Homeric Stitchings

Homeric Stitchings

Author: Mark David Usher

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 9780847690503

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Homeric Stitchings is the first extended study of the Homeric Centos, a long pastiche poem on a biblical theme composed by the Theodosian Empress Eudocia using only verses from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Building upon recent work on Homeric poetics, and utilizing linguistic and semiotic methods of analysis, this study introduces readers to the Centos as a sophisticated comparative reading of Homer and the Bible, based upon intertextual associations of ideas, words, and sounds. Homeric Stitchings is a study in the performative aspects of ancient reading, the processes of human memory, and the reception of Homeric poetry as oral poetry in later antiquity. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of Homer, the Bible and comparative literature, and cultural historians.


The Gospel 'According to Homer and Virgil'

The Gospel 'According to Homer and Virgil'

Author: Karl Olav Sandnes

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-02-14

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 9004187189

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This study investigates the phenomenon of Christian centos, i.e. attempts at rewriting the Gospel stories in both the style and vocabulary of either Homer (Greek) or Virgil (Latin). Out of the classical epics an entirely new text emerged.


The Lucretian Renaissance

The Lucretian Renaissance

Author: Gerard Passannante

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-11-25

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 0226648494

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With The Lucretian Renaissance, Gerard Passannante offers a radical rethinking of a familiar narrative: the rise of materialism in early modern Europe. Passannante begins by taking up the ancient philosophical notion that the world is composed of two fundamental opposites: atoms, as the philosopher Epicurus theorized, intrinsically unchangeable and moving about the void; and the void itself, or nothingness. Passannante considers the fact that this strain of ancient Greek philosophy survived and was transmitted to the Renaissance primarily by means of a poem that had seemingly been lost—a poem insisting that the letters of the alphabet are like the atoms that make up the universe. By tracing this elemental analogy through the fortunes of Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things, Passannante argues that, long before it took on its familiar shape during the Scientific Revolution, the philosophy of atoms and the void reemerged in the Renaissance as a story about reading and letters—a story that materialized in texts, in their physical recomposition, and in their scattering. From the works of Virgil and Macrobius to those of Petrarch, Poliziano, Lambin, Montaigne, Bacon, Spenser, Gassendi, Henry More, and Newton, The Lucretian Renaissance recovers a forgotten history of materialism in humanist thought and scholarly practice and asks us to reconsider one of the most enduring questions of the period: what does it mean for a text, a poem, and philosophy to be “reborn”?


Virgil Recomposed

Virgil Recomposed

Author: Scott McGill

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-07-28

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 0195175646

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This is the first book to present a comprehensive study of the mythological and secular Virgilian centos.


Jesus the Epic Hero

Jesus the Epic Hero

Author: Karl Olav Sandnes

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-08-29

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1666908630

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The ancient cento-genre was prone to be used on all kinds of subjects. New texts were created out of the classical epics. Empress Eudocia followed this practice and composed the story of Jesus in lines lifted almost verbatim from Homer’s epics. Jesus and his relevance to her audience is thus presented within the confines of style and vocabulary offered by the Iliad and Odyssey. The lines picked to convey her theology are often clustered around key Homeric motifs or type scenes, such as warfare, homecoming, feast, reconciliation, hospitality. Jesus waging war against all evil and Hades in particular runs throughout this Homeric and simultaneously biblical epic. The story starts in the Old Testament which is conceived as a divine counsel on Mt. Olympus where a plan to save sinful humanity is presented. The narrative then follows the biographic lines of the canonical gospels, with John’s Gospel holding pride of place in the way she renders and interprets the Jesus-story. The story told suspends both the geography and time of Jesus. Eudocia preaches the story she tells. She emerges in this poem as one of the most, if not the most prolific female theologian and preacher in the first Christian centuries.


Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters

Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters

Author: Marion Ann Taylor

Publisher: Baker Books

Published: 2012-10-01

Total Pages: 715

ISBN-13: 1441238670

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The history of women interpreters of the Bible is a neglected area of study. Marion Taylor presents a one-volume reference tool that introduces readers to a wide array of women interpreters of the Bible from the entire history of Christianity. Her research has implications for understanding biblical interpretation--especially the history of interpretation--and influencing contemporary study of women and the Bible. Contributions by 130 top scholars introduce foremothers of the faith who address issues of interpretation that continue to be relevant to faith communities today, such as women's roles in the church and synagogue and the idea of religious feminism. Women's interpretations also raise awareness about differences in the ways women and men may read the Scriptures in light of differences in their life experiences. This handbook will prove useful to ministers as well as to students of the Bible, who will be inspired, provoked, and challenged by the women introduced here. The volume will also provide a foundation for further detailed research and analysis. Interpreters include Elizabeth Rice Achtemeier, Saint Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine Mumford Booth, Anne Bradstreet, Catherine of Siena, Clare of Assisi, Egeria, Elizabeth I, Hildegard, Julian of Norwich, Thérèse of Lisieux, Marcella, Henrietta C. Mears, Florence Nightingale, Phoebe Palmer, Faltonia Betitia Proba, Pandita Ramabai, Christina Georgina Rossetti, Dorothy Leigh Sayers, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, St. Teresa of Avila, Sojourner Truth, and Susanna Wesley.


Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church

Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church

Author: Michael Graves

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2017-04-18

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1506425607

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Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church is part of Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources, a series designed to present ancient Christian texts essential to an understanding of Christian theology, ecclesiology, and practice. The books in the series will make the wealth of early Christian thought available to new generations of students of theology and provide a valuable resource for the Church. This volume focuses on how Scripture was interpreted and used for preaching, teaching, apologetics, and worship by early Christian scholars and church leaders. Developed in light of recent Patristic scholarship, Ad Fontes volumes will provide a representative sampling of key sources from both East and West that illustrate early Christian thought and practice. The series aims to provide volumes that are relevant for a variety of courses, including classes on theology, biblical interpretation, and church history. The goal of each volume is not to be exhaustive, but rather representative enough to denote for a non-specialist audience the multivalent character of early Christian thought, allowing readers to see how and why early Christian doctrine and practice developed the way it did.


Nostalgias for Homer in Greek Literature of the Roman Empire

Nostalgias for Homer in Greek Literature of the Roman Empire

Author: Vincent Tomasso

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-12-05

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1003821618

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This volume investigates how versions of Trojan War narratives written in Greek in the first through fifth centuries C.E. created nostalgia for audiences. In ancient education, the Iliad and the Odyssey were used as models through which students learned Greek language and literature. This, combined with the ruling elite’s financial encouragement of re-creations of the Greek past, created a culture of nostalgia. This book explores the different responses to this climate, particularly in the case of the third-century C.E. poet Quintus of Smyrna’s epic Posthomerica. Positioning itself as a sequel to the Iliad and a prequel to the Odyssey, the Posthomerica is unique in its middle-of-the-road response to nostalgia for Homer’s epics. This book contrasts Quintus’ poem with other responses to nostalgia for Homeric narratives in Greek literature of the Roman Empire. Some authors contradict pivotal events of the Iliad and Odyssey, such as the first-century orator Dio Chrysostom’s Trojan Speech, which claims that the Trojan hero Hector did not in fact die, contrary to the Iliad’s account. Others re-created Homeric narratives but did not contradict them, improvising some elements and adding others. Quintus strikes a compromise in his epic, re-imagining Homeric narrative by introducing new characters and scenarios, while at the same time retaining the Iliad and Odyssey’s aesthetics. Nostalgias for Homer in Greek Literature of the Roman Empire is of interest to students and scholars working on Homeric reception and the Greek literature of the Roman Empire, as well as those interested in classical literature and reception more broadly.


The Genres of Late Antique Christian Poetry

The Genres of Late Antique Christian Poetry

Author: Fotini Hadjittofi

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-10-12

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 3110696215

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Classicizing Christian poetry has largely been neglected by literary scholars, but has recently been receiving growing attention, especially the poetry written in Latin. One of the objectives of this volume is to redress the balance by allowing more space to discussions of Greek Christian poetry. The contributions collected here ask how Christian poets engage with (and are conscious of) the double reliance of their poetry on two separate systems: on the one hand, the classical poetic models and, on the other, the various genres and sub-genres of Christian prose. Keeping in mind the different settings of the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West, the contributions seek to understand the impact of historical setting on genre, the influence of the paideia shared by authors and audiences, and the continued relevance of traditional categories of literary genre. While our immediate focus is genre, most of the contributions also engage with the ideological ramifications of the transposition of Christian themes into classicizing literature. This volume offers important and original case studies on the reception and appropriation of the classical past and its literary forms by Christian poetry.


The Dune's Twisted Edge

The Dune's Twisted Edge

Author: Gabriel Levin

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 0226923673

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Collection of previously published essays.