What is the role of epic in modernity? Does it still have any value? What shape and structure does it take? This dissertation claims that the epic does indeed continue to inform our experience of the world in modernity, albeit often in unusual ways. Focusing on the period betwee…
"214" Result
Sort By:
While the story cycle form has been popular for centuries, as seen in works like The Decameron and One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, it is especially important to modern Anglo-American literature. Twentieth century short story composites by James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, and…
This thesis proposes a strategy for maximizing our knowledge of Qumran sectarian genres by focusing on the generic data in superscriptions. Using the Maskil Thanksgiving-Prayer (1QHodayota 20:7-21:39[?]) as a case study, this analysis applies insights gained from observations on…
Modern scholarship has shown that Callimachus' poetics is a poetics of reinvention, one that demands to be read against other specific literary works. In the past, scholars have focused on Callimachus' relationship to his poetic antecedents, while studies of the poet's engagemen…
This dissertation examines the creative ways in which the ancient Israelites used genres that were part of the broader ancient Near Eastern cultural repertoire in order to shape a narrative of their early history as a people. Study of the itinerary genre as it is used in adminis…
Magical realism has been applied as a critical label to literature since the 1920s. Even in its initial critical incarnation, though, its definition has varied widely. This dissertation, through first looking at the historical debate surrounding the term, crafts a definition of …
The evolution of Classical reception studies in recent decades has encouraged a corresponding growth of interest in assessing instances of Herodotean reception from antiquity to the present era. This thesis joins the conversation by exploring how Herodotus’ Historie s has been u…
Genocide Genres investigates the transnational circulation of atrocity testimony, writing which describes the most spectacularly failed of human encounters. In particular, my project compares the production and reception of atrocity narratives across three distinct, post-WWII di…
The myriad music styles performed in the Republic of Turkey are a complex amalgam of contemporary and historical elements. Using a mixture of archival and ethnographic methodologies, I examine the process by which Turkish performers domesticated Rock and Roll genre cues in the m…
This thesis explores the locust imagery in the book of Joel to suggest a more helpful way to classify the text. Scholars classify Joel as either prophetic, proto-apocalyptic, or apocalyptic literature based on different approaches to the text. This thesis will argue that Joel sh…
My study focuses on poetic descriptions of love in a pastoral setting. Many of the works that I discuss have at one time or another been considered part of the bucolic genre. Categorizing poetry as bucolic or pastoral has been problematic for some time because scholars disagree …
The act of telling stories to an audience is a trait shared by every society since ancient times. While storytelling was originally an oral practice characterized by performativity, soon the most popular tales started to be written down to ensure their preservation and transmiss…
Is Arabic science fiction similar to the kind of science fiction with which a reader of English-language science fiction, a watcher of English-language science fiction films, or viewer of English-language science fiction television programs is familiar, or is Arabic science fict…
The dissertation examines Berber cultural identity in Algeria and France through the vehicle of a new world music genre, called New Kabyle Song or la nouvelle chanson kabyle, which blends the harmonies, instruments, performance modalities, and technologies associated with Wester…
Ecclesiastes has been the object of much debate in the history of interpretation, in part because of its challenging and apparently conflicting message. Such debate has often included discussion regarding its genre. In the interpretation of Ecclesiastes, relatively little attent…
The topic of this dissertation is the intersection of three categories: the structural category “report,” the content category “material concerning birth,” and the Sitz im Literatur category “Hebrew Bible.” We catalogued all the birth reports, established the typical structure, …
The Apocalypse of Paul is an elaboration on Paul's journey to the heavens in 2 Corinthians 12:2–4. Originally composed in Greek, it is extant in more than a dozen languages and over 300 manuscripts. This dissertation uses the apocalyptic geography of the Apocalypse of Paul to ex…
Improvisation has often been viewed and valued in terms of its service and resemblance to scripted traditions of theatre. Such a stance seriously undermines the significance and impact of this global performance modality, and has resulted in improvisatory modes being largely ign…
This dissertation investigates the very beginnings of spy fiction in the United States by examining the large body of literature about spies during the Revolution which appeared from shortly after the Revolution through the antebellum period. By examining the paradoxical figure …