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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > Classical, early & medieval
Though it might seem as modern as Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, and Vladimir Nabokov, translingual writing - texts by authors using more than one language or a language other than their primary one - has an ancient pedigree. The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translingualism aims to provide a comprehensive overview of translingual literature in a wide variety of languages throughout the world, from ancient to modern times. The volume includes sections on: translingual genres - with chapters on memoir, poetry, fiction, drama, and cinema ancient, medieval, and modern translingualism global perspectives - chapters overseeing European, African, and Asian languages. Combining chapters from lead specialists in the field, this volume will be of interest to scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates interested in investigating the vibrant area of translingual literature. Attracting scholars from a variety of disciplines, this interdisciplinary and pioneering Handbook will advance current scholarship of the permutations of languages among authors throughout time.
In this title, originally published in 1950, the author has set out to give a description and a critical assessment of the most important (not necessarily the most famous) Utopian writings since Plato first gave, in his Republic, a literary form to the dreams of a Golden Age and of ideal societies which had doubtless been haunting man since the beginning of the conscious discussion of social problems. It is more than a mere compilation and criticism of Utopias, it brings out in a striking way the close and fateful relationship between Utopian thought and social reality, and takes its place among the important books which had appeared in the previous few years, warning us, from various points of view, of the doom that awaits those who are foolish enough to put their trust in an ordered and regimented world.
The narrative artistry of Polybius has received relatively little scholarly attention. Critics have tended to discuss his reflections on the various issues presented in his work or to use him as a source of valuable information about the historical period that he records. This volume, which draws on narratology's analytical tools, focuses instead on the narrative of the Histories, exploring the sophisticated narrative techniques that have gone into shaping it. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the ways the formal aspects of the text contribute to promoting Polybius' thematic concerns. Its aim is not only to present the Histories as the work of an author who has taken pains to provide us with a carefully structured story, but also to illustrate how interpretations of this story can be enriched by a sensitivity to factors such as chronological displacements and variations of focalization.
The century and a half following the Norman Conquest of 1066 saw an explosion in the writing of Latin and vernacular history in England, while the creation of the romance genre reinvented the fictional narrative. Where critics have seen these developments as part of a cross-Channel phenomenon, Laura Ashe argues that a genuinely distinctive character can be found in the writings of England during the period. Drawing on a wide range of historical, legal and cultural contexts, she discusses how writers addressed the Conquest and rebuilt their sense of identity as a new, united ???English??? people, with their own national literature and culture, in a manner which was to influence all subsequent medieval English literature. This study opens up new ways of reading post-Conquest texts in relation to developments in political and legal history, and in terms of their place in the English Middle Ages as a whole.
Nizami Ganjavi is one of the foremost figures in Persian poetry, living in Azerbaijan in the second half of the twelfth century. One of the oldest Western poets in Persian literature, he is acclaimed for his five masnavis which are assembled to form the Khamsa (Quintet). His reputation is that of a difficult and refined poet, who introduced into his verse vocabulary, expressions and allusions to the then-known sciences. This study considers all his verses containing allusions to trees and their fruit. The scientific contents of these allusions are then checked with the help of Arabic and Persian medieval scientific treatises, ranging from the ninth to the seventeenth century. As a result, this study not only proposes a better understanding of nature imagery in the work of a seminal Persian poet, but provides a useful insight into the breadth and depth of the education of medieval poets and their readers.
Pindar's Pythian Eleven is a miniature masterpiece: a poem praising a young athlete which presents a vivid and important account of the Agamemnon legend. Yet it contains so many difficulties (of text, metre, dating and interpretation) that even Wilamowitz regarded it as one of Pindar's most obscure poems. This 2007 edition (the first full-scale treatment that the poem had ever received) provides answers to the problems that have prevented proper appreciation of the work. In addition to the full introduction and commentary, the book also has a text based on re-examination of the manuscripts, detailed metrical discussion, and a translation.
Homeric Greek has a particularly rich system of moods which are analysed afresh in this book in the light of recent theoretical interest in the semantic domain of modality. The domain is one of the most complex and interesting, since modal forms are used for the most 'subjective' of messages, expressing our beliefs, intentions, desires, abilities and wishes. Incorporating findings from the theory of grammaticalisation, this study considers the Homeric Greek modal system from a diachronic perspective and offers a radical revision of traditional accounts. Providing insights into both individual constructions as well as the overall system of modality in Greek, it will be of interest to general linguists, linguists studying ancient Greek, and also scholars interested in fundamental questions of meaning in Greek. The indices, where all the instances of the moods in the Homeric poems are categorised into types, also make it useful as a research tool.
