Thesiss

The central claim of this study is that Shakespeare is deeply skeptical of a tendency to idealize impassibility or "constancy" which he sees as a defining feature of classical Roman culture. The tragic protagonists of his Roman plays persistently strive to transcend the limits o…

In William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Macbeth, the characters, Brutus and Macbeth, are considered honorable men in their society, but become traitors by murdering Caesar and King Duncan, respectively. Macbeth kills Duncan to gain political power; Brutus kills Caesar to prot…

In this doctoral dissertation I seek to reassess the innovativeness of the young Corduban poet Lucan’s masterpiece, the Civil War. Faced with the abrupt closure of Lucan’s poem 546 lines into Book 10, I adopt the view propounded by Haffter, Masters and Tracy, that what most have…