The present volume offers the first critical edition, accompanied by an English translation, a commentary, and an introductory study, of Liber nativitatum (Book of Nativities) and Liber Abraham Iudei de nativitatibus (Book on Nativities by Abraham the Jew), two astrological treatises in Latin that were written by Abraham Ibn Ezra or attributed to him, and whose Hebrew source-text or archetype has not survived.

When we encounter a text, whether ancient or modern, we typically start at the beginning and work our way toward the end. In Tracking the Master Scribe, Sara J. Milstein demonstrates that for biblical and Mesopotamian literature, this habit can yield misleading results. In the ancient Near East, "master scribes"-those who had the authority to produce and revise literature-regularly modified their texts in the course of transmission. One of the most effective techniques for change was to add something to the front-what Milstein calls "revision through introduction." This method allowed scribes to preserve their received material while simultaneously recasting it. As a result, numerous biblical and Mesopotamian texts manifest multiple and even competing viewpoints. Due to the primary position of these additions, such reworked texts are often read solely through the lens of their final contributions. This is true not only for biblical and cuneiform texts in their final forms, but also for Mesopotamian texts that are known from multiple versions: first impressions carry weight. Rather than "nail down every piece of the puzzle," Tracking the Master Scribe demonstrates what is to be gained when engaging questions of textual transmission with attention to how scribes actually worked. Working from the two earliest corpora that allow us to track large-scale change, the book provides broad overviews of evidence available for revision through introduction, as well as a set of detailed case studies that offer fresh insight into well-known biblical and Mesopotamian literary texts. The result is the first comprehensive and comparative profile of this key scribal method: one that was not only ubiquitous in the ancient Near East but also epitomizes the attitudes of the master scribes toward the literature that they produced.

Written by Derrida scholars, philosophers, and classicists, Derrida and Antiquity analyses a dialogue with the ancient world in the work of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Through an analysis of Derrida's work it explores the relationship between modern philosophy and Plato, the role ancient concepts of democracy have played in modern political debates, and the place of antiquity in contemporary discussions about Europe, as well as investigating the influence that deconstruction has had on the study of classical literature, ancient philosophy, and early religion. The volume is prefaced by a previously untranslated essay by Derrida, 'We Other Greeks'.

Speakers address audiences in the earliest Greek literature, but oratory became a distinct genre in the late fifth century and reached its maturity in the fourth. This book traces the development of its techniques by examining the contribution made by each orator. Dr Usher makes the speeches come alive for the reader through an in-depth analysis of the problems of composition and the likely responses of contemporary audiences. His study differs from previous books in its recognition of the richness of the early tradition which made innovation difficult, however, the orators are revealed as men of remarkable talent, versatility, and resource. Antiphon's pioneering role, Lysias' achievement of balance between the parts of the speech, the establishment of oratory as a medium of political thought by Demosthenes and Isocrates, and the individual characteristics of other orators - Andocides, Isaeus, Lycurgus, Hyperides, Dinarchus and Apollodorus - together make a fascinating study in evolution; while the illustrative texts of the orators (which are translated into English) include some of the liveliest and most moving passages in Greek literature.

This is a study of an anonymous ancient work, originally composed in Greek, titled Joseph and Aseneth. Although relatively unknown outside of scholarly circles, the story is remarkable because of its focus on a female character and its absence of overt misogyny. It has traditionally been viewed as an early 2nd-century C.E. conversion story of Jewish provenance. Kraemer, through her detailed examination of the texts, arrives at conclusions that disagree with previous findings with respect not only to questions of date, provenance, identity, geographic origin and textual relationships, but also to many matters of interpretation.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. The Medicamina Faciei Femineae is a didactic elegy which showcases an early example of Ovid's trademark combination of a moralistic, instructive form and trivial subject and meter. Exploring female beauty and cosmetics, with particular emphasis on the concept of 'cultus', the poem also presents five practical recipes for cosmetic treatments used by Roman women. Covering both didactic parody and pharmacological reality, this deceptively complex poem possesses wit, vivacity and importance. The first full study devoted to this little-researched but multi-faceted poem, Ovid on Cosmetics includes an in-depth introduction which situates the poem within its literary heritage of didactic and elegiac poetry, its place in Ovid's oeuvre and its relevance to social values, personal aesthetics and attitudes to female beauty in Roman society. The Latin text is presented on parallel pages alongside a new literal and quality translation, and all Latin phrases are translated for the non-specialist reader. Detailed commentary notes elucidate the text and individual phrases still further.The volume also contains related passages with translations and commentaries from Ovid's Ars Amatoria 3.101-250, on dress, appearance and make-up, and Amores 1.114, on hair dye and resulting baldness.Ovid on Cosmetics presents and explicates this witty, subversive yet significant poem, as well as contextualises its importance for gender and sexuality studies, women's life in antiquity, eroticism, aesthetics and social attitudes to women and beauty in Ancient Rome.

