Relics and Writing in Late Medieval England uncovers a wide-ranging medieval discourse that had an expansive influence on English literary traditions. Drawing from Latin and vernacular hagiography, miracle stories, relic lists, and architectural history, this study demonstrates that, as the shrines of England's major saints underwent dramatic changes from c. 1100 to c. 1538, relic discourse became important not only in constructing the meaning of objects that were often hidden, but also for canonical authors like Chaucer and Malory in exploring the function of metaphor and of dissembling language. Robyn Malo argues that relic discourse was employed in order to critique mainstream religious practice, explore the consequences of rhetorical dissimulation, and consider the effect on the socially disadvantaged of lavish expenditure on shrines. The work thus uses the literary study of relics to address issues of clerical and lay cultures, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and writing and reform.

In autumn 1397, Viscount Ramon de Perellos left the papal palace in Avignon to travel to St Patrick's Purgatory, famous throughout Europe as a gateway to the next world. There, he spent twenty-four hours in an underground cavern, where he claimed to have travelled through the nine fields of Purgatory, accompanied by demons, before entering the Earthly Paradise and catching a glimpse of Heaven.

Augustine and the Disciplines takes its cue from Augustine's theory of the liberal arts to explore the larger question of how the Bible became the focus of medieval culture in the West. Augustine himself became increasingly aware that an ambivalent attitude towards knowledge and learning was inherent in Christianity. By facing the intellectual challenge posed by this tension he arrived at a new theory of how to interpret the Bible correctly. The topics investigated here include: Augustine's changing relationship with the 'disciplines', as he moved from an attempt at their Christianization (in the philosophical dialogues of Cassiciacum) to a radical reshaping of them within a Christian world-view (in the De Doctrina Christiana and Confessiones); the factors that prompted and facilitated his change of perspective; and the ways in which Augustine's evolving theory reflected contemporary trends in Christian pedagogy.

This book is the first full-scale edition of the so-called Liber spectaculorum by Martial. A comprehensive introduction addresses the role of epigram in commemorating monuments and occasions, the connection between spectacle and imperial panegyric in Martial's oeuvre, characteristics of the collection, possible circumstances of composition and "publication," transmission of the text, and related issues. Each epigram is followed by an apparatus criticus, an English translation, and a detailed commentary on linguistic, literary, and historical matters, adducing extensive evidence from epigraphy and art as well as literary sources. The book is accompanied by four concordances, five tables, two maps, 30 plates, and an appendix.

In the Roman republic, only the People could pass laws, only the People could elect politicians to office, and the very word republica meant 'the People's business'. So why is it always assumed that the republic was an oligarchy? The main reason is that most of what we know about it we know from Cicero, a great man and a great writer, but also an active right-wing politician who took it for granted that what was good for a small minority of self-styled 'best people' (optimates) was good for the republic as a whole. T. P. Wiseman interprets the last century of the republic on the assumption that the People had a coherent political ideology of its own, and that the optimates, with their belief in justified murder, were responsible for the breakdown of the republic in civil war.

This book offers a new edition, with English translation and commentary, of the Kitab al-Madhal, which opens Avicenna's (d. 1037) most comprehensive summa of Peripatetic philosophy, namely the Kitab al-Sifa'. For the first time, the text is established together with a stemma codicum showing the genealogical relations among 34 manuscripts, the twelfth-century Latin translation, and the literal quotations by Avicenna's first and second-generation students. In this book, Avicenna's reappraisal of Porphyry's Isagoge is examined from both a historical and a philosophical point of view. The key-features of Avicenna's theory of predicables are analyzed in the General Introduction and in the Commentary both in their own right and against the background of the Greek and Arabic exegetical tradition. Readers shall find in this book the first systematic study of the Madhal which, in addition to being the only logical work of the Sifa' ever transmitted in its entirety both in Arabic and in Latin, is crucial for understanding Avicenna's conception of universal predicables at the crossroads between logic and metaphysics.

