Plautine Trends: Studies in Plautine Comedy and its Reception, a collective volume published as a Festschrift in honour of Prof. D. Raios (University of Ioannina), aims to contribute to the current, intense discussion on Plautine drama and engage with most of the topics which lie at the forefront of recent scholarship on 'literary Plautus'. 13 papers by experts on Roman Comedy address issues concerning a) the structure of Plautine plot in its social, historical and philosophical contexts, b) the interfaces between language and comic plot, and c) plot and language as signs of reception. Participants include (in alphabetical order): A. Augoustakis, R.R. Caston, D.M. Christenson, M. Fontaine, S. Frangoulidis, M. Hanses, E. Karakasis, D. Konstan, K. Kounaki-Philippides, S. Papaioannou, A. Sharrock, N.W. Slater, and J.T. Welsh. The papers of the volume are preceded by an introduction offering a review of the extensive literature on the subject in recent years and setting the volume in its critical context. The preface to the volume is written by R.L. Hunter. The book is intended for students or scholars working on or interested in Plautine Comedy and its reception.

Roman plays have been well studied individually (even including fragmentary or spurious ones more recently). However, they have not always been placed into their 'context', though plays (just like items in other literary genres) benefit from being seen in context. This edited collection aims to address this issue: it includes 33 contributions by an international team of scholars, discussing single plays or Roman dramatic genres (including comedy, tragedy and praetexta, from both the Republican and imperial periods) in contexts such as the literary tradition, the relationship to works in other literary genres, the historical and social situation, the intellectual background or the later reception. Overall, they offer a rich panorama of the role of Roman drama or individual plays in Roman society and literary history. The insights gained thereby will be of relevance to everyone interested in Roman drama or literature more generally, comparative literature or drama and theatre studies. This contextual approach has the potential of changing the way in which Roman drama is viewed.

The present volume offers a systematic discussion of the complex relationship between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world. For a long time, the relationship between the two has been assumed to be virtually non-existent. Paradoxography is concerned with disclosing a world full of marvels and wondrous occurrences without providing an answer as to how these phenomena can be explained. Its main aim is to astonish and leave its readers bewildered and confused. By contrast, medicine is committed to the rational explanation of human phusis, which makes it, in a number of significant ways, incompatible with thauma. This volume moves beyond the binary opposition between 'rational' and 'non-rational' modes of thinking, by focusing on instances in which the paradox is construed with direct reference to established medical sources and beliefs or, inversely, on cases in which medical discourse allows space for wonder and admiration. Its aim is to show that thauma, rather than present a barrier, functions as a concept which effectively allows for the dialogue between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world.

Did medieval women have the power to choose? This is a question at the heart of this book which explores three court cases from Yorkshire in the decades after the Black Death. Alice de Rouclif was a child heiress made to marry the illegitimate son of the local abbot and then abducted by her feudal superior. Agnes Grantham was a successful businesswoman ambushed and assaulted in a forest whilst on her way to dine with the Master of St Leonard's Hospital. Alice Brathwell was a respectable widow who attracted the attentions of a supposedly aristocratic conman. These are their stories.

Emily Francomano explores how medieval & early modern writers reconstructed, & also how readers read, the contradictory meanings of 'Lady' Wisdom.

As both a literary genre and a view of life, tragedy has from the very beginning spurred a dialogue between poetry and philosophy. Plato famously banned tragedians from his ideal community because he believed that their representations of vicious behavior could deform minds. Aristotle set out to answer Plato's objections, arguing that fiction offers a faithful image of the truth and that it promotes emotional health through the mechanism of catharsis. Aristotle's definition of tragedy actually had its greatest impact not on Greek tragedy itself but on later Latin literature, beginning with the tragedies of the Roman poet and Stoic philosopher Seneca (4 BC - AD 65). Scholarship over the last fifty years, however, has increasingly sought to identify in Seneca's prose writings a Platonic poetics which is antagonistic toward tragedy and which might therefore explain why Seneca's plays seem so often to present the failure of Stoicism. As Gregory Staley argues in this book, when Senecan tragedy fails to stage virtue we should see in this not the failure of Stoicism but a Stoic conception of tragedy as the right vehicle for imaging Seneca's familiar world of madmen and fools. Senecan tragedy enacts Aristotle's conception of the genre as a vivid image of the truth and treats tragedy as a natural venue in which to explore the human soul. Staley's reading of Seneca's plays draws on current scholarship about Stoicism as well as on the writings of Renaissance authors like Sir Philip Sidney, who borrowed from Seneca the word "idea" to designate what we would now label as a "theory" of tragedy. Seneca and the Idea of Tragedy will appeal broadly to students and scholars of classics, ancient philosophy, and English literature.

