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.

Law 180, which abolished mental asylums in Italy, was passed in 1978. It came to be known as the 'Basaglia Law', after the physician whose work revolutionised psychiatry in Italy and worldwide. Franco Basaglia (1924-1980) battled to overturn an obsolete but prevalent conception of psychiatry, rooted in the asylum, where allegedly dangerous madmen were incarcerated rather than cured. Following Law 180, the asylum system was indeed dismantled in Italy, to be replaced by community centres. This radical transformation coincided with the emergence of 'biopolitics', a direct involvement of political power with the biological lives of the subjects, by means of homogenising disciplines such as the statistical analysis of the population. Examining both his practice and his theory of psychiatry, this book argues that Franco Basaglia foresaw this change in the paradigm of power, and that it is possible to trace its embryonic conception in his writings. Combining history of ideas, social and cultural history, and philosophical analysis, the book contextualises Basaglia's works within the intense current debate on biopolitics. In doing so, it shows not only how his theory of the subject and his criticism of psychiatry are still as powerful and relevant now as they were in the 1970s, but also how Basaglia's philosophy makes an integral contribution to the burgeoning field of contemporary Italian theory.

This volume is based on papers given at the biennial Women in French conference held in Leeds in May 2011. Drawing on a range of interconnecting disciplines and forms of cultural production, it explores the relationship between French and Francophone women and the material world. Bringing together researchers from the United Kingdom, France and other Francophone countries, the book reflects the engagement of women researchers with contemporary debates. The first section focuses on the female body, examining dance and the performing arts but also the material objectification suffered by rape victims in France. The next highlights the contradictions of the im/materiality of the body, the act of writing and the text, in terms of dichotomies, permeable identities and fluid boundaries. The third section turns its attention to the practicalities of 'the material' in relation to women's engagement with the economy - the gendering of domestic work, women's discourse, the precariousness of women's employment and the alienating impersonality of consumer spaces. The concluding section considers the relationship of the female body to the material object, whether subverting, co-opting or indeed absorbing it. In the final chapters of the book the tactile and the visual converge in explorations of 'the material' in cinematic representations of the female body.

Jorge Luis Borges was profoundly interested in the ill-defined and shape-shifting traditions of mysticism. However, previous studies of Borges have not focused on the writer's close interest in mysticism and mystical texts, especially in the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). This book examines the relationship between Borges' own recorded mystical experiences and his appraisal of Swedenborg and other mystics. It asks the essential question of whether Borges was a mystic by analysing his writings, including short stories, essays, poems and interviews, alongside scholarly writings on mysticism by figures such as William James. The book locates Borges within the scholarship of mysticism by evaluating his many assertions and suggestions as to what is or is not a mystic and, in so doing, analyses the influence of James and Ralph Waldo Emerson on Borges' reading of Swedenborg and mysticism. The author argues further that Swedenborg constitutes a far richer presence in Borges' work than scholarship has hitherto acknowledged, and assesses the presence of Swedenborg in Borges' aesthetics, ethics and poetics.

A Literary Map of Spain in the 21st Century is a unique scholarly publication that participates in the debates of literary researchers by exploring the linguistic and literary map of Spain in the twenty-first century. Each chapter is centered in a particular cultural and linguistic area of Spain; and there the study extrapolates to other regions of interest. This book covers all or at least most of the sociolinguistic and literary environments of Spain. It is a comprehensive study of the new trends and attitudes towards linguistic and literary coexistence in a linguistically diverse nation. By painting a panoramic retrospective view of the evolution of this coexistence during the twenty-first century, Graciela Susana Boruszko brings new light to the current global scenario. The comparative approach of the study constitutes an excellent scholar contribution to the field of comparative literature and linguistics, Spanish linguistics, and Spanish cultural studies. While being centered in literary and linguistic analysis, this book will also appeal to scholars in adjacent academic fields, such as political science, sociology, sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, psycholinguistics, contemporary history, social studies, cultural studies, intercultural studies, gender studies, and European studies.

