If Greek tragedies are meant to be so tragic, why do they so often end so well? Here starts the story of a long and incredible misunderstanding. Out of the hundreds of tragedies that were performed, only 32 were preserved in full. Who chose them and why? Why are the lost ones never taken into account? This extremely unusual scholarly book tells us an Umberto Eco-like story about the lost tragedies. By arguing that they would have given a radically different picture, William Marx makes us think in completely new ways about one of the major achievements of Western culture. In this very readable, stimulating, lively, and even sometimes funny book, he explores parallels with Japanese theatre, resolves the enigma of catharsis, sheds a new light on psychoanalysis. In so doing, he tells also the story of the misreadings of our modernity, which disconnected art from the body, the place, and gods. Two centuries ago philosophers transformed Greek tragedies into an ideal archetype, now they want to read them as self-help handbooks, but all are equally wrong: Greek tragedy is definitely not what you think, and we may never understand it, but this makes it matter all the more to us.

This collection of essays tackles the issues that arise when multilingualism meets translation and discusses the findings with a particular focus on Slavonic migrant languages. Despite its high relevance from both the theoretical and the applied perspective, the intersection of multilingualism and translation has been rather neglected in international research on multilingualism. This volume intends to create a new angle within this wide field of research and to systematize the most relevant approaches and ideas on this topic in international Slavonic studies.

A dynamic and necessary new translation of Sophocles' unsparing drama about a desperate wife's lethal scheme to keep her warrior husband's wavering love

In Women of Trakhis, Sophocles challenges the very ideal of Greek manhood, portraying the classic mythological hero Herakles as a man equally capable of courageous feats and savage acts.

Deianeira is an ordinary woman married to Herakles, the most feared and storied hero of the ancient world. To preserve their marriage she must constantly struggle to keep her husband's affection, cope with her anxieties about his dangerous profession as a hired killer, and endure his amorous pursuits of other women. Though she knows he is resourceful and violent, with a merciless temperament and legendary strength, she attempts to bind him permanently to her with a love potion from a source she should never have trusted, and thus loses everything she values.

This extraordinary new translation by Robert Bagg presents a classic drama in a modern idiom while remaining faithful to the original Greek. Women of Trakhis preserves the depth and subtlety of the dramatist's characters and ideas, and the lyricism of his poetry. This is Sophocles for a new generation.

This book explores the environment and cultural context of Colombian political novels published between 1951 and 1987. Challenging the label of "novelas de la violencia", the author analyses them as products of their own historical time and takes into account their broader implications, such as their representation of the society they narrate. These novels are shown to be the product of political and ideological issues: the real preoccupations of the writers were the balance of power, social dysfunctionality and the need for reform in a society transitioning from rural to urban. These issues are traced in a close reading of representative novels, in which feature letrados and intellectuals and their role in the evolution of society, culture, literature and power in twentieth-century Colombia. With its critical-theoretical approach, this book constitutes a significant and innovative contribution to the debate on Latin American culture and literature.

Shakespeare's Tragedies Reviewed explores how the recognition of spectator interests by the playwright has determined the detailed character of Shakespeare tragedies. Utilizing Shakespeare's European models and contemporaries, including Cinthio and Lope de Vega, and following forms such as Aristotle's second, more popular style of tragedy (a double ending of punishment for the evil and honor for the good), Hugh Macrae Richmond elicits radical revision of traditional interpretations of the scripts. The analysis includes a major shift in emphasis from conventionally tragic concerns to a more varied blend of tones, characterizations, and situations, designed to hold spectator interest rather than to meet neoclassical standards of coherence, focus, and progression. This reinterpretation also bears on modern staging and directorial emphasis, challenging the relevance of traditional norms of tragedy to production of Renaissance drama. The stress shifts to plays' counter-movements to tragic tones, and to scripts' contrasting positive factors to common downbeat interpretations - such as the role of humor in King Lear and the significance of residual leadership in the tragedies as seen in the roles of Malcolm, Edgar, Cassio, and Octavius, as well as the broader progressions in such continuities as those within Shakespeare's Roman world from Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra to Cymbeline. It becomes apparent that the authority of the spectator in such Shakespearean titles as What You Will and As You Like It may bear meaningfully on interpretation of more plays than just the comedies.

