Geoffrey Chaucer was not a writer, primarily, but a privileged official place-holder. Prone to violence, including rape, assault, and extortion, the poet was employed first at domestic personal service and subsequently at policework of various sorts, protecting the established order during a period of massive social upset. "Chaucer's Jobs" shows that the servile and disciplinary nature of the daily work Chaucer did was repeated in his poetry, which by turns flatters his aristocratic betters and deals out discipline to malcontent others. Carlson contends that it was this social and political quality of Chaucer's writings, rathen than artistic merit, that made him the "Father of English Poetry."

The rhetorical trope of irony is well-trod territory, with books and essays devoted to its use by a wide range of medieval and Renaissance writers, from the Beowulf-poet and Chaucer to Boccaccio and Shakespeare; however, the use of sarcasm, the "flesh tearing" form of irony, in the same literature has seldom been studied at length or in depth. Sarcasm is notoriously difficult to pick out in a written text, since it relies so much on tone of voice and context. This is the first book-length study of medieval and Renaissance sarcasm. Its fourteen essays treat instances in a range of genres, both sacred and secular, and of cultures from Anglo-Saxon to Arabic, where the combination of circumstance and word choice makes it absolutely clear that the speaker, whether a character or a narrator, is being sarcastic. Essays address, among other things, the clues writers give that sarcasm is at work, how it conforms to or deviates from contemporary rhetorical theories, what role it plays in building character or theme, and how sarcasm conforms to the Christian milieu of medieval Europe, and beyond to medieval Arabic literature. The collection thus illuminates a half-hidden but surprisingly common early literary technique for modern readers.

Studies in the Age of Chaucer, the year-book of the New Chaucer Society, is published annually. Each issue contains articles that explore such concerns as the efficacy of various critical approaches to the art of Chaucer and his contemporaries, their literary relationships and reputations, and the artistic, economic, intellectual, religious, scientific, and social and historical backgrounds to their work. Reviews of books on Chaucer and related topics, and an annotated Chaucer bibliography are also included.

First full-scale account of the use of the Arthurian legend in the long twelfth century. The precedent of empire and the promise of return lay at the heart of King Arthur's appeal in the Middle Ages. Both ideas found fullness of expression in the twelfth century: monarchs and magnates sought to recreate an Arthurian golden age that was as wondrous as the biblical and classical worlds, but less remote. Arthurianism, the practice of invoking and emulating the legendary Arthur of post-Roman Britain, was thus an instance of medieval medievalism. This book provides a comprehensive history of the first 150 years of Arthurianism, from its beginnings under Henry II of England to a highpoint under Edward I. It contends that the Plantagenet kings of England mockingly ascribed a literal understanding of the myth of King Arthur's return to the Brittonic Celts whilst adopting for themselves a figurative and typological interpretation of the myth. A central figure in this work is Arthur of Brittany (1187-1203), who, for more than a generation, was the focus of Arthurian hopes and their disappointment. CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL BERARD is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Providence College. He completed his PhD at the University of Toronto's Centre for Medieval Studies.

This volume contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate regarding the reception of Cicero. It focuses on one particular moment in Cicero's life, the period from the death of Caesar up to Cicero's own death. These final years have shaped Cicero's reception in an special way, as they have condensed and enlarged themes that his life stands for: on the positive side his fight for freedom and the republic against mighty opponents (for which he would finally be killed); on the other hand his inconsistency in terms of political alliances and tendency to overestimate his own influence. For that reason, many later readers viewed the final months of Cicero's life as his swan song, and as representing the essence of his life as a whole. The fixed scope of this volume facilitates an analysis of the underlying debates about the historical character Cicero and his textual legacy (speeches, letters and philosophical works) through the ages, stretching from antiquity itself to the present day. Major themes negotiated in this volume are the influence of Cicero's regular attempts to anticipate his later reception; the question of whether or not Cicero showed consistency in his behaviour; his debatable heroism with regard to republican freedom; and the interaction between philosophy, rhetoric and politics.

The Dante Encyclopedia is a comprehensive reference work that presents a systematic introduction to Dante's life and works and the cultural context in which his moral and intellectual imagination took shape. It is the first major source of its kind, and the only such work currently available, in the English language. Until now, much Dante scholarship has been scattered in various sources and not available in English. This book brings together all the most recent theories about Dante and his works and summarizes them in clear and vivid prose for readers who seek basic but detailed information on all major aspects of Dante scholarship.