We Had Won the War (Habiamos ganado la Guerra) is the bestselling 2008 memoir about life in post-Civil War Barcelona by the acclaimed Spanish author Esther Tusquets. Unlike the majority of Spanish postwar narratives that are written from the perspective of those who lost the Civil War and suffered under the Franco regime, Tusquets' account recreates the era from the standpoint of the "winners." As the offspring of an upper-middle-class Catalonian family who had sided with Franco in the armed conflict, the young Esther grew up as a privileged member of Spanish society, enjoying all the advantages that birth and material affluence could afford. The child's initial enchantment with the glittering, sheltered world of her kin soon turns to disillusionment, as she discerns the fault lines running through the larger social landscape, and senses the hypocrisy and cruelty of her parents' inbred clan. She finds in the inner world of literature and of the imagination compensation for a disturbing outer reality. As the growing girl struggles to find her own way, she experiments with political and religious movements that aim to forge a more just society. Her quest eventually leads to the rejection of all absolutist forms of thought and action, and to the assumption of her life's calling as a publisher and writer. The book paints a vivid picture of life during the early Franco years, while offering an intimate, revealing look at the childhood and adolescence of one of Spain's most remarkable contemporary authors.

Sixty years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new translation of the Greek tragedies that would be the ultimate resource for teachers, students, and readers. They succeeded. Under the expert management of eminent classicists David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, those translations combined accuracy, poetic immediacy, and clarity of presentation to render the surviving masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in an English so lively and compelling that they remain the standard translations. Today, Chicago is taking pains to ensure that our Greek tragedies remain the leading English-language versions throughout the twenty-first century. In this highly anticipated third edition, Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most have carefully updated the translations to bring them even closer to the ancient Greek while retaining the vibrancy for which our English versions are famous. This edition also includes brand-new translations of Euripides' "Medea", "The Children of Heracles", "Andromache", and "Iphigenia among the Taurians", fragments of lost plays by Aeschylus, and the surviving portion of Sophocles' satyr-drama "The Trackers". New introductions for each play offer essential information about its first production, plot, and reception in antiquity and beyond. In addition, each volume includes an introduction to the life and work of its tragedian, as well as notes addressing textual uncertainties and a glossary of names and places mentioned in the plays. In addition to the new content, the volumes have been reorganized both within and between volumes to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship on the order in which the plays were originally written. The result is a set of handsome paperbacks destined to introduce new generations of readers to these foundational works of Western drama, art, and life.

Immigration has become a contentious issue in Europe in recent decades, with immigrants being accused of resisting integration and threatening the secular fabric of nationhood. The most extreme form of this unease has invented and demonized an Islamic 'other' within Europe. This book poses central questions about this global staging of difference. How has such anxiety increased exponentially since 9/11? Why has the Muslim veil been singled out as a metaphor in debates about citizenship? Lastly, and most fundamentally, who sets the criteria for constructing the ideal citizen? This study explores the issue of gender and immigration in the national contexts of Germany and France, where the largest minority populations are from Turkey and North Africa, respectively. The author analyzes fictional works by the Turkish-German writers Emine Sevgi OEzdamar and Zafer Senocak and by Francophone writer Malika Mokeddem. All three deconstruct binary oppositions and envision an alternate third space that allows them to break out of the confines of organized religion. In the latter part of the book, the voices of young Muslim women are foregrounded through interviews. The concluding chapter on the pedagogical tool Deliberative Dialogue suggests ways to navigate such contentious issues in the Humanities classroom.

