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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Essays, journals, letters & other prose works > Classical, early & medieval
This volume offers up-to-date translations of all 21 epistles of Ovid's Heroides. Each letter is accompanied by a preface explaining the mythological background, an essay offering critical remarks on the poem, and discussion of the heroine and her treatment elsewhere in Classical literature. Where relevant, reception in later literature, film, music and art, and feminist aspects of the myth are also covered. The book also contains an introduction covering Ovid's life and works, the Augustan background, the originality of the Heroides, dating, authenticity and reception. A useful glossary of characters mentioned in the Heroides concludes the book. This is a vital new resource for anyone studying the poetry of Ovid, Classical mythology or women in the ancient world.
Relatively little is known of the life of Crinagoras of Mytilene: a Greek epigrammatist and diplomat who lived between the first centuries BC and AD, he was despatched to Rome as part of the embassies to Julius Caesar and Octavian, was held in high regard by his contemporaries, and divided his life between his home of Mytilene and the centre of the Roman Empire, where he was acquainted with the family of the emperor Augustus. Much of the detail we have to flesh out this brief account comes from his poems, which, in keeping with the genre, draw extensively on his personal experience and on the events of the day to provide a key source for the circumstances of his life. They are also eloquent and dynamic in their own right, and as a corpus they cover a wide thematic range: many were inspired by contemporary political or military events or by personal experiences, observations, or contemplation, though they also include several sepulchral epigrams concerning the deaths of persons the poet knew, and many which were composed as notes to be sent with gifts to friends or acquaintances. This new edition collects together all fifty-one of the surviving epigrams which have come down to us as part of the Greek Anthology. Presented here in a new critical text alongside engaging English translations, they are analysed in detail in an incisive introduction and exegetic word-by-word commentary, both as individual poems and as part of the corpus as a whole. With discussion throughout covering not only textual and stylistic matters, but also literary and historical context and Crinagoras' place within his social and cultural milieu, this edition provides a guide to the life and work of this understudied poet which is both authoritative and accessible.
Written by Leofranc Holford-Strevens to accompany his Oxford Classical Texts edition of Aulus Gellius' Noctes Atticae, this volume presents more expansive discussions and explanations of choices of readings at various places in the text than would be possible within the narrow confines of the edition's apparatus criticus (in which all passages discussed in Gelliana are marked with an asterisk). The grounds adduced are generally grammatical in the modern sense of the word, concerning accidence, vocabulary, or syntax, but sometimes invoke palaeography, logic, or other matters of content. Previous scholars, and also translations, are frequently cited in order either to credit the person first on record as having understood the text correctly or to indicate the source of a current misinterpretation. The preliminary matter includes an extensive list, significantly expanded from that drawn up by Martin Hertz, of places where scribes have inadvertently corrupted the text through inappropriate importation of the Christian terms with which they were familiar, while a separate appendix contains corrections to and revisions of passages in the author's previously published monograph Aulus Gellius: An Antonine Scholar and his Achievement (OUP 2003, corrected paperback 2005) and article 'Recht as een Palmen-Bohm and other Facets of Gellius' Medieval and Humanistic Reception' in The Worlds of Aulus Gellius (co-edited with Amiel D. Vardi, OUP 2004).
This interdisciplinary and archival study explores the reception of ancient Rome in the artistic, literary, and philosophical works of David Jones (1895-1974)-the Anglo-Welsh, Roman Catholic, First World War veteran. For Jones, the twentieth century was a period of crisis, an age of conflict, disillusionment and cultural decay, all of which he saw as evidence of the decline of Western civilisation. Across his lifetime, Jones would create a dynamic vision of ancient Rome in an attempt both to understand and to challenge this situation. His reimagining of Rome was not founded on a classical education. Instead, it was fashioned from his lived experience, extensive reading, and-most importantly-his engagement with four areas of contemporary discourse that were themselves built upon intricate and conflicting representations of Rome: British political rhetoric, cyclical history, the Catholic cultural revival, and the Welsh nationalist movement. Tracing Jones's developing approach to Rome across these contexts can provide a way into his art and thought. Whether in his poetic fragments, watercolours, essays, letters, marginalia or unique painted inscriptions, Jones strove to question, complicate and remake Rome's relationship with modernity. In this way, Rome appears in Jones's works both as a symbol of transhistorical imperialism, totalitarianism, and the mechanisation of life, and simultaneously as the cultural and religious progenitor of the West, and in particular, of Wales, with which artists must creatively reconnect if decline was to be avoided.
