Roman epic : an interpretative introduction /
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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.
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Index: pages [365]-371. :
1 online resource (x, 371 pages) :
Bibliographie: pages 341-359. :
9789004351417 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Hymnic narrative and the narratology of Greek hymns /
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Ancient Greek hymns traditionally include a narrative section describing episodes from the hymned deity's life. These narratives developed in parallel with epic and other narrative genres, and their study provides a different perspective on ancient Greek narrative. Within the hymn genre, the place and function of the narrative section changed over time and with different kinds of hymn (literary or cultic; religious, philosophical or magical). Hymnic Narrative and the Narratology of Greek Hymns traces developments in narrative in the hymn genre from the Homeric Hymns via Hellenistic and Imperial hymns to those in the Orphic tradition and in magical papyri, analysing them in narratological terms in order to place them in the wider context of ancient Greek narrative literature.
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1 online resource (ix, 297 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004289512 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Harmonics /
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Ptolemy's comprehensive treatises on astronomy and geography were influential for nearly two millennia. Equally influential was his treatise on harmonics, the ancient science which combined and brought to completion the study of philosophy and science. This volume offers a comprehensive English translation and commentary of Ptolemy's Harmonics . The treatise begins with Ptolemy's study of pitches and intervals, for which he extracts both an idealized musical scale and a new acoustical tool. After discussing modulation, he expands his horizons by applying musical intervals to the human soul and celestial bodies, ultimately describing a cosmic harmony. The English translation faithfully reproduces Ptolemy's style and includes all the charts surviving in the manuscript tradition. The commentary offers a full exegesis of the text, loci paralleli, and citations of modern scholarly sources.
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1 online resource (xxxvii, 192 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-179) and indexes. :
9789004351165 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Clio and the poets : Augustan poetry and the traditions of ancient historiography /
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The Augustan age was one in which writers were constantly reworking the Roman past, and which was marked by a profound engagement of poets with the historians and historical techniques which were the main vehicle for the transmission of the image of the past to their day. In this book seventeen leading scholars from Europe and America examine the fascinating interaction between such apparently diverse genres: how the Augustan poets drew on - or reacted against - the historians' presentation of the world, and how, conversely, historians picked up and transformed poetic themes for their own ends. With essays on poems from Horace's Odes to Ovid's Metamorphoses , on authors from Virgil to Valerius Maximus, it forms the most important topic so central to such a particulary relevant period of literary history.
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Selected papers given at a conference at the University of Durham in 1999. :
1 online resource (xv, 396 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 363-379) and index. :
9789047400493 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Lucans poetische Technik : Studien zum historischen Epos /
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The present volume on Lucan's poetical technique focusses on the main artistic principles of the Pharsalia, studying both the underlying history of the Civil War and its poetical reworking by the author. A chapter on Lucan's historical source (Livy) is followed by a chapter on Lucan's poetical technique and the general outline of his work. The material basis for these chapters is provided by a detailed analysis of every single book of the Pharsalia, which takes the form of a \'historical-poetical\' commentary. The study closes with a chapter on the narrator and the author.
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1 online resource (xiii, 586 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 521-538) and indexes. :
9789047413035 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Portrayals of Antigone in Portugal : 20th and 21st century rewritings of the Antigone myth /
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Portrayals of Antigone in Portugal gathers a collection of essays on the Portuguese drama rewritings of this Theban myth produced in the 20th and 21st centuries. For each of the cases analysed, the Portuguese historical, political and cultural context is described. This perspective is expanded through a dialogue with coeval European events. As concerns Portugal, this results principally in political and feminist approaches to the texts. Since the importation of the Sophoclean model is often indirect, the volume includes comparisons with intermediate sources, namely French (Cocteau, Anouilh) and Spanish (María Zambrano), which were extremely influential on the many and diversified versions written in Portugal during this period.
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1 online resource (xii, 361 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004340060 :
2212-9405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Figures grecques de l'épouvante de l'antiquite au present : peurs enfantines et adultes /
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In Figures de l'épouvante grecques de l'antiquité au présent , Maria Patera examines an unfamiliar aspect of the Greek pedagogy of fear, illustrated by narratives about four Greek terrifying figures: Lamia, Mormô, Gellô and Empousa. These female bogeys belong to the children's world. Each of those figures provokes fear in a particular way, according to its own characteristics (metamorphosis, hybridity, cannibalism, et cetera). By means of a diachronic comparison of the ancient figures with their Byzantine and modern Greek namesakes, each of them is assigned a proper position within its specific historical, cultural, and religious context. Dans Figures de l'épouvante grecques de l'antiquité au présent , Maria Patera examine un aspect mal connu de la pédagogie grecque, celui de la peur, illustré à travers des récits principalement destinés aux enfants à propos des épouvantails Lamia, Mormô, Gellô et Empousa. Ces quatre figures féminines appartiennent aux chambres enfantines et aux contes de bonnes femmes. Chacune d'entre elles matérialise un aspect de l'épouvante à travers ses façons d'agir et ses traits caractéristiques (métamorphose, hybridité, anthropophagie, et cetera). Un examen diachronique permet de comparer les personnages anciens à leurs homonymes byzantins et néo-grecs et de déterminer leurs fonctions respectives dans chaque contexte historique, religieux et culturel donné.
