Language and style of epigram is a topic scarcely discussed in the related bibliography. This edition aspires to fill the gap by offering an in-depth study of dialect, diction, and style in Greek literary and inscribed epigram in a collection of twenty-one contributions authored by international scholars. The authors explore the epigrammatic Kunstsprache and matters of dialectical variation, the interchange between poetic and colloquial vocabulary, the employment of hapax legomena, the formalistic uses of the epigrammatic discourse (meter, syntactical patterns, arrangement of words, riddles), the various categories of style in sepulchral, philosophical and pastoral contexts of literary epigrams, and the idiosyncratic diction of inscriptions. This is a book intended for classicists who want to review the connection between the stylistic features of epigram and its interpretation, as well as for scholars keen to understand how rhetoric and linguistics can be used as a heuristic tool for the study of literature.

Here at last is a fully annotated critical edition of the Chateauroux text of the Chanson de Roland. Even in the Corpus edition, C was represented by a simple transcript. The Roland Corpus edition of 2005 took Venice 7 as the base text and V7 laisses 92A and 108A were relegated to Appendix A. This obscured crucial evidence demonstrating the greater authority of C as representing the shared model and the role of V7 as modifier of that model. Close comparison of C with V7 and of both texts with the other versions disproves the Segre thesis of the anteriority of V7. In this edition, the aim is always to provide an authentic text with minimal emendation, so as to show the salient characteristics of C, but to discuss its readings in detailed footnotes. All arguments are solidly based on textual analysis throughout and particularly in C's repetitions and associated assonanced passages. In addition, the linguistic characteristics are studied and the historical background to C pre-1328 and its possible route from Venice to Paris between 1746 and 1792 investigated.

When has using the term "lesbian" "not" been considered an anachronistic gesture? This question lies at the heart of this important new collection of essays. "The Lesbian Premodern" engages key scholars in lesbian studies and queer theory in an innovative conversation in print. Transgressing traditional period boundaries, "The Lesbian Premodern" scholars to pay full attention to significant and often overlooked theoretical, empirical, and textual work on female same-sex desire and identity in premodern cultures. This provocative book offers a radical new methodology for writing theories and histories of sexuality.

This book focuses on mythos and voice in the Odyssey, to illuminate its characters' journeys from social displacement through discovery and recovery. Mythos and Voice approaches the Odyssey as a narrative of displacement - a narrative that maps the social displacement of its characters, explores the cognitive consequences of that displacement, and embodies the variable strategies by which those characters learn to resolve their displacement. It is a narrative that also employs and elaborates the characters' own narratives of displacement as genres enabling them to resist externally imposed definitions of their situations and to redefine and ultimately reclaim their own place in the world, not as it was before their displacement, but as it must be, given the new post-heroic world in which they now live. The focus on mythos and voice enables readers to approach the study of learning and the acquisition of personal agency in the context of a hazardous world - the cultural world that Odysseus navigates in Homer's epic poem. With this focus, the author examines interactive processes of human learning in a specific cultural context - the epic universe of Homeric narrative. By ethnographically examining the learning contexts portrayed in Homer's epic, Mythos and Voice elucidates an Archaic Greek view of human learning through examples that show how the author(s) of the Odyssey envisioned and dramatized displacement, learning and agency in the epic work. The book focuses on aspects of Homeric cognition as they cumulatively develop among key characters within the Odyssey's inventive narrative structure. In this way, Mythos and Voice describes a culturally specific "theory" of learning and development - a perspective that proved compelling in the pre-classical and classical Greek world, even as it does to readers now.

The conventional view of Aristophanes bristles with problems. Important testimony for Alcibiades' paramount role in comedy is consistently disregarded, and the tradition that "masks were made to look like the komodoumenoi, so that before an actor spoke a word, the audience would recognize who was being attacked" is hardly ever invoked. If these testimonia are taken into account, a fascinating picture emerges, where the komodoumenoi are based on the Periclean household: older characters on Pericles himself, younger on Alcibiades. Aspasia, Pericles' mistress, and Hipparete, Alcibiades' wife, lie behind many female characters, and Alcibiades' ambiguous sexuality also allows him to be shown on the stage as a woman, notably as Lysistrata. There is a substantial overlap between the anecdotal tradition relating to the historical figures and the plotting of Aristophanes' plays. This extends to speech patterns, where Alcibiades' speech defect is lampooned. Aristophanes is consistently critical of Alcibiades' mercurial politics, and his works can also be seen to have served as an aide-memoire for Thucydides and Xenophon. If the argument presented here is correct, then much current scholarship on Aristophanes can be set aside.

