Apart from relatively few exceptions of texts which survive intact, what we have of Ancient Greek literature remains, to a great degree, fragmentary. As a result it is often misread, overlooked or mined not for its own sake but to support the investigation of texts which survive in their entirety. This collection of chapters addresses a range of poetic fragments, with a strong (though not exclusive) focus on Archaic epic and lyric, and an emphasis on the papyrological tradition. Its main purpose is to showcase effective methodologies through case studies, through a "hands-on" approach assisted by a robust theoretical underpinning. The topics covered include textual criticism, the editing of fragmentary corpora, the role of palaeography and the physical features of writing materials, the study of ancient editions, annotations and paraliterary texts, matters of indirect or mixed tradition, and fragment placement and attribution. This volume will certainly be a rewarding read, intended equally for new researchers who wish to acquire or improve the skills needed to deal with fragmentary texts and for established scholars who may draw on the authors' insights to navigate the field improving their experience and enriching their knowledge.

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy is a volume of original articles on all aspects of ancient philosophy. The articles may be of substantial length, and include critical notices of major books. OSAP is now published twice yearly, in both hardback and paperback.
Editor: David Sedley, Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy, University of Cambridge.
'standard reading among specialists in ancient philosophy' Brad Inwood, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'There is no greater sorrow then to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.' Considered one of the greatest medieval poems written in the common vernacular of the time, Dante's Inferno begins on Good Friday in the year 1300. As he wanders through a dark forest, Dante loses his way and stumbles across the ghost of the poet Virgil. Virgil promises to lead him back to the top of the mountain, but to do so, they must pass through Hell, encountering all manner of shocking horrors, sins and evil torments along the way, evoking questions about God's justice, human behaviour and Christianity.

Within the pantheon of world literature, the Persian poet Hafiz (born in around 1320 in the city of Shiraz) occupies an exalted position, and his poems have long been translated and studied in the West. However, the degree of the English language's "interaction" with the work of Hafiz has often been underestimated. Parvin Loloi's contribution has been to collect and analyse the entire body of translations of Hafiz in English and to identify the specific problems which his writing presents to translators, together with varying strategies adopted by translators to surmount these difficulties. Her book includes a comprehensive first-line index of English translations of individual poems of Hafiz: a rich resource for students of comparative literature or translation studies, which demonstrates widespread and long-established interest in one of the major poets of Persia. It points to cultural encounters which the debate on Orientalism has largely ignored and highlights a significant influence on English poets of the 19th century, including Byron and Tennyson.

Thucydides' account of the war between Athens and Sparta is the first great work of political history and still a fundamental text for political science and international relations today; it is also a compelling story, full of vivid characters and tragic miscalculations. This collection of essays is designed to accompany, instruct, and stimulate readers of Thucydides by making accessible some classic and influential studies that are frequently cited but not always easy to access. (One-third of the essays appear here in English for the first time.) All Greek is translated, and an introductory chapter surveys the chronology and thematic controversies among Thucydides' readings from antiquity to the present.

The essays on Dante collected in this volume interpret his Commedia as the attempt of a renewal of the Christian work of salvation by means of literature. In the view of his author, the sacro poema responds to a historical moment of extreme danger, in which nothing less than the redemption of mankind is at stake. The degradation of the medieval Roman Empire and the rise of an early capitalism in his birth town Florence, entailing a pernicious moral depravation for Dante, are to him nothing else but a variety of symptoms of the backfall of the world into its state prior to its salvation by the incarnation of Christ. Dante presents his journey into the other world as an endeavor to escape these risks. Mobilizing the traditional procedures of literary discourse for this purpose, he aims at writing a text that overcomes the deficiencies of the traditional Book of Revelation that, on its own terms, no longer seems capable of fulfilling his traditional tasks. The immense revaluation of poetry implied in Dante's Commedia, thus, contemporarily involves the claim of a substantial weakness of the institutional religious discourse.