This book was the winner of the 2011 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in German Studies. The post-war landscape of Europe is unthinkable without the voices of the Austrian writers Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) and Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989). Their work, coming after the devastation wrought by the Second World War and the Holocaust, is rooted in a specifically Austrian context of repression of this traumatic historical legacy. In post-war Austria, discourse on the recent past may have been dominated by silence, but the legacy of this past was all too apparent in the country's ruined and speedily reconstructed cityscapes. This book investigates Bachmann's and Bernhard's treatment of two fundamental aspects of the Austrian historical legacy: the trauma of the war and the desire to return to an ideal homeland, known as 'Haus OEsterreich'. Following a methodology based on Freud and Benjamin, this comparative study demonstrates that the confrontation with Austria's troubled history occurs through the protagonists' ambivalent encounter with the landscape or cityscape that they inhabit, travel or return to. The book demonstrates the centrality of topography on both thematic and structural levels in the authors' prose works, as a mode of confronting the past and making sense of the present.

This collection of essays by leading scholars from France, Great Britain and North America is published in honour of Peter Bayley, former Drapers Professor of French at the University of Cambridge and a leading scholar of early modern France. The volume reflects his scholarly interest in the interface between religion, rhetoric and literature in the period 1500-1800. The first three sections of the book are concerned with the early modern period. The contributors consider subjects including the eloquence of oration from the pulpit, the relationship between religion, culture and belief, and the role of theatre and ceremony during the seventeenth century. They engage with individuals such as the theologian Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, the dramatists Moliere, Racine and Corneille, and the philosophers Bayle and Pascal. The volume concludes with a section that is concerned with critical influences and contexts from the sixteenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Throughout, the authors offer stimulating new perspectives on an age that never ceases to intrigue and fascinate.

Die Beitrage dieses Bandes befassen sich mit dem sogenannten Slawenoserbischen, der Schriftsprache der Serben im spaten 18. und in den ersten Jahrzehnten des 19. Jahrhunderts, sowie mit dem Werk, Leben und Zeitalter des Sprachreformers Sava Mrkalj, dessen programmatischer Text Salo debeloga jera libo azbukoprotres vor 200 Jahren veroeffentlicht wurde. In diesem Kontext werden verschiedene Aspekte der Epoche, ihres Kulturparadigmas und der damaligen Schriftsprache behandelt. Einen weiteren thematischen Strang stellen die Arbeiten dar, die sich mit der Poetik, Rhetorik und den literarischen Richtungen des serbischen Schrifttums beschaftigen. Ein dritter Schwerpunkt gilt der beginnenden philologischen Arbeit, deren Anliegen die Schaffung einer Schrift- und Literatursprache fur das serbische Sozium war, das sich in dem UEbergang von der alten Kulturtradition und dem Lebensparadigma der Orthodoxen Slavia hin in die europaische Neuzeit befand.

This monograph is the first to identify an important theoretical overlap between Anglo-Saxon and Lusophone postcolonial theories: the systematic neglect of gender and sexual variables in the analysis of the marketing of cultural difference in the post colonial era. Drawing on the theoretical work of Graham Huggan and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the author of this study discusses the political significance of this neglect by focusing on the asymmetrical positions occupied by two widely acclaimed Lusophone women writers, Paulina Chiziane of Mozambique and Lidia Jorge of Portugal. The book asks how these two contemporary writers deal with master narratives such as Lusofonia, exoticism, capitalism and post colonialism in their novels, and examines the implications of placing gender and sexual difference at the heart of the 'post colonial exotic'.

This volume gathers contributions representing the main trends in translation and interpreting studies by authors in the Iberian peninsula, with a focus on the Iberian languages (Basque, Catalan, Portuguese/Galician and Spanish). The essays cover different methodologies and objects of analysis, including traditional textual and historical approaches as well as contemporary methods, such as cultural, sociological, cognitive and gender-oriented perspectives. This seemingly eclectic approach pivots around seven focal points that aim to reflect the most frequent research topics in the Iberian peninsula: (i) theoretical and methodological approaches; (ii) translation and interpreting training; (iii) historical perspectives; (iv) terminology; (v) rapidly evolving fields in the translation and interpreting industry, such as localization and public service interpreting; (vi) translation of literature; and (vii) translation studies journals.

