Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Ancient and Classical

The Homeric Questions of the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry (3rd cent. CE) is an important work in the history of Homeric criticism. In contrast to the philosopher's allegorical readings of Homer in De Antro and De Styge, in the Homeric Questions Porphyry solves problemata by applying the dictum that "the poet explains himself." Based on a new collation of the manuscripts, this edition of Porphyry's Homeric Questions on the Iliad is the first since 1880. The preface contains sections on Porphyry's life and works, the...

Evidence relating to the 'real world' of antiquity - inscriptions, historiography and legal speeches - has dominated studies of ancient Greek and Roman slavery, although providing few direct accounts by slaves of their subjective experiences. Yet the imaginative fictions produced by the ancient psyche in its literature and art provide many representations and discussions of what it felt like to be a slave. This volume provides a sustained discussion of the theory and practice of handling ancient poetry and images in order to enhance our understanding of the way that slavery was experienced...

The bucolic natives are aware of the presence of Rome, and Virgil himself is free to enter their world. Virgil's bucolic space is, in many ways, a poetic replication of the public and private gardens of his Roman audience - enclosed green spaces which afforded the citizen sheltered social and cultural activities, temporary respite from the turbulence of public life, and a tamed landscape in which to play out the tensions between the simple ideal and the complexities of reality. 'Virgil's Garden' looks at the 'Eclogues' in terms of the relationship between its contents and its cultural...

Aeschylus was the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world's great art-forms. In this completely revised and updated edition of his book Alan H. Sommerstein, analysing the seven extant plays of the Aeschylean corpus (one of them probably in fact the work of another author) and utilising the knowledge we have of the seventy or more whose scripts have not survived, explores Aeschylus' poetic, dramatic, theatrical and musical techniques, his social, political and religious ideas, and the significance of his drama for our own day. Special attention is paid to the "Oresteia"...

'But where shall wisdom be found?' asked Job, and from across the ancient world came many different replies. Some conceived of wisdom in supernatural personified form and answered the question in appropriate terms. For others, wisdom was something far more human, manifested in a number of different possible ways. For many philosophers, on the other hand, it was simply the highest human intellectual attainment possible. However understood, wisdom was highly prized across the ancient world and throughout ancient history. To the extent to which there was a shared ancient culture, wisdom lay...

The teaching and research of the Classics in South Africa are deeply rooted in the racial, political and educational inequalities which have characterised its turbulent history. In this original study, Michael Lambert opens three windows on to this history, using the creation of identities as his theoretical lens. The foundation of the Classical Association of South Africa in 1956 and the cultural reinforcement of Afrikaner nationalist identity; the deployment of British colonial identity in public discourses about the role of the Classics in apartheid South Africa at an English-speaking...

Planned as a companion volume to "Writing Latin" by Richard Ashdowne and James Morwood, this brand new guide to writing Greek will be useful both in the upper forms of schools and for those starting Greek prose composition at university. Part 1 deals with the constituent elements of the simple sentence, and in Part 2 all major constructions are covered, each with thorough explanations and clear examples. Each chapter has either two or three exercises of practice sentences, further supplemented throughout Part 2 by passages for continuous composition. 100 important irregular verbs with...

This is the first book to be devoted to its subject, offering a wide-ranging introduction to dictionaries of Latin and Greek from the ancient world to the present. As well as the well-known dictionaries such as Liddell and Scott and the 'Oxford Latin Dictionary', less well-known genres are considered, such as etymological dictionaries, lexica of single authors and the 'Gradus ad Parnassum'. Case studies of the treatment of individual words are included, but the nature of lexica as cultural enterprises is also considered, as are the human stories of their makers; the enduring tensions...

Aeschylus' 'Suppliants' dramatises the myth of the fifty daughters of Danaos, who flee Egypt and come to Argos as suppliants, trying to escape forced marriage to their Egyptian cousins. It was long considered to be the earliest surviving tragedy. Even after the mid-20th century, when new evidence established a later date for the play, critics tended to condemn it for its alleged 'archaic' features. As a result it has long been underestimated, although a careful examination reveals it to be one of the most exciting tragedies. This companion employs a variety of critical approaches to set...

This tightly focused collection of essays by a distinguished group of scholars analyses the degree to which expressions of emotion in ancient literature and art become an 'artistic' rather than a 'social' construct. To what degree do literary genres, philosophy and visual arts produce expectations for the arousal of certain emotions? Are the emotions of women, for example, represented differently in different genres? How and why do literary genres and visual arts concentrate on specific emotions and stylise them accordingly, and how do particular emotions relate to gender within literary...

Roman drama is a genre of Latin literature that was influential both in the cultural life of the ancient Romans and in the European theatre tradition. Plays of Plautus, Terence and Seneca are still very well known today; yet there were numerous works by other poets besides, though they survive only in fragmentary form. On the basis of a selection of paradigmatic sample texts by a number of Roman dramatists, this anthology provides a stimulating overview of the entire literary genre, including its various subtypes (tragedy, praetexta, comedy, togata, mime) and its historical development. To...

• A comprehensive introduction and overview of the classical tradition - the interpretation of classical texts in later centuries
• Comprises 26 newly commissioned essays from an international team of experts
• Divided into three sections: a chronological survey, a geographical survey, and a section illustrating the connections between the classical tradition and contemporary theory

Boethius (c. 480-c. 525) wrote his highly influential second commentary on Aristotle's On Interpretation in Latin, but using the style of the Greek commentaries on Aristotle. It was part of his project to bring knowledge of Plato and Aristotle to the Latin-speaking world of his fellow Christians. The project was cruelly interrupted by his execution at the age of about 45, leaving the Latin world under-informed about Greek Philosophy for 700 years. Boethius reveals to us how On Interpretation was understood not only by himself, but also by some of the best Greek interpreters, especially...