For over 2500 years many of the most learned scholars of the Greek language have concerned themselves with the topic of etymology. The most productive source of difficult, even inexplicable, words was Homer's 28,000 verses of epic poetry. Steve Reece proposes an approach to elucidating the meanings of some of these difficult words that finds its inspiration primarily in Milman Parry's oral-formulaic theory. He proposes that during the long period of oral transmission acoustic uncertainties, especially regarding word boundaries, were continually occurring: a bard uttered one collocation of words, but his audience thought it heard another. The consequent resegmentation of words and phrases is the probable cause of some of the etymologically inexplicable words in our Homeric texts.

The English language has changed dramatically over the past 500 years, making it increasingly difficult for students to read Chaucer's works. Assuming no previous linguistic knowledge or familiarity with Middle English, Simon Horobin introduces students to Chaucer's language and the importance of reading Chaucer in the original, rather than modern translation. Chaucer's Language - leads the reader gently through basic linguistic concepts with appropriate explanation - highlights how Chaucer's English differs from present-day English, and the significance of this for interpreting and understanding his work - provides close analysis and comparison with the writings of Chaucer's contemporaries to show how Chaucer drew on the variety of Middle English to achieve particular poetic effects - includes sample texts, a glossary of linguistic terminology, a bibliography and suggestions for further reading to aid study. Authoritative and easy-to-follow, this is an indispensable guide to understanding, appreciating and enjoying the language of Chaucer. Assuming no previous linguistic knowledge, Simon Horobin introduces students to Chaucer's language and the importance of reading Chaucer in the original, rather than in a modern translation. This updated edition includes references to most recent scholarship, suggestions for future research and an extensive glossary with sample quotations. Assumes no prior knowledge of Middle English One of the few books available devoted exclusively to Chaucer's language Incorporates the latest research and scholarship, draws on modern linguistic methods

This study reexamines the invention of the emblem book and discusses the novel textual and pictorial means that applied to the task of transmitting knowledge. It offers a fresh analysis of Alciato's Emblematum liber, focusing on his poetics of the emblem, and on how he actually construed emblems. It demonstrates that the "father of emblematics" had vernacular forebears, most importantly Johann von Schwarzenberg who composed two illustrated emblem books between 1510 and 1520. The study sheds light on the early development of the Latin emblem book 1531-1610, with special emphasis on the invention of the emblematic commentary, on natural history, and on advanced methods of conveying emblematic knowledge, from Junius to Vaenius.

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.

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.

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.

Why did premodern authors in the Arabic-Islamic culture compile literary anthologies, and why were these works remarkably popular? How can an anthology that consists of reproduced material be original and creative, and serve various literary and political ends? How did anthologists select their material, then record and arrange it? This book examines the life and works of Abu Mansur al-Tha'alibi (350-429/961-1039), an eminent anthologist from Nishapur, paying special attention to his magnum opus, Yatimat al-dahr (The Unique Pearl), and its sequel, Tatimmat al-Yatima (The Completion of the Yatima). This book is a direct window on to an anthologist's workshop in the second half of the fourth/tenth century. It examines the methodological consciousness expressed in Tha'alibi's selection and arrangement, and his sophisticated system of internal references and cross-references to other works; how he selected from his contemporaries' oeuvres; how he sought, recorded, memorized, misplaced, and sometimes lost or forgot his selections; how he scrutinized the authenticity of material, accepting, questioning, or rejecting its attribution; and the errors and inconsistencies that resulted from this process.

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 is the first full-scale companion on Hesiod to appear in English. The twelve contributions included in this volume cover a wide range of aspects of Hesiodic poetry, such as the relation between Hesiod and the literary traditions of the Near East and the entire span of works comprising the Hesiodic corpus, from the Theogony and the Works and Days to the Melampodia and the Aigimios. They also explore the language, style, poetics, and narrative art of Hesiod, as well as his influence on Hellenistic and Roman poetry, but also his reception by the ancient biographical traditions and scholia. The aim of this volume is to supply all those interested in Greek poetry with an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of scholarly approaches to Hesiod and various other works which have come down to us under his name.

