You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This volume examines for the first time the most important methodological issues concerning Christian poetry – i.e. biblical and theological poetry in classical meters – from a diachronic perspective. Thus, it is possible to evaluate the doctrinal significance of these compositions and the role that they play in the development of Christian theological ideas and biblical exegesis.
The complex relationship between psychic structures, social norms, and aesthetic representations is a challenge for every analysis of the historical manifestations of human desire. Pangs of Love and Longing: Configurations of Desire in Premodern Literature sets out to provide a deeper understanding of this relation by an assessment of linguistic and artistic configurations of desire in European literature from Antiquity to the Early Modern period. The aim is to explore historic continuities and ruptures in attitudes towards sexuality, pleasures and bodies, as these are represented in a variety of cultural forms, in order to demonstrate the plurality of premodern desire – and, ultimately, t...
Battlefield Emotions in Late Antiquity is the first work to offer a comprehensive analysis of morale and fear. Różycki examines Roman military treatises to illustrate the methods of manipulating the human psyche.
This is the first comprehensive book on the Arthurian legend in medieval and Renaissance Italy since Edmund Gardner's 1930 The Arthurian Legend in Italian Literature. Arthurian material reached all levels of Italian society, from princely courts with their luxury books and frescoed palaces, to the merchant classes and even popular audiences in the piazza, which enjoyed shorter retellings in verse and prose. Unique assemblages emerge on Italian soil, such as the Compilation of Rustichello da Pisa or the innovative Tavola Ritonda, in versions made for both Tuscany and the Po Valley. Chapters examine the transmission of the French romances across Italy; reworkings in various Italian regional dialects; the textual relations of the prose Tristan; narrative structures employed by Italian writers; later ottava rima poetic versions in the new medium of printed books; the Arthurian-themed art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance; and more. The Arthur of the Italians offers a rich corpus of new criticism by scholars who have brought the Italian Arthurian material back into critical conversation.
Education in Late Antiquity explores how the Christian and pagan writers of the Graeco-Roman world between c. 300 and 550 CE rethought the role of intellectual and ethical formation. Analysing explicit and implicit theorization of education, it traces changing attitudes towards the aims and methods of teaching, learning, and formation. Influential scholarship has seen the postclassical education system as an immovable and uniform field. In response, this book argues that writers of the period offered substantive critiques of established formal education and tried to reorient ancient approaches to learning. By bringing together a wide range of discourses and genres, Education in Late Antiquit...
"Previously published as Medusa's gaze and vampire's bite by Scribner"--Title page verso.
A superb volume, fully worthy of these famous but often misunderstood poems. P. G. Walsh's unmatched erudition in Latin literature furnishes lucid grammatical explanations, incisive analysis of goliardic literary values and technique, and illuminating references to ancient and medieval parallels. His prose translations make the poems accessible also to those with little or no Latin. Janet M. Martin, Princeton University
As a pandemic swept across fourteenth-century Europe, the Decameron offered the ill and grieving a symphony of life and love. For Florentines, the world seemed to be coming to an end. In 1348 the first wave of the Black Death swept across the Italian city, reducing its population from more than 100,000 to less than 40,000. The disease would eventually kill at least half of the population of Europe. Amid the devastation, Giovanni BoccaccioÕs Decameron was born. One of the masterpieces of world literature, the Decameron has captivated centuries of readers with its vivid tales of love, loyalty, betrayal, and sex. Despite the death that overwhelmed Florence, BoccaccioÕs collection of novelle w...
Humanity is moving ever towards its final destination without knowing why, when, where: teloi, multiple paths, leading towards God’s eschaton. These essays examine the movement towards this day of reckoning, and how such eschatological events are projected back into time. Towards the Day after Tomorrow, or the one after that, or months, decades—centuries—away, often we behave as though the end is upon us. These essays start with the beginning of the end: the incarnation. We examine the origins of Karl Barth’s realized eschatology in Expressionism. We consider death and judgment, as usurped by humanity, an eschaton without God’s forgiving judgment: multiple Holocausts. War ushers in...
This collection of essays approaches the role of demons and the devil in ancient and medieval Christianity from a variety of scholarly perspectives: historical, philosophical, and theological as well as philological, liturgical, and theoretical. In the opening article Gerd Theissen presents a wide-ranging overview of the role of the devil, spanning the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and patristic literature. The contributions that follow address texts on the devil, demons, and evil, and are drawn from ancient philosophy, the New Testament, early Christian apologetics, hagiography, and history. Covering primarily the patristic period, the volume also contains articles on medieval sources. The introduction discusses the different angles of approach found in the articles in an effort to shed fresh light on this familiar but also uniquely troubling theme.