This is the first study considering the reception of Greek tragedy and the transformation of the tragic idea in Hellenistic poetry. The focus is on third-century Alexandria, where the Ptolemies fostered tragedy as a theatrical form for public entertainment and as an official genre cultivated by the Pleiad, whereas the scholars of the Museum were commissioned to edit and comment on the classical tragic texts. More importantly, the notion of the tragic was adapted to the literary trends of the era. Released from the strict rules established by Aristotle about what makes a good tragedy, the major poets of the Alexandrian avant-garde struggled to transform the tragic idea and integrate it into non-dramatic genres. Tragic Failures traces the incorporation of the tragic idea in the poetry of Callimachus and Theocritus, in Apollonius' epic Argonautica, in the iambic Alexandra, in late Hellenistic poetry and in Parthenius' Erotika Pathemata. It offers a fascinating insight into the new conception of the tragic dilemmas in the context of Alexandrian aesthetics.

Irish saga literature represents the largest collection of vernacular narrative in existence from the early Middle Ages, using the tools of Christian literacy to retell myths and legends about the pagan past. This unique corpus remains marginal to standard histories of Western literature: its tales are widely read, but their literary artistry remains a puzzle to many even within Celtic studies. This book, the first to offer a systematic literary analysis of any single native Irish tale, aims to show how one particularly celebrated saga 'works' as a story: the Middle Irish tale Togail Bruidne Da Derga (The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel), which James Carney called 'the finest saga of the early period'. This epic tale tells how the legendary king Conaire was raised by a shadowy Otherworld to the kingship of Tara and, after a fatal error of judgement, was hounded by spectres to an untimely death at Da Derga's Hostel at the hands of his own foster-brothers. By turns lyrical and laconic, and rich in native mythological imagery, the story is told with a dramatic intensity worthy of Greek tragedy, and the intricate symmetry of its narrative procedure recalls the visual patterning of illuminated manuscripts such as The Book of Kells. This book invites the reader to enjoy and understand this literary masterpiece, explaining its narrative artistry within its native, classical and biblical literary contexts. Against a historical backdrop of shifting ideologies of Christian kingship, it interprets the saga's possible significance for contemporary audiences as a questioning exploration of the challenges and paradoxes of kingship.

Using a combination of formalist and psychology-based approaches, this work examines the triple knowledge of subjectivity, body and language in medieval imaginative literature. Building on a long tradition of scholarship in areas of linguistics and psychology, the book seeks to explain how subjectivity is formed in medieval texts.

Examination of texts concerning the vikings reveals much about their origin myth and legend. Viking settlers and their descendants inhabited both England and Normandy in the tenth century, but narratives discussing their origins diverged significantly. This comparative study explores the depictions of Scandinavia and theevents of the Viking Age in genealogies, origin myths, hagiographies, and charters from the two regions. Analysis of this literary evidence reveals the strategic use of Scandinavian identity by Norman and Anglo-Saxon elites. Countering interpretations which see claims of Viking identity as expressions of contact with Scandinavia, the comparison demonstrates the local, political significance of these claims. In doing so, the book reveals the earliest origins of familiar legends which at once demonize and romanticize the Vikings - and which have their roots in both Anglo-Saxon and Norman traditions. Dr KATHERINE CROSS is a historian of the early Middle Ages at the BritishMuseum and Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

The Bibliotheca Teubneriana, established in 1849, has evolved into the world's most venerable and extensive series of editions of Greek and Latin literature, ranging from classical to Neo-Latin texts. Some 4-5 new editions are published every year. A team of renowned scholars in the field of Classical Philology acts as advisory board: 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) Formerly out-of-print editions are offered as print-on-demand reprints. Furthermore, all new books in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana series are published as eBooks. The older volumes of the series are being successively digitized and made available as eBooks. If you are interested in ordering an out-of-print edition, which hasn't been yet made available as print-on-demand reprint, please contact us: [email protected] All editions of Latin texts published in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana are collected in the online database BTL Online.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Published in 2000, The Classical Poetry of the Japanese is a valuable contribution to the field of Asian Studies.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is Volume V of thirteen the Oriental series looking at Persia. The Shahnama of Firdausi Vol II, includes the Kaianian Dynasty, Kai Kaus and the war with Mazandaran, the seven courses of Rustam, Kai Kaus in the land of Barbistan, the fight of the seven warriors, Suhrab, and the story of Siyawush.