Exploration of the reception of Ovid's myth thorughout history in fiction, film and television. Why has the myth of Pygmalion and his ivory statue proved so inspirational for writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and directors and creators of films and television series? The 'authorised' version of the story appears in the epic poem of transformations, "Metamorphoses", by the first-century CE Latin poet Ovid; in which the bard Orpheus narrates the legend of the sculptor king of Cyprus whose beautiful carved woman was brought to life by the goddess Venus. Focusing on screen storylines with a "Pygmalion" subtext, from silent cinema to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Lars and the Real Girl", this book looks at why and how the made-over or manufactured woman has survived through the centuries and what we can learn about this problematic model of 'perfection' from the perspective of the past and the present. Given the myriad representations of Ovid's myth, can we really make a modern text a tool of interpretation for an ancient poem? This book answers with a resounding 'yes' and explains why it is so important to give antiquity back its future. "Continuum Studies in Classical Reception" presents scholarly monographs offering new and innovative research and debate to students and scholars in the reception of 'Classical Studies'. Each volume will explore the appropriation, reconceptualization and recontextualization of various aspects of the Graeco-Roman world and its culture, looking at the impact of the ancient world on modernity. Research will also cover reception within antiquity, the theory and practice of translation, and reception theory.

Karl Valentin once asked: "How can it be that only as much happens as fits into the newspaper the next day?" He focussed on the problem that information of the past has to be organised, arranged and above all: selected and put into form in order to be perceived as a whole. In this sense, the process of selection must be seen as the fundamental moment - the "Urszene" - of making History. This book shows selection as highly creative act. With the richness of early medieval material it can be demonstrated that creative selection was omnipresent and took place even in unexpected text genres. The book demonstrates the variety how premodern authors dealt with "unimportant", unpleasant or unwanted past. It provides a general overview for regions and text genres in early medieval Europe.

Aksum and Nubia assembles and analyzes the textual and archaeological evidence of interaction between Nubia and the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, focusing primarily on the fourth century CE. Although ancient Nubia and Ethiopia have been the subject of a growing number of studies in recent years, little attention has been given to contact between these two regions. Hatke argues that ancient Northeast Africa cannot be treated as a unified area politically, economically, or culturally. Rather, Nubia and Ethiopia developed within very different regional spheres of interaction, as a result of which the Nubian kingdom of Kush came to focus its energies on the Nile Valley, relying on this as its main route of contact with the outside world, while Aksum was oriented towards the Red Sea and Arabia. In this way Aksum and Kush coexisted in peace for most of their history, and such contact as they maintained with each other was limited to small-scale commerce. Only in the fourth century CE did Aksum take up arms against Kush, and even then the conflict seems to have been related mainly to security issues on Aksum's western frontier. Although Aksum never managed to hold onto Kush for long, much less dealt the final death-blow to the Nubian kingdom, as is often believed, claims to Kush continued to play a role in Aksumite royal ideology as late as the sixth century. Aksum and Nubia critically examines the extent to which relations between two ancient African states were influenced by warfare, commerce, and political fictions. Online edition available as part of the NYU Library's Ancient World Digital Library and in partnership with the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW).

Within the frame of the sub-series Athenian Dialogues, this volume comprises a selected number of talks delivered at the annual Seminar of the Research Centre for Greek and Latin Literature of the Academy of Athens 2018-2019 on the broad topic of Ancient Greek Literature and the Foreign. The volume aims at building on the ongoing dialogue on the par excellence intricate, as well as timely issues of "ethnicity," identity, and identification, as represented in ancient Greek (and, secondarily, Roman) literature. This is certainly a richly researched field, which extends to interdisciplinary areas of inquiry, namely those of classical studies, archaeology, ancient history, sociology, and anthropology. It is this interdisciplinary scope that makes the subject all the more relevant and worthy of investigation. The volume ultimately highlights new or under-researched aspects of the broad theme of ancient inter-cultural relations, which could in their turn lead to more detailed or more specified inquiries on this ever relevant and important, as well as universal, topic. Through the contributions of expert scholars on these areas of inquiry (Konstan, Lefkowitz, Paschalis, Seaford, Thomas, Vasounia, Vlassopoulos), the volume: (1) revisits key themes and aspects of the ancient Greek world's diverse forms of contact with foreign peoples and civilizations, (2) lays forth new data about specific such contacts and encounters or (3) formulates new questions about the very texture and essence of the theme of inter-cultural relations and forms of communication. More specifically, the volume addresses the following themes: the overarching role and function of the barbarian repertoire in Greek literature and culture, which certainly call for further theoretical investigation (Vlassopoulos); the highly popular but actually controversial theme of xenia in the Homeric epics and in archaic thought (Konstan); the intricate, intriguing role of the Foreigner as a focus for civic unity (Seaford); the role of the enigmatic figure of Dionysus from Greece to India (Vasunia); the representation of barbarians in Euripidean tragedy, and more specifically the portrayal of the controversial Phrygian slave in Euripides' Orestes (Lefkowitz); the meaningful changes in the representation of the arch-enemy, the Persians, across the late 5th and 4th century prose (Thomas); the adventures of Europa's legendary abduction from Moschus to Nonnus, along with its implications for the understanding of the division and animosity between the two continents, (future) Europe and Asia (Paschalis). The volume ultimately covers a wide range of ancient sources (literary and material, from Homer up to Nonnus) that delve into the interaction of ancient Greek civilization with foreign civilizations. It thus highlights new aspects of the diverse forms of contact of the Greek world with foreign civilizations and elements, both in terms of geography and particular seminal "mythical" or historical figures and forces (e.g. India and the "mysterious" Dionysus, as well as the emblematic Greek antagonist of the classical and post-classical era, i.e. the Persian Empire) and in terms of particular literary themes and motifs (e.g. the abduction of Europa).

