Guilt, redemption and reception: representing Roman female suicide

This thesis examines representations of Roman female suicide in a variety of genres and periods from the history and poetry of the Augustan age (especially Livy, Ovid, Horace, Propertius and Vergil), through the drama and history of the early Principate (particularly Seneca and Tacitus), to some of...

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Main Author: Glendinning, Eleanor Ruth
Format: Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
Published: 2011
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13450/
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author Glendinning, Eleanor Ruth
author_facet Glendinning, Eleanor Ruth
author_sort Glendinning, Eleanor Ruth
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description This thesis examines representations of Roman female suicide in a variety of genres and periods from the history and poetry of the Augustan age (especially Livy, Ovid, Horace, Propertius and Vergil), through the drama and history of the early Principate (particularly Seneca and Tacitus), to some of the Church fathers (Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine) and martyr acts of Late Antiquity. The thesis explores how the highly ambiguous and provocative act of female suicide was developed, adapted and reformulated in historical, poetic, dramatic and political narratives. The writers of antiquity continually appropriated this controversial motif in order to comment on and evoke debates about issues relating to the moral, social and political concerns of their day: the ethics of a voluntary death, attitudes towards female sexuality, the uses and abuses of power, and traditionally expected female behaviour. In different literary contexts, and in different periods of Roman history, writers and thinkers engaged in this same intellectual exercise by utilising the suicidal female figure in their works.
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spelling nottingham-134502025-02-28T11:25:16Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13450/ Guilt, redemption and reception: representing Roman female suicide Glendinning, Eleanor Ruth This thesis examines representations of Roman female suicide in a variety of genres and periods from the history and poetry of the Augustan age (especially Livy, Ovid, Horace, Propertius and Vergil), through the drama and history of the early Principate (particularly Seneca and Tacitus), to some of the Church fathers (Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine) and martyr acts of Late Antiquity. The thesis explores how the highly ambiguous and provocative act of female suicide was developed, adapted and reformulated in historical, poetic, dramatic and political narratives. The writers of antiquity continually appropriated this controversial motif in order to comment on and evoke debates about issues relating to the moral, social and political concerns of their day: the ethics of a voluntary death, attitudes towards female sexuality, the uses and abuses of power, and traditionally expected female behaviour. In different literary contexts, and in different periods of Roman history, writers and thinkers engaged in this same intellectual exercise by utilising the suicidal female figure in their works. 2011-12-15 Thesis (University of Nottingham only) NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en arr https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13450/1/555698.pdf Glendinning, Eleanor Ruth (2011) Guilt, redemption and reception: representing Roman female suicide. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Rome suicide women
spellingShingle Rome
suicide
women
Glendinning, Eleanor Ruth
Guilt, redemption and reception: representing Roman female suicide
title Guilt, redemption and reception: representing Roman female suicide
title_full Guilt, redemption and reception: representing Roman female suicide
title_fullStr Guilt, redemption and reception: representing Roman female suicide
title_full_unstemmed Guilt, redemption and reception: representing Roman female suicide
title_short Guilt, redemption and reception: representing Roman female suicide
title_sort guilt, redemption and reception: representing roman female suicide
topic Rome
suicide
women
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13450/