Jane Ellen Harrison (1850 - 1928), who spent most of her life at Newnham College, Cambridge, was renowned for her work on Greek art and religion. In her application of anthropology to classical studies, she stirred up controversy amongst her academic colleagues, while, at the same time, influencing many writers, including Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. Despite many difficulties, both academic and personal, her brilliant mind and strength of character enabled her to open up new possibilities for academic women.

Lysias' 21st speech "On a charge of taking bribes" is an important example of Attic oratory that sheds significant light on Classical history and society. Delivered after the restoration of democracy in 402 B.C.E., this speech provides information that is critical for our understanding of the relationship between the Athenian demos and aristocrats, Athenian civic institutions (e.g., taxation, liturgies and conscription), religious beliefs, moral values, political behavior, and, in particular, of the legal and rhetorical treatment of embezzlement and bribery. It also supplies unique information about the military engagement of the Athenians at Aegospotami and the role of Alcibiades in the political life of Athens. Despite its importance, however, Lysias' speech has never been the subject of an extensive study in its own right. This volume seeks to fill that gap by presenting the first systematic commentary on this speech. The author puts much emphasis on its structure, strategy, and argumentation, focusing especially on the tension between the actual practices of the anonymous client of the logographer and civic ideals invoked in the present case. The book is intended to be of interest to classicists, ancient historians and political theorists, but also to the general reader.

The book is a detailed study on the structure and the topics of Ovida (TM)s compedium of the Trojan Saga in Metamorphoses 12.1-13.622, the section also referred to as the a oeLittle Iliada . It explores the motives and the objectives behind the selected narrative moments from the Epic Cycle that found their way into the Ovidian version of the Trojan War. By thoroughly mastering and inspiringly refashioning a vast amount of literary material, Ovid generates a systematic reconstruction of the archetypal hero, Achilles. Thus, he projects himself as a worthy successor of Homer in the epic tradition, a master epicist, and a par to his great Latin predecessor, Vergil.

A unique analysis of the intensive interest in Jewish culture of early modern Christian Humanists as a part of their comprehensive program of study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. The book focuses on how that interest was particularly manifested in a score of treatises on Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Yiddish language and literature.

The comic playwright Menander was one of the most popular writers throughout antiquity. This book reconstructs his life and the legacy of his work until the end of antiquity employing a broad range of sources such as portraits, illustrations of his plays, papyri preserving their texts and inscriptions recording their public performances. These are placed within the context of the three social and cultural institutions which appropriated his comedy, thereby ensuring its survival: public theatres, dinner parties and schools. Dr Nervegna carefully reconstructs how each context approached Menander's drama and how it contributed to its popularity over the centuries. The resultant, highly illustrated, book will be essential for all scholars and students not just of Menander's comedy but, more broadly, of the history and iconography of the ancient theatre, ancient social history and reception studies.

The construction of a new Latin library between the end of the Republic and the Augustan Principate was anything but an inhibiting factor. The literary flourishing of the Flavian age shows that awareness of this canon rather stimulated creative tension. In the changing socio-cultural context, daring innovations transform the genres of poetry and prose. This volume, which collects papers by influential scholars of early Imperial literature, sheds light on the productive dynamics of the ancient genre system and can also offer insightful perspectives to a non-classicist readership.

This translation, first published in 1992, presents one of the most memorable poems of the 'romance' genre of medieval literature, largely because it contains a number of surprises and falsified expectations. Jaufre, the hero, arrives at the court of King Arthur with a total and naive faith in the King and his ability to effect a total transformation in his followers by inducting them into the order of knighthood. As his quest proceeds, he learns the mistake in his over-idealised view of chivalry and his uncompromising view of pure justice, untempered by mercy. By charting the choices Jaufre makes in military and amorous encounters and the effectiveness of his responses to social trials and temptations, the audience discerns the route to independent adulthood, prestige and virtue, as the poet conceives of them. This fascinating reissue will be of particular value to students and academics researching the concepts typically explored within medieval ballads and romances.

This book addresses the function of the classical world in the cultural imaginations of the second generation of romantic writers: Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Thomas Love Peacock, John Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the rest of their diverse circle. The younger romantics inherited impressions of the ancient world colored by the previous century, in which classical studies experienced a resurgence, the emerging field of comparative mythography investigated the relationship between Christianity and its predecessors, and scientific and archaeological discoveries began to shed unprecedented light on the ancient world. The Shelley circle embraced a specifically pagan ancient world of excess, joy, and ecstatic experiences that test the boundaries between self and other. Though dubbed the "Satanic School" by Robert Southey, this circle instead thought of itself as "Athenian" and frequently employed mythology and imagery from the classical world that was characterized not by philosophy and reason but by wildness, excess, and ecstatic experiences.