Beyond the Fifth Century brings together 13 scholars from various disciplines (Classics, Ancient History, Mediaeval Studies) to explore interactions with Greek tragedy from the 4th century BCE up to the Middle Ages. The volume breaks new ground in several ways. Its chronological scope encompasses periods that are not usually part of research on tragedy reception, especially the Hellenistic period, late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The volume also considers not just performance reception but various other modes of reception, between different literary genres and media (inscriptions, vase paintings, recording technology). There is a pervasive interest in interactions between tragedy and society-at-large, such as festival culture and entertainment (both public and private), education, religious practice, even life-style. Finally, the volume features studies of a comparative nature which focus less on genealogical connections (although such may be present) but rather on the study of equivalences.

"Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature" exposes the ways in which ostensibly normative sexualities depend upon queerness to shore up their claims of privilege. Through readings of such classic texts as "The Canterbury Tales, Pearl, Amis and Amiloun," and "Eger and Grime," Tison Pugh explains how sexual normativity can often be claimed only after queerness has been rejected, no matter how appealing such queerness might remain at the story's end. Masculinity itself is thus revealed to be a queer performance, one which heroic protagonists of medieval narratives embody while nonetheless highlighting its constricting limitations.

The oath was an institution of fundamental importance across a wide range of social interactions throughout the ancient Greek world, making a crucial contribution to social stability and harmony; yet there has been no comprehensive, dedicated scholarly study of the subject for over a century. This volume of a two-volume study explores the nature of oaths as Greeks perceived it, the ways in which they were used (and sometimes abused) in Greek life and literature, and their inherent binding power.

The Call to Read is the first full-length study to situate the surviving oeuvre of Reginald Pecock in the context of current scholarship on English vernacular theology of the late medieval period. Kirsty Campbell examines the important and innovative contribution Pecock made to late medieval debates about the roles of the Bible, the Church, the faculty of reason, and practices of devotion in fostering a vital, productive, and stable Christian community. Campbell argues that Pecock's fascinating attempt to educate the laity is more than an effort to supply religious reading material: it is an attempt to establish and unite a community of readers around his books, to influence and thus change the ways they understand their faith, the world, and their place in it. The aim of Pecock's educational project is to harness the power of texts to effect religious change. Combining traditional approaches with innovative thinking on moral philosophy, devotional exercises, and theological doctrine, Pecock's works of religious instruction are his attempt to reform a Christian community threatened by heresy through reshaping meaningful Christian practices and forms of belief. Campbell's book will be of interest to scholars and students of medieval literature and culture, especially those interested in fifteenth-century religious history and culture.

This study charts relationships between moral claims and audience response in medieval exemplary works by such poets as Chaucer, Gower, Robert Henryson, and several anonymous scribes. In late medieval England, exemplary works make one of the strongest possible claims for the social value of poetic fiction. Studying this debate reveals a set of local literary histories, based on both canonical and non-canonical texts, that complicate received notions of the didactic Middle Ages, the sophisticated Renaissance, and the fallow fifteenth century in between.

A Prosopography to Martial's Epigrams is the first dictionary of all the characters and personal names found in the work of Marcus Valerius Martialis, containing nearly 1,000 comprehensive entries. Each of them compiles and analyses all the relevant information regarding the characters themselves, as well as the literary implications of their presence in Martial's poems. Unlike other works of this kind, the book encompasses not only real people, whose positive existence is beyond doubt, but also fictional characters invented by the poet or inherited from the cultural and literary tradition. Its entries provide the passages of the epigrams where the respective characters appear; the general category to which they belong; the full name (in the case of historical characters); onomastic information, especially about frequency, meaning, and etymology; other literary or epigraphical sources; a prosopographical sketch; a discussion of relevant manuscript variants; and a bibliography. Much attention is paid to the literary portrayal of each character and the poetic usages of their names. This reference work is a much needed tool and is intended as a stimulus for further research.