This volume, in honour of Angus M. Bowie, collects seventeen original essays on Greek comedy. Its contributors treat questions of origin, genre and artistic expression, interpret individual plays from different angles (literary, historical, performative) and cover aspects of reception from antiquity to the 20th century. Topics that have not received much attention so far, such as the prehistory of Doric comedy or music in Old Comedy, receive a prominent place. The essays are arranged in three sections: (1) Genre, (2) Texts and Contexts, (3) Reception. Within each section the chapters are as far as possible arranged in chronological order, according to historical time or to the (putative) dates of the plays under discussion. Thus readers will be able to construe their own diachronic and thematic connections, for example between the portrayal of stock characters in early Doric farce and developed Attic New Comedy or between different forms of comic reception in the fourth century BC. The book is intended for professional scholars, graduate and undergraduate students. Its wide range of subjects and approaches will appeal not only to those working on Greek comedy, but to anyone interested in Greek drama and its afterlife.

Performing Greek Drama in Oxford is an absorbing celebration of the performance and reception of Greek drama in Oxford. Amanda Wrigley traces enduring connections between antiquity and dramatic performance in modern Oxford, and discusses the landmark events from the 16th century to the 1970s.This performance history of classical texts, especially those by the Greek dramatists, illuminates contemporary responses to debates on such matters as the position of women students, the 'dangers' perceived to be associated with undergraduate acting, and the position of classics within the curriculum at the University of Oxford. The book consistently engages with the history of theatrical performance of ancient plays beyond Oxford, for example, John Masefield's Boars Hill Players, Penelope Wheeler's Greek plays at the Front, and the link with the London stage through companies touring to Oxford, such as that led by Sybil Thorndike. Many of these engagements with Greek drama were facilitated by the connection with the classical scholar Gilbert Murray, who plays a central part in the history.This performance history of classical texts, especially those by the Greek dramatists, illuminates contemporary responses to debates on such matters as the position of women students, the 'dangers' perceived to be associated with undergraduate acting, and the position of classics within the curriculum at the University of Oxford. The book consistently engages with the history of theatrical performance of ancient plays beyond Oxford, for example, John Masefield's Boars Hill Players, Penelope Wheeler's Greek plays at the Front, and the link with the London stage through companies touring to Oxford, such as that led by Sybil Thorndike. Many of these engagements with Greek drama were facilitated by the connection with the classical scholar Gilbert Murray, who plays a central part in the history.

Investigations into the "realities" of staging dramatic performances, of a variety of kinds, in the middle ages. We know little about the nature of medieval performance and have generally been content to think of it in relation to more modern productions, not least because of the sparsity of existing evidence. Consequently, whilst much research has been undertaken into its contexts, there has been relatively little scholarly investigation into the conditions of perfomance itself. This book seeks to address this omission. It looks at such questions as the nature of performance in theatre/dance/puppetry/automata; the performed qualities of such events; the conventions of performed work; what took place in the act of performing; and the relationships between performers and witnesses, andwhat conditioned them. PHILIP BUTTERWORTH Is Visiting Research Fellow in the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds, where he was formerly Reader in Medieval Theatre and Dean for Research; KATIE NORMINGTON is Senior Vice Principal (Academic) at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she is also Professor of Drama. Contributors: Kathryn Emily Dickason, Leanne Groeneveld, Max Harris, David Klausner, Femke Kramer, Jennifer Nevile, Nerida Newbigin, Tom Pettitt, Bart Ramakers, Claire Sponsler.

Through combinations of instructive prose and incantatory verse, liturgical rituals and herbal recipes, Latinate learning and oral tradition, the Old English remedies offer hope not only for bodily ailments but also for such dangers as solitary travel, swarming bees and stolen cattle. Hybrid healing works from the premise that the tremendous diversity of Old English medical texts requires an equally diverse range of interpretative methodologies. Through a case study approach, this exploration of early medicine offers a series of close readings tailored specifically to individual remedies, drawing from a range of fields including plant biology, classical rhetoric, archaeology, folkloristics and disability studies. Embracing the endless complexity of these Old English texts, Hybrid healing argues that the healing power of individual remedies ultimately derives from a dynamic and unpredictable process that is at once both deeply traditional and also ever-changing. -- .