After a sleepless night spent longing for his absent wife Sita, Rama, god-prince and future king, surveyed his army camps on a clear autumn morning and spied a white goose playing in a pond of lotus flowers. Seeing this radiant creature who so resembled his lost beloved, he began to plead with the bird to send her a message of love and fierce revenge. This is the setting of the Hamsasandesa ("A Message for the Goose"), a sandesa or "messenger poem" by the medieval saint-poet and philosopher Vedantedesika, a seminal figure for the Srivaisnava religious community of Tamil Nadu, South India, and a master poet in Sanskrit and Tamil. In The Flight of Love, Steven P. Hopkins situates Vedantedesika's Sanskrit sandesa within the wider comparative context of South Indian and Sri Lankan literatures. He traces the significance of messenger poetry in the construction of sacred landscapes in pre-modern South Asia and explores the ways the piece re-envisions the pan-Indian story of Rama and Sita, rooting his protagonists in a turbulent emotional world where separation, overwhelming desire, and anticipated bliss, are written into the living particularized bodies of lover and beloved, in the "messenger" goose and in the landscapes surrounding them. Hopkins's translation of the Hamsasandesa into fluid American English verse is framed by a comparative introduction, including an extended essay on translation, detailed linguistic notes, and an expanded thematic commentary that weaves together traditional religious interpretations of the poem with themes of contemporary literary relevance. Equally the work of a scholar and a poet, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian studies, comparative religion, and Indian literatures.

A number of ancient novelists were skilful storytellers and resourceful literary artists, and their works are often carefully individualised presentations of an ancient and distinguished heritage. Ancient Fiction, first published in 1984, examines the tales retold by these novelists in light of more recently discovered Near Eastern texts, and in this way offers a tentative solution to Rohde's celebrated problem about the origins of the Greek novel. Among the surprises that emerge are an ancient stratum of the Arabian Nights and a possible Tristan-Romance, as well as an animal Satyricon and a human Golden Ass. This new framework is, however, incidental to an examination of the achievements of ancient novelists in their own right. In presenting character, structuring narrative, imposing a veneer of sophistication or contriving a religious ethos, these writers demonstrate that their work is worthy of sympathetic study, rather dismissal as the pulp fiction of the ancient world.

A significant trend in the study of Greek and Roman historiographers is to accept that their works are to a degree both science and fiction. As scholarly interest broadens, in addition to evaluating ancient historians on the basis of the reliability of the information they record, and verifying the narratives against various elements of the material (inscriptions, excavations, numismatics), new studies are beginning to elaborate on the stylistic and narrative qualities of the texts themselves. The present volume offers a fine collection of essays that on the whole emphasize the literary dimensions of the ancient Greek and Roman historians. Offering narratological, linguistic, and theoretical approaches to historiography, the contributors of the book elaborate on the intersections between historiography and other literary genres, the literary manipulation of military events and the criteria of selectivity, the reception of ancient historical texts in other genres, time and space in historical narrative, and plenty of other relevant topics. The shared belief of the authors is that there is a close interrelation between the literary features and the scientific value of ancient Greek and Roman historiography.

Essays on book history, manuscripts and reading during a period of considerable change. The production, transmission, and reception of texts from England and beyond during the late medieval and early renaissance periods are the focus of this volume. Chapters consider the archives and the material contexts in which texts were produced, read, and re-read; the history of specific manuscripts and early printed books; and some of the continuities and changes in literary and book production, dissemination, and reception in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Responding to Professor Julia Boffey's pioneering work on medieval and early Tudor material and literary culture, they cover a range of genres - from practical texts written in Latin to works of Middle English poetryand prose, both secular and religious - and examine an assortment of different reading contexts: lay, devotional, local, regional, and national. TAMARA ATKIN is Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval and Early RenaissanceLiterature, and JACLYN RAJSIC is Lecturer in Medieval Literature, at the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London. Contributors: Laura Ashe, Priscilla Bawcutt, Martin Camargo, Margaret Connolly, Robert R. Edwards, A.S.G. Edwards, Susanna Fein, Joel Grossman, Alfred Hiatt, Pamela M. King, Matthew Payne, Derek Pearsall, Corinne Saunders, Barry Windeatt, R.F. Yeager.

This is a set of essays from many of the leading scholars in the world of medieval studies, which addresses a wide diversity of texts and genres and their diverse perspectives on love. Attention is given to interaction between English writings and putative continental and international influences, with particular emphasis on the works of Chaucer.