Questions about dependence and independence are of crucial importance in relation to Latin America, given the region's history and its current situation. They are particularly relevant at this time, with the bicentenary of independence being celebrated throughout the region. This book examines central issues relating to these two notions in the Latin American context, offering twelve different studies of the themes in question, six of which cover sociology and politics and six of which examine topics in literary and cultural studies. The breadth of the subject matter considered in the volume reflects the wide range of issues that the ideas of dependence and independence raise in this political and geographical context, including, among others: identity, hegemony, wealth and poverty, discursive power, the role of civil society, language and gender. The contributors offer new insights into the fields examined, from discussions of the significance of cultural products such as literary works and films to a consideration of the validity of the concept of independence to ongoing efforts to alleviate poverty and assert national autonomy. As a uniquely interdisciplinary and multi-focused collection of essays, the book offers readers an excellent overview of these issues as they relate to Latin America today.

George Bernard Shaw is commonly regarded as one of the most controversial intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth century. Known for the ambiguity of his statements and the seeming inconsistency of his views, there was, nevertheless, one idea to which the British dramatist remained constant throughout his life: his long-term enthusiasm for Russia and his firm belief that the Russians would 'give the world back its lost soul'. Moved by the Russian cultural tradition, he found inspiration in the morally charged writings of Tolstoy and Gorky, and sent a copy of his Back to Methuselah to Lenin. The Soviet utopia fascinated him, and he made a much-publicised journey to the USSR to see the results of socialist construction, remaining for the rest of his life an unrepentant advocate of Stalin's policies. Focusing on detailed textual analysis, this book traces the Russian sources that contributed to the formation of Shaw's literary style. By reflecting on these parallels, as well as by drawing on archive reports in the Russian and Western media, the authors attempt to establish the extent to which Shaw's obsession with the socialist cause affected the evolving character of his dramatic output. The book also explores the enduring positive reception of Shaw's plays on the Russian stage.

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.

This is the first book-length study devoted to the work of Marie Darrieussecq, one of France's leading contemporary writers, whose work has proved fascinating to both critics and readers for its diversity, the author's seeming ability to evade established literary categories and the changes in focus of her trajectory. This volume focuses on this ambivalence, highlighting the capacity of Darrieussecq's texts both to confront contemporary social issues, such as national identity and the role of women, and examine the complex relationship between language and reality. Focusing on the mid-section of her oeuvre (Bref sejour chez les vivants, Le Bebe and Le Pays), the author of this study brings together Darrieussecq's social realism, her emphasis on the productive and creative roles of language and narrative, and her interest in the role of social discourse in the formation of identity. The analysis in this book highlights the significant questions that Darrieussecq's texts raise about the ways in which we perceive and narrate the world and makes clear the original and essential nature of Darrieussecq's continuing literary project.

In Exile and Identity in Autobiographies of Twentieth-Century Spanish Women, Karla P. Zepeda studies the experience of exile and its effects on identity in three autobiographies: In Place of Splendor by Constancia de la Mora, Memoria de la melancolia by Maria Teresa Leon, and Seis anos de mi vida by Federica Montseny. These three prominent Spanish women of the Second Republic became exiles at the conclusion of the Spanish Civil War due to the onset of the Francisco Franco regime. The political expatriation caused their relocation into various countries: the United States, France, Argentina, and Italy. The repositioning initiated a process of self-reinvention, as the women come in contact with social circumstances prompting new versions of self. Through their works, these women negotiate their identity in relation to the lost homeland and the new locale. Exile and Identity in Autobiographies of Twentieth-Century Spanish Women examines the diverse character of diaspora, the social transactions deployed in a variety of circumstances, and the self-negotiations elicited in social interactions. Identity proves to be an intentional re-creation of self, enacted in particular circumstances, and negotiated as a response to social conditions.