This is the first in-depth study of Apuleius' Metamorphoses to look at the different attitudes characters adopt towards magic as a key to deciphering the complex dynamics of the entire work. The variety of responses to magic is unveiled in the narrative as the protagonist Lucius encounters an assortment of characters, either in embedded tales or in the main plot. A contextualized approach illuminates Lucius' relatively good fortune when compared to other characters in the novel - this results from his involvement with the magic of a sorcerer's apprentice, rather than that of a real witch, and signals the possibility of eventual salvation. A careful investigation of Lucius' attitude towards Isis in book 11 and his relationship with the witch-slave girl Photis earlier on suggests that the novel's final book may be read as a second "Metamorphoses", consciously rewritten from a positive perspective. Last but not least, the book also breaks new ground by examining the narrative structure of the Metamorphoses against the background of the typical plotline found in the ideal romance. The comparison shows how Apuleius both follows and alters this plot, exploiting the genre to his own specific ends, in keeping with his central theme of metamorphosis.

This book is a companion to logical thought and logical thinking in China with a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. It introduces the basic ideas and theories of Chinese thought in a comprehensive and analytical way. It covers thoughts in ancient, pre-modern and modern China from a historical point of view. It deals with topics in logical (including logico-philosophical) concepts and theories rooted in China, Indian and Western Logic transplanted to China, and the development of logical studies in contemporary China and other Chinese communities. The term "philosophy of logic" or "logico-philosophical thought" is used in this book to represent "logical thought" in a broad sense which includes thinking on logical concepts, modes of reasoning, and linguistic ideas related to logic and philosophical logic. Unique in its approach, the book uses Western logical theories and philosophy of language, Chinese philology, and history of ideas to deal with the basic ideas and major problems in logical thought and logical thinking in China. In doing so, it advances the understanding of the lost tradition in Chinese philosophical studies.

The earliest complete morality play in English, The Castle of Perseverance depicts the culture of medieval East Anglia, a region once known for its production of artistic objects. Discussing the spectator experience of this famed play, Young argues that vision is the organizing principle that informs this play's staging, structure, and narrative.

The plays of Plautus have long been recognized as a unique mine of information about the spoken Latin of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. But detailed and up-to-date linguistic treatments of the Plautine meters and other phenomena in his plays have hitherto been lacking. This book seeks to remedy that gap by presenting a series of case-studies to glean information about the synchronic grammar of Plautine Latin, in particular the rhythmic organization of Latin speech and the effects of syntactic processes on Latin prosodic phonology. Some of the topics, such as enjambement and the aphaeresis of "est", have never before received such treatment, while others, such as Meyer's and Luchs's laws, split resolutions, and iambic shortening, are provided a firmer linguistic footing, and fuller discussion of allied issues, than hitherto. Topics in Italic syntax (such as the syntactic structure of adpositional phrases and their history) and in Indo-European morphophonology (such as the prosodic status of finite verbs) are dealt with as well, as is an investigation into the effects of pragmatics on the rhythmic organization of phrases. The book will be of interest to classicists, comparative philologists, and general linguists.

Research into traditional areas of Homeric scholarship (e.g., language, the structure of the text, etc.) has come a long way since the last comprehensive commentaries on the Iliad were carried out, that is, the commentary by Ameis-Hentze in German language in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century as well as the Cambridge commentary by Kirk et. al. in English language in the 1980/90s. Much of this kind of research is now set upon a much surer methodological and theoretical foundation. Developments in the field of Mycenology and in the study of Linear B, oral poetry, and the history of ancient Troy in particular, have made possible a number of new insights and interpretive possibilities in Homer's epic. Moreover, modern secondary literature of all major languages has been systematically covered. The "Basel Commentary" to the Iliad is a new, up-to-date, standard work that addresses these issues directly and will be of interest to scholars, teachers, and students alike. Central to the commentary on Iliad 24 is the interpretation of one of the most exciting and most moving scenes of the Iliad: how Priam, the king of Troy, makes his way to his mortal enemy Achilles, by whose hand his son Hector had fallen; how the god Hermes leads the old man almost magically into the army camp of the Greeks; how Achilles, at the end of an emotional encounter with Priam, leaves the body of Hector for burial.

The book is the second volume of a series of studies dealing with the Submerged literature in ancient Greek culture (s. vol. 1: G. Colesanti, M. Giordano, eds., Submerged Literature in Ancient Greek Culture. An Introduction, Berlin-Boston, de Gruyter, 2014). It is a peculiar starting point of the research in the field of Greek culture, since it casts a light on many case studies so far not yet analyzed as literary products subjected to the process of submersion: e.g. oracles, philosophy, phlyax play, epigrams, Aesopic fables, periplus, sacred texts, mysteries, medical treatises, dance, music. Therefore the book investigates the complex and manifold dynamics of 'emergence' and 'submersion' in ancient Greek literary culture, dealing especially with matters as the interaction between orality and literacy, the authorship, the cultural transmission, the folklore. Moreover, the book offers the reader new stimulating approaches in order to reconstruct the wide frame which contained the overall cultural processes, including the literary products subjected to the submersion, in a chronological span going from Greek archaic age to the Imperial age.