Saints' legends form a substantial portion of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, and can be found in more than four hundred manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts dating from shortly before the twelfth century to the 1700s. With The Legends of the Saints in Old Norse-Icelandic Prose, Kirsten Wolf has undertaken a complete revision of the fifty-year-old handlist The Lives of the Saints in Old Norse Prose. This updated handlist organizes saints' names, manuscripts, and editions of individual lives with references to the approximate dates of the manuscripts, as well as modern Icelandic editions and translations. Each entry concludes with secondary literature about the legend in question. These features combine to make The Legends of the Saints in Old Norse-Icelandic Prose an invaluable resource for scholars and students in the field.

Despite its importance in the history of Ancient science, Menelaus' Spherics is still by and large unknown. This treatise, which lies at the foundation of spherical geometry, is lost in Greek but has been preserved in its Arabic versions. The reader will find here, for the first time edited and translated into English, the essentials of this tradition, namely: a fragment of an early Arabic translation and the first Arabic redaction of the Spherics composed by al-Mahani /al-Harawi, together with a historical and mathematical study of Menelaus' treatise. With this book, a new and important part of the Greek and Arabic legacy to the history of mathematics comes to light. This book will be an indispensable acquisition for any reader interested in the history of Ancient geometry and science and, more generally, in Greek and Arabic science and culture.

After an extensive introduction that takes stock of the relevant research literature on Old Age in the Middle Ages and the early modern age, the contributors discuss the phenomenon of old age in many different fields of late antique, medieval, and early modern literature, history, and art history. Both Beowulf and the Hildebrandslied, both Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and Titurel, both the figure of Merlin and the trans-European tradition of Perceval/Peredur/Parzival, then the figure of the vetula in a variety of medieval French, English, and Spanish texts, and of the Old Man in The Stricker's Daniel, both the treatment of old age in Langland's Piers the Plowman and in Jean Gerson's sermons are dealt with. Other aspects involve late-antique epistolary literature, early modern French farce in light of Disability Studies, the social role of old, impotent men in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Netherlandish paintings, and the scientific discourse of old age and health since the 1500s. The discourse of Old Age proves to have been of central importance throughout the ages, so the critical examination of the issues involved sheds intriguing light on the cultural history from late antiquity to the seventeenth century.

In Stagecraft in Euripides, first published in 1985, Professor Michael Halleran examines certain aspects of the dramaturgy of the most extensively preserved Attic tragedian. Although the ancient dramatic texts do not contain performance directions, they do imply stage actions. This work explores the ways Euripides utilises the latter to make a point: to underline some issue, to suggest a contrast, or to shift the focus of the drama. Specifically, Halleran investigates the rearrangement of characters on stage at the major structural junctures of the play: entrances and their announcements; preparation for and surprise in entrances; and dramatic connections between exits and entrances. Three plays from the same era - Herakles, Trojan Women and Ion - are discussed in greater detail to reveal the potential of this approach for illuminating Euripides' 'grammar of dramatic technique'. Stagecraft in Euripides will thus appeal to students of theatre and drama as well as classicists.

Two thousand years after his death Horace is still recognised as a unique poet, having exerted marked influence on later European literature. This collection, first published in 1973, explores the different aspects of Horace's poetic achievement in his main works: the Odes, Epistles Satires and Ars Poetica. The essays, written by internationally-known scholars, include a discussion of the three worlds of the Satires, and a study of Horace's poetic craft in the Odes - his greatest technical accomplishment. The final chapter is devoted entirely to Horace's reputation in England up to the seventeenth century as 'The Best of Lyrick Poets', and concentrates on the many English translations which he inspired. The expert criticism is illustrated throughout by English translations from the original Latin texts. Horace will appeal to students and scholars of Latin poetry alike, as well as to those interested in the reception of classical literature throughout European history.

The "Enchiridion" or "Handbook" of the first-century AD Stoic Epictetus was used as an ethical treatise both in Christian monasteries and by the sixth-century pagan Neoplatonist Simplicius. Simplicius chose it for beginners, rather than Aristotle's "Ethics", because it presupposed no knowledge of logic. We thus get a fascinating chance to see how a pagan Neoplatonist transformed Stoic ideas. The text was relevant to Simplicius because he too, like Epictetus, was teaching beginners how to take the first steps towards eradicating emotion, although he is unlike Epictetus in thinking that they should give up public life rather than acquiesce, if public office is denied them. Simplicius starts from a Platonic definition of the person as rational soul, not body, ignoring Epictetus' further whittling down of himself to just his will or policy decisions. He selects certain topics for special attention in chapters 1, 8, 27 and 31. Things are up to us, despite Fate. Our sufferings are not evil, but providential attempts to turn us from the body. Evil is found only in the human soul. But evil is parasitic (Proclus' term) on good. The gods exist, are provident, and cannot be bought off. With nearly all of this the Stoics would agree, but for quite different reasons, and their own distinctions and definitions are to a large extent ignored. This translation of the "Handbook" is published in two volumes. This is the first, covering chapters 1-26; the second covers chapters 27-53.

