Jonathan Edwards’ “Personal Narrative” is a chronological, retrospective account of Edwards’ spiritual life interposed with comments and reflections on his experiences with the Divine. He describes...Show moreJonathan Edwards’ “Personal Narrative” is a chronological, retrospective account of Edwards’ spiritual life interposed with comments and reflections on his experiences with the Divine. He describes multiple powerful, highly emotional encounters as he recounts his religious development from his childhood to the present. It stands as a central text of eighteenth-century spirituality, a touchstone of religious thinking in this period. This thesis argues that concerns with the fallibility of language are central to Jonathan Edwards’ “Personal Narrative” (c.1740), as he struggles adequately to describe spiritual experience in words even as that experience is said to go beyond language, including in its emotional and bodily effects.Show less
This thesis focuses on the question how literary writers intervened in the debates about the nature and history of the GDR in the period following unification by publishing their autobiographies ...Show moreThis thesis focuses on the question how literary writers intervened in the debates about the nature and history of the GDR in the period following unification by publishing their autobiographies (1990-1997). The examination of four writers’ autobiographies by separating their epistemic, moral and political relations to the past, while also considering the emotions expressed in them, reveals the underlying, leading arguments in these texts by shedding light on individual, implicit claims. The writers took varying but concrete stances in the debates. The perspective of the writers' relations to the past reveals their arguments and demonstrates that these were primarily based on epistemic and moral claims instead of on direct political suggestions. It shows the variety of the writers' 'political' arguments and explains in which ways the writers made political points or took a stance in these texts, namely by (epistemically) explaining or showing and by (morally) judging, ridiculing or lamenting certain aspects of their lives, thus differentiating the ‘political’ nature of the interventions and the strategies to convey these. Moreover, the thesis' approach reveals and explains the texts' contradictions. These inconsistencies reveal the issues in which the writers' present interpretations cannot be applied to the construction of their pasts, demonstrating where these ‘weak points’ lie and that autobiographies are not as free as fiction. The analysis furthermore reveals strong correlations between the autobiographies’ styles and conceptualisations. Overall, the thesis complements historiography in various ways. For one, it proves the value of studying the autobiographies of literary writers, of whom other scholars of autobiography assumed that they could easily frame their lives around their art and hold back on political questions. The historical approach furthermore contradicts and complements interpretations by literary scholars. It is original in its use of the perspective of relations to the past in combination with comparing expressed emotions in the texts. Ultimately, this analysis sheds light on the ways in which individuals can deal with historical changes impacting not only their present, but also their past lives.Show less
Master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (MA)
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This paper re-examines the interpretative potential of Cicero's De consulatu suo, with a focus on the so-called speech of Urania (Blänsdorf 6). Starting from the increasing awareness that our...Show moreThis paper re-examines the interpretative potential of Cicero's De consulatu suo, with a focus on the so-called speech of Urania (Blänsdorf 6). Starting from the increasing awareness that our understanding of how Cicero's poetry was received is exceedingly one-sided and based on ahistoric assumptions, I seek to shift the common dismissal of his epic by investigating the little evidence we have to suggest that there was also a readership that did appreciate Cicero's poetry. Shifting focus to the poem itself, I first question what we know - and especially do not know - about the context in which the speech of Urania was originally found. Both in terms of general layout and vocabulary the text is recognisable as philosophical, but many more threads run through the poem, including Roman history and religion, the didactic language of Aratos' poetry, the nature of the cosmos and the gods, and the Roman community of city, senate, and people. These strands of meaning interact with each other in various nexus, as I demonstrate through an analysis of the overwhelming amount of verbal repetition that is found in the poem, and which does not necessarily give prominence to Cicero the consul alone. Thus, while the poem, as an autobiographical text, is certainly concerned with creating a favourable and usable public persona, its self-representational strategies also involve drawing the other players, whom in his other works Cicero is constantly involving in his concordia ordinum. This has important implications not just for our understanding of Cicero's way of speaking/writing about himself, but also for the interpretative strategies with which to approach Roman self-representational texts.Show less
The history of child labour, compulsory education, mental illness and the Second World War are fascinating and many books have been written about these subjects. However, Wolter’s autobiography...Show moreThe history of child labour, compulsory education, mental illness and the Second World War are fascinating and many books have been written about these subjects. However, Wolter’s autobiography shows how all of these four themes influenced his life. Through this edition of his autobiography, these four themes will actually become a reality instead of just history.Show less
