Gothic literature imagines the return of ghosts from the past. But what about the ghosts of the classical past? Spectres of Antiquity is the first full-length study to describe the relationship between Greek and Roman culture and the Gothic novels, poetry, and drama of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Rather than simply representing the opposite of classical aesthetics and ideas, the Gothic emerged from an awareness of the lingering power of antiquity. The Gothic reflects a new and darker vision of the ancient world: no longer inspiring modernity through its examples, antiquity has become a ghost, haunting contemporary minds rather than guiding them. Through readings of works by authors including Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Charles Brockden Brown, and Mary Shelley, Spectres of Antiquity argues that these authors' plots and ideas preserve the remembered traces of Greece and Rome. James Uden provides evidence for many allusions to ancient texts that have never previously been noted in scholarship, and he offers an accessible guide both to the Gothic genre and to the classical world to which it responds. In fascinating and compelling detail, Spectres of Antiquity rewrites the history of the Gothic, demonstrating that the genre was haunted by a far deeper sense of history than has previously been assumed.

This collection of essays by thirteen renowned specialists in the fields of French Renaissance literature and history is a fitting tribute to the scholarship of Pauline Smith, Emeritus Professor in French at the University of Hull and Research Associate of the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Trinity College, Dublin. The essays, which focus on areas of research to which Professor Smith has herself given - and continues to give - particular attention, are organised into two frequently converging strands: court and humour. The contributors engage with political and cultural issues at the heart of the construction and aesthetic expression of the French Renaissance, whilst also offering insights into the broader European context. The collection as a whole challenges and revises a number of established views and identifies paths for future research.

Apuleius' Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, our only complete Latin novel, tells the story of Lucius, a young man turned into a donkey by magic because of his unfettered curiosity. After many adventures he is finally saved by the goddess Isis, whose follower he becomes. The famous first book of the novel introduces the protagonist's character, his interest in magic and his gullibility, but also important themes of the novel such as metamorphosis from man into beast. Lucius listens to stories about magic and witchcraft told to him on his journey to ancient Thessaly and narrates them to the reader. A substantial part of the first book accordingly concentrates on the self-contained tale about a certain Socrates and his unhappy experiences with murderous Thessalian witches. Apuleius himself had been put on trial for allegedly using erotic magic to make his future wife fall in love with him, a theme which also appears in Metamorphoses 1. Throughout the novel, Apuleius portrays Lucius as an unreliable first person narrator and thus implicates the reader of the novel in the same character fault that drives its protagonist: curiosity. This edition of Book I presents the Latin text with a modern translation, substantial introduction and accompanying commentary. The author Apuleius is discussed in the literary environment of the second century AD together with key themes of the first book and the novel as a whole. Special attention is given to ancient magic, the roles of philosophy and the goddess Isis in the novel as well as the extensive reception of the first book in literature up to modern times. The commentary illustrates Apuleius' text as a densely constructed literary work and explains literary allusions as well as philosophical, historical and religious contexts.

Satyric is the most thinly attested genre of Greek drama, but it appears to have been the oldest and according to Aristotle formative for tragedy. By the 5th Century BC at Athens it shared most of its compositional elements with tragedy, to which it became an adjunct; for at the annual great dramatic festivals, it was performed only together with, and after, the three tragedies which each poet was required to present in competition. It was in contrast with them, aesthetically and emotionally, its plays being considerably shorter and simpler; coarse and half-way to comedy, it burlesqued heroic and tragic myth, frequently that just dramatised and performed in the tragedies. Euripides'Cyclops is the only satyr-play which survives complete. It is generally held to be the poet's late work, but its companion tragedies are not identifiable. Its title alone signals its content, Odysseus' escape from the one-eyed, man-eating monster, familiar from Book 9 of Homer's Odyssey. Because of its uniqueness, Cyclops could afford only a limited idea of satyric drama's range, which the many but brief quotations from other authors and plays barely coloured. Our knowledge and appreciation of the genre have been greatly enlarged, however, by recovery since the early 20th Century of considerable fragments of Aeschylus, Euripides' predecessor, and of Sophocles, his contemporary - but not, so far, of Euripides himself. This volume provides English readers for the first time with all the most important texts of satyric drama, with facing-page translation, substantial introduction and detailed commentary. It includes not only the major papyri, but very many shorter fragments of importance, both on papyrus and in quotation, from the 5th to the 3rd Centuries; there are also one or two texts whose interest lies in their problematic ascription to the genre at all. The intention is to illustrate it as fully as practicable.

