Research Articles (Mind, Culture and Society)
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Item Post-traumatic and post-modern : a South African "Electra".(University of Stellenbosch., 2009) Steinmeyer, Elke Gisela.The ancient myth of Electra seems to be of particular interest to South African writers and playwrights. This article focuses on the adaptation by Mervyn McMurtry, entitled Electra, which was produced in Durban in 2000. The underlying theme of his adaptation, which is based on the four Greek “Electra” tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, is the question of truth. This question — an important post-modern one — was of particular relevance for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa as it tried to deal with the legacy of the former apartheid regime. McMurtry’s play begins with a prologue six days after the matricide, while the actual play is performed as a sort of flashback. All the characters suffer from various symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The chorus consists exclusively of women who all have been victims / survivors of male violence. This article proposes that McMurtry uses the ancient Electra myth to reflect on the situation of contemporary South African society (and particularly women), as it struggles to come to terms with a traumatic past.Item Chanting the song of sorrow : threnody in Homer and Zakes Mda.(Taylor & Francis., 2003) Steinmeyer, Elke Gisela.This article examines the role of threnody in ancient Greece and contemporary South Africa. The main focus is on its representation in literature, in this case a passage from Homer's Iliad and the novel Ways of Dying (1995) by Zakes Mda, which are read in their respective historical contexts. The aim is to compare the different functions which threnody fulfills in different societies in different times with special emphasis on societies in crisis and transition.Item Blessed or bloody? Antigone in Sylvain Bemba’s Noces Posthumes de Santigone.(Association of French Studies in Southern Africa., 2010) Steinmeyer, Elke Gisela.Dans sa pièce de théâtre Noces Posthumes de Santigone, l’écrivain congolais Sylvain Bemba a produit une adaptation africaine de la tragédie Antigone de Sophocle. Il se sert du mythe ancien pour illustrer la situation politique dans de nombreux pays d’Afrique pendant les années 1980. En utilisant un pays fictif, la République d’Amandla, il décrit le rêve et l’échec d’une utopie postcoloniale. Ses trois protagonistes, Melissa (Antigone), Titus Saint-Just Bund (Polynice/Hémon) et le conteur (Griot), vont préserver la mémoire de cette utopie. Melissa, comme Antigone, est chargée de l’enterrement et de la garde du tombeau du président Titus Saint-Just Bund, qui a été assassiné par ses ennemis, mais elle meurt dans un accident d’avion. Le conteur va préserver leur histoire pour le peuple. Il semble que dans cette pièce de théâtre Bemba voulait créer une mémoire éternelle pour le personnage historique Thomas Sankara, président du Burkina Faso, qui représente pour lui l’incarnation d’une vision africaine à la fois sainte et sanglante (blessée), exprimée par le nom de «Santigone».Item The First Ethiopians: a critical perspective.(University of KwaZulu-Natal., 2010) Hilton, John Laurence.No abstract available.Item Apuleius, Florida 23 and popular moral philosophy.(Classical Association of South Africa., 2006) Hilton, John Laurence.This article examines the links between Apuleius Florida 23, Philo De Providentia 2.22, and popular philosophical ideas in Seneca’s works. All these writings use the metaphors of a rich man whose wealth matters little in comparison with his health, and an expensively fitted ship whose costly features are useless in a storm. Such material is also to be found in Florida 14, 22, and 23, which suggests that all these fragments are related and may have come from the same original speech.Item War and peace in the ancient Greek novel.(Classical Association of South Africa., 2005) Hilton, John Laurence.This article investigates how war and peace are represented in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe, the Ninus fragment, Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe, Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, and Heliodorus’ Aithiopika. With the exception of the Cyropaedia and possibly the Aithiopika, these romances were composed at the height of the pax Romana when warfare between nations within the Roman Empire had declined. Nevertheless, war and battles constitute significant elements in these narratives, although they are often set in the remote past at the time of the Persian Empire and are frequently pastiches drawn from the historians. In Chariton, Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, military episodes have an important narratological function. Attitudes to war vary: it is an intrusive element in the lives of most of the characters, and military bravado and imperial expansionism are sometimes viewed with irony. Occasionally the romances describe contemporary conflicts in considerable detail.Item The influence of Roman law on the practice of slavery at the Cape of Good Hope (1652-1834).