Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Ancient and Classical

"Becoming Female," the first book-length examination of the body in classical Athenian tragedy, reconsiders the figure of the male tragic hero, making use of both feminist and body theory. The male hero becomes female in the space of tragedy through the experience of suffering, and seems unable to return to any secure expression of masculinity. Katrina Cawthorn concentrates initially on the figure of Heracles in Sophocles' "The Women of Trachis," an exemplary specimen of the tragic process of becoming female, who exhibits many of the central issues considered in the book. The male hero is,...

"Orestes" was one of Euripides' most popular plays in antiquity. Its plot, which centres on Orestes' murder of his mother Clytemnestra and its aftermath, is exciting as well as morally complex; its presentation of madness is unusually intense and disturbing; it deals with politics in a way which has resonances for both ancient and modern democracies; and, it has a brilliantly unexpected and ironic ending. Nevertheless, "Orestes" is not much read or performed in modern times. Why should this be so? Perhaps it is because "Orestes" does not conform to modern audiences' expectations of what a...

"Euripides' Ion" is the story of a young man's search for his identity, and a woman's attempt to come to terms with her past. Through the story of a divine rape and its consequences, it asks questions about the justice of the gods and the nature of parenthood, encouraging its audience to consider contemporary concerns through the filter of traditional myth. This detailed study outlines the pre-history and later reception of the Ion myth, and provides a literary interpretation of the play's main themes, aiming to combine analysis of the text with a consideration of its cultural contexts....

In time for the bimillennium of Ovid's relegation to Tomis on the Black Sea by the emperor Augustus in 8 AD, Jo-Marie Claassen here revises and integrates into a more popular format two decades of scholarship on Ovid's exile. Some twenty articles and reviews from scholarly journals have been shortened, rearranged and merged into seven chapters, which, together with some new material, offer a wide-ranging overview of the exiled poet and his works. "Ovid Revisited" treats the poems from exile as the literary culmination of Ovid's oeuvre, ascribing the poet's resilience in the face of extreme...

These are paperback editions of important works on Greek and Roman literature, history, philosophy and archaeology. New introductions bring the works up to date in the light of more recent scholarship. In "The Imagery of Euripides," Shirley Barlow demonstrates, by a close analysis of Euripides' use of language and of imagery in particular, that his imaginative powers differ in kind, not just in quality, from those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, and that they serve a different purpose in the structure of the plays. This third edition includes a substantial new foreword by the eminent classical...

Of all the lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work has been best preserved. His odes to victorious Greek athletes were entertainments designed for performance in a hospitable atmosphere of drinking, dining and jokes. The victor has known the favour of the god whose contest he entered, and has brought back pan-Hellenic fame to his family, friends and city. To extend this glory and make it permanent, he has commissioned a song of praise, had dancers trained to sing it, and summoned an audience of kinsmen, neighbours and friends to enjoy it. Pindar's odes contain...

Taking a fresh look at the poetry and visual art of the Hellenistic age, from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. to the Romans' defeat of Cleopatra in 30 B.C., Graham Zanker makes enlightening discoveries about the assumptions and conventions of Hellenistic poets and artists and their audiences.
Zanker's exciting new interpretations closely compare poetry and art for the light each sheds on the other. He finds, for example, an exuberant expansion of subject matter in the Hellenistic periods in both literature and art, as styles and iconographic traditions reserved for grander...

Die Epigramme bilden das dritte groe Teilstuck des uberlieferten Werks des C. Valerius Catullus. Wahrend diese Epigramme in der Forschung bislang eher stiefmutterlich behandelt und oft als wenig kunstvoll angesehen wurden, ist es nun mittels intertextualitatstheoretischer Methodik gelungen, nachzuweisen, wie stark sie sich am kallimacheischen Kunstideal orientieren.
Die gestalterischen Prinzipien hellenistischer Dichtung sind in Catulls Epigrammen durchgehend prasent, und diese Erkenntnis liefert nicht nur zahlreiche neue Interpretationsansatze, sondern verrat auch viel uber die...

Schweigen ist die Negation von Rede, zugleich aber ein unerlasslicher Bestandteil von Rede und Kommunikation. Diese Erkenntnis, die fur die gesprochene Sprache gilt, lasst sich jedoch nicht einfach auf die erzahlende Literatur ubertragen: Schweigen im Epos bedeutet stets die Darstellung von Schweigen durch den Erzahler. Insofern ist es stets funktional. Die vorliegende Studie geht der Frage nach, wie im romischen Epos Stille, Schweigen, Sprachlosigkeit und Verweigerung der Kommunikation bis hin zur volligen Abwesenheit eines Protagonisten eingesetzt werden. Sie will sich dabei...

Die in der Erforschung und Interpretation antiker Texte lange aufrechterhaltene Trennung von Religion und Literatur in zwei nicht interdependente Spharen ist anachronistisch. Im Falle des griechischen Dramas, untrennbar gebunden an den athenischen Dionysoskult, hat sich die Erkenntnis einer strukturellen Pragung durch den Mythos und das Ritual zwar durchgesetzt, doch bleibt es ein Desiderat, das Interpretationsmodell auf andere Gattungen der griechischen Literatur (Epos, Lyrik, vorsokratisches Lehrgedicht, Geschichtsschreibung, platonischer Dialog, hellenistische Dichtung und Roman) sowie...

Die Bibliotheca Teubneriana, gegrundet 1849, ist die weltweit alteste, traditionsreichste und umfangreichste Editionsreihe griechischer und lateinischer Literatur von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Pro Jahr erscheinen 4-5 neue Editionen. Samtliche Ausgaben werden durch eine lateinische Praefatio erganzt.

Die wissenschaftliche Betreuung der Reihe obliegt einem Team anerkannter Philologen:

Gian Biagio Conte (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa)
James Diggle (University of Cambridge)
Donald J. Mastronarde (University of California, Berkeley)
Franco...

Zwanzig Beitrage zur byzantinischen Literatur, verfasst von Kollegen des Jubilars, mit Schwerpunkt auf W. Horandners Forschungsinteressen. Insbesondere werden Epigramme und die Literatur der Komnenenzeit behandelt sowie die Geschichte literarischer Motive, Rhetorik und Fragen der Literatursprache. Mehrere Beitrage beinhalten Texteditionen. Die Artikel sind in deutscher, englischer, franzosischer und italienischer Sprache verfasst.