This volume is a selection of papers presented at the 9th International Conference on Middle English held at Wyzsza Szkola Filologiczna (Philological School of Higher Education) in Wroclaw, Poland, from April 30 to May 3, 2015. The contributors cover a wide range of topics in the area of language and literature. The linguistic papers constitute the majority of contributions and focus on problems from phonology to grammar, semantics and pragmatics. The literary contributions discuss various aspects of Middle English texts.

Aeschylus starts his tetralogy boldly, making the Danaids themselves prologue, chorus and protagonist. Guided by their father Danaus, these girls have fled from Egypt, where their cousins want to marry them, to seek asylum in Argos: they claim descent from Io, who was driven to Egypt five generations earlier when Zeus' love for her was detected by jealous Hera. In the long first movement of the play the Danaids argue their claim, pressing it with song and dance of pathos and power, upon the reluctant Argive king. He, forced eventually by their threat of suicide, puts the case to his people, who vote to accept the girls, but while they sing blessings on Argos, Danaus spies their cousins' ships arriving. Left on their own when he goes for help, they sing more seriously of suicide, and seek sanctuary upstage when the Egyptians enter. A remarkable tussle of two choruses ensues; in the nick of time the king arrives, sees off the Egyptians (but they promise a return) and offers his hospitality. The girls want their father, however, and go when guided by him and his escort of Argive soldiers. Their final song has elements of wedding song in it; they share it, provocatively, with the Argives. The rest of the tetralogy is lost, but enough is known to indicate that marriage is the theme. Aeschylus probably surprised his first audience in his use of the myth; his command of theatre and poetry is fully mature. A.J.Bowen is an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. From 1993 to 2007 he was Orator of the University.

In Poetics, Aristotle sets about laying the foundations of critical thought about the arts. One of the most influential books in Western civilization, Poetics reveals not only a great intellect analyzing the nature of poetry, music, and drama, but also a down-to-earth understanding of the practical problems facing the poet and playwright.

‘I long to reach my home and see the day of my return. It is my never-failing wish’

The epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats – shipwrecks, battles, monsters and the implacable enmity of the sea-god Poseidon – Odysseus must test his bravery and native cunning to the full if he is to reach his homeland safely and overcome the obstacles that, even there, await him.

E. V. Rieu’s translation of the Odyssey was the very first Penguin Classic to be published, and has itself achieved classic status. For this edition, his text has been sensitively revised and a new introduction added to complement E. V. Rieu’s original introduction.

Since the 1980s, there has been an unprecedented and unremitting rise in the number of women writers in Galicia and Ireland. Publishers, critics, journals, and women's groups have played a decisive role in this phenomenon. Creation, Publishing, and Criticism provides a plurality of perspectives on the strategies deployed by the various cultural agents in the face of the advance of women authors and brings together a selection of articles by writers, publishers, critics, and theatre professionals who delve into their experiences during this process of cultural change. This collection of essays sets out to show how, departing from comparable circumstances, the Galician and the Irish literary systems explore their respective new paths in ways that are pertinent to each other. This book will be of particular interest to students of Galician and Irish studies, comparative literature, women's studies, and literary criticism. Both specialists in cultural analysis and the common reader will find this an enlightening book.

Questioning the traditional association between machismo and Hispanic culture, this collection of essays focuses on revisiting archetypes of masculinity from medieval Iberia to the present by placing them in the context of the divergent counter-images that have always existed below the radar. The essays in this volume investigate both the construction and de-construction of masculinity in Iberian cultures and literatures from different genres and historical periods and from different disciplines (literary studies, film studies, art, religion, visual culture, etc.) and methodological perspectives (masculinity studies, feminist theory, queer studies, cultural studies, etc.). Queering Iberia is particularly concerned with exploring alternative models that examine or challenge canonical models of manhood, placing special emphasis upon re-visions of Iberian masculinities, especially as they are manifested in Catalonia, the Basque country, Galicia, and the Americas. This book starts off from the critical assumption that rethinking masculinities from these counterpoints will contribute different perspectives on the topic, and that by exploring Iberian cultures through masculinities new aspects of the relationships among these cultures can be understood. Queering Iberia will be of interest to courses on queer, gender, and masculinity studies as well as Hispanic cultures and literatures.