This is a book about two empires-America and Rome-and the forms of time we create when we think about them together. Ranging from the eighteenth century to the present day, through novels, journalism, film, and photography, Time and Antiquity in American Empire reconfigures our understanding of how cultural and political life has generated an analogy between Roman antiquity and the imperial US state-both to justify and perpetuate it, and to resist and critique it. The book takes in a wide scope, from theories of historical time and imperial culture, through the twin political pillars of American empire-republicanism and slavery-to the popular genres that have reimagined America's and Rome's sometimes strange orbit: Christian fiction, travel writing, and science fiction. Through this conjunction of literary history, classical reception studies, and the philosophy of history, however, Time and Antiquity in American Empire builds a more fundamental inquiry: about how we imagine both our politics and ourselves within historical time. It outlines a new relationship between text and context, and between history and culture; one built on the oscillating, dialectical logic of the analogy, and on a spatialising of historical temporality through the metaphors of constellations and networks. Offering a fresh reckoning with the historicist protocols of literary study, this book suggests that recognizing the shape of history we step into when we analogize with the past is also a way of thinking about how we have read-and how we might yet read.
Beer and Brewing in Medieval Culture and Contemporary Medievalism is a cross-cultural analysis of the role that alcohol consumption played in literature, social and cultural history, and gender roles in the Middle Ages. The volume also seeks to correct or offer new insights into historical beer production. By drawing on the expertise of scholars of history, archaeology, Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Medieval and Early Modern literature, the book shows how historical medieval beer and brewing has influenced nostalgic post-medieval nationalism and romanticized visions of the medieval ale-house seen in beer marketing today. The essays describe alcohol consumption in the Middle Ages across much of Northern Europe, engage with the various myths employed in modern craft beer advertising and beer production, and examine how gender intersects with beer production and consumption. The editors also raise certain critical questions about medievalisms which need to be interrogated, particularly in light of the continued use of the Middle Ages for white supremacist and colonialist ideals. The volume contributes to the study of the popular and historical understandings of the Middle Ages as well the issues of race and gender.
The arguments used to justify the deposition of Richard II in 1399 created new forms of political discussion which developed alongside new expectations of kingship itself and which shaped political action and debate for centuries to come. This interdisciplinary study analyses the political language and literature of the early Lancastrian period, particularly the reigns of Henry IV (1399???1413) and Henry V (1413???1422). Lancastrian authors such as Thomas Hoccleve and the authors of the anonymous works Richard the Redeless, Mum and the Sothsegger and Crowned King made creative use of languages and idioms which were in the process of escaping from the control of their royal masters. In a study that has far-reaching implications for both literary and political history, Jenni Nuttall presents a new understanding of how political language functions in the late medieval period.
Euripides' Ion is a highly complex and elusive play and thus poses considerable difficulties to any interpreter. On the basis of a new recension of the text, this commentary offers explanations of the language, literary technique, and realia of the play and discusses the main issues of interpretation. In this way the reader is provided with the material required for an appreciation of this entertaining as well as provocative dramatic composition.
Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's intellectual mentor, is widely considered among the greatest Italian lyric poets; his famous and notoriously difficult philosophical canzone Donna me prega is often characterized as the most studied lyric poem in Italian literature. This book situates Cavalcanti's poetry in the context of the Arabic Aristotelian rationalism that entered the Latin West in the 12th century-a tradition marked by questions concerning whether humans can ever transcend their animality. Cavalcanti's poetry is a focal point where one can view, circa 1300 AD, Arabo-Islamic philosophy in the process of being assimilated and naturalized in Western Europe, eventually leading to values (associated with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment) that we now call modern and secular-in particular, to a notion of human reason as bound up with imagination and with ethical praxis rather than as a means for the attainment of knowledge concerning God and the cosmos. The book features a radically unprecedented interpretation of Donna me prega, starkly opposed to all previous accounts: far from treating love as a threat to reason that would best be eliminated, the canzone praises loving as the essential operation of rational human flourishing. This study of Cavalcanti serves as a prelude to the formulation of a new paradigm for understanding Dante's Comedy.
Covering a period of nearly 40 years' work by the author this collection of essays in the Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies series brings the perspective of a Drama academic and practitioner of early English plays to the understanding of how medieval plays and Robin Hood games of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were performed. It explores why, where, when, and how the plays happened, who took part, and who were the audiences. The insights are informed by a combination of research and the public presentation of surviving texts. The research included in the volume unites the early English experiences of religious and secular performance. This recognition challenges the dominant critical distinction of the past between the two and the consequent privileging of biblical and moral plays over secular entertainments. What further binds, rather than separates, the two is that the destination of funds raised by the different activities maintained the civic and parochial needs of the institutions upon which the people depended. This collection redefines the inclusive nature and common interests of the purposes that lay behind generically different undertakings. They shared an extraordinary investment of human and financial resources in the anticipation of a profit that was pious and practical. (CS1081).