Panegyric poetry, in both Arabic and Persian, was one of the most important genres of literature in the medieval Middle East and Central Asia. Jocelyn Sharlet argues that panegyric poetry is important not only because it provides a commentary on society and culture in the medieval Middle East, but also because panegyric writing was one of the key means for individuals to gain social mobility and standing during this period. This is particularly so within the context of patronage, a central feature of social order during these times. Sharlet places the medieval Arabic and Persian panegyric firmly within its cultural context, and identifies it as a crucial way of gaining entry to and movement within this patronage network. This is an important contribution to the fields of pre-modern Middle Eastern and Central Asian literature and culture.

Philippe de Commynes, a diplomat who specialized in clandestine operations, served King Louis XI during his campaign to undermine aristocratic resistance and consolidate the sovereignty of the French throne. He is credited with inventing the political memoir, but his reminiscence has also been described as 'the confessions of a traitor': Commynes had abandoned Louis' rival, the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold, before joining forces with the king. This study provides a literary re-evaluation of Commynes' text - a perennial subject of scandal and fascination - while questioning what the terms 'traitor' or 'betrayed' meant in the context of fifteenth-century France. Drawing on diplomatic letters and court transcripts, Irit Kleiman examines the mutual connections between writing and betrayal in Commynes' representation of Louis' reign, the relationship between the author and the king, and the emergence of the memoir as an autobiographical genre. This study significantly deepens our understanding of how historical narrative and diplomatic activities are intertwined in the work of this iconic, iconoclastic figure.

This book fills a long-standing gap in Arabic-Islamic studies. Following the informative and entertaining style of adab literature and based on a large number of relevant sources from a wide range of genres, Hasan Shuraydi presents a panoramic view of relevant themes that concern youth and old age in Medieval Arabic literature intended for both specialists and non-specialists. A pattern of binary oppositions runs through such themes, e.g., black/white, male/female, husband/wife, sacred/profane, paradise/this world, ignorance/wisdom, past/present, young/old, new/old, health/disease, sappy/dry, permitted/forbidden, lust/chastity, obedience/disobedience, experience/inexperience, folly/reason, sobriety/intoxication, parent/child, celibacy/marriage, present life/hereafter. Themes discussed include: aging, ambition, aphrodisiacs, beauty, education, feminist trends, hair dyeing, homosexuality, honoring age, jihad, life stages, longevity, love, marriage, sex.

This exciting third volume of David M. Honey's comprehensive history of Chinese thought begins with China after nomadic invaders overran the northern regions of the historic kingdom. The differentiation between scholarly emphases-northern focus on the traditional pedagogical commentary, and southern classical school's more innovative commentary-led to an emphasis on the interpretation of the overall message of a text, not a close reading of smaller sections. As Honey explains, serious attention to the phonological nature of Chinese characters also began during in this long era. Based on the work of earlier Sui dynasty classicists, Kong Yinga and his committee produced the Correct Meaning commentary to the Five Classics during the early Tang Dynasty, which is still largely normative today. The book demonstrates that the brooding presence of Zheng Xuan, the great textual critic from the Eastern Han dynasty, still exerted enormous influence during this period, as his ritualized approach to the classics inspired intellectual followers to expand on his work or impelled opponents to break off in new directions.

