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Zeitlin explores the diversity and complexity of these interactions through the most influential literary texts of the archaic and classical periods, from epic (Homer) and didactic poetry (Hesiod) to the productions of tragedy and comedy in fifth-century Athens.
Traditional and still prevalent accounts of late antique literature draw a clear distinction between 'pagan' and 'Christian' forms of poetry: whereas Christian poetry is taken seriously in terms its contribution to culture and society at large, so-called pagan or secular poetry is largely ignored, as though it has no meaningful part to play within the late antique world. The Myth of Paganism sets out to deconstruct this view of two contrasting poetic traditions and proposes in its place a new integrated model for the understanding of late antique poetry. As the book argues, the poet of Christ and the poet of the Muses were drawn together into an active, often provocative, dialogue about the relationship between Christianity and the Classical tradition and, ultimately, about the meaning of late antiquity itself. An analysis of the poetry of Nonnus of Panopolis, author of both a 'pagan' epic about Dionysus and a Christian translation of St John's Gospel, helps to illustrate this complex dialectic between pagan and Christian voices.
The first book-length treatment of artistic ecphrasis in Roman literature, The Captor's Image challenges pervasive views to argue for it as a site of subtle, ongoing competition between Greek and Roman cultures.
This is the first study of food in classical antiquity that treats it as both a biological and a cultural phenomenon. The variables of food quantity, quality and availability, and the impact of disease, are evaluated and a judgement reached which inclines to pessimism. Food is also a symbol, evoking other basic human needs and desires, especially sex, and performing social and cultural roles which can be either integrative or divisive. The book explores food taboos in Greek, Roman, and Jewish society, and food-allocation within the family, as well as more familiar cultural and economic polarities which are highlighted by food and eating. The author draws on a wide range of evidence new and old, from written sources to human skeletal remains, and uses both comparative historical evidence from early modern and contemporary developing societies and the anthropological literature, to create a case-study of food in antiquity.
Law and Society in Classical Athens, first published in 1987, traces the development of legal thought and its relation to Athenian values. Previously Athens’ courts have been regarded as chaotic, isolated from the rest of society and even bizarre. The importance of rhetoric and the mischief made by Aristophanes have devalued the legal process in the eyes of modern scholars, whilst the analysis of legal codes and practice has seemed dauntingly complex. Professor Garner aims to situate the Athenian legal system within the general context of abstract thought on justice and of the democratic politics of the fifth century. His work is a valuable source of information on all aspects of Athenian law and its relation to culture.
In recent times, especially under the influence of postmodernism, culture has often been construed as a critique of modernity. This wide-ranging and comprehensive collection of readings shows that such issues have always been at the centre of thought about the relationship between culture and civilization The readings are divided into three sections, linking the civilization debate to political theory, to the cultural debate and to the sociology and anthropology. The substantial extracts included give students a rare chance to engage at length with classic texts to appreciate the nature of the battle between the Enlightenment and its critics which has shaped current thought. Classical Readings on Culture and Civilisation presents essays from Immanuel Kant, Adam Ferguson, Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, Friedrich von Schiller, Friedrich Nietzche, Georg Simmel, Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Lucien Febvre, Alfred Weber, Robert E. Park and Norbert Elias.
What was a Roman book? How did it differ from modern books? How were Roman books composed, published and distributed during the high period of Roman literature that encompassed, among others, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Martial, Pliny and Tacitus? What was the ‘scribal art’ of the time? What was the role of bookshops and libraries? The publishing of Roman books has often been misrepresented by false analogies with contemporary publishing. This wide-ranging study re-examines, by appeal to what Roman authors themselves tell us, both the raw material and the aesthetic criteria of the Roman book, and shows how slavery was the ‘enabling infrastructure’ of literature. Roman publishing is placed firmly in the context of a society where the spoken still ranked above the written, helping to explain how some books and authors became politically dangerous and how the Roman book could be both an elite cultural icon and a contributor to Rome’s popular culture through the mass medium of the theatre.
A paperback of the hardcover edition, first published in 1962. The book describes Goethe's Weimar from documents and research and interprets the connections between German culture and German society both in the age of Goethe and later. To this book Professor Bruford has written a sequel, The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation, and the two books together offer an introduction to the whole evolution of the German intellectual tradition.
This collection of papers illustrates how our picture of the Greco-Roman East has changed in recent decades. The chapters, by a distinguished international cast of contributors, present a view of life in the Eastern Empire from the bottom up, and show how a thoughtful use of both more recent and existing material evidence can shed light on aspects of social and political life that could barely be guessed at from the literary record alone. The evidence of coins, inscriptions and archaeological data is used in the investigation of wider socio-historical issues, including processes of Hellenization and acculturation, the permeability and flexibility of political boundaries at all levels, the interaction of civil and religious authority, and the operation of networks of patronage and power from the highest to the lowest social level.
The series "Studies in Sociology: Symbols, Theory and Society" has been created by Elzbieta Halas and Risto Heiskala to stimulate cooperation in research on the meaning, forms and functions of symbolism in society. The series is open to various theoretical and methodological orientations in the studies of social symbolism. The aim is to show the central place of the problems of symbolization and symbolism in sociology - processes of symbolization in everyday life or in collective actions.