In Their Own Words examines early medieval history-writing through quotation practices in five works, each in some way the first of its kind. Nithard's Historiae de dissensionibus filiorum Ludovici Pii is extraordinary for its quotation of vernacular oaths, the first recorded piece of French. The Gesta Francorum is the first eye-witness account of the First Crusade. Geoffrey of Villehardouin's La Conquete de Constantinople, written by a leader and negotiator of the Fourth Crusade, and Robert de Clari's La Conquete de Constantinople, written by a common soldier in the same crusade, are the first extant French prose histories. Li Fet des Romains, a translation and compilation of all the classical texts about Julius Caesar (including Caesar's own Gallic Wars) that were known in the thirteenth century, is the first work of ancient historiography and the first biography to appear in French. Jeanette Beer's work bridges the divide between the study of vernacular and Latin writing, providing new evidence that the linguistic cultures were not isolated from each other. Her examination of quotation practices in early medieval histories illuminates the relationship between classical and contemporary influences in the formative period of history-writing in the West.

In recent years, classicists have begun aggressively to explore the impact of performance on the ways in which Greek and Roman plays are constructed and appreciated, both in their original performance context and in reperformances down to the present day. While never losing sight of the playscripts, it is necessary to adopt a more inclusive point of view, one integrating insights from archaeology, art, history, performance theory, theatre semiotics, theatrical praxis, and modern performance reception. This volume contributes to the restoration of a much-needed balance between performance and text: it is devoted to exploring how performance-related considerations (including stage business, masks, costumes, props, performance space, and stage-sets) help us attain an enhanced appreciation of ancient theatre.

This introduction provides the guidance that modern readers need to come to an informed appreciation of the writings of medieval England.
An introduction to English literature written in the four centuries following the Norman Conquest.
Written by the well-known medievalist, Thorlac Turville-Petre.
Demonstrates that Middle English literature is more accessible than is often supposed.
Provides readers with the guidance they need to come to an informed appreciation of the writings of medieval England.
Designed to be used alongside "A Book of Middle English, " (Third Edition, Blackwell Publishing, 2005).

Seneca's developed metaphors draw on what is known to describe the unknown. They put hard ethical in highly accessible, and often quite entertaining, terms. The present book provides a functional description of Seneca's dialectical relation between metaphorical language and philosophy. It shows how Stoic philosophy finds a new means of expression in Seneca's highly elaborated rhetorical discourse, and how this relates to the social and cultural demands of Neronian culture. Metaphors are purposely utilized to work "collectively" rather than by category or type and that, therefore, the analysis of what metaphors do when Seneca chooses to combine them in clusters, demonstrates the existence of a "metanarrative of rhetoric". This approach is fundamentally innovative and has the advantage of gauging the functioning of Senecan style as a whole, rather than focusing on single features of its rhetorical functioning. The main target is to show how philosophical preaching materially contributes to the healing of human soul because it shapes the individual's cognitive faculty in a way that is physical and not simply figurative. The stylus and the scalpel blend in their functions. This kind of therapy is not just the simulacrum of a more "real" one, it is in itself medical in nature.

Bacchae is one of the most troubling yet intriguing of Greek tragedies. Written during Euripides' self-imposed exile in Macedonia, it tells of the brutal murder and dismemberment of Pentheus by his mother and aunts who, driven temporarily insane, have joined the Bacchae (devotees of the god Dionysus, or Bacchus). The startling plot, driven by Dionysus' desire to punish his family for refusing to accept his divinity, and culminating in the excruciating pathos of a mother's realization that she has killed her son, has held audiences transfixed since its original performance (when it won first prize). It is one of the most performed and studied plays in the Greek tragic corpus, with a strong history of reception down to the present day. This collection of essays by eminent academics gathered from across the globe explores the themes, staging and reception of the play, with essays on the characters Dionysus and Pentheus, the role of the chorus of Bacchae, key themes such as revenge, women and religion, and the historical and literary contexts of the play. The essays are accompanied by David Stuttard's English translation which is performer-friendly, accessible and closely accurate to the original.

