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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Essays, journals, letters & other prose works > Classical, early & medieval
Written shortly after the capture of the Inca Atahualpa at
Cajamarca, Peru, True Account of the Conquest of Peru by Francisco
de Jerez, Francisco Pizarro's secretary and notary, is the most
influential of the early accounts of the conquest of the Andean
region. This fascinating text brings to life Pizarro and his men's
arrival in the central Andes of South America and their capture of
Inca Atahualpa, the ruler of one of the continent's largest and
most powerful civilizations. Injured during the massacre that took
place immediately after the capture of Atahualpa but wealthy thanks
to his share of the ransom offered by Atahualpa for his freedom,
Jerez published his account of the events just months after
arriving in Seville in 1534. The present edition is based on the
English translation Reports on the Discovery of Peru published by
Clement Markham in London in 1872 and also includes his
translations of the Letter from Hernando Pizarro to the Royal
Audience of Santo Domingo and the Report on the Distribution of the
Ransom of Atahualpa by Pedro Sancho. This volume is an invaluable
tool for scholars, professors, and students of Latin American
studies and students of history and literature interested in the
history of the conuest of the Andean region as well as a must read
for those fascinated by the history, civilization, and culture of
Peru and the Andean region in particular and the Americas in
general.
Grattius' Cynegetica, a Roman didactic poem on hunting with dogs,
is the author's only surviving work, though it reaches us now in an
incomplete form. Thanks to a passing reference by Ovid in his
Epistulae ex Ponto it can confidently be dated to the Augustan
period, and yet while his literary contemporaries have been and
continue to be subjects of academic scrutiny, Grattius is seldom
read and remains almost completely unappreciated in classical and
literary scholarship. This volume is the first book-length study of
Grattius in English or any other language and sets out to
rehabilitate the neglected poet by making him and his work
accessible to a wide audience. Prefaced by an introduction to the
poet and his work, as well as the Latin text of Cynegetica and a
new English translation, it presents a broad collection of
interpretive essays from an international team of scholars. These
essays explore the poem within its literary, intellectual, and
socio-political contexts and look forward to Grattius' (more
charitable) posthumous reception in Europe in the sixteenth to
eighteenth centuries. As a whole they aim to reveal his enduring
relevance for the tradition of didactic poetry and the study of
other Augustan poetry and culture, and to provide an impetus for
future discussions.
This collection of papers contains some 60 articles selected from
the works of the philologist Ernst Vogt. They dealwith a variety of
very different aspects of the study of ancient languages, for
example the history of literary forms and genres, Greek literature
of the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods, the history of
transmission and reception, or the history of classical philology.
All of the texts have been checked and additions or amendments
made.
The letters of Seneca are uniquely engaging among the works that
have survived from antiquity. They offer an urgent guide to Stoic
self-improvement but also cast light on Roman attitudes towards
slavery, gladiatorial combat and suicide. This selection of letters
conveys their range and variety, with a particular focus on letters
from the earlier part of the collection. As well as a general
introduction, it features a brief introductory essay on each
letter, which draws out its themes and sets it in context. The
commentary explains the more challenging aspects of Seneca's Latin.
It also casts light on his engagement with Stoic (and Epicurean)
ideas, on the historical context within which the letters were
written and on their literary sophistication. This edition will be
invaluable for undergraduate and graduate students and scholars of
Seneca's moral and intellectual development.
This book analyses articulations of cultural identity in the work
of the twentieth-century Polish poet Jerzy Harasymowicz,
concentrating on the ways in which his shifting perspectives on the
Carpathian Lemko Region are used to address the dilemmas of power,
hybridity and interethnic contact. Set against the background of
communist Poland, the poems examined here challenge official
narratives of identity, while exploring the possibilities and
limits of self-creation in poetry. Constituting the first post-1989
reading of Harasymowicz's verse, free from the constraints imposed
by political censorship, this book provides a reinterpretation of
the poet's work and reconsiders his contested legacy. By framing
the discussion within the context of postcolonial studies, the
author explores the usefulness of this approach in reassessing
cultural representations of Polish national identity and raises
broader questions about the ability of postcolonial theory to
redefine the established notions of national literature and
culture.