Known in her lifetime primarily as a literary scholar, Lydia Ginzburg (1902-1990) has become celebrated for a body of writing at the intersections of literature, history, psychology, and sociology. In highly original prose, she acted as a chronicler of the Soviet intelligentsia, a philosopher-cum-ethnographer of the Leningrad Blockade, and an author of powerful non-fictional narratives. She was a humanistic thinker with deep insights into psychological and moral dimensions of life and death in difficult historical circumstances. The first part of this book is a collection of essays by a distinguished set of scholars, shedding new light on Ginzburg's contributions to Russian literature and literary studies, life-writing, subjectivity, ethics, the history of the novel, and trauma studies. The second part is comprised of six works by Ginzburg that are being published for the first time in English translation. They represent a cross-section of her great themes, including Proustian notions of memory and place, the meaning of love and rejection, literary politics, ethnic and sexual identities, and the connections between personal biography and Soviet history. Both parts of the volume aim to explore, and make accessible to new readers, the gripping contribution to a broad set of disciplines by a profoundly intelligent writer and observer of her times.

Crossing Cultures/Cruzando culturas focuses on the creation of literary works and how these works reflect the life experiences of the authors. The purpose of this book is to inspire young Mexican-American, Hispanic, and Latino people by demonstrating that education is the key to life through the example of authors who have become successful in spite of their modest beginnings. Their love for education and their drive to improve themselves has turned them into nationally and internationally known authors recognized by major publishing companies. Their books in English have been translated quickly into other languages. The interviews reveal not only the authors' origins but also how they were able to overcome difficulties and challenges in their lives. The interviewed novelists include Mario Bencastro, Aristeo Brito, Rolando J. Diaz, Graciela Limon, and Demetria Martinez. Interviews conducted in English with Mexican-American writers are included in their original English version along with a proper Spanish translation. This book comprises a valuable resource for university students who are pursuing a degree in Spanish, Chicano studies, and ethnic studies that facilitates understanding the various dynamics of the Hispanic experience through literature. Crossing Cultures/Cruzando culturas se enfoca en la creacion de obras literarias y como estas obras reflejan las experiencias de los autores. El proposito de este libro es inspirar a los jovenes Mexico-Americanos, Hispanos y Latinos al demostrar que la educacion es la llave que les abre las puertas del triunfo en la vida. El ejemplo de los autores que han sido exitosos a pesar de sus raices humildes les estimulara a salir adelante. El amor por la educacion de estos escritores y su motivacion para mejorarse los ha convertido en autores reconocidos nacionalmente e internacionalmente por las editoriales mas reconocidas del mundo entero. Sus libros en ingles han sido traducidos a otras lenguas rapidamente. Las entrevistas revelan no solamente los origenes de los escritores pero como lograron vencer las dificultades y desafios en su vida. Los novelistas entrevistados incluyen a Mario Bencastro, Aristeo Brito, Rolando J. Diaz, Graciela Limon y Demetria Martinez. Las entrevistas realizadas en ingles con los escritores Mexico-Americanos estan incluidas en su forma original en ingles acompanadas por una traduccion al espanol. Este libro comprende un recurso valioso para los investigadores universitarios que buscan especializarse en literatura o historia latina, chicana, o estudios etnicos que facilitan el entendimiento de las dinamicas variadas de la experiencia hispana a traves de la literatura.

The first English translation of the oldest extant work in Apabhramsha, a literary language from medieval India, recounting the story of the Ramayana. The Life of Padma, or the Paumacariu, is a richly expressive Jain retelling in the Apabhramsha language of the famous Ramayana tale. The work was written by the poet and scholar Svayambhudeva, who lived in south India around the beginning of the tenth century. Like the epic tradition on which it is based, The Life of Padma narrates Prince Rama's exile, his search for his wife Sita after her abduction by King Ravana of Lanka, and the restoration of his kingship. The first volume of The Life of Padma begins by recounting the histories and noteworthy ancestors of Rama's allies and enemies, focusing on his antagonist, Ravana. Svayambhudeva connects central characters from the Ramayana tradition to one another and to Rishabha, the founding prophet of Jainism, in a complex web of family relations dating back generations. This is the first direct translation into English of the oldest extant work in Apabhramsha, accompanied by a corrected reprint in the Devanagari script of Harivallabh C. Bhayani's critical edition.