Diane Arnson Svarlien's translation of Euripides' Andromache , Hecuba , and Trojan Women exhibits the same scholarly and poetic standards that have won praise for her Alcestis , Medea , Hippolytus . Ruth Scodel's Introduction examines the cultural and political context in which Euripides wrote, and provides analysis of the themes, structure, and characters of the plays included. Her notes offer expert guidance to readers encountering these works for the first time.
This study provides a critical edition of the Pervigilium Veneris with a Latin text, translation and commentary. This late-antique poem, the 'Vigil of Venus', is of unknown date and authorship. It exists in four heavily corrupted manuscripts, including the Codex Salmasianus, as part of a collection of later Latin poetry compiled around the 6th Century AD. Considerable attention has been paid to the piece since its first edition in the 16th century, largely on account of its singularity, mysterious origins and enigmatic final stanza, in which the poet suddenly bursts into the piece lamenting his 'lost muse'. Despite this scholarly interest, much work remained to be done in order to arrive at a more solid text of the poem and a more complete understanding of its meaning. This new edition, with detailed commentary notes and a full introduction to the historical and literary contexts of the poem, furthers our knowledge by offering new perspectives and analysis, incorporating existing scholarship and reviving ideas that had previously been set aside.
In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, during a fifty-year stretch sometimes dubbed a Pauline "renaissance" of the western church, six different authors produced over four dozen commentaries in Latin on Paul's epistles. Among them was Jerome, who commented on four epistles (Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, Philemon) in 386 after recently having relocated to Bethlehem from Rome. His commentaries occupy a time-honored place in the centuries-long tradition of Latin-language commenting on Paul's writings. They also constitute his first foray into the systematic exposition of whole biblical books (and his only experiment with Pauline interpretation on this scale), and so they provide precious insight into his intellectual development at a critical stage of his early career before he would go on to become the most prolific biblical scholar of Late Antiquity. This monograph provides the first book-length treatment of Jerome's opus Paulinum in any language. Adopting a cross-disciplinary approach, Cain comprehensively analyzes the commentaries' most salient aspects-from the inner workings of Jerome's philological method and engagement with his Greek exegetical sources, to his recruitment of Paul as an anachronistic surrogate for his own theological and ascetic special interests. One of the over-arching concerns of this book is to explore and to answer, from multiple vantage points, a question that was absolutely fundamental to Jerome in his fourth-century context: what are the sophisticated mechanisms by which he legitimized himself as a Pauline commentator, not only on his own terms but also vis-a-vis contemporary western commentators?
With its ribald chorus of ithyphallic, half-man / half-horse creatures, satyr drama was a peculiar part of the Athenian theatrical experience. Performed three times each year after a trilogy of tragedies, it was an integral part of the 5th- and 4th-century City Dionysia, a large festival in honour of the god Dionysus. Euripides: Cyclops is the first book-length study of this fascinating genre's only complete, extant play, a theatrical version of Odysseus' encounter with the monster Polyphemus. Shaw begins with a look at the history of the genre, following its development from early 6th-century religious processions up to the Hellenistic era. He then offers a comprehensive analysis of the Cyclops' plot and performance, using the text (alongside ancient literary fragments and visual evidence) to determine the original viewing experience: the stage, masks, costumes, actions and emotions. A detailed examination of the text reveals that Euripides associates and distinguishes his version of the story from previous iterations of the myth, especially book nine of Homer's Odyssey. Euripides handles many of the same themes as his predecessors, but he updates the Cyclops for the Athenian stage, adapting his work to reflect and comment upon contemporary religious, philosophical and literary-musical trends.
This book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators. First published in 1990, the collection is now brought up to date with a new introduction by Richard Sorabji. New generations of scholars will benefit from this reissuing of classic essays, including seminal works by major scholars, and the volume gives a comprehensive background to the work of the project on the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, which has published over 100 volumes of translations since 1987 and has disseminated these crucial texts to scholars worldwide. The importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of ancient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence - uncovered in some of the chapters of this book - that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only did they preserve anti-Aristotelian material which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they present Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers.