A unique study of how novels by Lawrence, Forster and George Eliot can be read as rewritings of Sophocles's Antigone : each is presented as a socially and sexually involving argument between two sisters. The author provides an interconnected case-study where each text works on the hidden meanings of the other. Female sexuality, expressed through the language of duality (vulnerability, frustration, submission and destructivity, consummation and rebirth), becomes an ideal vehicle for crossing the barriers between sexes and between societies, as between the texts themselves.

John Benet's Chronicle, 1399-1462 is the first English translation of a fifteenth-century Latin chronicle which has been much used by medievalists since it was published in 1972. Lively and entertaining, it richly deserves the much wider readership that translation can now attract. The introduction argues that John Benet, vicar of Harlington, was only the - rather inefficient - copyist of a chronicle composed by an unidentified writer. Internal clues suggest that the real author was a Londoner who was exceptionally well-informed about events and people in the period of the Wars of the Roses. He was possibly a clerk to the signet, as this book investigates further.

A period of tumultuous political and religious strife, the English Civil War has inspired writers for the past four centuries. Their works vary widely in quality from the hurriedly written political verse of the 17th century and the superficial or sentimental novels of the 19th and 20th centuries to the brilliantly conceived novels of Daniel Defoe, Nigel Tranter, and Iain Pears. All provide a perspective on a turbulent era. A useful tool for historians and researchers, this bibliography provides access to verse, novels, short stories, and plays about the Civil War era written between 1625 and 1999.

The book opens with an introductory survey of the political and religious conflicts that led to the war and the execution of Charles I and that continued through the Interregnum, Cromwell's Protectorate, and the Restoration of Charles II. It then provides a discussion of some of the fiction written about the events and personalities of the period. With over 900 annotated entries, the bibliography itself includes virtually all of the fiction written about the period.

Leaving the traditional focus on Arthurian romance and Gothic tales, the essays in this collection address how the Victorians looked back to the Middle Ages to create a sense of authority for their own ideas in areas such as art, religion, gender expectations, and social services. This book will interest specialists in the Victorian period from various fields and will also be a welcome addition to any library serving substantial humanities divisions. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the essays, this collection would be useful in a wide range of humanities classes beyond the traditional literature class.

Witnesses to the disappearance of a text, palimpsest manuscripts bear the marks of their own genesis, with their original inscription rubbed out and written over on the same parchment.

This collection explores analogies of erasure and rewriting observed in editorial and literary practices underlying the production of texts from medieval England.

Raeleen Chai- Elsholz, Introduction: Palimpsests and ‘Palimpsestuous’ Reinscriptions, pp. 1-17. Abstract: This introduction analyzes the term “palimpsest” in relation to the various types of artifacts of cultural production discussed in the volume’s essays.

Adrian Papahagi, An Anglo- Saxon Palimpsest from Fleury: Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 342 (290), pp. 21-33. Abstract: This essay examines an Orléans manuscript (s. x/xi) against the background of exchanges between Fleury and Anglo- Saxon abbeys, and suggests it was palimpsested in Fleury.

Peter A. Stokes, Recovering Anglo-Saxon Erasures: Some Questions, Tools, and Techniques, pp. 35-60. Abstract: This essay provides practical instruction in enhancing digital images of damaged or palimpsested manuscripts, encompassing basic principles, hands-on techniques, and the ethics of enhancement.

Jane Roberts, Some Psalter Glosses in Their Immediate Context, pp. 61-79. Abstract: This essay looks closely at three Anglo-Saxon glossed psalters and how the palimpsestic layers of gloss and text, language and layout, speak to the meditative reader.

Paul E. Szarmach, The Palimpsest and Old English Homiletic Composition, pp. 81-94. Abstract: This essay proposes that the palimpsest offers a way to understand the composition techniques of Old English homilists, notably Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the anonymous tradition.