Key Features: * Study methods * Introduction to the text * Summaries with critical notes * Themes and techniques * Textual analysis of key passages * Author biography * Historical and literary background * Modern and historical critical approaches * Chronology * Glossary of literary terms

The questions of fame and reputation are central to Chaucer's writings; the essays here discuss their various treatments and manifestations. Fama, or fame, is a central concern of late medieval literature: where fame came from, who deserved it, whether it was desirable and how it was acquired and kept. An interest in fame was not new but was renewed and rethought within the vernacular revolutions of the later Middle Ages. The work of Geoffrey Chaucer collates received ideas on the subject of fama, both from the classical world and from the work of his contemporaries. Chaucer's place in these intertextual negotiations was readily recognized in his aftermath, as later writers adopted and reworked postures which Chaucer had struck, in their own bids for literary authority. This volume tracks debates onfama which were past, present and future to Chaucer, using his work as a centre point to investigate canon formation in European literature from the late Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period. Isabel Davis is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Birkbeck, University of London; Catherine Nall is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. Contributors: Joanna Bellis, Alcuin Blamires, Julia Boffey, Isabel Davis, Stephanie Downes, A.S.G. Edwards, Jamie C. Fumo, Andrew Galloway, Nick Havely, Thomas A. Prendergast, Mike Rodman Jones, William T. Rossiter, Elizaveta Strakhov.

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 oder englische Praefatio erganzt. Die wissenschaftliche Betreuung der Reihe obliegt einem Team anerkannter Philologen: Gian Biagio Conte (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) Marcus Deufert (Universitat Leipzig) James Diggle (University of Cambridge) Donald J. Mastronarde (University of California, Berkeley) Franco Montanari (Universita di Genova) Heinz-Gunther Nesselrath (Georg-August-Universitat Goettingen) Dirk Obbink (University of Oxford) Oliver Primavesi (Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat Munchen) Michael D. Reeve (University of Cambridge) Richard J. Tarrant (Harvard University) Vergriffene Titel werden als Print-on-Demand-Nachdrucke wieder verfugbar gemacht. Zudem werden alle Neuerscheinungen der Bibliotheca Teubneriana parallel zur gedruckten Ausgabe auch als eBook angeboten. Die alteren Bande werden sukzessive ebenfalls als eBook bereitgestellt. Falls Sie einen vergriffenen Titel bestellen moechten, der noch nicht als Print-on-Demand angeboten wird, schreiben Sie uns an: [email protected] Samtliche in der Bibliotheca Teubneriana erschienenen Editionen lateinischer Texte sind in der Datenbank BTL Online elektronisch verfugbar.

Against Leptines is one of the most important speeches delivered by Demosthenes. In it he argues against the abolition of all honorific exemptions (ateleiai) from festival liturgies in Athens. An important source for Athenian history in the mid-fourth century BC, the speech broaches a number of issues vital to our understanding of classical Athenian society, politics, and legislation. The questions of public honours, Athenian democratic ideology, and the themes of expediency, justice and injustice, are central to the speech and have made it popular with audiences ever since the classical period. Kremmydas' volume is the first detailed commentary on this speech in any language since the 19th century. An extensive introduction, which covers key background issues, the addition of the Greek text (adapted from M. R. Dilts's Oxford Classical Text of Demosthenes 20), and a facing English translation make the commentary even more accessible to a wider scholarly audience. While the important historical and complex legal issues are given appropriate attention in the commentary section, a special emphasis is also given to the elucidation of Demosthenes rhetorical strategy and argumentation.

"Memory, Images, and the English Corpus Christi Drama" uniquely brings together memory theory, medieval and contemporary images, cognition, and the English Corpus Christi drama. Lerud argues that the role of frames or backgrounds is integral to the image and has been underestimated or misunderstood in the study of the drama. Lerud examines the use of doorways, arches, gates, and other significant town spaces in framing or setting off particular pageant images, to achieve a fuller understanding of the longevity of a drama often viewed as "Catholic" that nonetheless survived the dissolution of the monasteries and the turmoil of the early Reformation.

