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Cicero was speaking like everybody, but better than anybody. Far from confining himself to the so-called 'periodic style', Cicero was a master of a thousand shades. This synopsis, followed by examples, shows in detail, why a study of Cicero's style might be rewarding even today.
The author's approach to Roman epic is interpretative; the reader is invited to study a choice of typical texts, from the beginnings to the end of Antiquity. Famous poets are given the attention they deserve, but also some minor authors are discovered as precious 'missing links' between the ages. Special heed is paid to intertextual relationships between different epochs, cultures, literary genres, linguistic and literary patterns. The book is meant for students and teachers of classical and modern literatures, but also for all those interested in the history of literary genres and cultural ideas.
In this commented anthology of Latin prose, Michael von Albrecht selects texts from a span of Roman literature covering four centuries. A summary of the contents will indicate its range and variety: M. Porcius Cato (the preface to De agricultura , a passage from the speech for the Rhodians of 167 B.C., and a section from the Origines ); republican oratory (C. Gracchus, from De legibus promulgatis of 122 B.C. and Cicero from In Verrem II ); Caesar as orator and historian; two passages of Sallust; a comparison of Claudius Quadrigarius and Livy as historiographers; philosophical texts from Cicero and the Younger Seneca; and chapters on Petronius, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Apuleius. The me...
Michael von Albrecht's A History of Roman Literature, originally published in German, can rightly be seen as the long awaited counterpart to Albin Lesky's Geschichte der Griechischen Literatur. In what will probably be the last survey made by a single scholar the whole of Latin literature from Livius Andronicus up to Boethius comes to the fore. 'Literature' is taken here in its broad, antique sense, and therefore also includes e.g. rhetoric, philosophy and history. Special attention has been given to the influence of Latin literature on subsequent centuries down to our own days. Extensive indices give access to this monument of learning. The introductions in Von Albrecht's texts, together with the large bibliographies make further study both more fruitful and easy.
This collectoion brings together an outstanding group of historical, cultural, and literary scholars to investigate the complicated, nuanced, and often surprising union and desire and dread associated with the figure of the foreign Other in the Middle Ages--represented variously by Muslims, Jews, heretics, pagans, homosexuals, lepers, monsters, and witches. Exploring the diverse manifestations of the foreign in medieval literature, historical documents, religous treatises, and art, these essays mine the traces of unprecedented encounters in which fascination and fear meet.
Ovid, a poet unashamedly in love in poetry, including his own, has enjoyed a recent renaissance in popularity. Yet there is still a certain tendency amongst critics to withhold from his writing the close, word-by-word, engagement which is its due. The primary aim of The Metamorphosis of Persephone is to celebrate this poet's detailed verbal art. Ovid twice treated the myth of Persephone. Dr Hinds' work is a close reading of the account in Metamorphoses 5. The book is at once a literary historical enquiry into the double transformation of the rape of Persephone, and a critical exploration of the self-conscious delight in language and in writing manifested in and between these twin Ovidian narratives. This attractively written and subtly nuanced literary study, which offers many quiet challenges to established modes of reading Latin narrative poetry, will be of interest both to scholars of Latin and to students of narrative in other languages.
The Greek poet Parthenius arrived in Italy in the mid-first century BC as a prisoner of war and became a friend and mentor to the greatest Latin poets of the period. This study places Parthenius in his intellectual and literary context and examines all the available evidence to reconstruct the fullest possible picture of his tastes and techniques. Passages in Latin literature that handle recognizably Parthenian themes are examined, especially in two important myth types that became popular around the time of Parthenius' arrival: myths of incestuous passion, and myths about young women who betray their cities under siege for love of an enemy.
This examination of Herodotus' references to mythological heroes reveals new aspects of his historiography and of his literary technique. In the development of Greek prose, Herodotus lies between the early logographers and later historians, thematically and stylistically as well as chronologically. His use of heroes exemplifies the intermediate nature of his work. As historiographical data, the heroes serve as chronological reference points, provide aetiologies for families and cities, and explain later customs and courses of action. As literary devices, the heroes operate as symbolic elements that stress important points in the text, place foreign countries within a comprehensible context, and contribute to the characterization of individuals such as Leonidas, Demaratus, and Xerxes.
This is a major new commentary on Jerome's Libellus de virginitate servanda , the first in any language to be devoted to this work. Written in Rome in 384, this treatise sets out the manner of life appropriate to a Christian virgin. It takes the form of a letter to a specific person, Eustochium, the teenage daughter of an aristocratic family, encouraging her to persevere in her intention of remaining a virgin. The Libellus , however, is more than just a friendly lecture on morality; it is an extensive academic treatise, forty-one chapters long, covering many aspects of virginity. Although the practice of unacknowledged quotation was common and acceptable throughout antiquity, Neil Adkin's commentary shows how far Jerome went in his borrowings from his Greek and Latin patristic predecessors and contemporaries, and also demonstrates how Jerome's brilliance as a writer enhanced his stolen material.