Perhaps no classical writer has been so consistently in vogue as Horace. Famous in his own lifetime as a close associate of the Emperor Octavian, to whom he dedicated several odes, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 BC) has never really been out of fashion. Petrarch, for example, modelled his letters on Horace's innovative Epistles, while also borrowing from his Roman forebear in composing his own Italian sonnets. The echo of Horace's voice can be found in almost every genre of medieval literature. And in later periods, this influence and popularity if anything increased. Yet, as Paul Allen Miller shows, while Horace may justifiably be called the poet for all seasons he is also in the end an enigma. His elusive, ironic contrariness is perhaps the true secret of his success. A cultured man of letters, he fought on the losing side of the Battle of Philippi (42 BC). A staunch Republican, he ended up eagerly (some said too eagerly) promoting the cause of Julio-Claudian imperialism. Viewed as the acme of Roman literary civilization, he was shaped by his Athens education at Plato's famous Academy. This new introduction reveals Horace in all his paradoxical genius and complexity.

This book offers a significant, original and timely contribution to the study of one of the most important and notorious Latin American authors of the twentieth century: Reinaldo Arenas. The text engages with the many extraordinary intersections created between Arenas' writing, the autobiographical construction of the literary subject and the exilic condition. Through focusing on texts written on the island of Cuba and in exile, the author analyses the ways in which Arenas' writing emblemises a complex process of identification with, and rejection of, his homeland - always an imagined place and which is, as the place of his origins, intrinsically related to the maternal. She examines how the maternal and the motherland are conflated and how the narrator-protagonists' identification is always in relation to, and dependent upon, this dominant motif. The book also explores the extent to which Arenas' writing is a tortuous attempt to escape from this dominance and to free himself and his writing from the ties that bind him to the mother and the motherland, and shows that Arenas suffered the exilic condition long before his move to the United States in 1980 as part of the Mariel exodus.

This book examines the relevance of the concepts of space and place to the work of Jorge Luis Borges. The core of the book is a series of readings of key Borges texts viewed from the perspective of human spatiality. Issues that arise include the dichotomy between 'lived space' and abstract mapping, the relevance of a 'sense of place' to Borges's work, the impact of place on identity, the importance of context to our sense of who we are, the role played by space and place in the exercise of power, and the ways in which certain of Borges's stories invite us to reflect on our 'place in the universe'. In the course of this discussion, crucial questions about the interpretation of the Argentine author's work are addressed and some important issues that have largely been overlooked are considered. The book begins by outlining cross-disciplinary discussions of space and place and their impact on the study of literature and concludes with a theoretical reflection on approaches to the issue of space in Borges, extrapolating points of relevance to the theme of literary spatiality generally.

Miron Bialoszewski: Radical Quest Beyond Dualisms is an innovative and challenging work of literary scholarship that examines Bialoszewski's artistic praxis as a certain philosophical proposition. It differs from the earlier critical approaches to the writings of this writer in as much as it attempts to examine his mature poetry from a non-dualistic perspective. The study demonstrates in detail how Bialoszewski's radical approach to poetry evolves into a consistent life-writing and life-philosophy (life-writing-philosophy). The poet disregards binary oppositions and he approaches life and reality without any universal method. In the poet's mature poetry, the context is identified as life and not as reality, and Bialoszewski's writing is described as his life project which is not searching but rather researching, since it has no pre-established goal to reach except for being continued.

Giorgio Vasari's Prefaces: Art and Theory provides students and scholars alike with the opportunity to study and understand the art, theory, and visual culture of Giorgio Vasari and sixteenth century Italy. For the first time all of Vasari's Prefaces from the Lives of the Artists (1568) are included translated into English as well as in the original Italian. Also included is an English translation of Giovanni Battista Adriani's letter to Giorgio Vasari enlightening Vasari on the art of the ancient masters. Through the eyes of Vasari, this book captures the creative achievements of his fellow artists - how they adopt nature and the classical tradition as their muses and how they ingeniously interpret the secular and religious themes of the past and present. Vasari himself is lauded for the transformation of the artist from one of being a mere laborer to one who imbues his work with intellectual depth and is recognized as a creator of beautiful visual myths.

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.