New and fresh assessments of Malory's Morte Darthur. The essays here are devoted to that seminal Arthurian work, Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur. Developments of papers first given at the 'Malory at 550: Old and New' conference, they emphasise here the second part of its remit. Accordingly, several contributors focus new attention on Malory's style, using his stock phrases, metaphors, characterization, or manipulation of sources to argue for a deeper appreciation of his merits as an author. If, as others illustrate, Malory is a much better artist than his twentieth-century reputation allowed, then there is a renewed need to re-assess the vexed question of the possible originality of his 'Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkeney'. Similarly fresh approaches underlie those essays re-examining Malory's attitude to time and the sacred in 'The Sankgreal', the manner in which the ghosts of Lot and his sons highlight potential failures in the Round Table Oath, or the pleasures and pitfalls of Arthurian hospitality. The remaining contributions argue for new approaches to Malory's narrative gaps, Launcelot's status as a victim of sexual violence, and the importance of rejecting Victorian moral attitudes towards Gwenyvere and Isode, moralizing that still informs much recent scholarship addressing Malory's female characters. Contributors: Joyce Coleman, Elizabeth Edwards, Kristina Hildebrand, Cathy Hume, David F. Johnson, Megan Leitch, Andrew Lynch, Molly A. Martin, Cory James Rushton, Fiona Tolhurst, Michael W. Twomey

The aim of this book is to explore the definition(s) of 'theatre' and 'metatheatre' that scholars use when studying the ancient Greek world. Although in modern languages their meaning is mostly straightforward, both concepts become problematical when applied to ancient reality. In fact, 'theatre' as well as 'metatheatre' are used in many different, sometimes even contradictory, ways by modern scholars. Through a series of papers examining questions related to ancient Greek theatre and dramatic performances of various genres the use of those two terms is problematized and put into question. Must ancient Greek theatre be reduced to what was performed in proper theatre-buildings? And is everything was performed within such buildings to be considered as 'theatre'? How does the definition of what is considered as theatre evolve from one period to the other? As for 'metatheatre', the discussion revolves around the interaction between reality and fiction in dramatic pieces of all genres. The various definitions of 'metatheatre' are also explored and explicited by the papers gathered in this volume, as well as the question of the distinction between paratheatre (understood as paratragedy/comedy) and metatheatre. Readers will be encouraged by the diversity of approaches presented in this book to re-think their own understanding and use of 'theatre' and 'metatheatre' when examining ancient Greek reality.

This is the first general study of the fortunes of Catullus in the Renaissance. After a brief introduction tracing the transmission of the poet from antiquity to the middle of the fifteenth century, the author follows his reception and interpretation by editors, commentators, university lecturers, and poets from the first edition (1472) through the sixteenth century. Their text and interpretations not only influenced the ways in which later generations (including our own) would read the poet, but also provide windows into their own intellectual and historical worlds, which include Poliziano's Florence, Rome under the Medici Pope Leo X and his puritanical successor Adrian VI, the Paris of Ronsard and Marc-Antoine de Muret, post-Tridentine Rome, sixteenth-century Leiden, fifteenth-century Verona, where Catullus was an object of patriotic veneration, and Pontano's Naples, where poets learned to read and imitate him through Martial's imitations.

This collection honours the scholarship of Professor David F. Johnson, exploring the wider view of medieval England and its cultural contracts with the Low Countries, and highlighting common texts, motifs, and themes across the textual traditions of Old English and later medieval romances in both English and Middle Dutch. Few scholars have contributed as much to the wider view of medieval England and its cultural contacts with the Low Countries than Professor David F. Johnson. His wide-ranging scholarship embraces both the textual traditions of Old English, especially in manuscript production, and later medieval romances in both English and Middle Dutch, highlighting their common texts, motifs, and themes. Taking Johnson's work as its starting point and model, the essays collected here investigate early English manuscript production and preservation, illuminating the complexities of reinterpreting Old English poetry, particularly Beowulf, and then go on to pursue those nuances through later English and Middle Dutch Arthurian romances and drama, including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Canterbury Tales, and the Roman van Walewein. They explore a plethora of material, including early medieval textual traditions and stone sculpture, and draw on a range of approaches, such as Body and Disability Theories. Overall, the aim is to bring multiple disciplines into dialogue with each other, in order to present a richer and more nuanced view of the medieval literary past and cross-cultural contact between England and the Low Countries, from the pre-Conquest period to the late-Middle Ages, thus forming a most appropriate tribute to Professor Johnson's pioneering work.