A fresh reading of the Legend shows it to be one of Chaucer's most carefully crafted and significant works. Professor Collette's approach to this challenging and provocative poem reflects her wide scholarly interests, her expertise in the area of representations of women in late medieval European society, and her conviction that the Legend of Good Women can be better understood when positioned within several of the era's intellectual concerns and historical contexts. The book will enrich the ongoing conversation among Chaucerians as to the significance of the Legend, both as an individual cultural production and an important constituent of Chaucer's poetic.achievement. A praiseworthy and useful monograph. Professor Robert Hanning, Columbia University. The Legend of Good Women has perhaps not always had the appreciation or attention it deserves. Here, it is read as one of Chaucer's major texts, a thematically and artistically sophisticated work whose veneer of transparency and narrow focus masks a vital inquiry into basic questions of value, moderation, and sincerity in late medieval culture. The volume places Chaucer within several literary contexts developed in separate chapters: early humanist bibliophilia, translation and the development of the vernacular; late medieval compendia of exemplary narratives centred in women's choices written by Boccaccio, Machaut, Gower and Christine de Pizan; and the pervasive late fourteenth-century cultural influence of Aristotelian ideas of the mean, moderation, and value, focusing on Oresme's translations of the Ethics into French. It concludes with two chapters on the context of Chaucer's continual reconsideration of issues of exchange, moderation and fidelity apparent in thematic, figurative and semantic connections that link the Legend both to Troilus and Criseyde and to the women of The Canterbury Tales. Carolyn Collette is Emeritus Professor of English Language and Literature at Mount Holyoke College and a Research Associate at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York.

Virgil:Critical Assessments collects eighty-four of the most important articles on Virgil published in the last hundred years, many of which remain the starting-points for modern scholarship and criticism. The set gathers together articles from a wide range of journals in English, as well as from the German and Italian traditions of Virgil studies, some in new translations, which would not otherwise be available.
The selections are arranged under the following headings:
* general articles, including a discussion of the influence of Lucretius' poetry on the Virgilian corpus
* the Eclogues, containing critical interpretations of all ten of Virgil's bucolic poems, an exploration of the Greek sources and a discussion of the complex poetic structure of the Eclogues
* the Georgics, incorporating an examination of the agricultural methods detailed in the poem, an exploration of the Augustan and Roman themes implicit in the poem and critical interpretations of all four books
* the Aeneid, featuring a discussion of the similarities between Virgil's Aeneas and Homer's Achilles, an exploration of the epic genre and crucial recurring themes in the Aeneid, an examination of Virgilian similes and a study of the Homeric allusions of the poem.
In volumes II-IV general studies on the works are followed by items on the individual poems and books.

This is the first study considering the reception of Greek tragedy and the transformation of the tragic idea in Hellenistic poetry. The focus is on third-century Alexandria, where the Ptolemies fostered tragedy as a theatrical form for public entertainment and as an official genre cultivated by the Pleiad, whereas the scholars of the Museum were commissioned to edit and comment on the classical tragic texts. More importantly, the notion of the tragic was adapted to the literary trends of the era. Released from the strict rules established by Aristotle about what makes a good tragedy, the major poets of the Alexandrian avant-garde struggled to transform the tragic idea and integrate it into non-dramatic genres. Tragic Failures traces the incorporation of the tragic idea in the poetry of Callimachus and Theocritus, in Apollonius' epic Argonautica, in the iambic Alexandra, in late Hellenistic poetry and in Parthenius' Erotika Pathemata. It offers a fascinating insight into the new conception of the tragic dilemmas in the context of Alexandrian aesthetics.

Studies in the Age of Chaucer is the annual yearbook of the New Chaucer Society, publishing articles on the writing of Chaucer and his contemporaries, their antecedents and successors, and their intellectual and social contexts. More generally, articles explore the culture and writing of later medieval Britain (1200-1500). Each SAC volume also includes an annotated bibliography and reviews of Chaucer-related publications.