Ammianus is regarded as the greatest historian of late antiquity.
Yet his geographic and ethnographic digressions were long
underestimated as examples offeigned eruditionand as undue
interruptions to the historical narrative. The author of this
volume believes that the key to understanding Ammianus s work as a
whole lies in his teaching of classical rhetoric, his metaphoric
reading of landscapes, and the creation of spaces for memory and
counterworlds to the Imperium Romanum. In this way, historical
understanding and digressions concerning geographic knowledge must
be viewed as interdependent features of the text. The author thus
casts a new light on Ammianus s literary achievements."
Claude McKay's Liberating Narrative: Russian and Anglophone
Caribbean Literary Connections examines McKay's search for an
original form of literary expression that started in Jamaica and
continued in his subsequent travels abroad. Newly found research
pertaining to his presence in several Russian periodicals,
magazines, and literary diaries brings new light to the writer's
contribution to the Soviet understanding of African American and
Caribbean issues and his possible influence on Yevgeny Zamyatin,
the writer he met during his 1922 - 1923 visit to Russia. The
primary focus of this book is Claude McKay and his positive
reception of Alexander Pushkin, Feodor Dostoyevsky, and Leo
Tolstoy, the nineteenth-century Russian writers who influenced his
literary career and enabled him to find a solution to his dilemma
of a dual Caribbean identity. The secondary focus of this book is
the analysis of McKay's affinity with his Russian literary
predecessors and with C.L.R. James and Ralph de Boissiere, his
Trinidadian contemporaries, who also acknowledged the importance of
Russian writers in their artistic development. The book discusses
McKay as a precursor of Russian and Anglophone Caribbean links and
presents a comparative analysis of cross-racial, cross-national,
and cross-cultural alliances between these two distinct yet similar
types of literature. Claude McKay's Liberating Narrative is highly
recommended for undergraduate and graduate courses in Caribbean and
comparative literature at North American, European, Caribbean, and
African universities.
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The Women of Troy
(Paperback)
Euripides; Introduction by Don Taylor; Translated by Don Taylor
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R374
Discovery Miles 3 740
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Ships in 9 - 17 working days
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An industrial port of a war-torn city. Women survivors wait to be
shipped abroad. Officials come and go. A grandmother, once Queen,
watches as her remaining family are taken from her one by one. The
city burns around them. Euripides' great anti-war tragedy is
published in Don Taylor's translation to coincide with the National
Theatre's production directed by Katie Mitchell in the Lyttelton
auditorium. This edition of the play features an introduction by
the translator setting the play in its historical and dramaturgical
context.
In this first introduction to Plautus' Trinummus, students and
non-specialists alike are guided through the themes, context, and
enduring humor of this Roman comedy. The play portrays the story of
an elaborate game of keep-away involving a hidden treasure, a
hot-blooded spendthrift youth, his pious sister, her would-be
fiancee, a con-artist, and the most unlikely of comic schemers-a
group of overly pious old men. The conflict of the plot focuses on
whether a pair of old men can help their absent friend Charmides by
getting a dowry to his daughter without Charmides' wastrel son
Lesbonicus first spending the money on the usual comic debauchery.
The money is taken from a treasure hidden by Charmides when he left
and a sycophant is hired to pretend to bring letters from Charmides
along with the cash for the dowry. Comic confusion ensues when
Charmides returns from abroad just in time to intercept the
con-artist and overturn the scheming of his friends. Long
neglected, Trinummus is one of many Plautine plays that is
experiencing a resurgence. This volume elucidates the humor of the
play, which is largely based on parody and clever inversions of
typical characters and situations from Roman comedy. This
discussion is accompanied by an examination of the religious,
social, and historical context of the play, as well as its modern
reception. The genuine humor of Trinummus has something to say to
modern readers, as it showcases how parody can skewer those engaged
in pompous moral posturing and presents readers with a playwright
who astutely views issues of imperialism and moral justification
through a comic lens.
