Papers by Jeff Ulrich
Making Time for Greek and Roman Literature, 2024
The essays in this collection explore various models of representing temporality in ancient Greek... more The essays in this collection explore various models of representing temporality in ancient Greek and Roman literature to elucidate how structures of time communicate meaning, as well as the way that the cultural impact of measured time is reflected in ancient texts. This collection serves as a meditation on the different ways that cosmological and experiential time are construed, measured, and manipulated in Greek and Latin literature. It explores both the kinds of time deemed worthy of measurement, as well as time that escapes notice. Likewise, it interrogates how linear time and its representation become politicized and leveraged in the service of emerging and dominant power structures. These essays showcase various contemporary theoretical approaches to temporality in order to build bridges and expose chasms between ancient and modern ideologies of time. Some of the areas explored include the philosophical and social implications of time that is not measured, the insights and limitations provided by queer theory for an investigation of the way sex and gender relate to time, the relationship of time to power, the extent to which temporal discourses intersect with spatial constructs, and finally an exploration of experiences that exceed the boundaries of time. Making Time for Greek and Roman Literature is of interest to scholars of time and temporality in the ancient world, as well as those working on time and temporality in English literature, comparative literature, history, sociology, and gender and sexuality. It is also suitable for those working on Greek and Roman literature and culture more broadly.
American Journal of Philology, 2022
Epode 16, Horace’s famous decline poem about Rome before Actium, has long been viewed as a cynica... more Epode 16, Horace’s famous decline poem about Rome before Actium, has long been viewed as a cynical response to Vergil’s prophecy of a returning Golden Age in Eclogue 4. In this article, I argue that there is another, unrecognized intertext for Epode 16—Pindar’s Olympian 2—to which Horace’s bleak poem alludes in a “window reference” refracted through Vergil’s bucolic. As such, Horace’s cynicism represents, in fact, a lament over the lost simplicity and timelessness of Greek oral poetry, and an attempt to reclaim for his listeners/readers the originary experience of listening. In so doing, Horace takes up the Pindaric mantle of poet-prophet.
Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy, 2023
Vergilius, 2021
This article revisits the Trojan women’s lament and the subsequent ship-burning episode in Aeneid... more This article revisits the Trojan women’s lament and the subsequent ship-burning episode in Aeneid 5 in order to recuperate a positive vision of the Iliades’ agency in their choice to remain in Sicily. In sections 1 and 2, I argue that the structural position of the women – “separated” from the Trojan men “far off” (procul) “on a lonely promontory” (5.613: in sola secretae…acta), and weeping as they “look at the sea” (615: profundum pontum aspectebant) – replicates not only the lament of the abandoned Dido, whose “polluted love” (5.5-6: pollutus amor) overshadows the Trojans’ journey at the opening of book 5, but also, the archetypal lament of Latin poetry: Ariadne’s reproach of Theseus for abandoning her on the island of Naxos in Catullus 64. After seeing how Vergil appropriates a Catullan intertext to color our interpretation of the Trojans’ penultimate stop before reaching Sicily, I turn in section 3 to the alternative city that the abandoned Iliades found on the island, which I suggest offers readers a counter-factual history and thus, a “feminine” alternative to the Augustan ideology of linear, progressive, and “cursive” time. Deploying Julia Kristeva’s notion of “Women’s Time,” I propose that the Iliades’ impulse to found a city where they are, rather than pursuing an arbitrary telos, provides a positive vision for feminine subjectivity within the brutal machinery of epic.
Transactions of American Philological Association, 2022
Though critics of Apuleius’s Metamorphoses have long recognized how inset tales can reverberate i... more Though critics of Apuleius’s Metamorphoses have long recognized how inset tales can reverberate into the larger narrative structure in interesting ways, they have overlooked how the direction of influence is often reversed. This article analyzes how elements of the frame-narrative seep into the secondary diegetic level of inset tales in the Met. at two vital interpretative junctures. First, Aristomenes’ tale in book 1 is modeled chiastically on Lucius’s initial refusal to rationalize an incredible fabula. Then, in a secondary replication, Milo’s tale of Diophanes incorporates verbal and conceptual resonances of this initial frame and inset tale. This maneuver between diegetic frames, which I label “ontological metalepsis,” represents a Platonic narratological strategy to engage readers by implicating them in the deceptions of fiction.
The Prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses has long presented an interpretative challenge. Whether o... more The Prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses has long presented an interpretative challenge. Whether one is analyzing the Prologue in relation to its predecessors, intertexts, or generic meaning, the text is riddled with so much hermeneutic uncertainty that scholars have resorted to casting ballots to resolve issues. In this article, I argue that we should view the Prologue through a different lens–not as a “conundrum,” but rather as an “embedded choice” for readers. I suggest that Apuleius’ hermeneutic uncertainty functions as a kind of “Heracles at the Crossroads” narrative, offering readers the option to find philosophical meaning in his bawdy novel.