Recent archaeological discoveries, coupled with long-lost but now available epigraphical evidence, and a more expansive view of literary sources, provide new and dramatic evidence of the emergence of rhetoric in ancient Greece. Many of these artifacts, gathered through onsite fieldwork in Greece, are analyzed in this revised and expanded edition of GREEK RHETORIC BEFORE ARISTOTLE. This new evidence, along with recent developments in research methods and analysis, reveal clearly that long before Aristotle's Rhetoric, long before rhetoric was even stabilized into formal systems of study in Classical Athens, nascent, pre-disciplinary "rhetorics" were emerging throughout Greece. These newly acquired resources and research procedures demonstrate that oral and literate rhetoric emerged not only because of intellectual developments and the refinement of technologies that facilitated communication but also because of social, political and cultural forces that nurtured rhetoric's growth and popularity throughout the Hellenic world. GREEK RHETORIC BEFORE ARISTOTLE offers insights into the mentalities forming and driving expression, revealing, in turn, a great deal more about the relationship of thought and expression in Antiquity. A more expansive understanding of these pre-disciplinary manifestations of rhetoric, in all of their varied forms, enriches the history and the nature of classical rhetoric as a formalized discipline. - RICHARD LEO ENOS is Professor and holder of the Lillian Radford Chair of Rhetoric and Composition at Texas Christian University. His research concentration is in classical rhetoric with an emphasis in the relationship between oral and written discourse. He is past president of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric (1980-1981) and the Rhetoric Society of America (1990-1991). He received the RSA George E. Yoos Award Distinguished Service and was inducted as an RSA Fellow in 2006. He is the founding editor of ADVANCES IN THE HISTORY OF RHETORIC and the editor (with David E. Beard) of ADVANCES IN THE HISTORY OF RHETORIC: THE FIRST SIX YEARS (2007, Parlor Press). He is also the author of ROMAN RHETORIC: REVOLUTION AND THE GREEK INFLUENCE, Revised and Expanded Edition (2008, Parlor Press). - LAUER SERIES IN RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION, edited by Catherine Hobbs, Patricia Sullivan, Thomas Rickert, and Jennifer Bay.

This is the OCR-endorsed publication from Bloomsbury for the Latin AS and A-Level (Group 1) prescription of Annals Book I sections 16-30 and the A-Level (Group 2) prescription of Annals Book I sections 3-7, 11-14 and 46-49, giving full Latin text, commentary and vocabulary, with a detailed introduction that also covers the prescribed text to be read in English for A Level. Annals I starts with the death of Augustus and the beginning of Tiberius' principate. Tacitus chronicles the uneasy and unprecedented transition from one to the other, in the context of a political elite shaken by years of civil war and unsure as to how best to protect their own interests and the stability Augustus had brought to Rome. With damning references to the servile nature of the new regime, Tacitus vividly paints scenes of confused senatorial debates, and Tiberius' own uncertainty over his own position and the best decisions to make. Opportunistic rebellions in the army are described with dramatic brilliance.

First recent full-length analysis of a major medieval poem. The late fourteenth-century English poem Winner and Waster narrates a debate between the forces of avarice (Winner) and generosity (Waster); it ranges widely over a number of major issues in the political life of England during Edward III's reign. This book sets out to re-date the poem from the 1350s to the 1360s, and in so doing to question whether its principal message really revolves (as so much earlier scholarship has insisted) around the state of public order and the costs of warfare in the 1350s. Instead, it proposes that the poem echoes debates about Edward III's ability to maintain concord between the members of his household, to manage the extravagance in clothing that prompted the sumptuary laws of 1363, and to run his peace-time finances of the 1360s in such a way as to guarantee the solvency of the crown. Drawing extensively on the records of parliament and on contemporary chronicles, this volume sets Winner and Waster within the wider context of other complaint literature of the fourteenth century, and characterizes it as one of the most politically - and socially - engaged works of the period.

This book analyses how the three books of visions by Hildegard of Bingen use the allegorical vision as a form of knowledge. It describes how the visionary's use of allegory and allegorical exegesis is linked to theories of cognition, interpretation, and prophecy. It argues that the form of the allegorical vision is not just the product of a medieval symbolic mentality, but specific to Hildegard's position and the major transformations taking place in the prescholastic intellectual milieu, such as the changing use of Scripture or the shift from traditional hermeneutics to cognitive language philosophy. The book shows that Hildegard uses traditional forms of knowledge - prophecy, the vision, monastic theology, allegorical hermeneutics - in startlingly innovative ways by combining them and by revising them for her own time.