Written as a companion volume to the author's Oxford Classical Texts edition of Livy, Books 21-25 (OUP, 2016), Liviana consists in large part of detailed discussions of 175 passages which present particular textual difficulties. The aim of these discussions is to elucidate the issues and aid readers in navigating the apparatus criticus of the edition, though the volume also expands on the edition by including a discussion of the conjectures in British Library manuscript Harley 2493 which have been attributed to 'Az' in the Oxford Classical Texts edition as well as five brief chapters listing information deliberately omitted from it: readings of the Puteaneus, identification of the manuscripts described merely as 'det(t)', and precise references for the conjectures ascribed to Weissenborn, Madvig, and H. J. Muller. These sections are preceded by a survey of the editing of Livy from the editio princeps in 1469 up to the present day, and the treatment of the edition is rounded off by a comprehensive list of addenda and corrigenda: in a brief second part, John Briscoe returns to his commentaries on and editions of Books 31-45, with discussion of a textual problem in Book 34 and the text of the fourth decade known to the pre-humanist Lovato Lovati. The volume concludes with further addenda and corrigenda to both his Teubner edition of the fourth decade and the commentaries on Books 38-40 and 41-45, followed by a brief Appendix correcting an error in the entry in Sisenna in Fragments of the Roman Historians.
Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life challenges the common belief that Aristotle's ethics is founded on an appeal to human nature, an appeal that is thought to be intended to provide both substantive ethical advice and justification for the demands of ethics. Sylvia Berryman argues that this is not Aristotle's intent, while resisting the view that Aristotle was blind to questions of the source or justification of his ethical views. She interprets Aristotle's views as a 'middle way' between the metaphysical grounding offered by Platonists, and the scepticism or subjectivist alternatives articulated by others. The commitments implicit in the nature of action figure prominently in this account: Aristotle reinterprets Socrates' famous paradox that no-one does evil willingly, taking it to mean that a commitment to pursuing the good is implicit in the very nature of action.
In a moonlit graveyard somewhere in southern Italy, a soldier removes his clothes in readiness to transform himself into a wolf. He depends upon the clothes to recover his human shape, and so he magically turns them to stone, but his secret is revealed when, back in human form, he is seen to carry a wound identical to that recently dealt to a marauding wolf. In Arcadia a man named Damarchus accidentally tastes the flesh of a human sacrifice and is transformed into a wolf for nine years. At Temesa Polites is stoned to death for raping a local girl, only to return to terrorize the people of the city in the form of a demon in a wolfskin. Tales of the werewolf are by now well established as a rich sub-strand of the popular horror genre; less widely known is just how far back in time their provenance lies. These are just some of the werewolf tales that survive from the Graeco-Roman world, and this is the first book in any language to be devoted to their study. It shows how in antiquity werewolves thrived in a story-world shared by witches, ghosts, demons, and soul-flyers, and argues for the primary role of story-telling-as opposed to rites of passage-in the ancient world's general conceptualization of the werewolf. It also seeks to demonstrate how the comparison of equally intriguing medieval tales can be used to fill in gaps in our knowledge of werewolf stories in the ancient world, thereby shedding new light on the origins of the modern phenomenon. All ancient texts bearing upon the subject have been integrated into the discussion in new English translations, so that the book provides not only an accessible overview for a broad readership of all levels of familiarity with ancient languages, but also a comprehensive sourcebook for the ancient werewolf for the purposes of research and study.
A student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great, Aristotle is one of the towering figures in Western thought. A brilliant thinker with wide-ranging interests, he wrote important works in physics, biology, poetry, politics, morality, metaphysics, and ethics. In the Nicomachean Ethics, which he is said to have dedicated to his son Nicomachus, Aristotle's guiding question is what is the best thing for a human being? His answer is happiness. "Happiness," he wrote, "is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world." But he means not something we feel, not an emotion, but rather an especially good kind of life . Happiness is made up of activities in which we use the best human capacities, both ones that contribute to our flourishing as members of a community, and ones that allow us to engage in god-like contemplation. Contemporary ethical writings on the role and importance of the moral virtues such as courage and justice have drawn inspiration from this work, which also contains important discussions on responsibility, practical reasoning, and on the role of friendship in creating the best life. This new edition combines David Ross's classic translation, lightly revised by Lesley Brown, with a new and invaluable introduction and explanatory notes. A glossary of key terms and comprehensive index, as well as a fully updated bibliography, add further value to this exceptional new edition. Features * This new edition of one of the founding texts of moral philosophy combines David Ross's classic translation, lightly revised by Lesley Brown, with a new and invaluable introduction and notes to aid readers in their understanding of Aristotle's intricate arguments. * Widely admired translation, sparingly revised to retain its qualities while paying special attention to key terms, enhancing understanding, eliminating unintentional ambiguity, and incorporating the latest scholarly thinking. * Invaluable introduction covers Aristotl
"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus / and its
devastation." For sixty years, that's how Homer has begun the
"Iliad" in English, in Richmond Lattimore's faithful
translation--the gold standard for generations of students and
general readers.