This volume introduces readers to classical Chinese literature from its beginnings (ca. 10th century BCE) to the tenth century CE. It asks basic questions such as: How did reading and writing practices change over these two millennia? How did concepts of literature evolve? What were the factors that shaped literary production and textual transmission? How do traditional bibliographic categories, modern conceptions of genre, and literary theories shape our understanding of classical Chinese literature? What are the recurrent and evolving concerns of writings within the period under purview? What are the dimensions of human experience they address? Why is classical Chinese literature important for our understanding of pre-modern East Asia? How does the transmission of this literature in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam define cultural boundaries? And what, in turn, can we learn from the Chinese-style literatures of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, about Chinese literature? In addressing these questions, The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature departs from standard literary histories and sourcebooks. It does not simply categorize literary works according to periods, authors, or texts. Its goal is to offer a new conceptual framework for thinking about classical Chinese literature by defining a four-part structure. The first section discusses the basics of literacy and includes topics such as writing systems, manuscript culture, education, and loss and preservation in textual transmission. It is followed by a second section devoted to conceptions of genre, textual organization, and literary signification throughout Chinese history. A third section surveys literary tropes and themes. The final section takes us beyond China to the surrounding cultures that adopted Chinese culture and produced Chinese style writing adapted to their own historical circumstances. The volume is sustained by a dual foci: the recuperation of historical perspectives for the period it surveys and the attempt to draw connections between past and present, demonstrating how the viewpoints and information in this volume yield insights into modern China and east Asia.

Often misleadingly called the Dark Ages, the period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance was a time of great creativity. The Middle Ages gave rise to some of the world's most enduring and influential literary works, including Dante's "Commedia," Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," and a large body of Arthurian lore and legend. This reference is a comprehensive guide to literature written between 500 and 1500. While the volume is primarily devoted to the early literature of England, it also includes entries for historical persons and subjects of cultural relevance which would have been discussed in literary works or which might have affected their creation. Multicultural in scope, the book also covers Islamic, Hispanic, Celtic, Mongolian, Germanic, Italian, and Russian literature and culture of the Middle Ages.

Longer entries provide thorough coverage of major English authors such as Chaucer and Malory, and of entire genres, such as drama, lyric, ballad, debate, saga, chronicle, and hagiography. Shorter entries examine particular literary works; significant kings, artists, explorers, and religious leaders; important themes, such as courtly love and chivalry; and major historical events, such as the Crusades. The entries are written by scholars and each entry concludes with a brief bibliography. The volume closes with a list of the most valuable general works for further reading.

The origins of satyr drama, and particularly the reliability of the account in Aristotle, remains contested, and several of this volume's contributions try to make sense of the early relationship of satyr drama to dithyramb and attempt to place satyr drama in the pre-Classical performance space and traditions. What is not contested is the relationship of satyr drama to tragedy as a required cap to the Attic trilogy. Here, however, how Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (to whom one complete play and the preponderance of the surviving fragments belong) envisioned the relationship of satyr drama to tragedy in plot, structure, setting, stage action and language is a complex subject tackled by several contributors. The playful satyr chorus and the drunken senility of Silenos have always suggested some links to comedy and later to Atellan farce and phlyax. Those links are best examined through language, passages in later Greek and Roman writers, and in art. The purpose of this volume is probe as many themes and connections of satyr drama with other literary genres, as well as other art forms, putting satyr drama on stage from the sixth century BC through the second century AD. The editors and contributors suggest solutions to some of the controversies, but the volume shows as much that the field of study is vibrant and deserves fuller attention.