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1 online resource (xxxi, 405 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-375), appendices, and index. :
9789004283626 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The propaganda of power : the role of panegyric in late antiquity /
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The 13 essays presented here shed new light on the role of panegyric in the western and eastern Roman Empire in the late antique world. Introductory chapters give an overview of panegyrical theory and practice, followed by studies of major writers of the early empire and the anonymous Panegyrici latini . The core of the volume deals with prose and verse panegyric under the Christian Roman Empire (4th-7th century): key themes addressed are social and political context, the 'hidden agenda', and the impact of Christianity on the pagan tradition of the panegyric, including the portrayal of patriarchs and holy men.
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1 online resource (x, 378 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004351479 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Brill's companion to Lucan /
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Although it was labeled an anti-epic for trumping the celebratory scope of the Roman national epos, Lucan's Bellum Civile is a hymn to lost republican liberty composed under Nero's tyrannical empire. Lucan lost his life in a foiled conspiracy to replace the emperor, but his poem survived the wreckage of antiquity and enjoyed uninterrupted readership. The present collection samples the most current approaches to Lucan's poem, its themes, its dialogue with other texts, its reception in medieval and early modern literature, and its relevance to audiences of all times.
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1 online resource (xxi, 625 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004217096 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Virgil, Aeneid 7 : a commentary /
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This commentary was begun in 1967, but most of the period from 1971 to 1996 was spent on work that was in some sense an essential preliminary to a detailed study of Aeneid 7. The work will serve as a guide to recent (and future) work on Virgilian language, grammar, syntax and style. Recent approaches to the text have been, where possible, taken into account, with sympathy but without jargon. Virgil's sources, in verse and prose, have been studied with special care and the commentary presents a coherent approach to Virgil's view of Italian religion, antiquities and topography. Unusually full indexing is intended to further the book's use as a guide to many aspects of Augustan poetic idiom. There is a text independent of recent editions and a precise, prose translation.
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1 online resource (xliv, 567 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. xxxix-xliv) and indexes. :
9789004351233 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Narrative and simile from the Georgics in the Aeneid /
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Excerpts from original texts in Greek or Latin.
Based on the author's thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1974. :
1 online resource (109 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-107) and index. :
9789004327757 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Brill's companion to Cicero : oratory and rhetoric /
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This volume is intended as a companion to the study of Cicero's oratory and rhetoric for both students and experts in the field: for the neophyte, it provides a starting point; for the veteran Ciceronian scholar, a place for renewing the dialogue about issues concerning Ciceronian oratory and rhetoric; for all, a site of engagement at various levels with Ciceronian scholarship and bibliography. The book is arranged along roughly chronological lines and covers most aspects of Cicero's oratory and rhetoric. The particular strength of this companion resides in the individual, often very original approach to sundry topics by an array of impressive contributors, all of whom have spent large portions of their careers concentrating upon the oratorical and rhetorical oeuvre of Cicero. A bibliography of relevant items from the past 25 years, keyed to specific Ciceronian works, completes the volume. Brill's Companion to Cicero will become the standard reference work on Cicero for many years.
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1 online resource (xiii, 632 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 533-599) and indexes. :
9789047400936 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
History of the Graeco-Latin fable /
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Spanning from Sumer to the present day few literary genres show greater continuity throughout their history than the fable. Historical evidence reaching as far back as Antiquity, supports the study of more than 500 works considered to be fables. This translation of the original Spanish, standard work on the fable, traces the history of the Graeco-Latin fable, investigates its origins, reconstructs lost collections from the Hellenistic Age, and establishes relationships between the fablist of the Imperial Age and the study of Medieval, Greek and Latin fables. Supplements at the end of each chapter have been added, giving information on a new bibliography and some new data, together with references to subsequent studies.
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"This edition has been revised and updated by the author and Gert-Jan van Dijk." :
1 online resource (3 volumes (xviii, 740, xx, 756, xlviii, 1168 pages)) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004351202 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Vergil's Aeneid : a poem of grief and love /
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For more than a century, critics of the Aeneid have assumed that all or most of its episodes must propound something about Aeneas and his mission to found the Roman people, and through them about Rome and Augustus; whether that is their positive aspects, or their brutality and destructiveness, or the contrast between the public "voice" of their achievements and the private "voice" of the suffering they cause. This book argues that this assumption is wrong; the Aeneid 's main purpose was to present a series of emotionally moving episodes, especially pathetic ones. This book shows that the Aeneid makes more sense when regarded primarily as a series of emotion-arousing episodes than as expressing a pro-Aeneas, anti-Aeneas or two voices message. That is how it was regarded into the nineteenth century and that is what the ancient Greeks and Romans assumed was the main purpose of literature.
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1 online resource (xii, 174 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-171) and index. :
9789004329188 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The challenge of epic : allusive engagement in the Dionysiaca of Nonnus /
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Nonnus once vied with Homer for popularity; today his Dionysiaca languishes in obscurity. The Challenge of Epic offers a literary critical rehabilitation of Nonnus' fifth-century AD poem. It argues that modern neglect stems from a failure to appreciate the central position of allusion in late-antique poetry. Attention first focuses on intertextual allusion. It is argued that the poet draws on a plethora of allusions to the cycle of Greek mythology in order to imbue his specific narrative with a universal significance. Focus then shifts to metapoetic allusion: the way in which Nonnus alludes self-consciously to the process of writing, and develops parallels between himself and his subject, Dionysus. Through an appreciation of Nonnus' alllusive strategies, the modern reader can again engage with the mind-bending challenge of the Dionysiaca .
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1 online resource (viii, 245 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-227) and indexes. :
9789004351103 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.