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Virgil:Critical Assessments collects eighty-four of the most important articles on Virgil published in the last hundred years, many of which remain the starting-points for modern scholarship and criticism. The set gathers together articles from a wide range of journals in English, as well as from the German and Italian traditions of Virgil studies, some in new translations, which would not otherwise be available. The selections are arranged under the following headings: * general articles, including a discussion of the influence of Lucretius' poetry on the Virgilian corpus * the Eclogues, containing critical interpretations of all ten of Virgil's bucolic poems, an exploration of the Greek sources and a discussion of the complex poetic structure of the Eclogues * the Georgics, incorporating an examination of the agricultural methods detailed in the poem, an exploration of the Augustan and Roman themes implicit in the poem and critical interpretations of all four books * the Aeneid, featuring a discussion of the similarities between Virgil's Aeneas and Homer's Achilles, an exploration of the epic genre and crucial recurring themes in the Aeneid, an examination of Virgilian similes and a study of the Homeric allusions of the poem. In volumes II-IV general studies on the works are followed by items on the individual poems and books.
First published in 1984, John Hardy's important interpretation of
Jane Austen's heroines breaks through the accepted tradition of
viewing the author as merely a rational comedienne of manners. He
argues instead that Jane Austen's greatness lies in her exploration
of human relationships through the subtle and original portrayal of
her heroines. Jane Austen's heroines come to enjoy a distinctive
relationship with the men they eventually marry. Between her lovers
the potential exists for the kind of intimacy that leads to a
shared privacy. Austen's recognition of this represents her special
insight into what is of central importance in human relationships.
Her belief that love and friendship are our only hope of triumphing
over solitude, and the character and integrity of her heroines, are
the major elements which make Jane Austen's novels so satisfying.
First published in 1984, John Hardy's important interpretation
of Jane Austen's heroines breaks through the accepted tradition of
viewing the author as merely a rational comedienne of manners. He
argues instead that Jane Austen's greatness lies in her exploration
of human relationships through the subtle and original portrayal of
her heroines.
Jane Austen's heroines come to enjoy a distinctive relationship
with the men they eventually marry. Between her lovers the
potential exists for the kind of intimacy that leads to a shared
privacy. Austen's recognition of this represents her special
insight into what is of central importance in human relationships.
Her belief that love and friendship are our only hope of triumphing
over solitude, and the character and integrity of her heroines, are
the major elements which make Jane Austen's novels so
satisfying.
The Ancient Lives of the poet Virgil, written in prose (and
sometimes in verse), have long enjoyed great, though controversial,
influence. Modern critics have often been scornful of these Lives,
for trying to construct biography of the poet from allegorical
reading of his verse. Yet some elements of the Lives are trusted,
and quietly adopted as canonical, most notably the dating of
Virgil's death. Some vignettes in the Lives have been cherished for
their image of an emotive poet, as when Virgil, by evoking in verse
the premature death of Augustus' nephew Marcellus, caused the young
man's bereaved mother to faint. Less romantic detail from the
Lives, as of Virgil's privileged material circumstances at the
heart of the Augustan regime, has been less regarded. The present
volume, from a distinguished international team, aims to revalue
the Ancient Lives of Virgil from a variety of angles and in a
variety of scholarly genres. The allegory within the Lives is here
studied for its own sake, and shown to be part of a developed
Graeco-Roman school of interpretation. The literary character of
the verse Life attributed to Phocas is respectfully analysed.
Certain political references within the best-known prose Life, the
Suetonian-Donatan', are shown to be apparently independent of
allegory, and to be worth prospecting for new information on the
poet's personal history. And ideas of Virgil received and developed
with brio in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are here traced
back to the Ancient Lives of the poet composed in Antiquity.
A unique look at how classical notions of ascent and flight
preoccupied early modern British writers and artists Between the
late sixteenth century and early nineteenth century, the British
imagination-poetic, political, intellectual, spiritual and
religious-displayed a pronounced fascination with images of ascent
and flight to the heavens. Celestial Aspirations explores how
British literature and art during that period exploited classical
representations of these soaring themes-through philosophical,
scientific and poetic flights of the mind; the ascension of the
disembodied soul; and the celestial glorification of the ruler.