The first modern study of Nicholas of Lyra. A Franciscan teacher at the University of Paris, Nicholas (d. 1349) was an immensely important biblical commentator whose works influenced generations of scholars including Luther. Famed for his knowledge of Hebrew learning, as well as of the Latin Fathers, Nicholas was also highly conscious of interpretative method and of the Bible as literary artefact. In his massive "Postillae," Nicholas commented on the entire Bible according to both literal and spiritual senses. This masterpiece is the basis for fifteen essays which cover major biblical books, examining them in a variety of ways, such as interpretative history, theology, and even political theory. They illuminate the remarkable range of Nicholas' thinking, his impressive scholarship, and his Franciscan evangelism. A major study of a key medieval writer. Contributors include: Philippe Buc, Mary Dove, Theresa Gross-Diaz, Deeana Copeland Klepper, Philip D.W. Krey, Frans van Liere, Kevin Madigan, Corrine Patton, Michael A. Signer, Lesley Smith, and Mark Zier.

This book's concern is with notoriously obscure ancient poets-riddlers, whom it argues to have been an essential, albeit necessarily marginal, element of the literary landscape of Antiquity, which, in addition, exerted subtle yet lasting influence on European culture. The three first essays in this book trace a direct line of influence between the early Hellenistic scholar-poet Simias of Rhodes, the late Republican Roman experimentalist Laevius and Constantine the Great's virtuoso panegyrist Optatian Porfyry, whereas the fourth essay discusses the preservation and transformation of the model invented by Simias in Byzantium. The Appendix reflects on the triumph of this intellectual paradigm in Neo-Latin Jesuit education by investigating the case of a peripheral yet highly influential Central European college at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This book is at once a contribution to the scholarship on the reception of Hellenistic poetry and to the study of ancient 'technopaegnia' (i.e. playful poetry) and their cultural influence in Antiquity, Byzantium and post-mediaeval Europe.

This collection of papers by an international team of contributors seeks to examine the various ways in which ancient authors and modern readers respond to the interrelations of Greek and Latin texts. The works studied in individual chapters vary widely in genre and historical period, with Plato and Cicero taking their places alongside Homer and Catullus.

Ancient Greek culture is pervaded by a profound ambivalence regarding female beauty. It is an awe-inspiring, supremely desirable gift from the gods, essential to the perpetuation of a man's name through reproduction; yet it also grants women terrifying power over men, posing a threat inseparable from its allure. The myth of Helen is the central site in which the ancient Greeks expressed and reworked their culture's anxieties about erotic desire. Despite the passage of three millennia, contemporary culture remains almost obsessively preoccupied with all the power and danger of female beauty and sexuality that Helen still represents. Yet Helen, the embodiment of these concerns for our purported cultural ancestors, has been little studied from this perspective. Such issues are also central to contemporary feminist thought. Helen of Troy engages with the ancient origins of the persistent anxiety about female beauty, focusing on this key figure from ancient Greek culture in a way that both extends our understanding of that culture and provides a useful perspective for reconsidering aspects of our own. Moving from Homer and Hesiod to Sappho, Aeschylus, and Euripides, Ruby Blondell offers a fresh examination of the paradoxes and ambiguities that Helen embodies. In addition to literary sources, Blondell considers the archaeological record, which contains evidence of Helen's role as a cult figure, worshipped by maidens and newlyweds. The result is a compelling new interpretation of this alluring figure.

This book presents new translations of Mesopotamian and ancient Near Eastern historiographic texts, providing the reader with the primary sources for the history of the ancient Near East.
A primary source book presenting new translations of Mesopotamian and ancient Near Eastern historiographic texts, and other related materials.
Helps readers to understand the historical context of the Near East.
Covers the period from the earliest historical and literary texts (c.2700 B.C.) to the latest Hellenistic historians who comment on ancient Near Eastern history (c.250 B.C.)
Texts range from the code of Hammurabi to the Assyrian royal inscriptions.
A detailed commentary is provided on each text, placing it in its historical and cultural context.
Maps, illustrations and a chronological table help to orientate the reader.

