other observations, in the formulation of my Canine Manifold Theory, which develops a holistic picture of dogs in antiquity by tracing patterns between differing but locally-consistent portrayals.
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    Dangerous Fugues: Sirens, Divas, and the Dangerous Voice
    (2012) Silverblank, Hannah; Mulligan, Bret; Roberts, Deborah H.
    The Sirens first appear in Book XII of Homer's Odyssey, and from this episode has emerged a tradition of the dangerously seductive and powerful feminine singing voice. In this essay, I argue that the Sirenic tradition can be identified in the music videos of the American pop divas Madonna and Lady Gaga, in which the singers' voices contain Sirenic qualities but also transcend the power of the ancient Sirens. I use reception theory and Helene Cixous' “The Laugh of the Medusa” to explore the ways in which the voices of ancient Sirens are silenced, arguing that pop divas channel this Sirenic voice in order to move outside of its expressive confines and limitations. I locate four primary sources of danger in the song of the Homeric Sirens. First, the Sirenic voice threatens bodily harm to its listeners, who die upon hearing the song. Additionally, this voice threatens the temporality of the primary narrative, as the Sirens offer the pleasure of a song with an alternative temporality that is incommensurable with that of the Odyssey itself. Next, the temptation of the voice offers a fatal distraction from and thus destruction of the hero's voyage. Finally, I argue that the Sirens' song beckons its listeners to indulge desires that threaten the social stability and economy for the song's male listeners. This section about the danger of the Sirens is followed by an exploration of the mortal female voices in the “Cupid and Psyche” episode of Apuleius' Metamorphoses, wherein the different female characters speak in Sirenic tones and thus offer a mirror to the Homeric rendering of the Sirens. Having traced these dangers through ancient accounts of the Sirens, I briefly discuss other ancient female characters with dangerous voices in Greek and Roman literature, including Medusa, the Furies, the Bacchantes, Scylla, Philomela, Echo, Cassandra, Medea, Circe, and various witches. The essay then moves toward its analysis of the vocal and visual poetics in Madonna's “Bedtime Story” video and Lady Gaga's “Telephone” video. Here, I argue that Madonna's video invokes Sirenic imagery to inscribe power within the voice of the singer, but also to ultimately reject the Sirenic tradition. Through the interactions between the visual, sonic, and lyrical elements of the text, Madonna's “Bedtime Story” enacts a performance of Cixous' écriture féminine in a way that re-characterizes the danger of the Sirens and works to create and claim a new kind of power for the feminine voice. Next, I analyze Lady Gaga's “Telephone,” and I suggest that the two divas in the video also employ Sirenic themes in order to reject a certain mode of listening to the powerful feminine voice, using écriture féminine to break out of the Sirenic tradition and to migrate toward an unspecified, anonymous elsewhere. Where “Bedtime Story” both uses and rejects the Sirenic tradition in the formulation and performance of écriture féminine, the “Telephone” video speaks in écriture féminine in order to defy the limitations placed upon the diva and to posit a new but unknown potential for the feminine voice.
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    Founding Figures: A Comparative Analysis Between Rome's Romulus and China's Huangdi
    (2020) Blood-Cheney, Claire; Mulligan, Bret
    By studying the Greco-Roman worlds and their literature in relation to other cultures, we can develop a more complex and holistic understanding of the ways in which ancient civilizations developed and interacted. Although Sino-Roman studies are only just beginning to gain exposure, the social and cultural aspects of the two civilizations have received comparably less attention than other subjects. ​To further this development, this thesis will compare the foundation myth of Romulus and the legend of Huangdi as told in two fundamental historical texts, Livy's ​Ab Urbe Condita​ and Sima Qian's ​Shiji​, respectively. Specifically, I will be exploring the context in which these figures came to be leaders, their characteristics, and the relationship between these myths and cultural identity. ​The goal of this thesis is to contribute to the growing number of Sino-Roman comparative studies, respond to the call to broaden the field of classics, and draw attention to the cultural values that are revealed by looking at the founding figures. ​Foundation myths are culturally fundamental as they reveal psychological tendencies and cultural values. Despite the significant distance between the two empires, based on the foundation myths of Huangdi and Romulus, the ancient Chinese and Romans had similar expectations for their rulers. Shared features of the two founding figures include divine association, military exploits, a divided state, brotherly rivalry, and the need for expansion. When compared together, the quasi-historical figures of Romulus and Huangdi provide a cultural link between –– as well as a new lens into –– the rise of China and Rome that has yet to be explored.