'Who would you say knows himself?' In 399 BCE Socrates was tried in
Athens on charges of irreligion and corruption of the young,
convicted, and sentenced to death. Like Plato, an almost exact
contemporary, in his youth Xenophon (c. 430-c. 354 BCE) was one of
the circle of mainly upper-class young Athenians attracted to
Socrates' teaching. His Memorabilia is both a passionate defence of
Socrates against those charges, and a kaleidoscopic picture of the
man he knew, painted in a series of mini-dialogues and shorter
vignettes, with a varied and deftly characterized cast-entitled and
ambitious young men, atheists and hedonists, artists and artisans,
Socrates' own stroppy teenage son Lamprocles, the glamorous
courtesan Theodote. Topics given Socrates' characteristic
questioning treatment include education, law, justice, government,
political and military leadership, democracy and tyranny,
friendship, care of the body and the soul, and concepts of the
divine. Xenophon sees Socrates as above all a supreme moral
educator, coaxing and challenging his associates to make themselves
better people, not least by the example of how he lived his own
life. Self-knowledge, leading to a reasoned self-control, was for
Socrates the essential first step on the path to virtue, and some
found it uncomfortable. The Apology is a moving account of
Socrates' behaviour and bearing in his last days, immediately
before, during, and after his trial.
This study examines ancient dialogue as a genre, and its 17 essays
explore the relationship between its form, content, and function,
with a focus on the literary aspects of dialogue. The contributions
address the development of the genre over time as well as the
formal aspects of dialogue.
Full Length, Tragedy
Characters: 7 male, 4 female
Various sets
This incisive translation of the classic drama is by the noted
British playwright, translator and director.
In 399 BC Socrates was prosecuted, convicted, sentenced to death
and executed. These events were the culmination of a long
philosophical career, a career in which, without writing a word, he
established himself as the figure whom all philosophers of the next
few generations wished to follow. The Apologies (or Defence
Speeches) by Plato and Xenophon are rival accounts of how, at his
trial, Socrates defended himself and his philosophy. This edition
brings together both Apologies within a single volume. The
commentary answers literary, linguistic and philosophical questions
in a way that is suitable for readers of all levels, helping
teachers and students engage more closely with the Greek texts. The
introduction examines Socrates himself, the literature generated by
his trial, Athenian legal procedures, his guilt or innocence of the
crimes for which he was executed, and the rivalry between Xenophon
and Plato.
The Arabic culinary tradition burst onto the scene in the middle of
the tenth century, when al-Warraq compiled a culinary treatise
titled al-Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes), containing over 600
recipes. However, it would take another three centuries for cookery
books to be produced in the European continent. For centuries to
come, gastronomic writing would remain the sole preserve of the
Arab-Muslim world, with cooking manuals and recipe books being
produced from Baghdad, Aleppo and Egypt in the East, to Muslim
Spain, Morocco and Tunisia in the West. A total of nine complete
cookery books have survived from this time, containing a total of
nearly four thousand recipes. The Sultan's Feast by the Egyptian
Ibn Mubarak Shah in the fifteenth century is one such book.
Reflecting the importance of gastronomy in Arab culture, this
culinary treatise features more than 330 recipes - from
bread-making and omelettes, to sweets, pickling and aromatics - and
tips on a range of topics, from essentials a cook should know to
how to distil drinkable water. Available in English for the first
time, this critical bilingual volume offers a sophisticated insight
into the world of medieval Arabic gastronomic writing.
Volume XXXI contains the editio princeps of the first group of Aramaic texts (4Q529-549) from Cave 4 which were originally assigned to Père Jean Starcky. They are primarily parabiblical and pseudepigraphical compositions reflecting the interest in biblical themes characteristic of Second Temple Judaism. The commentary is in French.
"Dew on the Grass": The Poetics of Inbetweenness in Chekhov is the
first comprehensive and systematic study to focus on the poetic
dimensions of Anton Chekhov's prose and drama. Using the concept of
"inbetweenness", this book reconceptualizes the central aspects of
Chekhov's style, from his use of language to the origins of his
artistic worldview. Radislav Lapushin offers a fresh interpretive
framework for the analysis of Chekhov's individual works and his
oeuvre as a whole.
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