This book explores the construction of gender ideology in early modern England through an analysis of the querelle des femmes --the debate about the relationship between the sexes that originated on the continent during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and developed in England into the Swetnam controversy. The volume contextualizes the debate in terms of its continental antecedents and elite manuscript circulation in England, then moves to consider popular culture and printed texts, its effects on women’s writing and the developing discourse on gender, and concludes by examining the ramifications of the debate during the Civil War and Restoration. Essays focus on the implications of the gender debate for women writers and their literary relations, cultural ideology and the family, and political discourse and ideas of nationhood.

Older research on the premodern world limited its focus on the Church, the court, and, more recently, on urban space. The present volume invites readers to consider the meaning of rural space, both in light of ecocritical readings and social-historical approaches. While previous scholars examined the figure of the peasant in the premodern world, the current volume combines a large number of specialized studies that investigate how the natural environment and the appearance of members of the rural population interacted with the world of the court and of the city. The experience in rural space was important already for writers and artists in the premodern era, as the large variety of scholarly approaches indicates. The present volume signals how much the surprisingly close interaction between members of the aristocratic and of the peasant class determined many literary and art-historical works. In a surprisingly large number of cases we can even discover elements of utopia hidden in rural space. We also observe how much the rural world was a significant element already in early-medieval mentality. Moreover, as many authors point out, the impact of natural forces on premodern society was tremendous, if not catastrophic.

"Constructing Chaucer "examines the scholarly appropriation and manipulation of Geoffrey Chaucer since his death in 1400 and seeks to enhance the theoretical dialogue on the famous author's reception history by challenging long-standing assumptions about the "Father of English Poetry." In response to the academy's recent disregard for the narrative persona-construct that was especially prominent in medieval literatures, this book offers a new and historically-based version of persona-theory and applies the paradigm to the reception of key texts where Chaucer's use of the persona is most acute. This method is centered upon the fresh concept of "autofiction," which is offered in order to recuperate and revitalize the persona as a critical tool. By applying the theory of autofiction to Chaucer's verse, Gust questions age-old traditions, presents a series of provocative new interpretations, and fosters a more complete understanding of the ideologies of Chaucer criticism.

Guynn offers an innovative new approach to the ethical, cultural, and ideological analysis of medieval allegory. Working between poststructuralism and historical materialism, he considers both the playfulness of allegory (its openness to multiple interpretations and perspectives) and its disciplinary force (the use of rhetoric to naturalize hegemonies and suppress difference and dissent). Ultimately, he argues that both tendencies can be linked to the consolidation of power within ruling class institutions and the persecution of demonized others, notably women and sexual minorities. The book examines a number of centrally canonical works, including the verse romance "Eneas," Alan of Lille's "De planctu Naturae," "The Romance of the Rose," and the "Querelle de la Rose."

Medieval historians and literary scholars have not ignored the topic of sexual violence and rape, but the primary focus has regularly rested on English, French, or Italian documents. Here we have the first book-length study that investigates the treatment of sexual crimes in medieval and early modern German and Latin literature, making great efforts to shed light on often ignored scenes and episodes even in some of the 'classical' works such as Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival or the anonymous Nibelungenlied. As this monograph reveals, many times we face situations where we cannot easily determine whether rape has occurred or not. Consequently, we recognize an important discourse in these literary examples concerning the question of how to view and deal with sexual violence, which could also involve men as victims. This critical examination extends toward sixteenth-century jest narratives (Schwanke) where the issue of rape continued to occupy the authors' minds. Moreover, as numerous side glances to contemporary European literature indicate, the theme of sexual violence was of universal concern and critical importance during the entire premodern era.

This book provides a recipe for healthy moral and personal transformation. Belliotti takes seriously Dante's deepest yearnings: to guide human well-being; to elevate social and political communities; to remedy the poisons spewed by the seven capital vices; and to celebrate the connections between human self-interest, virtuous living, and spiritual salvation. By closely examining and analyzing five of Dante's more vivid characters in hell-Piero della Vigna, Brunetto Latini, Farinata degli Uberti, Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti, and Guido da Montefeltro-and extracting the moral lessons Dante intends them to convey, and by conceptually analyzing envy, arrogance, pride, and human flourishing, the author challenges readers to interrogate and refine their modes of living.