This book by one of the preeminent Virgil scholars of our day is the first comprehensive study of ekphrasis in Virgil's final masterpiece, the Aeneid. Virgil uses ekphrasis-a self-contained aside that generates a pause in the narrative to describe a work of art or other object-to tell us something about the grander text in which it is embedded, says Michael C. J. Putnam. Individually and as a group, Virgil's ekphrases enrich the reader's understanding of the meaning of the epic. Putnam shows how the descriptions of works of art, and of people, places, and even animals, provide metaphors for the entire poem and reinforce its powerful ambiguities. Putnam offers insightful analyses of the most extensive and famous ekphrases in the Aeneid-the paintings in Juno's temples in Carthage, the Daedalus frieze, and the shield of Aeneas. He also considers shorter and less well known examples-the stories of Ganymede, the Trojan shepherd swept into the sky by an amorous Jupiter; the fifty daughters of Danaus, ordered by their father to kill their husbands on their wedding night; and Virgil's original tale of a domesticated wild stag whose killing sparks a war between Trojans and Italians. These ekphrases incorporate major themes of the Aeneid, an enduring formative text of the Western tradition, and provide a rich variety of interpretive perspectives on the poem.

This anthology should be a must' for all serious students of Aristophanes. It brings together for the first tinme in one volume all the most important contributions to the study of Aristophanes published over the last several decades - providing an ideal resource for anyone studying the plays. Aristophanes is the only surviving author of Greek Attic comedy who has left us more than fragments, and his eleven surviving plays reflect the spirit of Athens in the golden age - and its unique freedom of speech. The book deals not only with the better known comedies like Clouds and Birds , but also the later, more unusual works like The Assembywomen and Wealth , which represent important stages towards the evolution of modern comedy. Subjects range from the classic question of Aristophanes' relationship to contemporary politics to more modern issues such as feminism, gender, performance context, and the interaction between fifth century comedy and tragedy. Many of the contributions are not otherwise readily available to students and teachers, coming from foreign journals and books, difficult to obtain. This book is intended for students of classical literature, especially Greek comedy.

This book explores for the first time the relation between Atticist lexicography and the pronunciation of Greek, an aspect of Atticism that has never been studied thouroughly before. It examines the ideas of the Atticist about what Greek should sound like, drawing on Atticist lexicography as the main source of information on the special pronunciation of the Atticist. The book addresses all scholars with an interest in Atticism, Greek in the Imperial period, and linguistic purism more in general. It sheds new light on an aspect of Atticism that is otherwise poorly attested, and complements the existiting study on later Greek and the impact of Atticism in the history of the Greek language.

When scholars discuss the medieval past, the temptation is to become immersed there, to deepen our appreciation of the nuances of the medieval sources through debate about their meaning. But the past informs the present in a myriad of ways and medievalists can, and should, use their research to address the concerns and interests of contemporary society. This volume presents a number of carefully commissioned essays that demonstrate the fertility and originality of recent work in Medieval Studies. Above all, they have been selected for relevance. Most contributors are in the earlier stages of their careers and their approaches clearly reflect how interdisciplinary methodologies applied to Medieval Studies have potential repercussions and value far beyond the boundaries of the Middles Ages. These chapters are powerful demonstrations of the value of medieval research to our own times, both in terms of providing answers to some of the specific questions facing humanity today and in terms of much broader considerations. Taken together, the research presented here also provides readers with confidence in the fact that Medieval Studies cannot be neglected without a great loss to the understanding of what it means to be human.

This is a collection of essays by diverse hands engaging, interrogating, and honoring the medieval scholarship of Terry Jones. Jones' life-long engagement with the Middle Ages in general, and with the work of Chaucer in particular, has significantly influenced contemporary understanding of the period generally, and Middle English letters in particular. Both in film of all types - full-feature comedy (Monty Python and the Holy Grail) as well as educational television series for BBC, the History Channel, etc. (e.g., Medieval Lives) - and in his published scholarship (e.g., Chaucer's Knight, in original and revised editions, Who Murdered Chaucer?), Jones has applied his unique combination of carefully researched scholarship, keen intelligence, fearless skepticism of establishment thinking, and his broad good humor to challenge, enlighten and reform. No one working today in either Middle English studies or in period-related film and/or documentary can proceed untouched by Jones' purposive, provocative views. Jones, perhaps more than any other medievalist, can be said to be an integral part of what Palgrave deems the "common dialogue."