This beautiful collection brings together passages from the renowned stories, poems, dramas and myths of South Asian literature, including the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Drawing on the translations published by the Clay Sanskrit Library, the book presents episodes from the adventures of young Krishna, the life of Prince Rama and Hindu foundational myths, the life of the Buddha, as well as Buddhist and Jaina birth stories. Pairing key excerpts from these wonderful Sanskrit texts with exquisite illustrations from the Bodleian Library's rich manuscript collections, the book includes images of birch-bark and palm-leaf manuscripts, vibrant Mughal miniatures, early printed books, sculptures, watercolour paintings and even early photograph albums. Each extract is presented in both English translation and Sanskrit in Devanagari script, and is accompanied by a commentary on the literature and related books and artworks. The collection is organised by geographical region and includes sections on the Himalayas, North India, Central and South India, Sri Lanka and South East Asia, Tibet, Inner and East Asia, and the Middle East and Europe. This is the perfect introduction for anyone interested in Sanskrit literature and the manuscript art of South Asia - and beyond.

Die Bibliotheca Teubneriana, gegrundet 1849, ist die weltweit alteste, traditionsreichste und umfangreichste Editionsreihe griechischer und lateinischer Literatur von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Pro Jahr erscheinen 4-5 neue Editionen. Samtliche Ausgaben werden durch eine lateinische oder englische Praefatio erganzt. Die wissenschaftliche Betreuung der Reihe obliegt einem Team anerkannter Philologen: Gian Biagio Conte (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) Marcus Deufert (Universitat Leipzig) James Diggle (University of Cambridge) Donald J. Mastronarde (University of California, Berkeley) Franco Montanari (Universita di Genova) Heinz-Gunther Nesselrath (Georg-August-Universitat Goettingen) Dirk Obbink (University of Oxford) Oliver Primavesi (Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat Munchen) Michael D. Reeve (University of Cambridge) Richard J. Tarrant (Harvard University) Vergriffene Titel werden als Print-on-Demand-Nachdrucke wieder verfugbar gemacht. Zudem werden alle Neuerscheinungen der Bibliotheca Teubneriana parallel zur gedruckten Ausgabe auch als eBook angeboten. Die alteren Bande werden sukzessive ebenfalls als eBook bereitgestellt. Falls Sie einen vergriffenen Titel bestellen moechten, der noch nicht als Print-on-Demand angeboten wird, schreiben Sie uns an: [email protected] Samtliche in der Bibliotheca Teubneriana erschienenen Editionen lateinischer Texte sind in der Datenbank BTL Online elektronisch verfugbar.

The Sefer Yetsirah (the Book of Creation ) is a core text of the early kabbalah, yet scholars have struggled to establish even the most basic facts about the work. This project attempts to discover the ways in which diagrams accompanying the text and its commentaries show trends in the development of the kabbalistic tradition as a whole.

Plato's view that mathematics paves the way for his philosophy of forms is well known. This book attempts to flesh out the relationship between mathematics and philosophy as Plato conceived them by proposing that in his view, although it is philosophy that came up with the concept of beings, which he calls forms, and highlighted their importance, first to natural philosophy and then to ethics, the things that do qualify as beings are inchoately revealed by mathematics as the raw materials that must be further processed by philosophy (mathematicians, to use Plato's simile in the Euthedemus, do not invent the theorems they prove but discover beings and, like hunters who must hand over what they catch to chefs if it is going to turn into something useful, they must hand over their discoveries to philosophers). Even those forms that do not bear names of mathematical objects, such as the famous forms of beauty and goodness, are in fact forms of mathematical objects. The first chapter is an attempt to defend this thesis. The second argues that for Plato philosophy's crucial task of investigating the exfoliation of the forms into the sensible world, including the sphere of human private and public life, is already foreshadowed in one of its branches, astronomy.

This book is a literary analysis of the language and style of Tacitus' Annals. The political context of first-second century AD Rome is also taken into consideration. In analysis of particular passages close attention is given to the structure of the Latin, which is fully translated. Issues relating to the study of narrative, Roman politics and theories of history are addressed in the course of the discussion.

