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This book explores the body’s physical limits and the ways in which the confines of the body are delineated, transgressed, or controlled in literary and philosophical texts. Drawing on classics, philosophy, religious studies, medieval studies, and critical theory and examining material ranging from Homer to Game of Thrones, this volume facilitates an interdisciplinary investigation into how the boundaries of the body define the human form in language. This volume’s essays suggest that the body’s meaning is perhaps never more evident than in the violation of its wholeness. The boundaries of the body are areas of transition between states and are therefore vulnerable. As individuals find themselves isolated from their world and one another, their bodies regularly allow for physical interactions, incur transgressions and violations, and undergo profound transformations. Thus sympathy, sexuality, disease, and violence are among the main themes of the volume, which, ultimately, reexamines the place of the body in our understanding of what it means to be human.
Promotes a bilingual (Latin/Greek) focus to shed new light on the poetics and aesthetics of late antique poetry.
Discusses ancient religious texts, especially the so-called 'non-canonical' texts, by focusing on how they were used or functioned in Early Judaism and Early Christianity.
Examining Aelia Eudocia's writings as a unified whole and in context, Brian P. Sowers reveals an exceptional author representing three late-antique communities: poets interested in transforming classical literature; Christians positioned outside traditional power structures; and women who challenged social, religious, and literary boundaries.
Noted scholars in the field explore the rich variety of late antique literature With contributions from leading scholars in the field, A Companion to Late Antique Literature presents a broad review of late antique literature. The late antique period encompasses a significant transitional era in literary history from the mid-third century to the early seventh century. The Companion covers notable Greek and Latin texts of the period and provides a varied overview of literature written in six other late antique languages. Comprehensive in scope, this important volume presents new research, methodologies, and significant debates in the field. The Companion explores the histories, forms, features...
Explores how binary gender and behaviours of gender were actively challenged in classical antiquityProvides a focus on gender on its own terms and outside the context of sex and sexuality Offers an interdisciplinary approach, appealing to Classicists, Ancient Historians, and Archaeologists, as well as audiences working outside the ancient world, in Gender Studies, Transgender Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies, Anthropology, and Women's StudiesCovers a broad time period (6th c. BCE - 3rd c. CE) and addresses both textual evidence and material culture (vases, sculpture, wall painting)Provides history of gender identities and behaviours previously ignored or suppressed by disciplinary practicesGender ide...
Through an examination of paratextuality in late antique literature, this collection of essays reconsiders the importance of the written material that appears in the margins of ancient poetic texts. Paratexts such as headings, prefaces, letters et al. have largely been skimmed over or completely disregarded in favour of the main ancient work. However, there is now a new wave of scholarship that takes into consideration the reading of books in line with the different 'margins', or 'frames', and the structures (de-)constructed by them. A salient feature of late antique poetry is the presence of the paratextual. For example, the prefaces of Ausonius, Claudian, Avianus, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Venantius Fortunatus are studied in their own right by the contributors, who present new understandings and interpretations of the aims of these late antique writers. In keeping with its subject matter, this volume presents a multitude of approaches intended not only to look at, but rather to read and take seriously the paratextual material. The result is a reframing of our appreciation of the marginal matter, which has up until this point been overlooked.
This volume makes a powerful argument for epitome (combining textual dismemberment and re-composition) as a broad hermeneutic field encompassing multifarious historical, conceptual and aesthetical concerns. The contributors gather from across the globe to present case studies of the 'summing up' of cultural artefacts, literary and artistic, in epitomic writing, and as a collective they demonstrate the importance of this genre that has been largely overlooked by scholars. The volume is divided into five sections: the first showcases the broad range of fields from which epitomic analysis can be made, from classics to postmodernism to cultural memory studies; the second focuses in on epitome as...
Replete with fresh immediacy, rich spiritual content, innovation and occasional humour, these talks were given at a time when Rudolf Steiner was preparing for independence from the Theosophical Society. Alongside the much-loved lectures 'Nervousness and Ego Development' – in which Steiner shares practical exercises for coping with contemporary life's challenges – and 'Love and Its Significance in the World', the collection finds a focal point in descriptions of the 'Three Soul Paths to Christ'. The first of these is via the Gospels, the second through 'Inner Experience' and the third 'Initiation', which Steiner characterizes as a path transcending religion. He further elaborates these th...
Focusing on travel narratives as a setting for spelling out both cultural exchanges and identity building, the present volume maps a variety of strategies employed in travelogues by Christians and Jews in the late antique Roman East. The first part sheds light on the shared cultural background – folkloric or mythic – reflected in late antique Jewish and Christian sea-travel stories, and the various attempts to adapt it to a specific religious agenda. While the comparative analysis of the sources from two textual communities emphasizes their different religious agendas, it also allows for restoring patterns of the broader background with which they converse. The second part highlights Christian perceptions of the Land of Israel in missionary enterprises and in the eschatological visions. The travelogues offer a window on the interplay between shared inheritance and new agendas within the dialectical development of religious traditions in Late Antiquity.