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This book investigates one of the most polysemic Latin words, humanitas. While the first chapter briefly retraces the history of humanitas from its origins, the book as a whole focuses on its uses in the pagan literary texts from the Trajanic (late first century CE) to the Theodosian age (late fourth century CE). The aim of this study is to explore the extent to which the different meanings usually attributed to humanitas by dictionaries (roughly 'human nature', 'education and culture', 'philanthropy') are much more nuanced and in continuous relation with one another, and how the use of humanitas by some authors often performs clear rhetorical and/or ideological strategies. This book is ther...
Reading Roman Declamation: Seneca the Elder provides a comprehensive critical overview of Roman declamation, as transmitted through Seneca the Elder's Controversiae and Suasoriae, in fifteen accessible and up-to-date chapters by leading international scholars that seek to define the fundamentals of declamation as a literary genre.
Cicero has played a pivotal role in shaping Western culture. His public persona, his self-portrait as model of Roman prose, philosopher, and statesman, has exerted a durable and profound impact on the educational system and the formation of the ruling class over the centuries. Joining up with recent studies on the reception of Cicero, this volume approaches the figure of Cicero from a ‘biographical’, more than ‘philological’, perspective and considers the multiple ways by which different ages reacted to Cicero and created their ‘Ciceros’. From Cicero’s lifetime to our times, it focuses on how the image of Cicero was revisited and reworked by intellectuals and men of culture, wh...
Cicero's dialogue on oratory responded to the political crisis of Julius Caesar but ultimately invented 'modern' literary history.
This new and important introduction to Seneca provides a systematic and concise presentation of this author’s philosophical works and his tragedies. It provides handbook style surveys of each genuine or attributed work, giving dates and brief descriptions, and taking into account the most important philosophical and philological issues. In addition, they provide accounts of the major steps in the history of their later influence. The cultural background of the texts and the most important problem areas within the philosophic and tragic corpus of Seneca are dealt with in separate essays.
As a genre situated at the crossroad of rhetoric and fiction declamatio offers the freedom to experiment with new forms of discourse. Placing the literariness of declamatio into the spotlight, this volume showcases declamation as a realm of genuine literary creation with its own theoretical underpinning, literary technique and generic conventions. Focusing on the oeuvre of Calpurnius Flaccus this volume demonstrates that these texts constitute a genre on their own, the rhetorical and literary framework of which remains not yet fully mapped. Contributions from an international group of leading scholars from the field of Roman Literature and Rhetoric will explore the question of how Roman Declamation functions as a literary genre. This volume investigates the literary technique and the generic conventions of declamatio in its social, pedagocial and ethical context to determine “the poetics” of Roman Declamation. This volume is of interest to students and scholars of Rhetoric and Roman Literature. If you are interested in Roman Declamation, we also recommend the volume on the Declamations Ascribed to Quintilian by the same editors to you.
This volume offers a coherent collection of 26 papers presented at an international conference held in November 2010, exploring the latest achievements of formal and comparative linguistics applied to the teaching of Latin. The three sections (syntax and morphology, semantics and pragmatics, history and theory of teaching) compare Latin with different ancient and modern languages, aiming to represent grammar rules as the product of mental processes. The book is addressed to linguists, teachers and students, who are looking for new perspectives to update their approach to classical Latin.
Karl Valentin once asked: "How can it be that only as much happens as fits into the newspaper the next day?" He focussed on the problem that information of the past has to be organised, arranged and above all: selected and put into form in order to be perceived as a whole. In this sense, the process of selection must be seen as the fundamental moment – the “Urszene” – of making History. This book shows selection as highly creative act. With the richness of early medieval material it can be demonstrated that creative selection was omnipresent and took place even in unexpected text genres. The book demonstrates the variety how premodern authors dealt with "unimportant", unpleasant or unwanted past. It provides a general overview for regions and text genres in early medieval Europe.
This title brings together contributions which rethink the role of public speech in the Roman Republic. With careful attention to a range of evidence, it shines a light on orators and considers the oratory of diplomatic exchanges and impromptu heckling and repartee alongside the familiar genres of forensic and political speech.