Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Ancient and Classical

W.-H. Friedrich's Verwundung und Tod in Der Ilias was originally published in 1956. Never before translated into English, its importance has slowly come to be recognised: first, because it discusses in detail the plausibility (or otherwise) of the wounds received on the Homeric battlefield and is therefore of considerable interest to historians of medicine; and second, because it makes a serious and sustained effort to grapple with the question of style, and thus confronts an issue which oral theory has scarcely touched.

Peter Jones adds a Preface briefly locating the work...

Iphigenia at Aulis is one of Euripides' most intriguing and challenging plays. It dramatises the myth of Iphigenia, the young virgin sacrificed by her father Agamemnon at the start of the expedition against Troy. Produced at the end of the Peloponnesian war, it explores the breakdown of social norms which turns Greeks against Greeks, men against women, and condemns young brides to death. Pantelis Michelakis examines the mythological, socio-political and institutional background, as well as the cultural, political, institutional, and theatrical contexts within which it was...

In a poem written in exile, Ovid pictures his latest book in conversation with his previous volumes, united in the bookcase containing his collected works back in Rome. One can imagine their dialogue - in the protected space of the whispering bookcase - as loaded with allusion and intertextuality. This collection of essays by the classicist Alessandro Barchiesi examines Ovid and his 'rationalistic art of illusion' along with intertextuality in Latin literature more generally, and in the wider context of the Graeco-Roman tradition.

The book provides perspectives on the literary...

What is the importance of poetry? Why do we enjoy the experience of tragic distress? Does Roman tragedy reflect Aristotelian poetics? In what ways can Aristotle's "Poetics" be read and interpreted? To what kind of use can it be put? Such are the questions discussed in this collection of essays, which examines one of the most seminal as well as cryptic texts of Western criticism - a text that still triggers essential deliberations about literature and the ways in which we relate to it.

How should I interpret a classical text? However I interpret it, someone else will so do differently, and even the nature of the interpreter's task is a matter of dispute; consensus is not a realistic prospect. Malcolm Heath sees the inevitability of such disagreements, not as a problem to be deplored, but as a constructive force, at once an essential part of the process of enquiry and a reflection of the endless diversity of the questions that interest the readers of classical texts. Accordingly he argues for an approach to interpretation that is theoretically reflective and committed to...

Using recent narrative theory, this book explores the narrative strategies that sustain the complex relationship between the tragic poet and his sophisticated audience. It discusses how these sprawling stories were typically shaped by Aeschylus into dramatic form; and, once established, how these patterns were successively adapted, subverted, capped or ignored by Sophocles and Euripides in the annual attempt to recreate suspense and express fresh meanings relevant to the difficult last decades of the fifth century.

Sophocles' Electra deals with the famous story of Orestes' vengeance on his mother Clytemnestra for her murder of his father Agamemnon. This book discusses whether the matricide is a just and final act of violence, or whether Sophocles ironically implies that it is more problematic than it seems. Electra is notable among Sophocles' plays for the prominent part played in it by female characters, and especially the heroic resistance and suffering of Orestes' sister Electra. The book pays particular attention to the portrayal of Electra herself, but also discusses wider issues of dramatic...

Like other classical Greek tragedies, Sophocles' Philoctetes is an extraordinarily timely and timeless play. Dramatising the efforts of people who had wronged him to bring the play's hero, Philoctetes, to join the Greek forces in their war against Troy, it traces the moral and emotional development of the young Neoptolemos as he struggles between the values of honesty and deceit, honour and expedience. This is an introduction to the play for students and lay readers. The well focused chapters on Greek theatre and performance, the mythical background, and the literary, intellectual, and...

This scholarly edition consists of the Latin text, with translation and detailed commentary, of a sequence of epigrams from the "Anthologia Latina" (Shackleton Bailey 78-188). An introduction discusses whether these epigrams constitute a unified collection and are the work of a single author, examines their likely date and place of composition (which, it is argued, is North Africa under Vandal rule), and sets them in their cultural context. The line-by-line commentary covers issues of literary, linguistic and historical significance. Although text and interpretation of these pieces present...

"Phoenician Women," one of Euripides' later tragedies, is an intriguing play that arguably displays some of his finest dramatic technique. Rich in cast and varied in incident, it is an example of Euripides' experimentation with structure. It dramatises the most fertile mythical tradition of the city of Thebes and its doomed royal family, focusing in particular on the conflict between Eteocles and Polyneices as a result of their father Oedipus' curse, which eventually leads to mutual fratricide. The play was very popular throughout antiquity, and became part of the so-called "Byzantine...

"Classics and the Bible" looks at story-patterns and themes which Greek and Latin literature shares with the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. Direct influence or a common source can explain some similarities, but uncannily parallel plots and forms of expression seem more often to occur independently. Classical and biblical texts constantly illuminate each other. Hospitality and recognition are central themes in both traditions, and also metaphors about the relation between them. Classical and biblical authors alike tell stories which need to be read in the light of other stories....

In this book, Maria Pretzler combines a thorough introduction to Pausanias with exciting new perspectives. She considers the process and influences that shaped the "Periegesis," and maps out its literary and cultural context. Pausanias' text records contemporary interpretations of monuments and traditions, and is concerned with the identity and history of Greece, issues that were crucial concerns for Greeks under Roman rule. Parallels with various texts of the period offer insights into Pausanias' attitudes as well as illustrating important aspects of Second Sophistic culture. A discussion...

"Ovid and Augustus" deals with one of the most contentious issues in the study of Roman literature, the relationship between Augustan literary texts and Augustan politics. One of the central facts of Ovid's life is that he was exiled to the shores of the Black Sea. The poet himself tells us that he was being punished because of a poem and a mistake. Although the mistake is unknowable, we do have the poem, "Art of Love." Here, Peter Davis reads all of Ovid's early works (the erotic poetry: "Heroides," "Amores," "Art of Love," "Cures for Love") against their political context, and argues...

This engaging, readable yet impeccably scholarly investigation of monsters in Classical literature will entertain and stimulate as well as inform. It covers all the major mythical monsters mentioned by Greek and Roman authors (Medusa, Hydra, Polyphemus, the Minotaur, Sphinx, Harpies, Sirens, Cerberus, Chimaera, Centaurs, and many more) along with Classical precursors of vampires, werewolves and the living dead. Versions of these creatures that appear in later literature and film are also discussed.

Mythical Monsters is original in considering monsters squarely from a literary...

This book rethinks the characterization of two highly contrastive forms of ancient literary tradition - epic and novel - and re-frames their function as dynamic points of reference in the history of ideas and in our understanding of the interface between antiquity and the modern. Epic and novel have often been construed in terms of sharp contrasts: temporally, with the epic anchored in the canonical beginnings of classical literature, as opposed to the novel, which rises only late in the ancient era; hierarchically, with epic regularly occupying the canonical core while the novel often...

While claiming to stand outside literature altogether, Roman verse satire was the most aggressively literary of Roman genres, Juvenal's particularly so. In the opening lines of the corpus, his performance creates an arena in which the various genres of his Graeco-Roman cultural inheritance jostle to be heard, and are suppressed by his own generic identity. Juvenal and the Satiric Genre considers the fluid nature of the generic field, and how Juvenal comes out of and fits into it. Specifically, it measures his use of names, his ambiguous and sometimes hostile relations with other genres,...