The papers, the appreciation and the poem that are collected in this volume were delivered at the conference, Aesthetics and Politics in Modern German Culture, which was held from 31 August to 2 September 2008 at the University of Wales Conference Centre, Gregynog Hall, in honour of Professor Rhys W. Williams upon his retirement from the Chair of German at Swansea University. The contributions focus on broad themes in modern German culture, all of which reflect Rhys Williams' research interests: Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit; Representing/Resisting National Socialism; West German Writing; GDR Spaces and Voices; Exploring Masculinities in Fiction; Performing Politics, Performing Humour; Intertexts and Difference; and Lives and Letters.

This book addresses the problems of the nature of the category of aspect, its formal expression and its relation to Action modes, to the Aorist/Imperfect and Perfect/Non-Perfect distinctions. The discussion is largely based on data from Bulgarian -- a Slavonic language where aspect as a grammatical category systematically coexists not only with verbal prefixation, but also with temporal boundedness, correlation and, in the nominal sphere, definiteness. Cross-language parallels with English and French data and the mapping of Bulgarian structures to notions drawn from the «western tradition of aspectual study result in the outline of a framework for an integrated study of the expression of aspectuality in languages belonging to different language groups. Refuting existing views of aspect as a «compensatory phenomenon for nominal definiteness, the book presents arguments in favour of a systematic relation between verbal prefixation and NP quantification in Slavonic languages and of a compositional, syntactic dimension of aspectual analysis.

National Trauma in Postdictatorship Latin American Literature: Chile and Argentina examines the traumatic experiences of Chile and Argentina under authoritarian regimes and argues that in order for postdictatorship countries to successfully implement transitions to democracy, they must confront the past. This book employs the research of psychologists Bessel van der Kolk, Judith Herman, Donald Dutton, Elizabeth Loftus, and Cathy Caruth, in order to better understand the emotional and psychological effects of national trauma in the works of Chileans Diamela Eltit and Ariel Dorfman, and Argentines Ricardo Piglia and Griselda Gambaro. The themes and characters transcend national boundaries - the abuse, torture, paranoia, anguish, and shame are common to all human beings oppressed by tyranny. The inclusion of theater is necessary in global times for the art of drama has the power to ignite a repressed consciousness to emerge and contribute to progress and change. National Trauma in Postdictatorship Latin American Literature: Chile and Argentina proceeds with the reality that it is possible to heal from past trauma and become - once again - dignified citizens of the world.

Inspired by the work of their colleague David Gascoigne, a group of scholars from the UK and France examine in this book the narrative strategies of some of the most interesting and important French writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Stretching chronologically from 1905 to 2005, the volume examines a wide variety of prose genres, from pornography to Bildungsroman to magic realism, as well as poetry. Michel Tournier figures in several of the contributions, emerging as something of a touchstone for many of the thematic preoccupations that are common throughout the period: values and authority, self and other, identity, spirituality, migration and exile, sexuality, the body, violence and war, and language. The authors also examine the flourishing of intertextuality, as well as the use of traditional forms, such as mythical structures and the 'robinsonade', to undermine authoritative 'metarecits'. Probing these themes and forms, and their metamorphoses across 100 years, the essays demonstrate a striking degree of continuity, linking writers as different as Apollinaire and Houellebecq or Valery and Fleutiaux, and highlight the difficulty of dividing the period neatly into chronologically ordered categories labelled 'modern' or 'postmodern'.

The notion of « exposure underlies much modern thinking about identity, representation, ethics, desire and sexuality. This provocative notion is explored in a collection of essay selected form, and inspired by, the proceedings of a conference held in the Department of French at the University of Cambridge in 2002. The authors engage with exposure as both object and mode of representation in a range of cultural media: literature, critical theory, visual art and film. They analyse a variety of works from the medieval, early-modern, and modern periods, examining not only canonical texts such as Montaigne's Essais but also lesser-studied works such as the psychoanalytic theory of Didier Anzieu, the photomontage self-portraits of Claude Cahun, and the novel La Nouvelle Pornographie by Marie Nimier. This volume thus both illustrates and, more importantly, interrogates the richness of the term « exposure, in a way that is stimulating for students and researchers alike.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price The story of the mythical Greek king of Thebes, the archetypal tragic hero who accidentally fulfills a prophecy that he will end up killing his father and marrying his mother, thereby bringing disaster down upon his city and family. This volume, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, contains two plays by Sophocles, Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonos, in English translations by Kenneth McLeish. It also includes an introduction to the plays.

