Lucian: Three Menippean Fantasies

Lucian: Three Menippean Fantasies

Author: Lucian

Publisher: Hackett Publishing

Published: 2021-10-06

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1647920272

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A handful of fragments is all that remains of the writings of Menippus, the third-century BCE provocateur of the Greek Cynic movement. The Western literary tradition knows him through Lucian, the Greek satirist who lived and worked four hundred years later. Included in this book are Joel Relihan’s lively English translations of Lucian’s three reanimations of Menippus—fantastic narratives and comic dialogues set in heaven and hell: Menippus; or, The Consultation of the CorpsesIcaromenippus; or, A Man above the CloudsThe Colloquies of the Corpses (Dialogues of the Dead) For the first time in over fifty years, these works are assembled in a unified format to tell a particular story: Lucian’s evolving understanding of the philosophical and literary potential of the person, productions, and purposes of Menippus. Not only is it time to give Lucian’s Menippus a fresh look and a thorough reevaluation, but also to consider how Lucian’s imitations and innovations adumbrate, illuminate, and complicate the history of that enigmatic genre, Menippean satire.


Three Menippean Fantasies

Three Menippean Fantasies

Author: Lucian (of Samosata.)

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 9781647920289

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A handful of fragments is all that remains of the writings of Menippus, the third-century BCE provocateur of the Greek Cynic movement. The Western literary tradition knows him through Lucian, the Greek satirist who lived and worked four hundred years later. Included in this book are Joel Relihan's lively English translations of Lucian's three reanimations of Menippus--fantastic narratives and comic dialogues set in heaven and hell: Menippus; or, The Consultation of the CorpsesIcaromenippus; or, A Man above the CloudsThe Colloquies of the Corpses (Dialogues of the Dead) For the first time in over fifty years, these works are assembled in a unified format to tell a particular story: Lucian's evolving understanding of the philosophical and literary potential of the person, productions, and purposes of Menippus. Not only is it time to give Lucian's Menippus a fresh look and a thorough reevaluation, but also to consider how Lucian's imitations and innovations adumbrate, illuminate, and complicate the history of that enigmatic genre, Menippean satire.


Lucian’s Laughing Gods

Lucian’s Laughing Gods

Author: Inger NI Kuin

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2023-04-10

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0472133349

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The first English-language monograph about religion and Lucian of Samosata


The Tale of Lucius; or, The Ass (Onos)

The Tale of Lucius; or, The Ass (Onos)

Author: Joel C. Relihan

Publisher: Hackett Publishing

Published: 2023-03-01

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1647921252

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An anonymous Greek reworking (doubtfully attributed to Lucian) of the lost, anonymous Greek Metamorphoseis (falsely attributed to Lucius of Patras). An American translation by Joel C. Relihan (Professor of Classics, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts), available as a free eBook from Hackett Publishing Company.


Fantasy in Greek and Roman Literature

Fantasy in Greek and Roman Literature

Author: Graham Anderson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-07-01

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 0429639171

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Fantasy in Greek and Roman Literature offers an overview of Greek and Roman excursions into fantasy, including imaginary voyages, dream-worlds, talking animals and similar impossibilities. This is a territory seldom explored and extends to rarely read texts such as the Aesop Romance, The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice, and The Pumpkinification of the Emperor Claudius. Bringing this diverse material together for the first time, Anderson widens readers’ perspectives on the realm of fantasy in ancient literature, including topics such as dialogues with the dead, Utopian communities and fantastic feasts. Going beyond the more familiar world of myth, his examples range from The Golden Ass to the Late Antique Testament of a Pig. The volume also explores ancient resistance to the world of make-believe. Fantasy in Greek and Roman Literature is an invaluable resource not only for students of classical and comparative literature, but also for modern writers on fantasy who want to explore the genre’s origins in antiquity, both in the more obvious and in lesser-known texts.


The Cynics

The Cynics

Author: R. Bracht Branham

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-07-28

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 0520921984

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This collection of essays—the first of its kind in English—brings together the work of an international group of scholars examining the entire tradition associated with the ancient Cynics. The essays give a history of the movement as well as a state-of-the-art account of the literary, philosophical and cultural significance of Cynicism from antiquity to the present. Arguably the most original and influential branch of the Socratic tradition, Cynicism has become the focus of renewed scholarly interest in recent years, thanks to the work of Sloterdijk, Foucault, and Bakhtin, among others. The contributors to this volume—classicists, comparatists, and philosophers—draw on a variety of methodologies to explore the ethical, social and cultural practices inspired by the Cynics. The volume also includes an introduction, appendices, and an annotated bibliography, making it a valuable resource for a broad audience.


Chattering Courtesans and Other Sardonic Sketches

Chattering Courtesans and Other Sardonic Sketches

Author: Lucian

Publisher: ePenguin

Published: 2004-06-24

Total Pages: 584

ISBN-13:

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A Greek-educated Syrian, Lucian wrote witty pieces that demonstrate a profound skepticism for religion and philosophy and encourage honest living and good sense. “Chattering Courtesans” is a series of short dialogues in which the amusing gossip of “kept women” gives rise to a discussion of more serious subjects such as love, sex, and marriage. Other comic dialogues in this volume show Lucian making fun of fanaticism and mocking pretension, hypocrisy, and the vanity of human wealth and power, while in “Diatribes” he targets a range of subjects, from scandal and money to death, in order to demonstrate the follies of contemporary life. Also included here is Lucian's most famous work, True Histories, which inspired imaginary voyages, from More's Utopia to Swift's Gulliver's Travels.


Reading the Way to the Netherworld

Reading the Way to the Netherworld

Author: Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 551

ISBN-13: 3647540307

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The volume focuses on the various representations of the Beyond in later Antiquity, a period of intense interaction and competition between various religious traditions and ideals of education. The concepts and images clustering around the Beyond form a crucial focal point for understanding the dynamics of religion and education in later Antiquity. Although Christianity gradually supersedes the pagan traditions, the literary representations of the Beyond derived from classical literature and transmitted through the texts read at school show a remarkable persistence: they influence Christian late antique writers and are still alive in medieval literature of the East and West. A specifically Christian Beyond develops only gradually, and coexists subsequently with pagan ideas, which in turn vary according to the respective literary and philosophical contexts. Thus, the various conceptualisations of the great existential unknown, serves here as a point of reference for mirroring the changes and continuities in Imperial and Late Antique religion, education, and culture, and opening up further perspectives into the Medieval world.


Trips to the Moon

Trips to the Moon

Author: Of Samosata Lucian

Publisher: Good Press

Published: 2019-11-20

Total Pages: 99

ISBN-13:

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"Trips to the Moon" by Of Samosata Lucian was originally written in the 2nd century, though it was later translated in the late 1800s. A satire about society through the lens of the ancient Greeks, the book is just as fun and insightful to read now as it was nearly two thousand years ago when it was first penned.


The Golden Ass

The Golden Ass

Author: Apuleius

Publisher: Hackett Publishing

Published: 2007-09-15

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 160384032X

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Relihan uses alliteration and assonance, rhythm and rhyme, the occasional archaism, the rare neologism, and devices of punctuation and typography, to create a sparkling, luxurious, and readable translation that reproduces something of the linguistic and comic effects of the original Latin. The general Introduction is a masterpiece of clarity, orienting the reader in matters of authorship, narration, genre, religion, structure and style. A generous and browsable index, select bibliography, and maps are included.