First Published in 2000. This is Volume VI of thirteen the Oriental series looking at Persia. The Shahnama of Firdausi Vol III, includes the Kaianian Dynasty, The Story of Farud, of Kamus of Kashan, of Rustam, and finally Bizhan and Manizha.

This is Volume VII of thirteen the Oriental series looking at Persia. The Shahnama of Firdausi Vol IV, includes the Kaianian Dynasty, Kai Kaus, the battle of the twelve Rukhs, the great war of Kai Khusrau with Afrasiyab, and Luhrasp.

First Published in 2000. This is Volume VIII of thirteen the Oriental series looking at Persia. The Shahnama of Firdausi Vol V, includes Kaianian Dynasty, the coming of Zarduhst, the story of the Seven Stages, of Asfandiyar and Rustam, Bahman and finally Humai.

This is Volume IX of thirteen the Oriental series looking at Persia. The Shahnama of Firdausi Vol VI, includes the genealogical table of the Sasanians, the conclusion of the Kaianian dynasty, the Eaianian dynasty, the Ashkanian dynasty and the Sasanian dynasty, concluding iwth Yazdagird, son of Shapur.

First Published in 2000. This is Volume X of thirteen the Oriental series looking at Persia. The Shahnama of Firdausi Vol VII, includes the Sasanian Dynasty, Bhram Gur, Yazdagird, Hurmuz, Piruz, Balash,Kubad son of Piruz, Nushirwan, the story of Buzurjmihr, of Mahbud, and the introduction of the game of chess into Iran.

This is Volume XI of thirteen the Oriental series looking at Persia. The Shahnama of Firdausi Vol VIII, includes the Sasanian dynasty, and the Shah's last years, Hurmuzd son of Nushirwan, Khusrau Parwiz, including the story of Shirin.

First Published in 2000. This is Volume XII of thirteen the Oriental series looking at Persia. The Shahnama of Firdausi Vol IX, includes the Sasanian Dynasty, Kubad, Ardshir, Guraz, Purandukht, Azarmdukht, Farrukhzad, and Yazdagird.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Studies in the Age of Chaucer is the annual yearbook of the New Chaucer Society, publishing articles on the writing of Chaucer and his contemporaries, their antecedents and successors, and their intellectual and social contexts. More generally, articles explore the culture and writing of later medieval Britain (1200-1500). Each SAC volume also includes an annotated bibliography and reviews of Chaucer-related publications.

Cutting-edge and fresh new outlooks on medieval literature, emphasising the vibrancy of the field. New Medieval Literatures is an annual of work on medieval textual cultures, aiming to engage with intellectual and cultural pluralism in the Middle Ages and now. Its scope is inclusive of work across the theoretical, archival, philological, and historicist methodologies associated with medieval literary studies, and embraces the range of European cultures, capaciously defined. Essays in this volume engage with a wide range of subject matter, from as far back as Livy (d.c.AD 12/18) to Erwin Panofsky (d. 1968). They demonstrate that medieval textual cultures is a radically negotiable category and that medieval understandings of the past were equally diverse and unstable.They reflect on relationships between history, texts, and truth from a range of perspectives, from Foucault to "truthiness", a twenty-first-century media coinage. Materiality and the technical crafts with which humans engage withthe natural world are recurrent themes, opening up new insights on mysticism, knighthood, and manuscript production and reception. Analysis of manuscript illuminations offers new understandings of identity and diversity, while a survey of every thirteenth-century manuscript that contains English currently in Oxford libraries yields a challenging new history of script. Particular texts discussed include Chretien de Troyes's Conte du Graal, Richard Rolle's Incendium amoris and Melos amoris, and the Middle English verse romances Lybeaus Desconus, The Erle of Tolous, Amis and Amiloun, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Studies in the Age of Chaucer, the year-book of the New Chaucer Society, is published annually. Each issue contains articles that explore such concerns as the efficacy of various critical approaches to the art of Chaucer and his contemporaries, their literary relationships and reputations, and the artistic, economic, intellectual, religious, scientific, and social and historical backgrounds to their work. Reviews of books on Chaucer and related topics, and an annotated Chaucer bibliography are also included.

