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Plato and Aristotle both believed that the arts were mimetic creations of the human mind that had the power to influence society. In this they were representative of a widespread consensus in ancient culture. Cultural and political impulses informed the fine arts, and these in turn shaped—and were often intended to shape—the living world. The contributors to this volume, all of whom have been encouraged and inspired by the work of Peter Green, document the interaction between life and the arts that has made art more lively and life more artful in sixteen essays with subjects ranging from antiquity to modern times. With topics ranging from Antigone to D. H. Lawrence and Norman Douglas, and from Bactrian coins to Livy's characterization of women, the scope, the zest, and the scholarship of these essays will illuminate new avenues in our understanding of the relationship between classics and culture, and in our appreciation of both the artistic products that have come down to us and the varieties of life from which they spring.
The forced suicide of Seneca, former adviser to Nero, is one of the most tortured death scenes from classical antiquity. Here, James Ker offers a comprehensive cultural history of Seneca's death scene, situating it in the Roman imagination and tracing its many subsequent interpretations.
God's Beauty Parlor opens the Bible to the contested body of critical commentary on sex and sexuality known as queer theory and to masculinity studies. The author pursues the themes of homoeroticism, masculinity, beauty, and violence through such texts as the Song of Songs, the Gospels, the Letter to the Romans, and the Book of Revelation.
This study presses beyond the pervasive early Christian aversion to pagan theatrical art in all its forms and investigates the growing critical engagement with the genre of tragedy by Christian authors, especially in the post-Constantinian era.
An insightful series of portraits of Boudicca as envisaged by both ancient and modern writers and artists.
Roman plays have been well studied individually (even including fragmentary or spurious ones more recently). However, they have not always been placed into their ‘context’, though plays (just like items in other literary genres) benefit from being seen in context. This edited collection aims to address this issue: it includes 33 contributions by an international team of scholars, discussing single plays or Roman dramatic genres (including comedy, tragedy and praetexta, from both the Republican and imperial periods) in contexts such as the literary tradition, the relationship to works in other literary genres, the historical and social situation, the intellectual background or the later reception. Overall, they offer a rich panorama of the role of Roman drama or individual plays in Roman society and literary history. The insights gained thereby will be of relevance to everyone interested in Roman drama or literature more generally, comparative literature or drama and theatre studies. This contextual approach has the potential of changing the way in which Roman drama is viewed.
The large collection of letters by Pliny the Younger includes a number of women among its addressees, and Pliny also gives us plentiful information about many women of his acquaintance. This book brings together this material to build up a portrait of a peer-group of women in their social setting.
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