While much has been written of the importance of Agrippa in Augustus' rise to power as the first emperor of Rome, Maecenas remains a shadowy figure despite being a vital part in the success of Augustus. After the assassination of Julius Caesar, Maecenas was a vital negotiator between Octavian and Mark Antony in the years leading up to the battle of Actium, and a wise political advisor to Augustus during the early years of the new regime. This is the first biography of Maecenas in English and gives due credit to the stature of Maecenas both as a confidant of the emperor and as patron of the poets Virgil, Horace and Propertius. The book devotes a chapter to each poet's relationship with Maecenas and the Augustan regime: the chapter on Virgil, while considering his relationship to Maecenas and Augustus, argues that the origins of his choice of Aeneas may lie in Etruria rather than elsewhere, while the chapter on Horace assesses one of the closest documented relationships of Roman history. The chapter on Propertius wrestles with the disparate views of scholars on the question of his relationship with the Augustan regime and argues that, at heart, he remains an Umbrian/Etruscan rather than a Roman. A crucial feature of the book is the provision of 161 texts from ancient Roman and Greek authors which mention Maecenas. Based on sustainable evidence this study of the importance of Maecenas takes scholarship in new and important directions.
This selection of over 200 texts, nearly all appearing for the first time in English translation, provides a close-up look at the crusades against the Hussite heretics of 15th-century Bohemia, from the perspective of the official Church - or at their struggles for religious freedom, from the Hussites' own point of view. It also throws light on the meaning of the crusading movement and on the nature of warfare in the late Middle Ages. There is no single documentary account of the conflict, but the riveting events can be reconstructed from a wide range of contemporary sources: chronicles, sermons, manifestos, songs, bulls, imperial correspondence, military and diplomatic communiques, liturgy, military ordinances, trade embargos, epic poems, letters from the field, Jewish documents, speeches, synodal proceedings, and documents from popes, bishops, emperors and city councils. These texts reveal the zeal and energy of the crusaders but also their deep disunity, growing frustration and underlying fears - and likewise the heresy, determination and independence of the Hussites. Five times the cross was preached and the vastly superior forces of the official church and the empire marched into Bohemia to suppress the peasant armies. Five times they were humiliated and put to flight.
The Old French 'Rothelin' Continuation of William of Tyre's Historia provides one of the best contemporary narratives of the history of the crusades and of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the mid-thirteenth century. Covering the period 1229-61, it has vivid accounts of the disastrous expeditions led by Count Theobald of Champagne (1239-40) and King Louis IX of France (1248-54) as well as of other events in the East. But the text contains far more than this, with a detailed description of Jerusalem itself, songs of protest written by crusaders, and a variety of marvels and adventures, including stories of Alexander the Great, and the poisonous snakes encountered by the Roman army under Cato. This text is here translated into English for the first time, together with a narrative for the same years taken from another Old French Continuation of William of Tyre's work, part of L'Estoire de Eracles. Both accounts are translated from the Receuil des historiens des croisades: Historiens occidentaux vol. 2 (Paris, 1859). An introduction and full notes make these thirteenth-century events and ideas accessible to students of medieval history and to anyone interested in the lives and patterns of thought of people of that time.
The Story of Attila in Prose is the first critical edition and translation of the thirteenth century Franco-Italian prose text the Estoire d'Atile en prose. Preserved in two anonymous and untitled manuscripts composed between the last quarter of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth century, the story recounts the fictional founding of Venice after the invasion of Aquileia by Attila the Hun. The manuscripts, located in Zagreb and Venice, detail Attila's pagan mother, her union with a dog, and his feral birth, as well as his unusual death during a chess match and the origins of the Holy Grail. This edition and translation are based on the Zagreb manuscript, which was only recently discovered. The book includes a full critical apparatus containing rejected readings and variants from the Venetian manuscript, and a thorough introduction that discusses the literary value of the text, its possible sources, and its influence on later literature. It is important reading for both historians of medieval Europe and literary critics.