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

This book examines Duras's contribution to contemporary cinema. The 'dark room' in the collection's title refers to one of Duras's metaphors for the writing process, la chambre noire, as the solitary space of literary creation, the place where she struggles to project her 'internal shadow' onto the blank page. The dark room is also a metaphor for the film theater and, by extension, for the filmic experience. Duras rejected conventional forms of cinematic address that encourage the spectator to develop a positive identification with the film's diegesis and narrative. Her films create unusual rapports between image and sound, diegetic and extra-diegetic elements, and textual and intertextual dimensions of cinematic representation. In doing so, they allow the film spectator to establish new connections with the screen. This collection focuses on the aesthetic, conceptual, and political challenges involved in Duras's innovative approach to cinematic representation, from an interdisciplinar perspective including film and literary theory, psychoanalytic analysis, music theory, gender studies, and post-colonial criticism. The book opens with a theoretical introduction to Duras's cinematic practice and its peculiar position in contemporary cinema and contemporary film theory and is divided into five parts, each one devoted to a specific aspect of Duras's films: the interaction between literature and cinema (Part One); the reconfiguration of the cinematic gaze (Part Two) and of the image/sound relation (Part Three); the representation of history and memory (Part Four) and of cultural identity (Part Five).

The story of our ongoing fascination with Homer, the man and the myth. Homer, the great poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is revered as a cultural icon of antiquity and a figure of lasting influence. But his identity is shrouded in questions about who he was, when he lived, and whether he was an actual person, a myth, or merely a shared idea. Rather than attempting to solve the mystery of this character, James I. Porter explores the sources of Homer's mystique and their impact since the first recorded mentions of Homer in ancient Greece. Homer: The Very Idea considers Homer not as a man, but as a cultural invention nearly as distinctive and important as the poems attributed to him, following the cultural history of an idea and of the obsession that is reborn every time Homer is imagined. Offering novel readings of texts and objects, the book follows the very idea of Homer from his earliest mentions to his most recent imaginings in literature, criticism, philosophy, visual art, and classical archaeology.

During the late 1920s and the 1930s, the Italian government sought various commercial and politically oriented solutions to cope with the advent of new sound technologies in cinema. The translation of foreign-language films became a recurrent topic of ongoing debates surrounding the use of the Italian language, the rebirth of the national film industry and cinema's mass popularity. Through the analysis of state records and the film trade press, The Politics of Dubbing explores the industrial, ideological and cultural factors that played a role in the government's support for dubbing. The book outlines the evolution of film censorship regulation in Italy and its interplay with film translation practices, discusses the reactions of Mussolini's administration to early Italian-language talkies produced abroad and documents the state's role in initiating and encouraging Italians' habit of watching dubbed films.

The Batrachomyomachia (Battle of the Frogs and Mice) is a Hellenistic pastiche of Homer's Iliad which was often attributed to Homer himself by later commentators. As a parody of epic battle narrative it is quite unlike anything else that survives in full from antiquity; however, despite its popular and influential reception throughout much of history from the Roman period onwards, the advent of the twentieth century saw it largely dismissed and overlooked as a curio. This volume presents a new critical edition of the poem, comprising an introduction, Greek text and English verse translation, and line-by-line commentary, which aims to rehabilitate its image and return it to the centre of scholarly attention by mapping out the wide range of metaliterary jokes, references, and parodies concealed within the apparently simple and childish story. The Greek text is entirely new, based on a fresh collation of the nine most important early manuscripts as well as on the work of previous editors. All verses which appear in these manuscripts are included - those which do not belong in the main text are presented separately at the foot of each page - and are accompanied by a full apparatus criticus and a new facing verse translation, which aims to strike a balance between precision and readability. A comprehensive introduction thoroughly orients readers in the poem's historical and literary context, covering its (highly uncertain) date and disputed authorship, its relationship with the wider genre of 'parody', its language and metre, and its reception and influence up to the present day, among other topics. The commentary forms the largest part of the volume, offering detailed discussion of linguistic, stylistic, and thematic questions, as well as guiding readers through the complex network of references to Homer and Hellenistic poetry and breaking down the textual problems for which the poem is so notorious.