This book re-evaluates the perception of "courtly love" in Old French verse. Adams traces how these verses explore the emotional trials of "amour" and propose coping methods for the lovelorn.

William of Poitiers served William the Conqueror for many years as one of his chaplains. His Gesta Guillelmi is a first-hand account of the momentous events of William's reign, and one of the most important sources for the history of the period. This new edition, with facing-page English translation of the Latin text, provides the first complete English translation, as well as a full historical introduction and detailed notes.

Drawing from classical myth, the history of philosophy, literature, film, music, and painting, Workman connects the artistic claims of Chaucer and tests them against similar gestures in the history of philosophy and literature. What results is a radical retake on Chaucer as a philosopher and poet, upending any preconceived views.

This book reconstructs the theory of signification implicit in Aristotle's De Interpretatione and its psychological background in his writing De Anima, a project often envisioned by scholars but never systematically undertaken. I begin by explaining what sort of phonetic material, according to Aristotle, can be a significans and a phone. To that end, I provide a physiological account of which animal sounds count as phone, as well as a psychological evaluation of the cognitive content of the phonai under consideration in De Interpretatione: names, verbs, and assertive sentences. I then turn to noemata, which, for Aristotle, are the psychological reference and significata of names, verbs and assertive sentences. I explain what, for Aristotle, are the logical properties a significatum must have in order to be signified by the phonetic material of a name, verb or assertive sentence, and why noemata can fulfil those logical conditions. Finally, I elucidate the significans-significatum relation without making use of the modern semantic triangle. This approach is consonant with Aristotle's methodology and breaks new ground by exploring the connection between the linguistic and psychological aspects of Aristotle's theory of signification.

Barbara Pavlock unmasks major figures in Ovid's ""Metamorphoses"" as surrogates for his narrative persona, highlighting the conflicted revisionist nature of the ""Metamorphoses"". Although Ovid ostensibly validates traditional customs and institutions, instability is in fact a defining feature of both the core epic values and his own poetics. ""The Image of the Poet"" explores issues central to Ovid's poetics - the status of the image, the generation of plots, repetition, opposition between refined and inflated epic style, the reliability of the narrative voice, and the interrelation of rhetoric and poetry. The work explores the constructed author and complements recent criticism focusing on the reader in the text. Ovid's simultaneous play to and rebellion against epic tradition makes Narcissus both an idealized elegiac image through allusions to the poet's own mistress in the Amores and an elegiac poet fixated on his own image. Through Narcissus' demise, Ovid reflects the instability of visual images. In ""Orpheus' story of Venus and Adonis"", an undercurrent of desire in Venus' inset tale reveals a problematic self-involvement. The self-referential nature of Orpheus' song then raises questions about his reliability as narrator, a theme that culminates in Ulysses' contest with Ajax. Here Ovid undercuts heroic views about lineage and valor, but also highlights the many clever strategies by which Ulysses elevates himself over his rival, undermining Homer's ""Illiad"" and ""Odyssey"". Ovid questions the authority of the narrator but also provides the means for understanding the problems at the core of his epic. Thus, in his time and ours, the reader ultimately emerges better equipped to assess inherited traditions in literary, social, and political spheres.

How were non-human animals treated in the Classical world, and how did ancient authors record their responses to animals in Greek and Roman life? The civilisations of Greece and Rome left detailed records of their experience and opinions of animals: in these societies, which practised mass sacrifice and large-scale public animal hunts, as well as being economically reliant on animal power and products, how were animals actually treated and how was it acceptable to treat them?
This sourcebook presents specially-prepared translations from Greek and Latin texts across several genres which give a wide-reaching sense of the place of the non-human animal in the moral register of Classical Greece and Rome. From theories of the origins of animal life and vegetarianism, literary uses of animal imagery and its role in formulating cultural identity, to vivid descriptions of vivisection, force-feeding, intensive farming, agricultural and military exploitation, and detailed accounts of animal-hunting and the trade in exotic animal products: the battleground of the modern animal rights debate is here given its historical foundation in a selection of nearly 200 passages of Classical authors from Homer to Porphyry.