This volume presents, for the first time, an edition and facing English translation of all of the stories that belong to the Anglo-Latin corpus of the immensely popular and influential collection of moralized stories from the Middle Ages, known as Gesta Romanorum ('The Deeds of the Romans'). The Anglo-Latin branch of the Gesta is of particular interest and importance as it is the source of the Middle English versions of the stories as well as the earliest English printed version, and includes stories that are either not found in continental Gesta collections or that differ significantly from the continental versions. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 310 has been chosen as the base manuscript for the edition and has been collated with seven other Anglo-Latin manuscripts in order to illustrate the nature and degree of textual variation that is a feature of the Anglo-Latin Gesta tradition, and to facilitate comparison between the Anglo-Latin versions of the stories and the Middle English and Early Modern English versions. An edited text and translation of the stories that do not form part of the collection in Douce 310, some of which are found in only one or two manuscripts, have also been provided. In addition, the volume includes notes that identify the sources, analogues, and folktale motifs of the stories and that explain key literary, cultural, and linguistic features, and an introduction that provides an overview of the history and significance of the Gesta and a detailed account of the Anglo-Latin tradition.
Statius' narrative of the fraternal strife of the Theban brothers Eteocles and Polynices has had a profound influence on Western literature and fascinated generations of scholars and readers. This book studies in detail the poem's view of power and its interaction with historical contexts. Written under Domitian and in the aftermath of the civil war of 69 CE, the Thebaid uses the veil of myth to reflect on the political reality of imperial Rome. The poem offers its contemporary readers, including the emperor, a cautionary tale of kingship and power. Rooted in a pessimistic view of human beings and human relationships, the Thebaid reflects on the harsh necessity of monarchical power as the only antidote to a world always on the verge of returning to chaos. While humans, and especially kings, are fragile and often the prey of irrational passions, the Thebaid expresses the hope that an illuminated sovereign endowed with clementia (mercy) may offer a solution to the political crisis of the Roman empire. Statius' narrative also responds to Domitian's problematic interaction with the emperor Nero, whom Domitian regarded as both a negative model and a secret source of inspiration. With The Fragility of Power, Stefano Rebeggiani offers thoughtful parallels between the actions of the Thebaid and the intellectual activities and political views formulated by the groups of Roman aristocrats who survived Nero's repression. He argues that the poem draws inspiration from an initial phase in Domitian's regime characterized by a positive relationship between the emperor and the Roman elite. Statius creates a number of innovative strategies to negotiate elements of continuity between Domitian and Nero, so as to show that, while Domitian recuperated aspects of Nero's self-presentation, he was no second Nero. Statius' poem interacts with aspects of imperial ideology under Domitian: Statius' allusions to the stories of Phaethon and Hercules engage Domitian's use of solar symbols and his association with Hercules. This book also shows that the Thebaid adapts previous texts (in particular Lucan's Bellum Civile) in order to connect the mythical subject of its narrative with the historical experience of civil war in Rome in 69 CE. By moving past recent solely aesthetic readings of the Thebaid, The Fragility of Power offers a serious and thoughtful addition to the recent scholarship in Statian studies.
When in 1939 Friedrich Klingnera (TM)s new edition of Horatius, published in thea oeBibliotheca Teubnerianaa deposed the hitherto authoritative text edited by Vollmer, this had an epoch-making effect on both teaching and research. Klingnera (TM)s text held a leading position internationally over many decades. Klingnera (TM)s edition was a keystone in particular for students of Latin in the tradition of German grammar schools and universities. Even today, scholars continually have recourse to Klingnera (TM)s constitution of the text. Following numerous enquiries from customers, the publishers have decided to re-issue Klingnera (TM)s Horatius text as an unrevised reprint of the 3rd edition from 1959.