This book explores the areas in which novels such as Chariton's Callirhoe and Heliodorus's Aithiopika are ideal beyond the ideal love relationship and considers how concepts of the ideal connect to archetypal and literary patterns as well as reflecting contemporary ideological and cultural elements. Readers will gain a better understanding of how necessary is an understanding of these ideal elements to a full understanding of the novels' possible readings and their reader's attitudes. This book sets forth critical methods, subsequently followed, which allows for this exploration of ideal themes. Ideal Themes in the Greek and Roman Novel will be an invaluable resource for scholars of these novels, as well as ancient narratives and classical literature more generally. Scholars of cultural and utopian studies will also find the book useful, as well as some undergraduate students in all these areas.
Published in 1987: Erec and Enide, the first of five surviving Arthurian romantic poems by a twelfth-century French poet, narrates a vivid chapter from the legend of King Arthur.
Originally published in 1987, this book is a translation of Xenophon's Cyropaedeia (The Education of Cyprus), first published in 1567.
Originally compiled and published in 1922, this volume contains three studies on Early Greek Thought: E. Hofmann's Qua Ratione; J. W. Beardslee's Fifth-Century Greek Literature; and O. JOhrens's Die Fragmente des Anaxagoras.
Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England investigates the relationship between the development of parliament and the practice of English poetry in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. During this period, the bureaucratic political culture of parliamentarians, clerks, and scribes overlapped with the artistic practice of major poets like Chaucer, Gower, and Langland, all of whom had strong ties to parliament. Matthew Giancarlo investigates these poets together in the specific context of parliamentary events and controversies, as well as in the broader environment of changing constitutional ideas. Two chapters provide fresh analyses of the parliamentary ideologies that developed from the thirteenth century onward, and four chapters investigate the parliamentary aspects of each poet, as well as the later Lancastrian imitators of Langland. This study demonstrates the importance of the changing parliamentary environs of late medieval England and their centrality to the early growth of English narrative and lyric forms.
This volume provides a detailed, lemmatic, literary commentary on Demosthenes' speech Against Androtion. It is the first study of its kind since the nineteenth century, filling a significant gap in modern scholarship. The Greek text of the speech is accompanied by a facing English translation, making the work more accessible to a wide scholarly audience. It also includes an extensive introduction covering key historical, socio-political, and legal issues. The speech was delivered in a graphe paranomon (a public prosecution for introducing an illegal decree) which was brought against Androtion, a well-established Athenian public speaker and intellectual. Demosthenes composed Against Androtion for Diodoros, the supporting speaker in this trial and an active political figure in the mid-fourth century. In her commentary, Ifigeneia Giannadaki illuminates the legal, socio-political, and historical aspects of the speech, including views on male prostitution and the relationship between sex and politics, complex aspects of Athenian law and procedure, and Athenian politics in the aftermath of the Social War. Giannadaki balances the analysis of important historical and legal issues with a special emphasis on elucidating Demosthenes' rhetorical strategy and argumentation.
The Major Declamations stand out for their unique contribution to our understanding of the final stage in Greco-Roman rhetorical training. These exercises, in which students learned how to compose and deliver speeches on behalf of either the prosecution or the defense at imaginary trials, demonstrate how standard themes, recurring situations and arguments, and technical rules were to be handled by the aspiring orator. And what is more, they lay bare the mistakes that students often made in this process. The practice of declamation was already flourishing in Greece as early as the fifth century BC, but nearly all of its vast tradition has disappeared except the present anthology, whose nineteen declamations are almost the only substantial examples surviving from pre-medieval Latinity. They seem to represent that tradition reasonably well: although attributed to the great master Quintilian in antiquity, internal features indicate multiple authorship from around AD 100 to the mid- or late third century, when the collection was assembled. A wide variety of fascinating ethical, social, and legal details animates the fictional world conjured up by these oratorical exercises, and although the themes of declamation can be unrealistic and even absurd (often reminiscent of ancient novel and tragedy), they seem to provide a safe space in which a student could confront a range of complex issues, so as to attain both the technical knowledge necessary to speak persuasively and the soft skills needed to manage the challenges of adult life under the Roman empire.
Medieval commentaries on the origin and history of language used biblical history, from Creation to the Tower of Babel, as their starting-point, and described the progressive impairment of an originally perfect language. Biblical and classical sources raised questions for both medieval poets and commentators about the nature of language, its participation in the Fall, and its possible redemption. John M. Fyler focuses on how three major poets - Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun - participated in these debates about language. He offers fresh analyses of how the history of language is described and debated in the Divine Comedy, the Canterbury Tales and the Roman de la Rose. While Dante follows the Augustinian idea of the Fall and subsequent redemption of language, Jean de Meun and Chaucer are skeptical about the possibilities for linguistic redemption and resign themselves, at least half-comically, to the linguistic implications of the Fall and the declining world. |
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