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    Framing Classical Objects through Comic Book Theory
    (2016) Rehm-Daly, Nathaniel; Mulligan, Bret
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    Hated Hades and Provoked Pluto: Characterizing Hades, Pluto, and the transition between the Greek and Roman Gods in antiquity and in the modern works of Rick Riordan
    (2012) Lee, James; Mulligan, Bret
    This thesis investigates and analyzes the portrayal of the ancient Greek god Hades and his Roman counterpart Pluto in the ancient Greek and Roman literature and in Rick Riordan’s modern children’s literature novel series: Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Heroes of Olympus. Ultimately Rick Riordan’s Hades and Pluto show an inversion of the gods’ personalities from antiquity: in antiquity the Greek god Hades is depicted as a fearsome and law-abiding god while the Roman god Pluto is similarly law-abiding but is also angry, embittered, and rage-driven. In Riordan’s novels Hades is the embittered and angry god while Pluto is very calm and dignified.
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    Love as Recollection in Plato's Symposium
    (2010) LeFrancois, Meghan; Mulligan, Bret
    In Plato's Symposium, the interlocutors take turns giving speeches about love. The careful reader can draw several parallels between love as it is discussed throughout this dialogue and recollection as it is presented in Plato's Meno and Phaedo. According to the recollection thesis, humans have latent, innate knowledge, and throughout our lives, we recollect it, making it explicit and articulate. In the Symposium's culminating speech—that of Socrates—I argue that we learn that love is, in fact, a kind of recollection; we learn that love is the recollection of the form of beauty. In this speech, Socrates argues that love is an ascent. When we love correctly, we complete this ascent, and recollect the form of beauty. When we love incorrectly, we only ascend partially and so we partially recollect; in the process, we give birth not to knowledge, but to ideas. Socrates' speech invites us to reconsider the dialogue's other speeches. I argue that each speech not only shows parallels between love and recollection, but contributes to Socrates' argument that love is a species of recollection. The speeches of Pausanias and Eryximachus, for example, anticipate the distinction Socrates later draws between a correct and an incorrect kind of love. Alicibiades' speech—the only speech after Socrates'—reiterates, in a story, Socrates' argument for love's being a kind of recollection. I argue that this reading of the dialogue supports an interpretation of the recollection thesis according to which not only philosophers, but all humans recollect. Finally, I provide a possible reason that Socrates is the first interlocutor to explicitly mention recollection; perhaps he is the only interlocutor with something like explicit knowledge of what love is.
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    The Rage of a Hero in the Song of the Nightingale
    (2013) Foxley, Florencia; Roberts, Deborah H.; Mulligan, Bret; Conybeare, Catherine
    My senior thesis provides a comprehensive way of reading Euripides’ tragedy Medea by encompassing both the traditional Greek heroic and maternal aspects of Medea’s identity, in particular explaining how this reading clarifies Medea’s act of infanticide at the end of the play. In the play, Medea talks about herself and her values in ways that ally her with other male heroes from Greek legend, notably Ajax from Sophocles’ tragedy of the same name and Achilles from the Iliad. I explore how Euripides uses some of Sophocles’ distinctive heroic language in Medea to create a significant comparison between Medea and Ajax. I argue that this comparison, supplemented by a comparison between Achilles and Medea and how they operate in their close personal relationships creates an image of Medea as a hero that is both in keeping with traditional Greek ideals of the hero and creates significant overlap with Greek understandings of maternity and maternal affection. The comparisons to Ajax show the reader that Medea is a figure devoted to her heroic ideals of honor and of helping her friends and harming her enemies, just like Ajax, and like Ajax, she too will be forced to commit a self-destructive act because of her own relentless obstinacy. The comparisons to Achilles, and Achilles' relationship with his dearest connection, Patroclus, provide a traditional example for how heroes engage with, and inevitably harm, those ‘most dear’ to them. Euripides uses the same Greek term, φίλτατος (‘most dear’), to describe Medea’s relationship to her children as is used to describe Achilles relationship to Patroclus. In this way, Medea’s eventual killing of her children can be understood as an act similar to Achilles’ indirect killing of Patroclus; the infanticide can thus be understood as an act that causes great pain to Medea, but is nevertheless inevitable. These sentiments of heroic pain and remorse over the death of someone ‘most dear’ overlap a great deal with maternal pain and love of their children, helping us understand how Medea can be both maternal and loving while still being wholly heroic and destructive.