Bold new paths in life and love are forged in nineteenth-century New Zealand in the stirring final chapter of bestselling author Sarah Lark's multigenerational Fire Blossom Saga. It's 1880 in the North Island town of Otaki, where Aroha lives contentedly with her mother, Linda-until a fateful tragedy leaves Aroha traumatized and plagued by a cursed guilt. For the long recovery ahead, Aroha is sent to Rata Station, a thriving sheep farm that Aroha's mother and grandmother once called home. Linda knows it's the perfect place for her daughter to heal, find hope, and start a life she can call her own. On South Island, Aroha soon develops a bond with her relatives, who are looking toward the future, too. Aroha's cousin March is a vivacious, business-minded beauty who wants to take advantage of New Zealand's burgeoning industrial age. Robin is a delicate young man and an aspiring actor as fearful of his father's disapproval as he is desperate to run from it. And then there's Aroha, who sees unexpected opportunity in the growing tourism trade beyond the continental plains. Through personal trials, professional compromises, great love, profound loss, and a struggle to survive, Aroha, March, and Robin will discover their true destinies. A country is in flux, and a generation of ambitious and resilient young dreamers is changing with it in this exhilarating conclusion to an epic saga.
This book argues that Old Comedy's parodic and non-parodic engagement with tragedy, satyr play, and contemporary lyric is geared to enhancing its own status as the preeminent discourse on Athenian art, politics and society. Donald Sells locates the enduring significance of parody in the specific cultural, social and political subtexts that often frame Old Comedy's bold experiments with other genres and drive its rapid evolution in the late fifth century. Close analysis of verbal, visual and narrative strategies reveals the importance of parody and literary appropriation to the particular cultural and political agendas of specific plays. This study's broader, more flexible definition of parody as a visual - not just verbal - and multi-coded performance represents an important new step in understanding a phenomenon whose richness and diversity exceeds the primarily textual and literary terms by which it is traditionally understood.
Completely unabridged, with a new foreword written by Huffington Post writer Carolyn Gregoire, this publication of Meditations is an all-encompassing collection of Marcus Aurelius's works. "Do every deed, speak every word, think every thought in the knowledge that you may end your days any moment." "We have body, soul, and intelligence. To the body belong the senses, to the soul the passions, to the intelligence principles." "Think not as your insulter judges or wishes you to judge: but see things as they truly are." "To pursue impossibilities is madness; and it is impossible that the wicked should not act in some such way as this." "Order not your life as though you had ten thousand years to live. Fate hangs over you. While you live, while yet you may, be good." Meditations is a collection of twelve books written by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. This set of books was originally compiled in the form of private journals. Marcus Aurelius used these notes as personal guides to live by and to better himself as a ruler. He compiled these journals during his time as emperor, and while they were not intended for public consumption, there are valuable lessons to be gleaned from his wisdom. The entries include his views of stoicism-the Hellenistic philosophy devoid of "destructive emotions" that could tamper with logic-and its practical use in ruling and military tactics.
Ajax is perhaps the earliest of Sophocles' tragedies, yet the issues at its heart remain profoundly resonant today. Set in the Greek encampment during the siege of Troy, it traces not just the story of a respected war hero's mental breakdown but (like Sophocles' Antigone) the treatment of an enemy's remains and the management of his memory. Pitting the fate of the individual against not just his own community but the cosmic world of the divine, it explores questions of loyalty and power, compassion and control, integrity and political expediency - and ultimately what it is to be human. In Antiquity the fate of Ajax fascinated writers and artists alike. Today it has assumed a new importance with Sophocles' play being used to help treat military veterans suffering from PTSD. This collection of 12 essays by leading academics from across the UK, US and Ireland draws together many of the themes explored in Ajax, from how Sophocles exploits audiences' awareness of mythology and visual arts, to questions of politics and religion, staging and characterization, changing perceptions of the heroic, and the therapeutic use to which the play is put today. The essays are accompanied by David Stuttard's introduction and performer-friendly, accurate and easily accessible English translation. |
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