Disciplining Christians reconsiders several of Augustine's most well-known letter exchanges, including his famously controversial correspondence with Jerome and his efforts to engage his Donatist rivals in a letter exchange. It reads these letters with close attention to conventional epistolary norms and practices, in an effort to identify innovative features of Augustine's epistolary practice. In particular, it notes and analyzes Augustine's adaptation of the traditionally friendly letter exchange to the correction of perceived error in the Christian community. In transforming the practice of letter exchange into a tool of correction, Augustine draws on both the classical philosophical tradition and also scripture. His particular innovation is his insistence that this process of correction can-and often must-be done in the potentially public form of a letter exchange rather than in the privacy of a face-to-face conversation. This is particularly true when the perceived error is one that has the potential to jeopardize the salvation of the entire Christian community. In offering epistolary correction, and requesting reciprocal correction from his correspondents, Augustine treats his practice of letter exchange as a performance of Christian caritas. Indeed, in his view, the friendliest correspondence was that which was concerned solely with preserving the salvation of the participants. In recognizing Augustine's commitment to the corrective correspondence and thus reading his letters with attention to their corrective function, we gain new insights into the complicated dynamics of Augustine's relationships with Jerome, Paulinus of Nola, the Donatists, and Pelagius.

Creation, Migration, and Conquest: Imaginary Geography and Sense of Space in Old English Literature explores the Anglo-Saxons' spatial imaginaire; tracing its political, literary, and intellectual backgrounds and analyzing how this imaginaire shapes perceptions and representations of geographical space. The book elaborates new interpretative paradigms, drawing on the work of continental scholars and literary critics, and on complementing interdisciplinary scholarship of medieval imaginary spaces and their representations. It gathers evidence from both Old English verse and historico-geographical documents, and focuses on the juncture between traditional scientific learning and the symbolic values attributed to space and orientation. Combining close reading with an original theoretical model, Creation, Migration, and Conquest offers innovative interpretations of celebrated texts and highlights the links between place, identity, and collective identity.

"A" "Companion to Medieval Poetry" presents a series of original essays from leading literary scholars that explore English poetry from the Anglo-Saxon period up to the 15th century. Organised into three parts to echo the chronological and stylistic divisions between the Anglo-Saxon, Middle English and Post-Chaucerian periods, each section is introduced with contextual essays, providing a valuable introduction to the society and culture of the timeCombines a general discussion of genres of medieval poetry, with specific consideration of texts and authors, including "Beowulf," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Chaucer, Gower and LanglandFeatures original essays by eminent scholars, including Andy Orchard, Carl Schmidt, Douglas Gray, and Barry Windeatt, who present a range of theoretical, historical, and cultural approaches to reading medieval poetry, as well as offering close analysis of individual texts and traditions

Trials for murder and manslaughter in ancient Athens are preserved in a singularly full and revealing record. The earliest surviving speeches were written for such proceedings, and the laws governing such trials - laws that tradition ascribes to Draco himself - also survive in large part. These documents bear witness to the birth of the jury trial and of democratic rhetoric. This book, the first study of its kind, offers a systematic interpretation of Draco's law and the legal reasoning that grew out of it. The author outlines the historical development (7th to 4th centuries BCE), and then analyses the surviving speeches to unravel the underlying issues and practical consequences.

This book is devoted to medieval Iberian women, readers and writers. Focusing on the stories and texts women heard, visually experienced or read, and the stories that they rewrote, the work explores women's experiences and cultural practices and their efforts to make sense of their place within their familial networks and communities. The study is based on two methodological and interpretive threads: a new paradigm to represent premodern reading and, a study of women's writing, or, more precisely, women's textualities, as a process of creating words but also acts, social practices, emotions and, ultimately, affectus, understood here as the embodiment of the ability to affect and be affected.

This first monograph in English on Colluthus situates this late antique author within his cultural context and offers a new appraisal of his hexameter poem The Abduction of Helen, the end-point of the pagan Greek epic tradition, which was composed in the Christianised Egyptian Thebaid. The book evaluates the poem's connections with long-established and contemporary literary and artistic genres and with Neoplatonic philosophy, and analyzes the poet's re-negotiation of traditional material to suit the expectations of a late fifth-century AD audience. It explores Colluthus' interpretation of the contemporary fascination with visuality, identifies new connections between Colluthus and Claudian, and shows how the author's engagement with the poetry of Nonnus goes much further than previously shown.