This is the first volume of essays published on the television series Troy: Fall of a City (BBC One and Netflix, 2018). Covering a wide range of engaging topics, such as gender, race and politics, international scholars in the fields of classics, history and film studies discuss how the story of Troy has been recreated on screen to suit the expectations of modern audiences. The series is commended for the thought-provoking way it handles important issues arising from the Trojan War narrative that continue to impact our society today. With discussions centered on epic narrative, cast and character, as well as tragic resonances, the contributors tackle gender roles by exploring the innovative ways in which mythological female figures such as Helen, Aphrodite and the Amazons are depicted in the series. An examination is also made into the concept of the hero and how the series challenges conventional representations of masculinity. We encounter a significant investigation of race focusing on the controversial casting of Achilles, Patroclus, Zeus and other series characters with Black actors. Several essays deal with the moral and ethical complexities surrounding warfare, power and politics. The significance of costume and production design are also explored throughout the volume.

This anthology of articles on the Roman novels of Petronius and Apuleius makes available some of the most useful and important articles published in German and Italian as well as English over the last thirty years. The introduction, by the editor, provides a general assessment of all scholarly work written about the texts from the 1900s to the 1990s, setting the papers usefully in context. The articles in this collection which concern the work of Petronius include a general interpretation of a fragmentary and problematic text, exploration of narrative technique, relation to Menippean satire and recently discovered Greek novel papyri, and realism. On Apuleius, the collection includes pieces on narrative and ideological unity, relation to religion and Platonism, exploration of narrative technique, relation to epic and to the Greek ass stories, to folk-tale, and historical realism. A reflection of the period of rapid expansion of scholarly interest in the area of the ancient novel, this book combines the best of current international scholarly interpretation.

This collective volume provides a fresh perspective on Homeric reception through a methodologically focused, interdisciplinary investigation of the transformations of Homeric epic within varying generic and cultural contexts. It explores how various aspects of Homeric poetics appeal and can be mapped on to a diversity of contexts under different socio-historical, intellectual, literary and artistic conditions. The volume brings together internationally acclaimed scholars and acute young researchers in the fields of classics and reception studies, yielding insight into the varied strategies and ideological forces that define Homeric reception in literature, scholarship and the performing arts (theatre, film and music) and shape the 'horizon of expectations' of readers and audience. This collection also showcases that the wide-ranging 'migration' of Homeric material through time and across place holds significant cultural power, being instrumental in the construction of new cultural identities. The volume is of particular interest to scholars in the fields of classics, reception and cultural studies and the performing arts, as well as to readers fascinated by ancient literature and its cultural transformations.

Gladstone's ideas are far more accessible for analysis now that, following the publication of his diaries, a record of his reading is available. This book traces the evolution of what the diaries reveal as the statesman's central intellectual preoccupations, theology and classical scholarship, as well as the groundwork of his early Conservatism and his mature Liberalism. In particular it examines the ideological sources of Gladstone's youthful opposition to reform before scrutinizing his convictions in theology. These are shown to have passed through more stages than has previously been supposed: he moved from Evangelicalism to Orthodox High Churchmanship, on to Tractarianism and then further to a broader stance that eventually crystallized as a liberal Catholicism. His classical studies, focused primarily on Homer, also changed over time, from a version that was designed to defend a traditional worldview to an approach that exalted the depiction of human endeavour in the ancient Greek poet. An enduring principle of his thought about religion and antiquity was the importance of community, but a fresh axiom that arose from the modifications of his views was the centrality of all that was human. The twin values of community and humanity are shown to have conditioned Gladstone's rhetoric as Liberal leader, so making him, in terms of recent political thought, a communitarian rather than a liberal, but one with a distinctive humanitarian message. As a result of a thorough scrutiny of Gladstone's private papers, the Victorian statesman is shown to have derived a distinctive standpoint from the Christian and classical sources of his thinking and so to have left an enduring intellectual legacy. It becomes apparent that his religion, Homeric studies and political thought were interwoven in unexpected ways. The evolution of Gladstone's central intellectual preoccupations, with religion and Homer, is the theme of this book. It shows how the statesman developed from Evangelism to Orthodox High Churchmanship, on to Tractarianism and then further to a broader stance that eventually crystallized as a liberal Catholicism. It demonstrates also that his Homeric studies developed over time. Neither aspect of his thinking was kept apart from his politics. Gladstone's early conservatism emerged from a blend of classical and Christian themes focusing on the idea of community. While that motif persisted in his speeches as Liberal leader, the category of the human emerged from his religious and Homeric ideas to condition the presentation of his Liberalism. In Gladstone's mind there was an intertwining of theology, Homeric studies and political thought.

