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theses

My dissertation explores the use of hunting in five didactic poems as a means to characterize their attitudes towards the human ability to acquire true understanding. Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, Vergil’s Georgics, Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, Grattius’ Cynegetica and Nemesianus’ Cynegetica—didactic poems written in Latin from the first century BCE to the third century CE—respond to questions of human perception and knowledge in different ways, but they all use the hunt to represent the human search. Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura uses hunting as a metaphor for the reader’s actions, and parallels himself, his philosophical forefather Epicurus, and the reader to dogs hunting out proofs and ataraxia, “freedom from care,” the goal or prey of the Epicurean hunt. According to Lucretius, this hunt has the potential to be successful: humankind can obtain its ultimate goal of ataraxia if it follows Epicureanism. Vergil’s Georgics is less optimistic about the ability of humankind to be successful in their hunt for knowledge. Farmers, the protagonists of the Georgics, are presented as knowing how to hunt and can follow the tracks of Justice, but there is no indication that they obtain it. The poem closes with the myth of Aristaeus, which displays the deceitful nature of prey (Proteus) to humankind (Aristaeus) and presents man’s imperfect methods for capturing knowledge. Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, a playful didactic about seduction, similarly puts forth a pessimistic view of human knowledge via hunting metaphors. The reader’s education, presented as a hunt for the beloved, ultimately backfires and his knowledge fails him, as violently allegorized in the myth of Cephalus and Procris in Book 3. Grattius’ Cynegetica makes the figurative use of the hunt into the literal subject of the poem, but Grattius’ hunting poem is also an exploration of knowledge and morality. It reasserts an optimistic view of knowledge while at the same correcting Lucretius’ Epicurean moral and religious views. I finish by looking at Nemesianus’ Cynegetica, which provides a useful contrast to the previous works since the surviving fragment turns away from metaphysical and epistemological questions in favor of practical advice and literary reflection.

ETD_4557

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Lisa A. Whitlatch

http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001600001.ETD.000069001

doi:10.7282/T30863VK

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.