Author Archives: emilygshanahan

Abstract:

Welcome to Hell, where geography is no accident of nature. In katabasis, the geography of the underworld is a major tool for challenging and remaking characters on their journey; common landmarks are generally impediments to movement, like gates or bodies of water. Each katabatic geography represents a different conception of life after death, and the characters’ exposure to this geography reveals to us, through their experiences, the narrative’s value system. 

The journey down is a process of spiritual transformation, but only those who successfully navigate the underworld experience growth: some stay trapped forever. The ability to overcome obstacles often depends on whether the would-be traveler is dead or alive. The implication: the dead do not change. This belief is enshrined in katabatic geographies from antiquity onward. 

Modern narratives have received katabasis and transformed it to suit each narrative’s philosophical argument. In this paper, I will begin with the Aeneid, and discuss the generalities of katabatic geography in antiquity. I will then explore how Sartre’s No Exit and Schur’s The Good Place adapt the trope. No Exit features characters whose spiritual stasis is embodied in their environment. Conversely, Schur’s The Good Place subverts the schema established in No Exit by allowing its dead protagonists to destroy the world they inhabit by forming a community and improving their treatment of one another. The Good Place sets up the established schema of death as stasis, then takes it apart, brick by brick. 

Abstract

This paper argues that Aratus’ Phaenomena contains a sophisticated exploration of the aesthetics of stargazing, which has long gone unanalyzed. To do so, this paper focuses on Phaenomena’s ekphrases of the northern and southern hemispheres and analyzes the techniques their description. 

Although not usually considered an ekphrastic poem, this paper argues that the Phaenomena contains two distinct ekphrases, which treat each hemisphere as its own object. The passage on the northern hemisphere follows its constellations from the north pole out and then counter-clockwise around the sky. Other ekphrases of two-dimensional objects begin at center and end at the outer perimeter of the object; thus, this hemisphere is a concrete object. This paper argues the circular motion is also significant because the northern hemisphere appears to rotate counter-clockwise. Further, the ekphrasis of the southern hemisphere follows the constellations clockwise, mimicking the rotation around that pole. The poem therefore performs the experience of stargazing by altering an ekphrastic trope to demonstrate the sky’s apparent cyclical movement.

Phaenomena also utilizes the new affordances of writing as a visual medium following the rise of literacy. This has previously been established by the presence of several acrostics (Jacques 1960, Danielewicz 2005, Hanses 2014, Danielewicz 2015). In addition, however, this paper argues that the poem contains an embedded technopaegnia of the constellation Draco, which has not been previously documented. That is, body-part nouns appear in such loci within the text so as to mimic the shape of the constellation, e.g. κεφαλῇ is in the locus of the figure’s head. This embedded technopaegnia is perhaps unique in the Hellenistic corpus, as the six documented technopaegnia are all freestanding. This paper therefore argues that Phaenomena adapts two techniques to not only describe a natural phenomenon but also to recreate the experience of observing it.    

an introduction

Founder of Diversitas, academic writer, and educator, Emily Shanahan is an eager and pioneering member of the classics community. She is an ardent traveler, having studied in both London and Berlin, and speaks multiple languages including German and French. Emily has a strong background of teaching assistantships and public speaking, and is looking forward to a long and fruitful career of continued discovery.

Outside of her academic life, Emily has a passion for apple cider donuts, her rescue dog, Nani, and niece, Ella Violet.