Elizabeth wrote her senior honors thesis on depictions of Odysseus’ death in literature, beginning with The Odyssey. She worked from the outside in, starting with Dante, retracing his steps, looking at the classical tradition around Odysseus, and then going past Dante to who he inspired. In Oxford, she learned more about Dante’s own experiences with Odysseus, combining the classical and Medieval/Renaissance knowledge. There is an illuminated manuscript at the Bodleian Library, Benoit’s Roman de Troie, a Medieval Romance that was based largely on Dares and Dictys’ accounts of the Trojan War. Seeing this poem in the text helped her to better understand Dante’s familiarity with the Medieval traditions surrounding the Trojan War.
Classical Studies