This volume of essays in honour of Professor Emma Harris explores various branches of British history from 1700 to the present. The range of topics reflects the varied academic interests of the authors, who are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Harris. The essays take us on a journey through time, beginning with Queen Anne, eighteenth-century translations of literature, literary criticism, and ethnographical writings on witches. From there we proceed to Lord Byron, the outcast playwright, Victorian Englishness, modernist foreignness, the effect of World War I on language, and World War II on fashion. The collection also incorporates reflections on subcultural studies and on the fascination of the mystery of Jack the Ripper.

Why were runes invented? What did the Germanic peoples of southern Scandinavia speak during the first centuries CE? Can the earliest runic inscriptions be used to learn something about their dialects, and can we extract other information from their study as a corpus? The Early Runic Inscriptions: Their Western Features gives answers to these questions through an analysis of the earliest runic inscriptions found mainly in Denmark, and later in England and on the continent up to the seventh century. This analysis offers a novel tracing of the initial appearance and later establishment of West Germanic dialectal features in an area and time usually referred to as having a more Northern linguistic identity. The earliest runic inscriptions are an invaluable source of information about the state of the Germanic dialects during the first seven centuries of our era. They also provide insights about some of the social customs of different Germanic groups during this period, such as the development of the purposes of runic writing or personal-name formation. Using a comparative and comprehensive methodology, this book combines linguistics with other disciplines to cast as much light as possible on these oftentimes single-worded inscriptions.

Eutocius of Ascalon (4th cent. AD) accompanied his edition of the first four books of Apollonius of Perga's Konika with a commentary. His work is relevant to the history of conic sections and important for the textual transmission of Apollonius. This new critical edition contains the first translation into a modern language and complements the Graeco-Arabic edition of the first four books of the Konika (SGA 1-2).

The third book of Lucretius' great poem on the workings of the universe is devoted entirely to expounding the implications of Epicurus' dictum that death does not matter, 'is nothing to us'. The soul is not immortal: it no more exists after the dissolution of the body than it had done before its birth. Only if this fact is accepted can men rid themselves of irrational fears and achieve the state of ataraxia, freedom from mental disturbance, on which the Epicurean definition of pleasure was based. To present this case Lucretius deploys the full range of poetic and rhetorical registers, soberly prohibitive, artfully decorative or passionately emotive as best suits his argument, reinforcing it with vivid and compelling imagery. This new edition has been completely revised, with a considerably enlarged Commentary and a new supplementary introduction taking account of the great amount of new scholarship of the last forty years.

Sing of rage, Goddess, that bane of Akhilleus, Peleus' son, which caused untold pain for Akhaians, sent down throngs of powerful spirits to Aides, war-chiefs rendered the prize of dogs and everysort of bird.

Edward McCrorie's new translation of Homer's classic epic of the Trojan War captures the falling rhythms of a doomed Troy. McCrorie presents the sundry epithets and resonant symbols of Homer's verse style and remains as close to the Greek's meaning as research allows.

The work is an epic with a flexible contemporary feel to it, capturing the wide-ranging tempos of the original. It underscores the honor of soldiers and dwells upon the machinations of "Moira," each man's and woman's portion in life.

Noted Homeric scholar Erwin Cook contributes a substantial introduction and extensive notes written to guide both students and general readers through relevant elements of ancient Greek history and culture. This version of the " Iliad" is ideal for readings and performances.

Migration as a process has achieved increasing attention in the context of nation-states and globalisation. In linguistics the field of language contact is particularly associated with this phenomenon. This book investigates the connection between language usage, migration, space, in particular urban space, and the constitution of cultural identity. Two corpora of Andean migrants' Spanish conversations in Lima and in Madrid are analysed. The resulting comparative analysis provides the material for considerations on language contact, code copying, discourse strategies etc. Throughout the book a new theoretical approach based on linguistic ecology is used. It includes the concept of a general expanded feature pool, which is the basis for language use and identity constitution for migrants.

One of the most celebrated plays of ancient Athens in a vivid and dynamic new translation by award-winning poet James Scully

Fate, free will, and the sacredness of the social bond are all challenged and reassessed in this tale torn from the midst of the Trojan War.

The soldier Philoktetes was abandoned with a festering, god-inflicted foot wound on the desolate island of Lemnos by the Greeks under Odysseus, who could no longer stand the stench or the soldier's screams of pain. Now, ten years later, the Greeks realize they will never take Troy without Philoktetes and the bow given to him by Herakles. But Philoktetes refuses to rejoin the Greek army, vowing to kill his enemy Odysseus instead--so Neoptolemos, son of the slain hero Achilles, is dispatched to trick Philoktetes into returning. Philoktetes and Neoptolemos, however, are constantly at sea, their minds shifting and re-shifting amid mixed feelings, deceptions, suspicions, and qualms as they struggle with themselves and their strangely evolving relationship.

