Animals and their Relation to Gods, Humans and Things in the Ancient World
Animals and their Relation to Gods, Humans and Things in the Ancient World

Author: Raija Mattila

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-03-11

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 3658243880

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While Human-Animal Studies is a rapidly growing field in modern history, studies on this topic that focus on the Ancient World are few. The present volume aims at closing this gap. It investigates the relation between humans, animals, gods, and things with a special focus on the structure of these categories. An improved understanding of the ancient categories themselves is a precondition for any investigation into the relation between them. The focus of the volume lies on the Ancient Near East, but it also provides studies on Ancient Greece, Asia Minor, Mesoamerica, the Far East, and Arabia.

Para-Narratives in the Odyssey
Para-Narratives in the Odyssey

Author: Maureen Alden

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-09-15

Total Pages: 437

ISBN-13: 0192524275

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Readers coming to the Odyssey for the first time are often dazzled and bewildered by the wealth of material it contains which is seemingly unrelated to the central story: the main plot of Odysseus' return to Ithaca is complicated by myriad secondary narratives related by the poet and his characters, including Odysseus' own fantastic tales of Lotus Eaters, Sirens, and cannibal giants. Although these 'para-narratives' are a source of pleasure and entertainment in their own right, each also has a special relevance to its immediate context, elucidating Odysseus' predicament and also subtly influencing and guiding the audience's reception of the main story. By exploring variations on the basic story-shape, drawing on familiar tales, anecdotes, and mythology, or inserting analogous situations, they create illuminating parallels to the main narrative and prompt specific responses in readers or listeners. This is the case even when details are suppressed or altered, as the audience may still experience the reverberations of the better-known version of the tradition, and it also applies to the characters themselves, who are often provided with a model of action for imitation or avoidance in their immediate contexts.

Genres of Mark
Genres of Mark

Author: Jacob P. B. Mortensen

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published: 2022-11-14

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 364756060X

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One of the most fundamental questions when reading and trying to understand New Testament texts is the question of genre. It is impossible to understand a text, its meaning and intention, in its proper historical setting if one does not understand its genre: As an example, interpreting a satirical text without understanding the genre would no doubt lead to grave misunderstandings. The same logic applies to texts from the New Testament, and the matter is complicated even further by the immense historical gap between the time of the genesis of the New Testament canon and now. The problem of the New Testament texts' genre(s) is therefore a vital area of scholarly discussion within international New Testament scholarship. The current volume utilizes the newest insights from current research on the New Testament to cast new light on the question of the genre of Mark's Gospel. Here, prominent international New Testament scholars discuss how we should understand the genre(s) of Mark's Gospel, thus making an important contribution to international scholarship on the Gospel of Mark as well as the Gospel genre in general.

Iambic Poetics in the Roman Empire
Iambic Poetics in the Roman Empire

Author: Tom Hawkins

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-04-17

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1139915975

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This is the first book to study the impact of invective poetics associated with early Greek iambic poetry on Roman imperial authors and audiences. It demonstrates how authors as varied as Ovid and Gregory Nazianzen wove recognizable elements of the iambic tradition (e.g. meter, motifs, or poetic biographies) into other literary forms (e.g. elegy, oratorical prose, anthologies of fables), and it shows that the humorous, scurrilous, efficacious aggression of Archilochus continued to facilitate negotiations of power and social relations long after Horace's Epodes. The eclectic approach encompasses Greek and Latin, prose and poetry, and exploratory interludes appended to each chapter help to open four centuries of later classical literature to wider debates about the function, propriety and value of the lowest and most debated poetic form from archaic Greece. Each chapter presents a unique variation on how these imperial authors became Archilochus – however briefly and to whatever end.

Defining Genre and Gender in Latin Literature
Defining Genre and Gender in Latin Literature

Author: Garth Tissol

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 9780820478296

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The Roman confrontation and assimilation of Greek literature entailed a scrutiny, critique, and adaptation of generic assumptions. This book considers the ways in which major genres - among them comedy, lyric, elegy, epic, and the novel - were redefined to accommodate Roman concerns and the ways in which gender plays a role in generic definition and authorial self-definition. Both of these areas of research have been important to William S. Anderson throughout his career. This collection of essays by his students helps readers to understand the nature of Roman literary self-definition, as it honors Professor Anderson's own achievements in this field.