The heat of Beowulf develops a new approach to the aesthetics of Beowulf by engaging with the work of twentieth-century poets Robin Blaser and Jack Spicer, whose avant-garde poetics were informed by a serious encounter with the poem in the seminar of medievalist Arthur G. Brodeur. By considering Blaser's and Spicer's poetics as they were shaped by their encounter with Beowulf, the book is able to open up questions about the non-representational poetics of the poem, rebooting a mid-century approach to aesthetics on a new critical trajectory. The book considers the poem's aesthetics through relationship translation theory, as well as early medieval discourses of sensory-affective experience and twentieth-century phenomenology. The heat of Beowulf reexamines the scholarship on Old English poetics from the mid-twentieth century as it intersected with post-war avant-garde poetics, and how understanding these critical histories can reshape how we read Beowulf now. -- .

English Stage Comedy 1490-1990 is a unique and beautifully written study of the comedy of the English stage from the Tudor period to the late twentieth century. Alexander Leggatt demonstrates that an examination of comedy as a 'genre' can tell us much about the relationships between literature and society. English Stage Comedy 1490-1990 surveys five centuries of classic comic drama, focusing on major playwrights such as:
* Shakespeare
* Jonson
* Etherege
* Wycherley
* Congreve
* Vanbrugh
* Goldsmith
* Sheridan
* Wilde
* Shaw
* Coward
* Orton
* Ayckbourn

Examination of texts concerning the vikings reveals much about their origin myth and legend. Viking settlers and their descendants inhabited both England and Normandy in the tenth century, but narratives discussing their origins diverged significantly. This comparative study explores the depictions of Scandinavia and theevents of the Viking Age in genealogies, origin myths, hagiographies, and charters from the two regions. Analysis of this literary evidence reveals the strategic use of Scandinavian identity by Norman and Anglo-Saxon elites. Countering interpretations which see claims of Viking identity as expressions of contact with Scandinavia, the comparison demonstrates the local, political significance of these claims. In doing so, the book reveals the earliest origins of familiar legends which at once demonize and romanticize the Vikings - and which have their roots in both Anglo-Saxon and Norman traditions. Dr KATHERINE CROSS is a historian of the early Middle Ages at the BritishMuseum and Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

This is the first volume to explore the commentaries on ancient texts produced and circulating in Byzantium. It adopts a broad chronological perspective (from the twelfth to the fifteenth century) and examines different types of commentaries on ancient poetry and prose within the context of the study and teaching of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and science. By discussing the exegetical literature of the Byzantines as embedded in the socio-cultural context of the Komnenian and Palaiologan periods, the book analyses the frameworks and networks of knowledge transfer, patronage and identity building that motivated the Byzantine engagement with the ancient intellectual and literary tradition.

This book explores the cultural and intellectual stakes of medieval and renaissance Britain's sense of itself as living in the shadow of Rome: a city whose name could designate the ancient, fallen, quintessentially human power that had conquered and colonized Britain, and also the alternately sanctified and demonized Roman Church. Wallace takes medieval texts in a range of languages (including Latin, medieval Welsh, Old English and Old French) and places them in conversation with early modern English and humanistic Latin texts (including works by Gildas, Bede, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bacon, St. Augustine, Dante, Erasmus, Luther and Montaigne). 'The Ordinary', 'The Self', 'The Word', and 'The Dead' are taken as compass points by which individuals lived out their orientations to, and against, Rome, isolating important dimensions of Rome's enduring ability to shape and complicate the effort to come to terms with the nature of self and the structure of human community.

No other ancient poet has had such a hold on the imagination of readers as Ovid. Through the centuries, artists, writers, and poets have found in his work inspiration for new creative endeavors. This anthology of twenty of the most influential papers published in the last thirty years represents the broad range of critical and scholarly approaches to Ovid's work. The entire range of his poetry, from the Amores to the Epistles from the Black Sea, is discussed by some of the leading scholars of Latin poetry, employing, critical methods ranging from philology to contemporary literary theory. In an introductory essay, Peter Knox surveys Ovidian scholarship over this period and locates the assembled papers within recent critical trends. Taken together, the articles in this collection offer the interested reader, whether experienced scholar or novice, an entree into the current critical discourse on Ovid, who is at once one of the most accessible authors of classical antiquity and one of the least understood.