James Scully's remarkable translation of Sophocles' classic Philoktetes achieves an accurate yet accessibly idiomatic rendering of the Greek original, suited for reading, teaching, or performing. This is Sophocles for a new generation, certain to strike a powerful chord with contemporary audiences everywhere.

Weissrussland und die Ukraine gelten als zweisprachig. Millionen von Menschen in beiden Landern sprechen aber oft weder Weissrussisch bzw. Ukrainisch noch Russisch in Reinform. Vielmehr praktizieren sie eine gemischte weissrussisch-russische bzw. ukrainisch-russische Rede. Diese Mischungen aus genetisch eng verwandten Sprachen werden in Weissrussland Trasjanka und in der Ukraine Surzyk genannt. Der bekannte ukrainische Schriftsteller Jurij Andruchovyc hat das Phanomen in seiner Heimat als Blutschandekind des Bilingualismus angesprochen, also eine Metapher des Inzests kreiert. Darin klingt die verbreitete negative Bewertung der Sprachmischung an. Ihr ist der Band gewidmet. Er umfasst Beitrage von Autoren aus Weissrussland und der Ukraine sowie aus sieben anderen Landern.

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.

Nemesianus s didactic poem about hunting, written in 283-84 AD, is based in its structure and conception on Vergil s Georgics, the classical model for the genre. In its presentation of hunting as a leisure sport, the Cynegetica provides an un-heroic counterpoint to earlier hunting poems. This new critical edition includes extensive and detailed philological commentary. It also considers broader questions, such as the relationship to cynegetic literature, genre-related elements, and the author s self-perception."

Totalitarian Speech brings together a range of texts on totalitarian manipulations of language. The author analyzes various phenomena, from the hateful rhetoric of Nazi Germany to the obfuscating newspeak of communist Poland, finding certain common characteristics. Above all, totalitarian speech in its diverse manifestations imposes an all-embracing worldview and an associated set of dichotomous divisions from an omniscient and authoritative perspective. This volume collects the work of over three decades, including essays written during the communist era and more recent pieces assessing the legacy of totalitarian ways of thinking in contemporary Poland.

Aristotle (384-322 BC), the great Greek thinker, researcher, and educator, ranks among the most important and influential figures in the history of philosophy, theology, and science. He joined Plato's Academy in Athens in 367 and remained there for twenty years. After spending three years at the Asian court of a former pupil, Hermeias, he was appointed by Philip of Macedon in 343/2 to become tutor of his teenaged son, Alexander. After Philip's death in 336, Aristotle became head of his own school, the Lyceum at Athens, whose followers were known as the Peripatetics. Because of anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens after Alexander's death in 323, he withdrew to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died in 322. Aristotle wrote voluminously on a broad range of subjects analytical, practical, and theoretical. Rhetoric, probably composed while he was still a member of Plato's Academy, is the first systematic approach to persuasive public speaking based in dialectic, on which he had recently written the first manual. This edition of Aristotle's Rhetoric, which replaces the original Loeb edition by John Henry Freese, supplies a Greek text based on that of Rudolf Kassel, a fresh translation, and ample annotation fully current with modern scholarship.

Pliny the Younger's nine-book Epistles is a masterpiece of Roman prose. Often mined as a historical and pedagogical sourcebook, this collection of 'private' letters is now finding recognition as a rich and rewarding work in its own right. The second book is a typically varied yet taut suite of miniatures, including among its twenty letters the trial of Marius Priscus and Pliny's famous portrait of his Laurentine villa. This edition, the first to address a complete book of Epistles in over a century, presents a Latin text together with an introduction and commentary intended for students, teachers and scholars. With clear linguistic explanations and full literary analysis, it invites readers to a fresh appreciation of Pliny's lettered art.

This collection of essays analyzes the construction of the fall of Rome from a range of perspectives native to different disciplines. Subjects addressed include comparable discourses dating from the earlier history of Rome, the perception of this historical moment by writers living at the time it occurred, and its reception in Byzantium and Western Europe during the Middle Ages."

How is the history of antiquity told, and what is the role of narrativity in transforming the image of antiquity? This volume addresses the highly charged intersection between experience, narrative, and history that may be apprehended when we consider the great diversity of narrative practices in literature, the visual arts, and historiography. Individual chapters explore transformations in the imagery, content, stories, and narrative modes of antiquity as they were appropriated in medieval and early modern chronicles, images, and epics.