From textual reachings for the heavens in Spenser, Marlowe,
Shakespeare, Donne and Cowley, to the ceiling paintings of Rubens,
Verrio and Thornhill, Philip Hardie focuses on the ways that the
history, ideologies and aesthetics of the postclassical world
received and transformed the ideas of antiquity. In England,
narratives of ascent appear on the grandest scale in Milton's
Paradise Lost, an epic built around a Christian plot of falling and
rising, and one of the most intensely classicizing works of English
poetry. Examining the reception of flight up to the Romanticism of
Wordsworth and Tennyson, Hardie considers the Whig sublime, as well
as the works of Alexander Pope and Edward Young. Throughout, he
looks at motivations both public and private for aspiring to the
heavens-as a reward for political and military achievement on the
one hand, and as a goal of individual intellectual and spiritual
exertion on the other. Celestial Aspirations offers an intriguing
look at how creative minds reworked ancient visions of time and
space in the early modern era.
This volume is a replacement for "Greece and Rome New Survey on
Virgil" by R.D. Williams. A brief introduction on historical and
bibliographical contexts is followed by three chapters on each of
Virgil's major works - the "Eclogues", "Georgics" and "Aeneid",
providing both a critical survey of each poem and a guide to the
present state of Virgil studies, with extensive bibliographical
notes. A final chapter offers a close reading of the end of "Aeneid
5" as an object lesson in the practical criticism of a discrete
section of text. Each chapter is designed both as a self-contained
introduction to its subject and as a guide to further study.
This is a wide-ranging collection of essays on ancient Roman
literary careers and their reception in later European literature,
with contributions by leading experts. Starting from the three
major Roman models for constructing a literary career - Virgil (the
rota Vergiliana), Horace and Ovid - the volume then looks at
alternative and counter-models in antiquity: Propertius, Juvenal,
Cicero and Pliny. A range of post-antique responses to the ancient
patterns is examined, from Dante to Wordsworth, and including
Petrarch, Shakespeare, Milton, Marvell, Dryden and Goethe. These
chapters pose the question of the continuing relevance of ancient
career models as ideas of authorship change over the centuries,
leading to varying engagements and disengagements with classical
literary careers. The volume also considers other ways of
concluding or extending a literary career, such as bookburning and
figurative metempsychosis.
Lucretius' 'De rerum natura', one of the greatest Latin poems,
worked a powerful fascination on Virgil and Horace, and continued
to be an important model for later poets in antiquity and after,
including Milton. This innovative set of studies on the reception
of Lucretius is organized round three major themes: history and
time, the sublime, and knowledge. The 'De rerum natura' was
foundational for Augustan poets' dealings with history and time in
the new age of the principate. It is also a major document in the
history of the sublime; Virgil and Horace engage with the Lucretian
sublime in ways that exercised a major influence on the sublime in
later antique and Renaissance literature. The 'De rerum natura'
presents a confident account of the ultimate truths of the
universe; later didactic and epic poets respond with varying
degrees of certainty or uncertainty to the challenge of Lucretius'
Epicurean gospel.
The Latin word fama means 'rumour', 'report', 'tradition', as well
as modern English 'fame' or 'renown'. This magisterial and
groundbreaking study in the literary and cultural history of rumour
and renown, by one of the most influential living critics of Latin
poetry, examines the intricate dynamics of their representations
from Homer to Alexander Pope, with a focus on the power struggles
played out within attempts to control the word, both spoken and
written. Central are the personifications of Fama in Virgil and
Ovid and the rich progeny spawned by them, but the book focuses on
a wide range of genres other than epic, and on a variety of modes
of narrating, dramatising, critiquing and illustrating fama.
Authors given detailed readings include Livy, Tacitus, Petrarch,
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Milton.