Sharon M. Rowley, 'Ic Beda’ . . . ‘Cwæð Beda’: Reinscribing Bede in the Old English Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, pp. 95-113. Abstract: This essay examines literal and metaphorical palimpsests in the OEHE, emphasizing the strategies through which Bede’s translators represent Bede’s voice in direct and indirect discourse.

Florence Bourgne, Vernacular Engravings in Late Medieval England, pp. 115-136. Abstract: Anxious late-medieval vernacular authors saturated their texts with references to engraved writings. These often refer to inscriptions on wax tablets, a fragile albeit professional medium.

Leo Carruthers, Rewriting Genres: Beowulf as Epic Romance, pp. 139-155. Abstract: Investigation of its historical matter in parallel with its generic classifications shows Beowulf to be a literary palimpsest anticipating the historical novel.

Gila Aloni, Palimpsestic Philomela: Reinscription in Chaucer’s “Legend of Philomela", pp. 157-173. Abstract: In rewriting Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VI, Chaucer partially erases his source to make room for his own “Legend of Philomela.”

Claire Vial, The Middle English Breton Lays and the Mists of Origin, pp. 175-191. Abstract: Awareness of generic ancestry offers evidence of the palimpsestuous nature of the “true” Middle English Breton lays.

Colette Stévanovitch, Enquiries into the Textual History of the Seventeenth- Century Sir Lambewell (London, British Library, Additional 27897), pp. 193-204. Abstract: The mid- seventeenth-century romance Sir Lambewell incorporates accretions from various periods, which reflect the tastes of various audiences and coexist as in a palimpsest.

Jean- Marc Elsholz, Elucidations: Bringing to Light the Aesthetic Underwriting of the Matière de Bretagne in John Boorman’s Excalibur, pp. 205-226. Abstract: Boorman’s film Excalibur enacts medieval theories of light that form the underwriting of successive layers of the Arthurian romance tradition.

Proceedings of the Seminar held in Brussels, Belgium, October 17-18, 1983

THE OXFORD HISTORY OF LITERARY TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH
General Editors: Peter France and Stuart Gillespie
This groundbreaking five-volume history runs from the Middle Ages to the year 2000. It is a critical history, treating translations wherever appropriate as literary works in their own right, and reveals the vital part played by translators and translation in shaping the literary culture of the English-speaking world, both for writers and readers. It thus offers new and often challenging perspectives on the history of literature in English. As well as examining the translations and their wider impact, it explores the processes by which they came into being and were disseminated, and provides extensive bibliographical and biographical reference material.
Volume 1 of The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English originates with what medievalists have long known, that virtually everything written in the Middle Ages in English can be regarded, one way or another, as a translation, and that medieval understandings of what constitutes literature were significantly more generous than many modern ones. It uses modern as well as medieval understandings of translation to inform its discussions (the two understandings have a great deal in common), and it aims to situate medieval translation in English as fully as possible in its various cultural contexts: this includes, in particular, the complicated inter-relations of translation throughout the period into Latin, and (for the Middle English period) of translation in French. Since it also understands the Middle Ages of its title as including the first half of the sixteenth century, it studies what has survived of nearly athousand years of translation activity in England.

The reception of ancient Cyprus in the Western world has not received much attention in scholarship, despite the fact that significant literary and extra-literary evidence presented by European intellectuals and artists explicitly or implicitly refers to the history of Cyprus, as well as to the myths and art produced on it or inspired by its landscape. This is a neglect that this volume wishes to address, by re-establishing the literary thread of the representation of ancient Cyprus beyond generic, spatial and temporal limits, and by thus shedding light on its depiction throughout the centuries, from the ancient Roman to the Western world up until modern times. The volume's central thesis is that a number of Cypriot traditions constitute a unique example of intercultural and multi-level fusions of diverse European civilizations. By investigating the various and often contradictory ways in which Cyprus was represented in Latin literature and beyond, the volume treats its multifaceted reception as a vastly complex matter, and suggests that even though the island has always been an outlier, it has often been explored in literature as an intellectual landscape and a precious pathway between at times conflictual yet compatible worlds.