Die Bibliotheca Teubneriana, gegrundet 1849, ist die weltweit alteste, traditionsreichste und umfangreichste Editionsreihe griechischer und lateinischer Literatur von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Pro Jahr erscheinen 4-5 neue Editionen. Samtliche Ausgaben werden durch eine lateinische oder englische Praefatio erganzt. Die wissenschaftliche Betreuung der Reihe obliegt einem Team anerkannter Philologen: Gian Biagio Conte (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) Marcus Deufert (Universitat Leipzig) James Diggle (University of Cambridge) Donald J. Mastronarde (University of California, Berkeley) Franco Montanari (Universita di Genova) Heinz-Gunther Nesselrath (Georg-August-Universitat Goettingen) Dirk Obbink (University of Oxford) Oliver Primavesi (Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat Munchen) Michael D. Reeve (University of Cambridge) Richard J. Tarrant (Harvard University) Vergriffene Titel werden als Print-on-Demand-Nachdrucke wieder verfugbar gemacht. Zudem werden alle Neuerscheinungen der Bibliotheca Teubneriana parallel zur gedruckten Ausgabe auch als eBook angeboten. Die alteren Bande werden sukzessive ebenfalls als eBook bereitgestellt. Falls Sie einen vergriffenen Titel bestellen moechten, der noch nicht als Print-on-Demand angeboten wird, schreiben Sie uns an: [email protected] Samtliche in der Bibliotheca Teubneriana erschienenen Editionen lateinischer Texte sind in der Datenbank BTL Online elektronisch verfugbar.

The thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose was a major bestseller - largely due to its robust treatment of 'natural' sexuality. Alastair Minnis's innovative study considers the ways in which Jean de Meun, in imitation of Ovid as understood within medieval scholarship, assumed the mock-mastership of love. The reception of the Rose is placed within the European history of literary criticism.

Crete offers rich material for investigating questions at the heart of research on social organization in ancient Greece. The essays in these proceedings use archeological and historical approaches to analyze the processes of structural change that took place in the cities of Crete during the archaic and classical periods, bringing together for the first time various research methods to develop a coherent perspective.

Susan Ford Wiltshire traces the evolution of the doctrine of individual rights from antiquity through the eighteenth century. The common thread through that long story is the theory of natural law. Growing out of Greek political thought, especially that of Aristotle, natural law became a major tenet of Stoic philosophy during the Hellenistic age and later became attached to Roman legal doctrine. It underwent several transformations during the Middle Ages on the Continent and in England, especially in the thought of John Locke, before it came to justify a theory of natural right, claimed by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence as the basis of the "unalienable rights" of Americans.

The renowned Basler Homer-Kommentar of the Iliad, edited by Anton Bierl and Joachim Latacz and originally published in German, presents the latest developments in Homeric scholarship. Through the English translation of this ground-breaking reference work, edited by S. Douglas Olson, its valuable findings are now made accessible to students and scholars worldwide.

This book charts the influence of Seneca--both as specific text and inherited tradition--through Shakespeare's tragedies. Discerning patterns in previously attested borrowings and discovering new indebtedness, it presents an integrated and comprehensive assessment. Familiar methods of source study and a sophisticated understanding of intertextuality are employed to re-evaluate the much maligned Seneca in the light of his Greek antecedents, Renaissance translations and commentaries, and contemporary dramatic adaptations, especially those of Chapman, Jonson, Marston, Garnier, and Giraldi Cinthio. Three broad categories organize the discussion--Senecan revenge, tyranny, and furor--and each is illustrated by an earlier and later Shakespearean tragedy. The author keeps in view Shakespeare's eclecticism, his habit of combining disparate sources and conventions, as well as the rich history of literary criticism and theatrical interpretation. The book concludes by discussing Seneca's presence in Renaissance comedy and, more important, in that new and fascinating hybrid genre, tragicomedy. Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy makes an important contribution to our understanding of Shakespeare and of his foremost antecedents, as well as throwing light on the complex interactions of the Classical and Renaissance theatres.

Fresh approaches to one of the most important poems from medieval Scotland. John Barbour's Bruce, an account of the deeds of Robert I of Scotland (1306-29) and his companions during the so-called wars of independence between England and Scotland, is an important and complicated text. Composed c.1375 during the reign of Robert's grandson, Robert II, the first Stewart king of Scotland (1371-90), the poem represents the earliest surviving complete literary work of any length produced in "Inglis" in late medieval Scotland, andis usually regarded as the starting point for any worthwhile discussion of the language and literature of Early Scots. It has also been used as an essential "historical" source for the career and character of that iconic monarch Robert I. But its narrative defies easy categorisation, and has been variously interpreted as a romance, a verse history, an epic or a chivalric biography. This collection re-assesses the form and purpose of Barbour's great poem. It considers the poem from a variety of perspectives, re-examining the literary, historical, cultural and intellectual contexts in which it was produced, and offering important new insights. Steve Boardman is a Reader in History at the University of Edinburgh. Susan Foran, currently an independent scholar, researches chivalry, war and the idea of nation in late medieval historical writing. Contributors: Steve Boardman, Dauvit Broun, Michael Brown, Susan Foran, Chris Given-Wilson, Theo van Heijnsbergen, Rhiannon Purdie, Bioern Tjallen, Diana B. Tyson, Emily Wingfield.