New essays on aspects of Gower's poetry, viewed through the lens of the self and beyond. The topics of "selfhood" and "otherness" lie at the heart of these new assessments of John Gower's poetry. The first part of the book, on knowing the self and others, focuses on cognition, brain functions, imagination, and the internal and external factors that affect one's sense of being, from sensation and inner emotive effects within body parts to cosmic perspectives, morality, and theology as voiced by language and storytelling. The second, on the essence of strangers, explores the interconnections of sensation and aesthetics; it also considers kinds of social dysfunction, whether through racial or gender conflict, or religious and political warfare.The final part of the booklooks at social ethics and ethical poets, reassessing two of Gower's perpetual concerns: honest government and honest craft. It considers Gower as a constitutional thinker, whether in terms of law, judicial corruption, or a society of businessmen who would rewrite ethics in terms of business models. It concludes with an examination of the Confessio in the culture of Portugal and Spain. Russell Peck is the John Hall Deane Professor of English at the University of Rochester: R. F. Yeager is Professor of English at the University of West Florida. Contributors: Stephanie L. Batkie, Helen Cooper, Brian W. Gastle, Matthew Giancarlo, Matthew W. Irvin, Yoshiko Kobayashi, Robert J. Meindl, Peter Nicholson, Maura Nolan, Gabrielle Parkin, Russell A. Peck, Ana Saez-Hidalgo, Larry Scanlon, Karla Taylor, Kim Zarins, R.F. Yeager,

This volume contains all the known Old Syriac inscriptions from Edessa and the area around Osrhoene in Northern Mesopotamia from the first three centuries C.E., the number of which has substantially increased over the last decades. The texts are given in estrangelo script and are accompanied by an extensive philological and historical commentary. The originals are presented in photographs and line drawings. The volume also contains chapters on the script of these inscriptions, on the language and on the history and culture of Edessa.
Two appendices offer the texts of three parchments written in Syriac and originating from the same area, and of known but still unpublished inscriptions. The book concludes with indices of words and proper names, which are complement to the "Dictionary of the North-West Semitic Inscriptions ("Brill, 1995), and with a full bibliography.

A new collective volume with over twenty important studies on less well-studied dialects of ancient Greek, particularly of the northern regions. The book covers geographically a broad area of the classical Greek world ranging from Central Greece to the overseas Greek colonies of Thrace and the Black Sea. Particular emphasis is placed on the epichoric varieties of areas on the northern fringe of the classical Greek world, including Thessaly, Epirus and Macedonia. Recent advances in research are taken into consideration in providing state-of-the art accounts of these understudied dialects, but also of more well-known dialects like Lesbian. In addition, other papers address special intriguing topics in these, but also in other dialects, such as Thessalian, Lesbian and Ionic, or focus on important multi-dialectal corpora such as the oracular tablets from Dodona. Finally, a number of studies examine broader topics like the supraregional Doric koinai or the concept of dialect continuum, or even explore the possibility of an ancient Balkansprachbund, which included Greek too. This new reference work covers a gap in current research and will be indispensable for people interested in Greek dialectology and ancient Greek in general.

God, Space, and City in the Roman Imagination is a unique exploration of the relationship between the ancient Romans' visual and literary cultures and their imagination. Drawing on a vast range of ancient sources, poetry and prose, texts, and material culture from all levels of Roman society, it analyses how the Romans used, conceptualized, viewed, and moved around their city. Jenkyns pays particular attention to the other inhabitants of Rome, the gods, and investigates how the Romans experienced and encountered them, with a particular emphasis on the personal and subjective aspects of religious life. Through studying interior spaces, both secular (basilicas, colonnades, and forums) and sacred spaces (the temples where the Romans looked upon their gods) and their representation in poetry, the volume also follows the development of an architecture of the interior in the great Roman public works of the first and second centuries AD. While providing new insights into the working of the Romans' imagination, it also offers powerful challenges to some long established orthodoxies about Roman religion and cultural behaviour.

Cicero has played a pivotal role in shaping Western culture. His public persona, his self-portrait as model of Roman prose, philosopher, and statesman, has exerted a durable and profound impact on the educational system and the formation of the ruling class over the centuries. Joining up with recent studies on the reception of Cicero, this volume approaches the figure of Cicero from a 'biographical', more than 'philological', perspective and considers the multiple ways by which different ages reacted to Cicero and created their 'Ciceros'. From Cicero's lifetime to our times, it focuses on how the image of Cicero was revisited and reworked by intellectuals and men of culture, who eulogized his outstanding oratorical and political virtues but, not rarely, questioned the role he had in Roman politics and society. An international group of scholars elaborates on the figure of Cicero, shedding fresh light on his reception in late antiquity, Humanism and Renaissance, Enlightenment and modern centuries. Historians, literary scholars and philosophers, as well as graduate students, will certainly profit from this volume, which contributes enormously to our understanding of the influence of Cicero on Western culture over the times.

The ancient Dormition and Assumption traditions are the earliest accounts of the Virgin Mary's departure from this life. They first developed in the eastern Mediterranean during the early Christian period. This book presents the first systematic study of these traditions in the English language, and it is intended as an introduction to the earliest traditions. Significant appendices include the first English translations of several of the most important narratives. The book will be of interest to all scholars of early Christian literature.