Book Reviews by Jeff Ulrich
Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2023
Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2020
Preview Scholars have long struggled to categorize and interpret Apuleius' Metamorphoses, as the ... more Preview Scholars have long struggled to categorize and interpret Apuleius' Metamorphoses, as the heightened sublimity a reader may feel at certain episodes in this masterpiece of fiction is matched only by an equally intense encounter with the grotesque and carnivalesque realism of others. Gustave Flaubert captured it best in a line which is quoted on the first page of the monograph under review: Apuleius' novel "reeks of incense and piss" (p. 1), suggesting both the immersive power of a high church liturgy on Sunday morning, and the snap back to reality one then feels walking next to the dumpster outside the church after the service ends. Geoffrey Benson, in this revision of his 2013 dissertation, intervenes in the debate over the serious and/or comic tone of the Metamorphoses by suggesting that scholars have hitherto overlooked a significant motif that pervades some of the most important and interpretatively difficult scenes in the novel, namely, the ethics and metaphysics of invisibility. In the Met., we witness the travels and travails of a narrator who remains hidden in the guise of an ass for 7 out of 11 books of the tale. Moreover, within the ass-books, Lucius hears and relates a tale of love between a young woman, Psyche, and her invisible (or unseen?) lover. Finally, the novel concludes, Benson argues, with an increasing exclusion of the reader from the divine epiphanies Lucius experiences. What Lucius-actor visualizes-with Benson borrowing Winkler's narratological framework-slowly becomes less and less visible to the reader over the course of Book 11 through the narrative manipulations and evasions of Lucius-auctor.
Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2018
Die griechische Geschichte d^s 5. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. ist reich an Hohepunkten-die Abwehr persis... more Die griechische Geschichte d^s 5. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. ist reich an Hohepunkten-die Abwehr persischer Invasoren in den Schlachten von Marathon, Salamis und Plataiai, die Entstehung der Demokratie, eine Bliite der Dichtung, Philosophie, Architektur und bildenden Runst sowie der Beginn der Geschichtsschreibung. Auch wenn neuzeitli-chen Historikern das 4. Jahrhundert weniger vorbildlich schien, hinderte sie dies nieht, die Epoehe insgesamt als " Rlassik " zu etikettieren. Sebastian Sehmidt-Hofner zeigt in seiner modernen, faktengesattigten und aufregenden Darstellung des klassischen Grieehenlands, was fur ein Zeitalter sich hinter diesem Begriff tatsaehlieh verbirgt.
Conference Presentations by Jeff Ulrich
Organized by Luca Graverini, Jeff Ulrich, and Carlo Caruso
Edited Volumes by Jeff Ulrich
eds. Elena Giusti and Victoria Rimell, Special issue of the journal Vergilius, 2021
Do we still need, as Elaine Showalter predicted, ‘even more drastic re-estimations of the old mas... more Do we still need, as Elaine Showalter predicted, ‘even more drastic re-estimations of the old masters?’ Vergil, so-called ‘Father of the West’, has not escaped scrutiny by feminist criticism, yet feminist approaches to Vergil, or readings alert to reading his works through the lens of gender, still represent a tiny portion of modern scholarship. And unlike Homer or Ovid, he has traditionally not been seen as fertile territory for feminist philosophy. This special volume of Vergilius, which has its origins in the Vergilian Society’s Symposium Cumanum 2019 on the same theme, asks how ever-evolving contemporary feminisms might engage in new dialogues with the Aeneid, Eclogues and Georgics, and aims to reassess, through Vergil, the role and potential of feminist modes of reading within classical philology.
Syllabi by Jeff Ulrich
Course Description Juvenal, writing anonymously in the 2 nd century CE, is the most biting and sa... more Course Description Juvenal, writing anonymously in the 2 nd century CE, is the most biting and sardonic writer of satire across the Roman tradition. He's often considered a misogynist, racist (or antiimmigrant), and very conservative. But he's also quite difficult to pin down because, unlike other Roman satirists, he always speaks through an anonymous persona, constructing a poetic voice through which to criticize 2 nd century CE Rome from different vantage points. His primary tool is not innate talent, as he claims, but indignatio-"rage." And his poetry offers us a fascinating window into Imperial culture in the so-called decline of the Empire. In this course, we will read the first two books of Juvenal's Satires, aiming to situate it in the larger discourse of satire and poetry in Rome.
The concept of a "novel" is highly debated in literary criticism: the absence of a well-defined f... more The concept of a "novel" is highly debated in literary criticism: the absence of a well-defined form or clear generic constraints have led scholars of the novel to postulate a number of different "characteristics" that constitute what a novel is: settings, themes, and plot types stand in for other clearer generic markers (e.g., meter). Even the term "novel" is problematic-as something distinct from a "Romance"-since other languages prefer to classify long extended, fictional prose works under the same heading (der Roman, le roman, il romanzo). This seminar will focus on the reading of seven ancient novels (or romances), five in Greek and two in Latin, all of which were written under the Roman Empire in the first four centuries of the common era. On the Greek side, these are Xenophon of Ephesus' An Ephesian Tale; Chariton's Callirhoe; Longus' Daphnis and Chloe; Heliodorus' An Ethiopian Tale; Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Cleitophon; and in Latin, Petronius' Satyricon and Apuleius' The Golden Ass. The primary goal of the course is to increase your understanding of one of the most interesting literary genres of the ancient world. To this end, we will be examining the development of the "novel" and assessing each individual author's contribution to the genre. The social context in which these works were produced will be considered, as will their differences from and similarities to modern novels. We will also read some examples from the "fringes" of the genre, such as the Life of Aesop, the Ass, Lucian's True History and The Acts of Paul and Thecla.
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Papers by Jeff Ulrich
Book Reviews by Jeff Ulrich
Conference Presentations by Jeff Ulrich
Edited Volumes by Jeff Ulrich
Syllabi by Jeff Ulrich