Building on the formula of York Notes, this series introduces students to more sophisticated analysis and wider critical perspectives. This enbables students to appreciate contrasting interpretations of the text and to develop critical thinking. This text covers The Aeneid by Virgil.

A new kind of songbook emerged in the later fifteenth century: personalized, portable, and lavishly decorated. Five closely related chansonniers, copied in the Loire Valley region of central France c. 1465-c. 1475, are the earliest surviving examples of this new genre.
The Loire Valley Chansonniers preserve the music of such renowned composers as Guillaume Du Fay, Johannes Ockeghem, and Antoine Busnoys. But their importance as musical sources has overshadowed the significance of these manuscripts as artifacts in their own right.
This book places the physical objects at center, investigating the means by which they were produced and the broader culture in which they circulated. Jane Alden performs a codicological autopsy upon the manuscripts and reveals the hitherto unrecognized role of scribes in shaping the transmission and reception of the chanson repertory. Alden also challenges the long-held belief that the Loire Valley Chansonniers were intended for royal or noble patrons. Instead, she argues that a rising class of bureaucrats--notaries, secretaries, and other court officials--commissioned these exquisite objects. Active as writers and participants in poetry competitions, these individuals may even have written some of the chansons' texts.
The unique integration of image, text, and music found in chansonniers extends their appeal to a broad readership. But for the nineteenth-century scholars who rediscovered these manuscripts, the larger literary and visual resonances were not of primary interest. Alden documents the tangle of motivations--national identity, populist politics, and the rise of the musical masterwork--that informed the earliest writings on these books. Only now is their multifaceted structure the inspiration for a new generation of readers.

What happens when poetry deals explicitly with a serious theological issue? In Poetry Does Theology, Jim Rhodes seeks one answer to that question by analyzing the symbiotic relationship that existed between theology and poetry in fourteenth-century England. He pays special attention to the narrative poems of Chaucer, Grosseteste, the Pearl-poet, the author of Saint Erkenwald, and Langland.

Rhodes shows that Chaucer and his contemporaries wrote at the end of a linguistic and theological revolution -- a time when revised perspectives on the creation and incarnation gave rise to a new humanistic spirit that transformed late medieval theological culture and spurred the development of vernacular theology and poetry. Rhodes' careful analysis describes how the relationship between theology and poetry underwent a radical transformation as the century progressed.

What had previously been the exclusive prerogative of a Latinate and clerical elite became in the later Middle Ages a matter of concern within vernacular culture, particularly the emerging category of "literature." This newly defined and self-conscious literature provided not simply an arena in which theological questions could be raised; it also privileged a secular, humanist outlook that granted to earthly life its own legitimacy and dignity.

In Poetry Does Theology, Rhodes argues that one of the distinctive qualities of modernity -- its secular and this-worldly orientation -- is a phenomenon that took root in England in the fourteenth century and found its primary site of development not in theological or philosophical circles, but in a vernacular literature that opened for inquiry the theological and philosophical questionsthat dominated the era.

Among extant Greek comedies, the Frogs is unique for the light it throws on classical Greek attitudes to tragedy and to literature in general. Sir Kenneth Dover's edition, with a full introduction and extensive commentary, has been the most comprehensive edition available, drawing together the relevant scholarship that has accumulated on the subject. The general purpose and character of the abridged version remains the same: to provide a helpful guide on a difficult author for students who wish to translate the play, or need to interpret it for performance. In this edition, nothing relevant to the performance of the play on stage has been sacrificed although information on manuscripts and discussion of the history of the text have been pared to the minimum, and arguments on controversial points have been abbreviated. Where relevant, conclucions reached in the original edition have been changed in the light of work done by others since 1993. The inclusion of a vocabulary should reduce the need for students to have a recourse to a lexicon.

