Prudentius' Psychomachia, written about A.D. 405, has been studied by classicists, medievalists, and general literary historians. Nevertheless, scholars have barely explored the allegory's inner workings or related it to its historical context. The present study remedies this critical neglect and its attendant misreadings. The author arrives at a coherent, unified interpretation by examining the work's major features in relation to the poet's life and times. He contends that the poet balanced an affirmation of Christian allegory with an ironic negation of pagan literary tradition. For this remarkable achievement his audience was the aristocracy, still largely pagan at a time of intense antagonism between the Church and old Roman religious institutions. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Prudentius' Psychomachia, written about A.D. 405, has been studied by classicists, medievalists, and general literary historians. Nevertheless, scholars have barely explored the allegory's inner workings or related it to its historical context. The present study remedies this critical neglect and its attendant misreadings. The author arrives at a coherent, unified interpretation by examining the work's major features in relation to the poet's life and times. He contends that the poet balanced an affirmation of Christian allegory with an ironic negation of pagan literary tradition. For this remarkable achievement his audience was the aristocracy, still largely pagan at a time of intense antagonism between the Church and old Roman religious institutions. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Despite its global popularity, rap has received little scholarly attention in terms of its poetic features, perhaps because rap is so demonstrative and powerful, or because poetry scholars have been slow to recognize rap's poetic worth, or uncertainty about its legitimacy as a form of poetry. Rhymes in the Flow systematically analyzes the poetics (rap beats, rhythms, rhymes, verse and song structures) of some 6,000 lines of rap lyrics to provide new insights on rap artistry and performance. While most scholarship on rap has focused on its historical and cultural dimensions, Rhymes in the Flow traces rap's deepest roots and stylistic evolution-from Anglo-Saxon poetry to Lil Wayne-and contextualizes its complex poetics. The book is a collaboration between two rap poetry aficionados separated in age by fifty years. Poetry professor Macklin Smith and his undergraduate student Aurko Joshi discovered in a University of Michigan poetry course their shared passion for the sounds and beats of hip hop and have been collaborating ever since. Through their efforts, Rhymes in the Flow shows how rap, at times disparaged as an art form, is in fact a more complex and complicated, versatile and nuanced genre than has been previously appreciated.