This book offers the hint for a new reflection on ancient textual transmission and editorial practices in Antiquity.In the first section, it retraces the first steps of the process of ancient writing and editing. The reader will discover how the book is both a material object and a metaphorical personification, material or immaterial. The second section will focus on corpora of Greek texts, their formation, and their paratextual apparatus. Readers will explore various issues dealing with the mechanisms that are at the basis of the assembling of ancient Greek texts, but great attention will also be given to the role of ancient scholarly work. The third section shows how texts have two levels of authorship: the author of the text, and the scribe who copies the text. The scribe is not a medium, but plays a crucial role in changing the text. This section will focus on the protagonists of some interesting cases of textual transmission, but also on the books they manufactured or kept in the libraries, and on the words they engraved on stones. Therefore, the fresh voices of the contributors of this book, offer new perspectives on established research fields dealing with textual criticism.

This innovative and intriguing introduction to Old English literature is structured around what the author calls 'figures' from Anglo-Saxon culture: the Vow, the Hall, the Miracle, the Pulpit, and the Scholar.
An innovative and intriguing introduction to Old English literature.
Structured around 'figures' from Anglo-Saxon culture: the Vow, the Hall, the Miracle, the Pulpit, and the Scholar.
Situates Old English literary texts within a cultural framework.
Creates new connections between different genres, periods and authors.
Combines close textual analysis with historical context.
Based on the author's many years experience of teaching Old English literature.
The author is co-editor with Seamus Heaney of "Beowulf: A Verse Translation" (2001) and recently published with Blackwell "Lady Godiva: A Literary History of the Legend" (2003).

A range of approaches (literary, historical, art-historical, codicological) to this mysterious but hugely significant manuscript. Extravagantly heterogeneous in its contents, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86 is an utterly singular production. On its last folio, the scribe signs off with a self-portrait - a cartoonishly-drawn male head wearing a close-fitted hood - and an inscription: "scripsi librum in anno et iii mensibus" (I wrote the book in a year and three months). His fifteen months' labour resulted in one of the most important miscellanies to survive from medieval England: a trilingual marvel of a compilation, with quirky combinations of content that range from religion, to science, to literature of a decidedly secular cast. It holds medical recipes, charms, prayers, prognostications, magic tricks, pious doctrine, a liturgical calendar, religious songs, lively debates, poetry on love and death, proverbs, fables, fabliaux, scurrilous games, and gender-based diatribes. That Digby is from the thirteenth century adds to its appeal, for English literary remnants from before 1300 are all too rare. Scholars on both sides of the vernacular divide, French and English, are deeply intrigued by it. Many of its texts are found nowhere else: for example, the French Arthurian Lay of the Horn, the English fabliau Dame Sirith and the beast fable Fox and Wolf, and the French Strife between Two Ladies (a candid debate on feminine politics). The interpretationsoffered in this volume of its contents, presentation, and ownership, show that there is much to discover in Digby's lively record of the social and spiritual pastimes of a book-owning gentry family. SUSANNA FEIN is Professor of English at Kent State University. CONTRIBUTORS: Maureen Boulton, Neil Cartlidge, Marilyn Corrie, Susanna Fein, Marjorie Harrington, John Hines, Jennifer Jahner, Melissa Julian-Jones, Jenni Nuttall, David Raybin, Delbert Russell, J.D. Sargan, Sheri Smith

The standard view in scholarship is that disease in Lucretius' De rerum natura is mainly a problem to be solved and then dispensed with. However, a closer reading suggests that things are more layered and complex than they appear at first sight: just as morbus causes a radical rearrangement of atoms in the body and makes the patient engage with alternative and up to that point unknown dimensions of the sensible world, so does disease as a theme generate a multiplicity of meanings in the text. The present book argues for a reconsideration of morbus in De rerum natura along those lines: it invites the reader to revisit the topic of disease and reflect on the various, and often contrasting, discourses that unfold around it. More specifically, it illustrates how, apart from calling for therapy, disease, due to its dominant presence in the narrative, transforms at the same time into a concept that is integral both to the poem's philosophical agenda but also to its wider aesthetic concerns as a literary product. The book thus sheds new light on De rerum natura's intense preoccupation with morbus by showing how disease is not exclusively conceived by Lucretius as a blind, obliterating force but is crucially linked to life and meaning-both inside and outside the text.

This casebook presents representative texts from Roman legal sources that introduce the basic problems arising in Roman families, including marriage and divorce, the pattern of authority within households, the transmission of property between generations, and the supervision of orphans.