Examinations of the use of classical Latin texts, themes and techniques in medieval Irish narrative. This edited volume will make a major contribution to our appreciation of the importance of classical literature and learning in medieval Ireland, and particularly to our understanding of its role in shaping the content, structureand transmission of medieval Irish narrative. Dr Kevin Murray, Department of Early and Medieval Irish, University College Cork. From the tenth century onwards, Irish scholars adapted Latin epics and legendary histories into the Irish language, including the Imtheachta Aeniasa, the earliest known adaptation of Virgil's Aeneid into any European vernacular; Togail Troi, a grand epic reworking of the decidedly prosaic historyof the fall of Troy attributed to Dares Phrygius; and, at the other extreme, the remarkable Merugud Uilixis meic Leirtis, a fable-like retelling of Ulysses's homecoming boiled down to a few hundred lines of lapidary prose.Both the Latin originals and their Irish adaptations had a profound impact on the ways in which Irish authors wrote narratives about their own legendary past, notably the great saga Tain Bo Cuailnge (The Cattle-Raid of Cooley). The essays in this book explore the ways in which these Latin texts and techniques were used. They are unified by a conviction that classical learning and literature were central to the culture of medieval Irish storytelling,but precisely how this relationship played out is a matter of ongoing debate. As a result, they engage in dialogue with each other, using methods drawn from a wide range of disciplines (philology, classical studies, comparative literature, translation studies, and folkloristics). Ralph O'Connor is Professor in the Literature and Culture of Britain, Ireland and Iceland at the University of Aberdeen. Contributors: Abigail Burnyeat, Michael Clarke, Robert Crampton, Helen Fulton, Barbara Hillers, Maire Ni Mhaonaigh, Ralph O'Connor, Erich Poppe.

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.

St. Birgitta of Sweden (1303-1373, canonized 1391) was one of the most charismatic and influential female visionaries of the later Middle Ages. Altogether, she received some 700 revelations. They deal with a variety of subjects, from meditations on the human condition, domestic affairs in Sweden, and ecclesiastical matters in Rome, to revelations in praise of the Incarnation and devotion to the Virgin. Her Revelations, collected and ordered by her confessors, circulated widely throughout Europe and long after her death. Many eminent individuals, including Cardinal Juan Torqemada and Martin Luther, read and commented on her writings, which influenced the spiritual lives of countless individuals. Birgitta was also the founder of a new contemplative order, which still exists. She is the patron saint of Sweden, and in 2000 was declared (with Catherine of Siena and Edith Stein) the first co-patroness of Europe. This new translation in four volumes, supported by the Tercentenary Foundation of the Swedish National Bank, is based on the newly available, definitive Latin edition. It will be the first translation of the complete work into English. Interest in Birgitta's Revelations has grown over the past decade. Historians and theologians draw on them for insights into late medieval spirituality, artistic imagery, political struggles, and social life. Scholars of literature study them to gain knowledge of rhetorical strategies employed in late medieval texts by women. Philologists analyze them to enhance understanding of the historical development of Latin and medieval Swedish. Increasingly, Birgitta is also admired and studied as a powerful female voice and prophet of reform. The publication of this translation will make this important text available to a much wider cross-section of scholars and students, and to those who are interested in her spiritual insights. The editors will provide an extensive introduction outlining the major characteristics of Brigitta's spirituality, her life and work, her style and use of sources, and the main features of her theology. The subsequent volumes are projected to appear at two-year intervals.

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.

An exploration of the contours imposed on physical punishment by education, establishing how pedagogues accommodated violence into a system of rules, rituals and objectives. What meanys shall I use to lurne withoute betynge?, asks a pupil in a translation exercise compiled at Oxford in 1460s. One of the most conspicuous features of medieval education is its reliance on flogging. Throughout the period, the rod looms large in literary and artistic depictions of the schoolroom: it appears in teaching manuals, classroom exercises, and even in the iconography of instruction, which invariably personifies Grammatica as a woman brandishing a birch or ferule. However, as this book seeks to demonstrate, the association between teaching and beating was more than simply conventional. Medieval pedagogues and theorists did not merely accept the utility of punishment without question, but engaged with the issue in depth and detail. Almost every conceivable aspect of discipline was subject to intense scrutiny: the benefits it might transmit to learners, the relationship between mental development and physical correction, and the optimal ways in which chastisement should be performed, were all carefully examined. This book unpicks the various levels of this debate. It surveys material from multiple languages and discourses, in order to build up the fullest possible picture of medieval thought and practice. Each chapter addresses a specific aspect of punishment in school: topics include the classical inheritance of medieval teaching, therituals and structures of discipline, theoretical accounts of its effects, and the responses of students themselves to grammar's regimen. As a whole, the study not only exposes the impressive rigour with which beating was defined, but also some of the doubts, paradoxes, and even anxieties that surrounded its usage. At the same time, it also raises larger questions about the presence of violence across medieval culture, and how we might confront it withoutplaying into the reductive stereotype of "a barbaric age". BEN PARSONS is Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Literature at the University of Leicester.

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.

How did an Athenian citizen address his wife? - his children, his slaves, and his dog? How did they address him? This book is the first major application of linguistic theories of address to an ancient language. It is based on a corpus of 11,891 vocatives from twenty-five prose authors from Herodotus to Lucian, and on comparative data from Aristophanes, Menander, and other sources; the data are analysed using techniques and evidence from the field of sociolinguistics to shed light on some long-standing problems in Greek. A separate section discusses the theoretical problems which arise from the attempt to reconstruct conversational Greek on the basis of written texts and concludes that this enterprise is indeed possible, provided that the right sources are selected. Analysis of the Greek address system leads to a reconsideration of the meanings of individual addresses and thus of the interpretation of specific passages; it also challenges the validity of some alleged sociolinguistic 'universals'. In particular, Eleanor Dickey examines some of the idiosyncratic aspects of Socrates' language, offering an exceptionally interesting and novel contribution to the problem of the 'historical Socrates'. Highly original, lucid, and jargon-free, this book offers many significant insights on both the literature and language of ancient Greece.