The Anonymous Old English Homily: Sources, Composition, and Variation offers important essays on the origins, textual transmission, and (re)use of early English preaching texts between the ninth and the late twelfth centuries. Associated with the Electronic Corpus of Anonymous Homilies in Old English project, these studies provide fresh insights into one of the most complex textual genres of early medieval literature. Contributions deal with the definition of the anonymous homiletic corpus in Old English, the history of scholarship on its Latin sources, and the important unedited Pembroke and Angers Latin homiliaries. They also include new source and manuscript identifications, and in-depth studies of a number of popular Old English homilies, their themes, revisions, and textual relations. Contributors are: Aidan Conti, Robert Getz, Thomas N. Hall, Susan Irvine, Esther Lemmerz, Stephen Pelle, Thijs Porck, Winfried Rudolf, Donald G. Scragg, Robert K. Upchurch, Jonathan Wilcox, Charles D. Wright, Samantha Zacher. See inside the book.

This book explores the phenomenon of shame in the Hebrew bible. It focuses particularly on the major prophets, because shame vocabulary is most prominent there. Shame has been widely discussed in the literature of psychology and anthropology; the book discusses the findings of both disciplines in some detail. It emphasises the social-anthropological honour/shame model, which a considerable number of biblical scholars since the early 1990s have embraced enthusiastically. The author highlights the shortcomings of this heuristic model and proposes a number of alternative critical approaches.

Self-restraint or self-mastery may appear to be the opposite of erotic desire. But in this nuanced, literary analysis, Diane Lipsett traces the intriguing interplay of desire and self-restraint in three ancient tales of conversion: The Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and Joseph and Aseneth. Lipsett treats "conversion"--marked change in a protagonist's piety and identity--as in part an effect of story, a function of narrative textures, coherence, and closure. Her approach is theoretically versatile, drawing on Foucault, psychoanalytic theorists, and the ancient literary critic Longinus. Well grounded in scholarship on Hermas, Thecla, and Aseneth, the closely paced readings sharpen attention to each story, while advancing discussions of ancient views of the self; of desire, masculinity, and virginity; of the cultural codes around marriage and continence; and of the textual energetics of conversion tales.

This volume provides the first full-scale commentary on the eighth book of Virgil's Aeneid, the book in which the poet presents the unforgettable tour of the site of the future Rome that the Arcadian Evander provides for his Trojan guest Aeneas, as well as the glorious apparition and bestowal of the mystical, magical shield of Vulcan on which the great events of the future Roman history are presented - culminating in the Battle of Actium and the victory of Octavian over the forces of Antony and Cleopatra. A critical text based on a fresh examination of the manuscript tradition is accompanied by a prose translation.

This volume examines the long and complex history of the Greco-Roman tradition in South America, arguing that the Classics have played a crucial, though often overlooked, role in the self-definition in the New World. Chronicling and theorizing this history through a detailed analysis of five key moments, chosen from the early and late colonial period, the emancipatory era, and the 20th and 21st centuries, it also examines an eclectic selection of both literary and cinematographic works and artefacts such as maps, letters, scientific treatises, songs, monuments, political speeches, and even the drafts of proposals for curricular changes across Latin America. The heterogeneous cases analysed in this book reveal cultural anxieties that recur through different periods, fundamentally related to the 'newness' of the continent and the formation of identities imagined as both Western and non-Western - a genealogy of apprehensions that South American intellectuals and political figures have typically experienced when thinking of their own role in world history. In tracing this genealogy, The Classics in South America innovatively reformulates our understanding of well-known episodes in the cultural history of the region, while providing a theoretical and historical resource for further studies of the importance of the Classical tradition across Latin America.

In this collected volume fourteen experts in the fields of Classics and Ancient History study the textual strategies used by Herodotus and Livy when recounting the disastrous battles at Thermopylae and Cannae. Literary, linguistic and historical approaches are used (often in combination) in order to enhance and enrich the interpretation of the accounts, which for obvious reasons confronted the authors with a special challenge. Chapters drawing a comparison with other battle narratives and with other genres help to establish genre-specific elements in ancient historiography, and draw attention to the particular techniques employed by Herodotus and Livy in their war narratives.

Aeschylus' Oresteia is a tragedy of inescapable killing within one family, such that each generation must avenge it in kind. This new and close translation tries to preserve its theatrical and poetic qualities: introductory and explanatory matter emphasizes the interconnection of scenes, ideas, and language which distinguishes this unique work, the only trilogy to survive from Greek tragedy.