Cheiron's Way
Cheiron's Way

Author: Justina Gregory

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0190857889

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This book studies the social and ethical formation of youthful characters in Greek epic and tragedy. It investigates Cheiron the Centaur, ancient Greece's first teacher; traces the influential trajectory of the Iliadic Achilles; and offers readings of the Odyssey, Sophocles' Ajax and Philoctetes, and Euripides' Hippolytus and Iphigenia in Aulis.

Roman Faith and Christian Faith
Roman Faith and Christian Faith

Author: Teresa Jean Morgan

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 639

ISBN-13: 0198724144

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This study investigates why "faith" (pistis/fides) was so important to early Christians that the concept and praxis dominated the writings of the New Testament. It argues that such a study must be interdisciplinary, locating emerging Christianities in the social practices and mentalites of contemporary Judaism and the early Roman empire. This can, therefore, equally be read as a study of the operation of pistis/fides in the world of the early Roman principate, taking one small but relatively well-attested cult as a case study in how micro-societies within that world could treat it distinctively. Drawing on recent work in sociology and economics, the book traces the varying shapes taken by pistis/fides in Greek and Roman human and divine-human relationships: whom or what is represented as easy or difficult to trust or believe in; where pistis/fides is "deferred" and "reified" in practices such as oaths and proofs; how pistis/fides is related to fear, doubt and scepticism; and which foundations of pistis/fides are treated as more or less secure. The book then traces the evolution of representations of human and divine-human pistis in the Septuagint, before turning to pistis/pisteuein in New Testament writings and their role in the development of early Christologies (incorporating a new interpretation of pistis Christou) and ecclesiologies. It argues for the integration of the study of pistis/pisteuein with that of New Testament ethics. It explores the interiority of Graeco-Roman and early Christian pistis/fides. Finally, it discusses eschatological pistis and the shape of the divine-human community in the eschatological kingdom.

Animal Narratology
Animal Narratology

Author: Joela Jacobs

Publisher: MDPI

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 3039283480

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Animal Narratology interrogates what it means to narrate, to speak—speak for, on behalf of—and to voice, or represent life beyond the human, which is in itself as different as insects, bears, and dogs are from each other, and yet more, as individual as a single mouse, horse, or puma. The varied contributions to this interdisciplinary Special Issue highlight assumptions about the human perception of, attitude toward, and responsibility for the animals that are read and written about, thus demonstrating that just as “the animal” does not exist, neither does “the human”. In their zoopoetic focus, the analyses are aware that animal narratology ultimately always contains an approximation of an animal perspective in human terms and terminology, yet they make clear that what matters is how the animal is approximated and that there is an effort to approach and encounter the non-human in the first place. Many of the analyses come to the conclusion that literary animals give readers the opportunity to expand their own points of view both on themselves and others by adopting another’s perspective to the degree that such an endeavor is possible. Ultimately, the contributions call for a recognition of the many spaces, moments, and modes in which human lives are entangled with those of animals—one of which is located within the creative bounds of storytelling.

Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition
Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition

Author: Graham Speake

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-01-31

Total Pages: 2407

ISBN-13: 1135942137

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Hellenism is the living culture of the Greek-speaking peoples and has a continuing history of more than 3,500 years. The Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition contains approximately 900 entries devoted to people, places, periods, events, and themes, examining every aspect of that culture from the Bronze Age to the present day. The focus throughout is on the Greeks themselves, and the continuities within their own cultural tradition. Language and religion are perhaps the most obvious vehicles of continuity; but there have been many others--law, taxation, gardens, music, magic, education, shipping, and countless other elements have all played their part in maintaining this unique culture. Today, Greek arts have blossomed again; Greece has taken its place in the European Union; Greeks control a substantial proportion of the world's merchant marine; and Greek communities in the United States, Australia, and South Africa have carried the Hellenic tradition throughout the world. This is the first reference work to embrace all aspects of that tradition in every period of its existence.

The Look of Lyric: Greek Song and the Visual
The Look of Lyric: Greek Song and the Visual

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-04-26

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 9004314849

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The Look of Lyric: Greek Song and the Visual addresses the various modes of interaction between ancient Greek lyric poetry and the visual arts as well as more general notions of visuality. It covers diverse poetic genres in a range of contexts radiating outwards from the original performance(s) to encompass their broader cultural settings, the later reception of the poems, and finally also their understanding in modern scholarship. By focusing on the relationship between the visual and the verbal as well as the sensory and the mental, this volume raises a wide range of questions concerning human perception and cultural practices. As this collection of essays shows, Greek lyric poetry played a decisive role in the shaping of both.