This major overview of how classical texts were preserved across millennia addresses both the process of transmission and the issue of reception, as well as the key reference works and online professional tools for studying literary transmission.
An updated history of classical philology had long been a desideratum of scholars of the ancient world. The volume edited by Diego Lanza and Gherardo Ugolini is structured in three parts. In the first one (“Towards a science of antiquity”) the approach of Anglo-Saxon philology (R. Bentley) and the institutionalization of the discipline in the German academic world (C.G. Heyne and F.A. Wolf) are described. In the second part (“The illusion of the archetype. Classical Studies in the Germany of the 19th Century”) the theoretical contributions and main methodological disputes that followed are analysed (K. Lachmann, J.G. Hermann, A. Boeckh, F. Nietzsche and U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff). The last part (“The classical philology of the 20th century”) treats the redefinition of classical studies after the Great War in Germany (W. Jaeger) and in Italy (G. Pasquali). In this context, the contributions of papyrology and of the new images of antiquity that have emerged in the works of writers, narrators, and translators of our time have been considered. This part finishes with the presentation of some of the most influential scholars of the last decades (B. Snell, E.R. Dodds, J.-P. Vernant, B. Gentili, N. Loraux).
Habent sua fata libelli honors the work of Craig Kallendorf, offering studies in his primary fields of expertise: the history of the book and reading, the classical tradition and reception studies, Renaissance humanism, and Virgilian scholarship.
Shedding new light on the history of the book in antiquity, Empire of Letters tells the story of writing at Rome at the pivotal moment of transition from Republic to Empire (c. 55 BCE-15 CE). By uniting close readings of the period's major authors with detailed analysis of material texts, it argues that the physical embodiments of writing were essential to the worldviews and self-fashioning of authors whose works took shape in them. Whether in wooden tablets, papyrus bookrolls, monumental writing in stone and bronze, or through the alphabet itself, Roman authors both idealized and competed with writing's textual forms. The academic study of the history of the book has arisen largely out of the textual abundance of the age of print, focusing on the Renaissance and after. But fewer than fifty fragments of classical Roman bookrolls survive, and even fewer lines of poetry. Understanding the history of the ancient Roman book requires us to think differently about this evidence, placing it into the context of other kinds of textual forms that survive in greater numbers, from the fragments of Greek papyri preserved in the garbage heaps of Egypt to the Latin graffiti still visible on the walls of the cities destroyed by Vesuvius. By attending carefully to this kind of material in conjunction with the rich literary testimony of the period, Empire of Letters exposes the importance of textuality itself to Roman authors, and puts the written word back at the center of Roman literature.
Early modern audiences, readerships, and viewerships were not homogenous. Differences in status, education, language, wealth, and experience (to name only a few variables) could influence how a group of people, or a particular person, received and made sense of sermons, public proclamations, dramatic and musical performances, images, objects, and spaces. The ways in which each of these were framed and executed could have a serious impact on their relevance and effectiveness. The chapters in this volume explore the ways in which authors, poets, artists, preachers, theologians, playwrights, and performers took account of and encoded pluriform potential audiences, readers, and viewers in their works, and how these varied parties encountered and responded to these works. The contributors here investigate these complex interactions through a variety of critical and methodological lenses.
Athens and Wittenberg explores how Luther and early Lutheranism did not neglect the classics of Greece and Rome, but continued to draw from the philosophy and poetry of antiquity in their quest to reform the church.
The poet Juvenal is one of the most important ancient Roman authors, and his sixteen satires have left a strong mark on western literature. Despite his great influence, little is known about the poet’s life, beyond unreliable details gleaned from his poetry. Yet Juvenal’s satires contain a wealth of information about the mentality of imperial-era Romans. This volume offers a fresh and student-friendly translation of two of Juvenal’s most provocative poems: Satire 2 and Satire 6. With their common focus on gender and sexuality, these two works are of particular interest to today’s readers. Both Satire 2 and Satire 6 target effeminate men and wayward women as objects of ridicule, and they ruthlessly mock their behavior in an effort to expose deep-seated problems in Roman society. The longer of the two works, Juvenal’s sixth satire, addresses a basic question, “Why get married?,” in a tone of spite and ferocity, and its details are disturbingly graphic. Satire 2 is a shorter but equally pointed tirade against effeminacy and passive homosexuality. Taken together, the poems compel readers to critique the discourse of gender stereotypes and misogyny. For students and scholars of gender and sexuality, these poems are crucial texts. Chiara Sulprizio’s lively translation, perfectly suited for classroom use, captures the vivid spirit of Juvenal’s poems, and her extensive notes enhance the volume’s appeal by explicating the poems from a gendered perspective. An in-depth introduction by Sarah H. Blake places the satires within their broader literary, historical, and cultural context.
The Greek biographer and philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. 45-125 AD) makes a fascinating case-study for reception studies not least because of his uniquely extensive and diverse afterlife. Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plutarch offers the first comprehensive analysis of Plutarch’s rich reception history from the Roman Imperial period through Late Antiquity and Byzantium to the Renaissance, Enlightenment and the modern era. The thirty-seven chapters that make up this volume, written by a remarkable line-up of experts, explore the appreciation, contestation and creative appropriation of Plutarch himself, his thought and work in the history of literature across various cultures and intellectual traditions in Europe, America, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Written texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey achieved an unprecedented degree of standardization after 150 BCE, but what of the earlier history of Homeric texts? This volume draws on scholarship from outside the discipline of classical studies to offer a comprehensive study of Homeric texts from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period.
Cicero's letters have figured prominently in some of western modernity's most cherished illusions about the immediacy of its encounter with Classical antiquity. Celebrated since their discovery in the Renaissance for their intimate mode of self-expression, they have been prized ever since for the unparalleled proximity they appear to give us to the events and leading figures of the late Republic. However, they were only organized into books and collections, and published as such, by unknown editors long after Cicero's death. Modern editors have also dismantled these collections and reorganized the letters chronologically in an attempt to reconstruct the events that they document more accurately. Souvenirs of Cicero studies the narratives that the letter collections unfold and the post-Republican perspectives that shape them. It looks closely at the ancient format of Epistulae ad Familiares, the collection that incorporates Cicero's widest cast of correspondents and has been most vulnerable to this practice of reorganization, and reverses it, attending instead to the collection's status as an artefact of the later imperial age. Francesca K. A. Martelli traces the social, political, and technological agencies that shaped this letter collection in antiquity and elucidates the interests that these editorial interventions serve both for ancient readers and for our interpretation of the letters today by integrating a close analysis of these letters with hypotheses drawn from contemporary media theory. Cicero's letters emerge from this study as residual media, which haunt subsequent history with the Republic's lost futures as they circulate beyond their own era.