It has seemed at times that there is no neutral territory between those who see Bakhtin as the practitioner of a kind of neo-Marxist, or at least materialist, deconstruction and those who look at the same texts and see a defender of traditional, liberal humanist values and classical conceptions of order, a conservative in the true sense of the term. Arising from a conference under the same title held at Texas Tech University, Carnivalizing Difference seeks to explore the actual and possible relationships between Bakhtinian theory and cultural practice. The introduction explores the changing configurations of our understanding of Bakhtin's work in the context of recent theory and outlines how that understanding can inform, and be informed by, culture both ancient and modern. Eleven articles, spanning a wide range of periods and cultural forms, then address these issues in detail, revealing the ways in which Bakhtinian thought illuminates, sometimes obfuscates, but always challenges.

It has seemed at times that there is no neutral territory between those who see Bakhtin as the practitioner of a kind of neo-Marxist, or at least materialist, deconstruction and those who look at the same texts and see a defender of traditional, liberal humanist values and classical conceptions of order, a conservative in the true sense of the term. Arising from a conference under the same title held at Texas Tech University, Carnivalizing Difference seeks to explore the actual and possible relationships between Bakhtinian theory and cultural practice. The introduction explores the changing configurations of our understanding of Bakhtin's work in the context of recent theory and outlines how that understanding can inform, and be informed by, culture both ancient and modern. Eleven articles, spanning a wide range of periods and cultural forms, then address these issues in detail, revealing the ways in which Bakhtinian thought illuminates, sometimes obfuscates, but always challenges.

The comedies of Aristophanes are known not only for their boldly imaginative plots but for the ways in which they incorporate and orchestrate a wide variety of literary genres and speech styles. Unlike the writers of tragedy, who prefer a uniformly elevated tone, Aristophanes articulates his dramatic dialogue with striking literary and linguistic juxtapositions, producing a carnivalesque medley of genres that continually forces both audience and reader to readjust their perspectives. In this energetic and original study, Charles Platter interprets the complexities of Aristophanes' work through the lens of Mikhail Bakhtin's critical writing.

This book charts a new course for Aristophanic comedy, taking its lead from the work of Bakhtin. Bakhtin describes the way multiple voices -- vocabularies, tones, and styles of language originating in different social classes and contexts -- appear and interact within literary texts. He argues that the dynamic quality of literature arises from the dialogic relations that exist among these voices. Although Bakhtin applied his theory primarily to the epic and the novel, Platter finds in his work profound implications for Aristophanic comedy, where stylistic heterogeneity is the genre's lifeblood.

In this collection of provocative essays, historians and literary theorists assess the influence of Michel Foucault, particularly his "History of Sexuality," on the study of classics. Foucault's famous work presents a bold theory of sexuality for both ancient and modern times, and yet until now it has remained under-explored and insufficiently analyzed. By bringing together the historical knowledge, philological skills, and theoretical perspectives of a wide range of scholars, this collection enables the reader to explore Foucault's model of Greek culture and see how well his interpretation accounts for the full range of evidence from Greece and Rome. Not only do the essays bring to light the assumptions, ideas, and practices that constituted the intimate lives of men and women in the ancient Mediterranean world, but they also demonstrate the importance of the" History of Sexuality" for fields as diverse as Greco-Roman antiquity, women's history, cultural studies, philosophy, and modern sexuality.

The essays include "Situating "The History of Sexuality"" (the editors), "Taking the Sex Out of Sexuality: Foucault's Failed History" (Joel Black), ""Incipit Philosophia"" (Alain Vizier), "The Subject in Antiquity after Foucault" (Page duBois), "This Myth Which Is Not One: Construction of Discourse in Plato's "Symposium"" (Jeffrey S. Carnes), "Foucault's "History of Sexuality" A Useful Theory for Women?" (Amy Richlin), "Catullan Consciousness, the 'Care of the Self, ' and the Force of the Negative in History" (Paul Allen Miller), "Reversals of Platonic Love in Petronius' "Satyricon"" (Daniel B. McGlathery), and an essay from "Dislocating Masculinity" (Lin Foxhall).

Examines some neglected Latin texts produced during the thousand years after the end of most classicists' field-of-view in the fifth century, looking at what ideological values are explicitly encoded by the feminine and the female body. The 11 essays consider such works as Hrotswitha's Clamor Validus Gandeshemensis, Raimon de Cornet's 14-century m