How do traditions of magic, both practical and literary, interact with texts about plant- and substance-based remedies in ancient Greece and Rome, and what role does genre play in the manifestation and transmission of these traditions? This is the question that my research seeks to answer, through the methods of lexicography, close reading, and comparison of magical texts with pharmaceutical literature from four significant authors. Each chapter represents a case study of one of these authors: Theophrastus and Nicander of Colophon, who wrote in Greek; and Pliny the Elder and Scribonius Largus, who wrote in Latin.
My analysis of the interplay of magic, remedy, genre, and botany in each author has revealed the development, through time, of what I term a pharmaceutical-didactic subgenre, created through the editorial decisions and selective curatorship of writers who sought to educate others in botanical and pharmaceutical topics, and, often, to display their breadth of knowledge in these subjects.
At the heart of this subgenre lies the problem of dangerous or othered information: to what extent is recording it reasonable or unreasonable, ethical or immoral, traditional or subversive? How is it justified or erased, spoken or unspoken? Under what circumstances does an author preserve the sorcerer’s pharmacy? It is my hope that this approach will, beyond the limits of this thesis, prove useful for the examination of other authors of this genre in the classical period, and for their reception in the medieval era.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Classics
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Botany
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Magic
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_9326
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online reource (130 pages : illustrations)
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
Ella Faye Wallace
Subject
Name (authority = LCNAF)
NamePart (type = personal)
Theophrastus
Subject
Name (authority = LCNAF)
NamePart (type = personal)
Nicander, Lars
Subject
Name (authority = LCNAF)
NamePart (type = personal)
Pliny, the Elder
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
School of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore10001600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
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