عنوان

Guilt, redemption and reception :

Number

TLets555698

Title Proper

Guilt, redemption and reception :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Glendinning, Eleanor Ruth

Title Proper by Another Author

representing Roman female suicide

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Nottingham

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2011

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

University of Nottingham

Text preceding or following the note

2011

Text of Note

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.

DG Italy

HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare

Glendinning, Eleanor Ruth

University of Nottingham

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y