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.

The concept of news that we have today is not a modern invention, but rather a social and cultural institution that has been passed down to us by the Greeks as a legacy. This concept is only modified by the social, political, and economic conditions that make our society different from theirs. In order to understand what was considered news in Ancient Greece, a lexical study of and all of its derivatives attested in a representative corpus of the period spanning from the second millennium BC to the end of the fourth BC has been conducted. This piece of research provides new contributions both to studies in Classics (there are hardly any studies on the transmission of news in Antiquity) and in journalism. This study also reveals an interesting point: the presence of false news - similar to current fake news - in ancient Greek literature, especially in tragedy and historiography when it comes to the use of the derivatives of .

Everyone knows of the Canterbury Tales, acknowledged as one of the leading texts of the English Canon. Consensus about them ends there. Amongst the most written about works of English literature, they still defy categorisation. Was Chaucer a poet of profound religious piety or a sceptic who questioned all religious and moral certainties? Do his pilgrims reflect the actual society of his day, or were they a product of an already well-established literary tradition and convention? Was he a defender of women or a misogynist, who reproduced the antifeminism characteristic of his time? Did his writings present a challenge to the dominant social outlook of late Medieval England or reinforce the status quo? This stimulating new book surveys and assesses these competing critical approaches to Chaucer's work, emphasising the need to see Chaucer in historical context; the context of the social and political concerns of his own day. Writing as a historian, Rigby brings refreshing new insights to this contested old chestnut and Chaucer, and his Tales, are revealed to us as Chaucer's contemporaries would have seen them.

The present edition of the first book of the Epistulae ex Ponto gives a revised text with a new translation, an extended introduction, and the first full-scale commentary of this work in English. The commentary pays particular attention to stylistic questions and examines how the Epistulae exPonto differs from the poet's remaining oeuvre. It demonstrates that Ovid generally adopts a more colloquial and prosaic style (as suits the epistolary form) and that he carefully adjusts the stylistic register to the respective addressees of the letters.

Packed full of analysis and interpretation, historical background, discussions and commentaries, York Notes will help you get right to the heart of the text you're studying, whether it's poetry, a play or a novel. You'll learn all about the historical context of the piece; find detailed discussions of key passages and characters; learn interesting facts about the text; and discover structures, patterns and themes that you may never have known existed. In the Advanced Notes, specific sections on critical thinking, and advice on how to read critically yourself, enable you to engage with the text in new and different ways. Full glossaries, self-test questions and suggested reading lists will help you fully prepare for your exam, while internet links and references to film, TV, theatre and the arts combine to fully immerse you in your chosen text. York Notes offer an exciting and accessible key to your text, enabling you to develop your ideas and transform your studies!

Featured here is a modern translation of a medieval herbal, with a study showing how this technical treatise on herbs was turned into a literary curiosity in the nineteenth century. The contours of this second edition replicate the first; however, it has been revised and updated throughout to reflect new scholarship and new findings. New information is presented on Oswald Cockayne, the nineteenth-century philologist who first translated the Old English medical texts for the modern world. Here the medieval text is read as an example of technical writing (i.e., intended to convey instructions/information), not as literature. The audience it was originally aimed at would know how to diagnose and treat medical conditions and knew or was learning how to follow its instructions. For that reason, while working on the translation, specialists in relevant fields were asked to shed light on its terse wording, for example, herbalists and physicians. Unlike many current studies, this work discusses the Herbarium and other medical texts in Old English as part of a tradition developed throughout early-medieval Europe associated with monasteries and their libraries. The book is intended for scholars in cross-cultural fields; that is, with roots in one field and branches in several, such as nineteenth-century or medieval studies, for historians of herbalism, medicine, pharmacy, botany, and of the Western Middle Ages, broadly and inclusively defined, and for readers interested in the history of herbalism and medicine.