This thought-provoking book explores medieval perceptions of pilgrimage, gender and space. It examines real life evidence for the widespread presence of women pilgrims, as well as secular and literary texts concerning pilgrimage and women pilgrims represented in the visual arts. Women pilgrims were inextricably linked with sexuality and their presence on the pilgrimage trails was viewed as tainting sacred space.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203463803

An interdisciplinary approach, crucial as it is in most fields of research, proves itself to be unescapable in the study of interactions between the ancient Armenian and Greek worlds and literatures. The volume arises from such an awareness and collects papers presented in a conference which has been organized in 2013 at the University of Genova, thanks to a cooperation with the Universite Paris-Sorbonne, following in the footsteps of a tradition inaugurated by Giancarlo Bolognesi in the years '80 and '90. The subject is explored from many points of view: the topic of Armenian translations of Greek texts - with considerations of a methodological nature and the discussion of case-studies -, aspects which pertain to the historical context and the historiographical sources, the wide theme of the Armenian reception of Biblical, Christian and Byzantine literature, and finally philological, linguistic and lexical problems. The aim of this kind of research is to exploit the cooperation among classical philologists, linguists and Armenologists, in order to face the challenge of investigating a subject which requires many different competences.

Recent archaeological discoveries, coupled with long-lost but now available epigraphical evidence, and a more expansive view of literary sources, provide new and dramatic evidence of the emergence of rhetoric in ancient Greece. Many of these artifacts, gathered through onsite fieldwork in Greece, are analyzed in this revised and expanded edition of GREEK RHETORIC BEFORE ARISTOTLE. This new evidence, along with recent developments in research methods and analysis, reveal clearly that long before Aristotle's Rhetoric, long before rhetoric was even stabilized into formal systems of study in Classical Athens, nascent, pre-disciplinary "rhetorics" were emerging throughout Greece. These newly acquired resources and research procedures demonstrate that oral and literate rhetoric emerged not only because of intellectual developments and the refinement of technologies that facilitated communication but also because of social, political and cultural forces that nurtured rhetoric's growth and popularity throughout the Hellenic world. GREEK RHETORIC BEFORE ARISTOTLE offers insights into the mentalities forming and driving expression, revealing, in turn, a great deal more about the relationship of thought and expression in Antiquity. A more expansive understanding of these pre-disciplinary manifestations of rhetoric, in all of their varied forms, enriches the history and the nature of classical rhetoric as a formalized discipline. - RICHARD LEO ENOS is Professor and holder of the Lillian Radford Chair of Rhetoric and Composition at Texas Christian University. His research concentration is in classical rhetoric with an emphasis in the relationship between oral and written discourse. He is past president of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric (1980-1981) and the Rhetoric Society of America (1990-1991). He received the RSA George E. Yoos Award Distinguished Service and was inducted as an RSA Fellow in 2006. He is the founding editor of ADVANCES IN THE HISTORY OF RHETORIC and the editor (with David E. Beard) of ADVANCES IN THE HISTORY OF RHETORIC: THE FIRST SIX YEARS (2007, Parlor Press). He is also the author of ROMAN RHETORIC: REVOLUTION AND THE GREEK INFLUENCE, Revised and Expanded Edition (2008, Parlor Press). - LAUER SERIES IN RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION, edited by Catherine Hobbs, Patricia Sullivan, Thomas Rickert, and Jennifer Bay.

The Dante Encyclopedia is a comprehensive reference work that presents a systematic introduction to Dante's life and works and the cultural context in which his moral and intellectual imagination took shape. It is the first major source of its kind, and the only such work currently available, in the English language. Until now, much Dante scholarship has been scattered in various sources and not available in English. This book brings together all the most recent theories about Dante and his works and summarizes them in clear and vivid prose for readers who seek basic but detailed information on all major aspects of Dante scholarship.