This is a wide-ranging collection of essays on ancient Roman
literary careers and their reception in later European literature,
with contributions by leading experts. Starting from the three
major Roman models for constructing a literary career - Virgil (the
rota Vergiliana), Horace and Ovid - the volume then looks at
alternative and counter-models in antiquity: Propertius, Juvenal,
Cicero and Pliny. A range of post-antique responses to the ancient
patterns is examined, from Dante to Wordsworth, and including
Petrarch, Shakespeare, Milton, Marvell, Dryden and Goethe. These
chapters pose the question of the continuing relevance of ancient
career models as ideas of authorship change over the centuries,
leading to varying engagements and disengagements with classical
literary careers. The volume also considers other ways of
concluding or extending a literary career, such as bookburning and
figurative metempsychosis.
Lucretius' didactic poem De rerum natura ('On the Nature of
Things') is an impassioned and visionary presentation of the
materialist philosophy of Epicurus, and one of the most powerful
poetic texts of antiquity. After its rediscovery in 1417 it became
a controversial and seminal work in successive phases of literary
history, the history of science, and the Enlightenment. In this
2007 Cambridge Companion experts in the history of literature,
philosophy and science discuss the poem in its ancient contexts and
in its reception both as a literary text and as a vehicle for
progressive ideas. The Companion is designed both as an accessible
handbook for the general reader who wishes to learn about
Lucretius, and as a series of stimulating essays for students of
classical antiquity and its reception. It is completely accessible
to the reader who has only read Lucretius in translation.
Ovid's poetry is haunted obsessively by a sense both of the living
fullness of the texts and of the emptiness of these 'insubstantial
pageants'. This major study touches on the whole of Ovid's output,
from the Amores to the exile poetry, and is an overarching
treatment of illusionism and the textual conjuring of presence in
the corpus. Modern critical and theoretical approaches, accompanied
by close readings of individual passages, examine the topic from
the points of view of poetics and rhetoric, aesthetics, the
psychology of desire, philosophy, religion and politics. There are
also case studies of the reception of Ovid's poetics of illusion in
Renaissance and modern literature and art. The book will interest
students and scholars of Latin and later European literatures. All
foreign languages are accompanied by translations.
A companion to one of the greatest writers of classical antiquity, and arguably the single most influential ancient poet for post-classical literature and culture, is long overdue. Chapters by leading authorities discuss the backgrounds and contexts for Ovid, the individual works, and his influence on later literature and art. Coverage of essential information is combined with exciting new critical approaches.
This major study of Ovid's poetry is the first significant analysis of the importance of illusion and the conjuring presence throughout his work. Modern theoretical approaches examine the topic from the points of view of poetics and rhetoric, aesthetics, the psychology of desire, philosophy, religion, and politics. There are also case studies of the reception of Ovid's poetics of illusion in Renaissance and modern literature and art. The book will interest those studying Latin and later European literature. Foreign language sections are accompanied by English translations.
Aeneid IX marks the beginning of the full-scale narrative of the
war between the Trojans and Turnus' Italians which occupies the
last quarter of the epic. Two days during which Turnus launches a
siege-assault on the Trojan camp while Aeneas is absent are
separated by the nocturnal interlude of the ill-fated expedition of
the romantic young Trojans Nisus and Euryalus. In this, the first
major single-volume commentary in English on the book, Dr Hardie
explores Virgil's transformation of Homeric models of battle
narrative in the service of contemporary Roman ideology. The volume
includes a detailed linguistic and thematic commentary on the text,
and an introduction consisting of a series of interpretative essays
on the book.
This short book is a study of the epic tradition of the early Roman
empire and specifically of the epic poems of Ovid, Lucan, Statius,
Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus. It explores the use they made
of Virgil's Aeneid, an epic interpreted not just as a monument to
the heroic construction of the principate, but also as a
problematical text that challenged succeeding epic poets to a
reworking of the issues that it dramatised: the possibility of
establishing a lasting age of peace, the relation between power and
the sacred, the difficulties of distinguishing between good and its
evil parodies, anxiety about imperial and poetic succession. The
author draws on modern critical and theoretical approaches to argue
for the vitality and interest of works which have all too often
been relegated to a second division of literary history.