The advances in Xenophontic studies of the last generation have still not resulted in a definitive literary treatment of the Hellenica 1-2, so Xenophon's description of the Peloponnesian War deserves closer examination. This book aims to show that Xenophon has crafted his narrative in such a way as to reinforce the opinion of Thucydides, whose work he continued, that the development of the Peloponnesian War depended to a great extent on Persian money, but the factors that ultimately determined its outcome were the moral virtues and the skills of the military leaders of Athens and Sparta. Regarding Athens, Xenophon wants to show that despite Persia's support of Sparta, Athens lost the war because of its troubled relationship with Alcibiades; the moral disintegration of the Athenians who condemned illegally the Arginousai generals and the appointment of generals who were greatly inferior. Concerning Sparta, Xenophon leads his readers to believe that in spite of- not because of- the interference of Persia in the Peloponnesian War the moral and military qualities of Lysander and Callicratidas were what turned the course of the war either in favor of or against Sparta in each phase of the war.

Roslyn Weiss contends that, contrary to prevailing notions, Plato's Crito does not show an allegiance between Socrates and the state that condemned him. Weiss argues that Socrates considers the laws of the state to be more concerned with creating deference than justice, and asserts that, by submitting to his judgement, Socrates acts from a personal sense of justice rather than a set of imposed rules.

Giovanni Villani's New Chronicle traces the history of Europe, Italy, and Florence over a vast sweep of time - from the Tower of Babel to the great earthquake of 1348. In the eleventh and twelfth books, Villani depicts a particularly eventful period in the history of Florence, whose grandeur is illustrated in several famous chapters describing the city's income, expenses, and magnificence. The dramatic account follows Florence's internal affairs as well as its conflicts with powerful lords like Castruccio Castracani and Mastino della Scala. The chronicler's perspective, however, ranges beyond his city, as he documents such events as the imperial coronation of Louis of Bavaria, the penitential pilgrimage of Venturino da Bergamo, and the first campaigns of the Hundred Year's War.

A late medieval Icelandic romance about the 'maiden-king' of France, Nitida saga generated interest in its day and grew in popularity in post-Reformation Iceland, yet until now it has not received the comprehensive scholarly analysis that it much deserves. Analysing this saga from a variety of perspectives, this book sheds light on the manner in which Nitida saga explores and negotiates the romance genre from an Icelandic perspective, showcasing this exciting saga's strong female characters, worldviews, and long manuscript tradition. Beginning with Nitida saga's manuscript context, including its reception and transformation in early modern Iceland, this study also discusses how Nitida saga was influenced by, and also later influenced, other Icelandic romances. Considering the text as literature, discussion of its unusual depiction of world geography, as well as the various characters and their relationships, provides insights into medieval Icelanders' ideas about themselves and the world they lived in, including questions about Icelandic identity, gender, female solidarity, and the literary genre of romance itself. The book also includes a newly revised reading edition and translation of Nitida saga.

Aristophanes' Peace was performed at the City Dionysia in Athens in 421 BC as a decade-long war with Sparta seemed finally to be drawing to an end, and is one of only eleven extant plays by the greatest Old Comic poet. Olson's edition of the play, which replaces Platnauer's of 1969, is based on a complete new collation of the manuscripts, many of which have never been adequately reported before. The extensive commentary explores matters of all sorts, but it focuses in particular on the realities of day-to-day life in classical Athens and also examines the practical problems of staging. The substantial introduction includes essays on Aristophanes' early career, the politics of the Greek world in the late 420s, and the poet's theology.

As witnessed by a tremendous upsurge in medieval research, academic meetings, innovative interpretive approaches, enrolment numbers, and public interest, Medieval Studies are proving once again to be a vibrant field of investigations both inside and outside of academia. Nevertheless, there is a tendency among colleagues and administrators in the field of Germanistik/German Studies to exclude the earlier period as an exotic and irrelevant subject matter. The contributors to this volume, all of whom teach at North American universities, make a strong case for the paradigmatic function of medieval German literature for the general field of Germanistik, and argue that many of the most recent changes in our discipline related to the German Studies paradigm have been foreshadowed by Medieval Studies where interdisciplinarity, comparative approaches, the consideration of Mentalitatsgeschichte, theology, history, art history, even gender studies, and the history of everyday life have often constituted the conditio sine qua non. Some of the authors in this volume argue for the relevance of medieval German literature by investigating concrete cases taken from the Middle Ages, others show how modern German literature has been deeply influenced by medieval texts. The purpose of this volume is not to privilege medieval literature over modern literature, but instead to reclaim the premodern period as an important and relevant field of investigation within contemporary German Studies.