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    Virtus, Clementia, and Caesar’s Left-Hand Man: Lucan’s Lament of Republican Ethics
    (2013) Liscovitz, Matthew; Mulligan, Bret
    Lucan wrote the Bellum Civile, an epic about the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, under a firmly entrenched Empire that had presided over political violence and personal excess for decades. Lucan’s epic is about the origin of this political system and how the Republican system gave way to autocratic rule. My thesis discusses Caesar’s role in Lucan’s epic, and how his character employs benevolence and Republican imagery to take advantage of and restructure a Roman society already weakened by the excesses of empire. This transformation from republican to imperial rule occurs through a restructuring of Roman moral vocabulary. Lucan’s Caesar takes traditional Roman virtues, like clementia, gentleness shown toward an inferior, and martial virtus, the physical expression of courage on the battlefield, and perverts them to bolster his authority as an autocratic leader. One of Caesar’s most important tools for this perversion is Scaeva, a centurion who single-handedly repels a Pompeian army in Book 6 of the epic. His fighting is reminiscent of the virtus shown by Republican heroes, who fought against the early Roman kings to establish a society based on political equality and freedom of expression. Though Scaeva demonstrates the same kind of physical virtus, he fights not for the betterment of society, but for Caesar’s victory. Through him, virtus becomes an attribute not of a free Roman, but of an imperial subject. His fighting also allows Caesar to remain removed from battle. Lucan’s Caesar never raises a hand against a fellow Roman citizen, instead forgiving defeated enemies when other generals would have called for execution. While it does not cause bloodshed like Scaeva’s virtus, Lucan portrays Caesar’s clementia as even more damaging to the soul of the Republic. When Caesar grants clemency to citizens, he creates a power dynamic within which he has authority over the lives of people who were formerly his equals. This transformation of Republican ethics is subtle but destructive, creating an authoritarian government under the guise of virtue, freedom, and benevolence.
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    When the Emperor Wasn't Divine: Patient-Doctor Interactions in Tacitus' Annals
    (2022) Bayona, Joshua; Mulligan, Bret
    In his Annals, a sixteen book history of the Roman Empire, the Roman historian Tacitus includes four episodes of an emperor or a member of the imperial class interacting with a doctor. Although there has been much scholarly study of ancient medicine and physicians in Roman antiquity, as well as of Tacitus' Annals, very little attention has been paid to these patient-doctor interactions in the Annals, despite the considerable sociopolitical, historical, and cultural implications inherent to medical interactions in Roman society, implications that can be used to elucidate Tacitus' text. This thesis fills this gap in Tacitean scholarship by examining the effect that the social and political undertones of these four medical interactions have on Tacitus' political history as a whole. In particular, I first examine Tacitus' representation of imperial doctors as stereotypically Greek professionals, and what consequences that ethnic labeling has on his argument about foreign influence on the principate; namely, that Greek physicians are a manifestation of a Greek influence on imperial politics that Tacitus deems negative. Then, I turn to the amorphous and muddled power dynamics of these interactions, and the ways the physicians subvert and fulfill expectations for how Roman doctors should act. From this analysis, I conclude that Tacitus' depiction of doctors is a thematic extension of his broader arguments surrounding the principate, and especially its susceptibility to foreign interference, and the unstable, contradictory nature of its authority.