Lucretius' didactic poem De rerum natura ('On the Nature of
Things') is an impassioned and visionary presentation of the
materialist philosophy of Epicurus, and one of the most powerful
poetic texts of antiquity. After its rediscovery in 1417 it became
a controversial and seminal work in successive phases of literary
history, the history of science, and the Enlightenment. In this
2007 Cambridge Companion experts in the history of literature,
philosophy and science discuss the poem in its ancient contexts and
in its reception both as a literary text and as a vehicle for
progressive ideas. The Companion is designed both as an accessible
handbook for the general reader who wishes to learn about
Lucretius, and as a series of stimulating essays for students of
classical antiquity and its reception. It is completely accessible
to the reader who has only read Lucretius in translation.
A companion to one of the greatest writers of classical antiquity, and arguably the single most influential ancient poet for post-classical literature and culture, is long overdue. Chapters by leading authorities discuss the backgrounds and contexts for Ovid, the individual works, and his influence on later literature and art. Coverage of essential information is combined with exciting new critical approaches.
The Latin word fama means 'rumour', 'report', 'tradition', as well
as modern English 'fame' or 'renown'. This magisterial and
groundbreaking study in the literary and cultural history of rumour
and renown, by one of the most influential living critics of Latin
poetry, examines the intricate dynamics of their representations
from Homer to Alexander Pope, with a focus on the power struggles
played out within attempts to control the word, both spoken and
written. Central are the personifications of Fama in Virgil and
Ovid and the rich progeny spawned by them, but the book focuses on
a wide range of genres other than epic, and on a variety of modes
of narrating, dramatising, critiquing, and illustrating fama.
Authors given detailed readings include Livy, Tacitus, Petrarch,
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Milton.
After centuries of near silence, Latin poetry underwent a
renaissance in the late fourth and fifth centuries CE evidenced in
the works of key figures such as Ausonius, Claudian, Prudentius,
and Paulinus of Nola. This period of resurgence marked a milestone
in the reception of the classics of late Republican and early
imperial poetry. In Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique
Latin Poetry, Philip Hardie explores the ways in which poets
writing on non-Christian and Christian subjects used the classical
traditions of Latin poetry to construct their relationship with
Rome's imperial past and present, and with the by now not-so-new
belief system of the state religion, Christianity. The book pays
particular attention to the themes of concord and discord, the
"cosmic sense" of late antiquity, novelty and renouatio, paradox
and miracle, and allegory. It is also a contribution to the ongoing
discussion of whether there is an identifiably late antique poetics
and a late antique practice of intertextuality. Not since Michael
Robert's classic The Jeweled Style has a single book had so much to
teach about the enduring power of Latin poetry in late antiquity.
The Oxford History of Classical Reception (OHCREL) is designed to
offer a comprehensive investigation of the numerous and diverse
ways in which literary texts of the classical world have stimulated
responses and refashioning by English writers. Covering the full
range of English literature from the early Middle Ages to the
present day, OHCREL both synthesizes existing scholarship and
presents cutting-edge new research, employing an international team
of expert contributors for each of the five volumes. OHCREL
endeavours to interrogate, rather than inertly reiterate,
conventional assumptions about literary 'periods', the processes of
canon-formation, and the relations between literary and
non-literary discourse. It conceives of 'reception' as a complex
process of dialogic exchange and, rather than offering large
cultural generalizations, it engages in close critical analysis of
literary texts. It explores in detail the ways in which English
writers' engagement with classical literature casts as much light
on the classical originals as it does on the English writers' own
cultural context. This second volume covers the years 1558-1660,
and explores the reception of the ancient genres and authors in
English Renaissance literature, engaging with the major, and many
of the minor, writers of the period, including Shakespeare,
Marlowe, Spenser, and Jonson. Separate chapters examine the
Renaissance institutions and contexts which shape the reception of
antiquity, and an annotated bibliography provides substantial
material for further reading.
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