This book presents for the first time a panorama of about 85 neo-latin epics composed in France during the 16th and 17th centuries; the collection includes historical, biblical and hagiographic poems, ranging from a few hundred to thirty thousand hexameters. A full account is given of the contents and composition of every poem, the historical, biblical and hagiographic background is explored, and the poets' debt to classical poetry is analyzed with as a clear result the growing influence of Vergil and, during the 17th century, of Tasso as well. The repertorium is intended as a sort of guide, which provides the reader interested in Neo-Latin, Classics or the literary history of France conveniently with well-founded information on this literary genre.

The contributions to this volume by a team of international experts illustrate how the linguistic study of Greek comedy can deepen our knowledge of the intricate connections between the dramatic texts and their literary and socio-cultural environment. While the main focus is on comedy, the diversity of the approaches adopted (including narratology, pragmatics, lexicology, dialectology, sociolinguistics, and textual criticism) ensures that much of the work applies to different genres and is relevant also to linguists and literary scholars.

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 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."

Representing Others in Medieval Iberian Literature explores the ways Arabic, Jewish and Christian intellectuals in medieval Iberia (courtiers and clerics) adapt and transform the Andalusi go-between figure in order to represent their own role as cultural intermediaries. While these authors are of different religious, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, they use the go-between, an essential figure in the Andalusi courtly discourse of desire, to open up a secular, more tolerant intellectual space in the face of increasingly fundamentalist currents in their respective cultures. The way this study focuses on the hybrid discourses and identities of medieval Iberia as Muslim, Jewish and Christian responses to continual contact/conflict reflects a methodological approach based in Cultural and Translation Studies.

Responses from the nineteenth century onwards to the medieval French poet. Medieval Paris' paradigmatic poet, Francois Villon, has long captured the imaginations of creative writers. Attracted by his beguilingly pseudo-autobiographical literary persona and a body of work that moves seamlessly between bawdy humour, bitterness, devotion, and regret, Villon's heirs have been many and varied. A veritable "poet's poet", his oeuvre has appealed to fellow versifiers in particular, providing a rich source for translation and imitation. This book explores creative responses to Villon by British and North American poets, focusing on translations and imitations of his work by Algernon Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ezra Pound, Basil Bunting, and Robert Lowell. They are presented as exemplary of the greater trend of rendering Villon into English, transporting the reader from the first verse translations of his work in the nineteenth century, to post-modern adaptations and parodies ofVillon in the twentieth. By concentrating on the manner in which individual poets have reacted to Villon, and to one another, the study unravels multiple layers of poetic relations. It argues that the relationships that exist between the translated or imitated texts are collaborative as much as they are competitive, establishing a canon of Villon in English poetry whose allusions are not only to the French source, but to the parallel corpus of English translations and imitations. CLAIRE PASCOLINI-CAMPBELL holds degrees in medieval and comparative literatures from the University of St Andrews and University College London.

Text with facing translation of two important Old English texts. The texts edited in this volume are AElfric's vernacular versions of two highly influential early medieval ethical treatises. The first, De duodecim abusiuis, is his Old English version of a seventh-century Hiberno-Latin tract dealing with the twelve abuses of the world. The second, De octo uitiis et de duodecim abusiuis, is a composite text; it combines a treatment of the eight vices and the complementary eight virtues, also found as the lastpart of AElfric's Lives of Saints XVI, with the twelve abuses. The main source for the virtues and vices is Alcuin's ninth-century De uirtutibus et uitiis. Both texts were composed in AElfric's hallmark rhythmical, alliterative prose. This new edition provides, for the first time, critical editions of both texts, with a facing translation, presented with full apparatus; it also includes an extensive discussion of the sources and how theyare treated. MARY CLAYTON is Professor of Old and Middle English, University College Dublin.

Kashefi's Anvar-e Sohayli (15th c. A.D.) is a Persian rewriting of the timeless and influential Kalila wa-Dimna text, done at the Timurid court. Christine van Ruymbeke offers a first in-depth analysis of the contents and style of this important text and also addresses the Kalila wa-Dimna field across its full rewriting history. This analysis shows how Kashefi's additions function as an invaluable commentary that opens up our understanding and the appreciation of this seminal text. This studies revisits several received ideas and current misapprehensions about the text and shows why it has been such an international best-seller before being unjustly relegated to children's literature. In Van Ruymbeke's words, Kalila wa-Dimna is a grim text, exposing the mechanisms of sophisticated psychological manipulation and exploring universal philosophical themes, known since Antiquity and still relevant today.