(Classical Association of South Africa., 2007) Hilton, John Laurence.This article investigates the extent to which Roman Law and received ideas about Roman slavery actually did form the basis on which slavery was practised and administered in the Cape of Good Hope between 1652 and 1834. Cape slavery was governed by plakaaten issued in Batavia as well as in Cape Town, but, particularly in capital cases, recourse was had directly to Roman Law and to the Roman-Dutch writers such as Simon van Leeuwen, Joost de Damhouder, Ulrich Huber, Andreas Gail and others. These writers frequently cite actual Roman laws, especially when considering the appropriate punishment. At this stage of our knowledge of how Roman Law was used in these cases, it is not possible to say whether its effect was ameliorative or pejorative, but there is little doubt that it was used both by owners and slaves, prosecution and defence, from the beginning until the end of this period.Item Item Furor, dementia, rabies: social displacement, madness and religion in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius.(Classical Association of South Africa., 2009) Hilton, John Laurence.No abstract available.Item Cohesion in Latin.(Taylor & Francis., 1993) Hilton, John Laurence.This article discusses ancient and modern concepts of textual coherence and in Latin. A number of ideas about the degree of cohesion in the letters of Cicero, compared with those of Seneca and Pliny are discussed. The article shows that Seneca and Pliny make more use of asyndeton within the sentence than Cicero, and undertakes a statistical analysis of coordinate and subordinate connectors in a selected corpus of texts. This analysis gives a reliable indication of the degree of cohesion in the corpus.Item Item The meaning of antitheos (HLD. 4.7.13) again.(Classical Association of South Africa., 1997) Hilton, John Laurence.No abstract available.Item The Roman-Dutch law of evidence at the Cape.(University of Otago., 2001) Hilton, John Laurence.No abstract available.Item Item Scopic orgiasts and catoptric visualities.(University of Otago., 2006) Hilton, John Laurence.No abstract available.Item Veiled or unveiled? (Plut. Quaest. Rom. 267B–C).(Cambridge University Press., 2008) Hilton, John Laurence.; Matthews, Lydia Lenore Veronica.No abstract available.Item The dream of Charikles (4.14.2) : intertextuality and irony in the Ethiopian story of Heliodorus.(Classical Association of South Africa., 2001) Hilton, John Laurence.There are strong but previously unnoticed intertextual links between the dream of Charikles in Heliodorus (4.14.2), the portent of the eagle in Achilles Tatius (2.12.1-3), and the dream of Penelope in Homer (Od. 19.535-69). The allusion to Achilles Tatius' Leukippe and Kleitophon may have alerted Heliodorus' readers to the approach of an important turning-point in the plot, but it is the Homeric link that is the primary focus. The dream of Penelope provides moral underpinning for marriage in the Aithiopika and helps to underline the complex ironies in Heliodorus' narrative at this crucial turning-point in the plot.Item Electra transformations.(University of Otago., 2006) Steinmeyer, Elke Gisela.No abstract available.Item Azania - some etymological considerations.(Classical Association of South Africa., 1992) Hilton, John Laurence.There have been a number of attempts to establish an etymology for the name Azania. Liddell and Scott offer the derivation 'land of Zan or Zeus', Casson suggests that Azania has the same root as Zanzibar, and that this root had the meaning 'black'. Huntingford argues that the name derives from the Greek 'to dry, parch up'. Finally, Dreyer points out that the Afro-Asiatic languages of north-east Africa have a word meaning 'brother' which may have given rise to the name. Liddell and Scott's derivation refers to Azania in Arcadia, whereas the others refer to a region in north-east Africa. This article investigates these derivations and goes on to ask whether the use of the same name for the Arcadian and the African Azania is a coincidence or not.Item The sphragis of Heliodoros, genealogy in the Aithiopika, and Julian’s Hymn to King Helios.(Departamento de Linguas e Culturas, Universidade de Aveiro., 2011) Hilton, John Laurence.This article analyses the final sentence of Heliodoros's Aithiopika as a sphragis- an autobiographical statement by the author. Heliodoros here stresses his descent from Helios, as one of characters in the romance, Persinna, also does. However, while genealogy (or physis) is an important element it is counterbalanced by the relativization of knowledge in the Aithiopika - nomos is king. The tension between these concepts is resolved by reading the romance in the light of Julian's Hymn to Helios.