The legacy of ancient Greece and Rome has been imitated, resisted, misunderstood, and reworked by every culture that followed. In this volume, some five hundred articles by a wide range of scholars investigate the afterlife of this rich heritage in the fields of literature, philosophy, art, architecture, history, politics, religion, and science.
'Reorganizes the field and challenges our preconceptions in both familiar areas and in disciplines that are not usually treated in studies on the classical tradition. A must read.' - Craig Kallendorf, Texas A&M University 'An exciting read: energetic, considered, sparklingly written. One gets the feeling that all angles have been properly covered. An ambitious project brilliantly realized.' - Matthew Bell, King's College London 'The authors have pulled off the seemingly impossible task of fusing their three voices into a single, urgently argued discourse, and for that reason among many others, this will be a wonderful book to read and to use, for all kinds of readers.' - Terence Cave, St John's College, Oxford 'I found the text very readable and I particularly enjoyed the post-postmodernist take on many issues. It is hugely stimulating and intriguing throughout.' - Deborah Howard, University of Cambridge 'I think this is an absolutely splendid text, unique in conception, elegant and ingenious in design, and extremely ???user-friendly??? in styling and presentation.' - David Hopkins, University of Bristol 'A prodigiously ambitious, cornucopian book . . . so rich that no review will do it justice.' - Paul Barolsky, University of Virginia, Arion 'Impressive power and learning.' - Justus Cobet, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Sehepunkte 'Succeeds in providing an overarching account of a huge sweep of cultural history without losing sight of the host of nuances and particularities associated with such an overwhelmingly large topic.' - Pablo Maurette, University of Chicago, Comparative Critical Studies 'Highly innovative...engrossing...the book is marvellously packed throughout with insights and provocations. It conducts, to its great benefit and ours, a properly theoretical enquiry.' - Charles Martindale, University of Bristol, Translation and Literature The classical tradition – the legacy of Ancient Greece and Rome – is a large, diverse, and important field that continues to shape human endeavour and engender wide public interest. The Classical Tradition: Art, Literature, Thought presents an original, coherent, and wide-ranging guide to the afterlife of Greco-Roman antiquity in later Western cultures and a ground-breaking reinterpretation of large aspects of Western culture as a whole – English-speaking, French, German, and Italian – from a classical perspective. Encompassing almost two millennia of developments in art, literature, and thought, the authors provide an overview of the field, a concise point of reference, and a critical review of selected examples, from Titian to T. S. Eliot, from the hero to concepts of government. They engage in current theoretical debate on various fronts, from hermeneutics to gender. Themes explored include the Western languages and their continuing engagement with Latin and Greek; the role of translation; the intricate relationship of pagan and Christian; the ideological implications of the classical tradition; the interplay between the classical tradition and the histories of scholarship and education; the relation between high and low culture; and the myriad complex relationships – comparative, contrastive, and interactive – between art, literature, and thought themselves. Authoritative and accessible, The Classical Tradition: Art, Literature, Thought offers new insights into the powerful legacy of the ancient world from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the present day.
Composition in the Classical Tradition borrows from late antiquity a series of composition exercises called the progymnasmata to teach the art of persuasion. The exercises apply an understanding of the invention and composition of arguments from ancient rhetoric to a writer's own forms of persuasive communication. This book is structured to provide an effectively graded sequence of exercises, manageable at each step, from the simple to the more difficult and from the concrete to the abstract, within an explicit rhetorical framework. Learn how to compose an essay or a speech by first becoming proficient at its parts Composition in the Classical Tradition features a variety of ancient forms myths, historical episodes, descriptions, fables, proverbs, anecdotes, and speeches for readers to enjoy while learning how to write and speak persuasively. For anyone interested in composition and classical rhetoric.
These fifteen essays on Nietzsche's indebtedness to the Classical Tradition were composed by scholars in the fields of philosophy, theology, German and Classics. The essays roughly cover the following epochs: the age of the Fathers of the Western Church, medieval scholasticism, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Weimar Classicism, Romanticism and the several other intellectual trends and movements in the nineteenth century. Collection includes three essays comparing Nietzsche's perceptions of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates with those (respectively) of Augustine, Aquinas, and Hamann. Three essays treat Nietzsche's relationship to Goethe, Schiller, and Heine. Three deal with Nietzsche and French literature or thought, one explores possible parallels between Nietzsche and Dante, another the extent of his debt to Byron. Four contributions center on Nietzsche's view of tragedy, and an older study has been expanded to show the underlying harmony of Nietzsche's conception with that of the French classical tragedians. This book affirms and fulfills the need for serious scholarship by the student of Nietzsche unable to work in German, while presenting a readable cross-section of the work being done relating Nietzsche to the intellectual tradition from which he sprang.
Constraints on freedom, education, and individual dignity have always been fundamental in determining who is able to write, when, and where. Considering the singular experience of the African American writer, William W. Cook and James Tatum here argue that African American literature did not develop apart from canonical Western literary traditions but instead grew out of those literatures, even as it adapted and transformed the cultural traditions and religions of Africa and the African diaspora along the way.Tracing the interaction between African American writers and the literatures of ancient Greece and Rome, from the time of slavery and its aftermath to the civil rights era and on into the present, the authors offer a sustained and lively discussion of the life and work of Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Rita Dove, among other highly acclaimed poets, novelists, and scholars. Assembling this brilliant and diverse group of African American writers at a moment when our understanding of classical literature is ripe for change, the authors paint an unforgettable portrait of our own reception of “classic” writing, especially as it was inflected by American racial politics.
This book is an invaluable survey of the allusions to ancient Greek and Roman culture in the work of seven major modern American novelists: Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth and Marilynne Robinson.
For all its concern with change in the present and future, science fiction is deeply rooted in the past and, surprisingly, engages especially deeply with the ancient world. Indeed, both as an area in which the meaning of "classics" is actively transformed and as an open-ended set of texts whose own 'classic' status is a matter of ongoing debate, science fiction reveals much about the roles played by ancient classics in modern times. Classical Traditions in Science Fiction is the first collection in English dedicated to the study of science fiction as a site of classical receptions, offering a much-needed mapping of that important cultural and intellectual terrain. This volume discusses a wide variety of representative examples from both classical antiquity and the past four hundred years of science fiction, beginning with science fiction's "rosy-fingered dawn" and moving toward the other-worldly literature of the present day. As it makes its way through the eras of science fiction, Classical Traditions in Science Fiction exposes the many levels on which science fiction engages the ideas of the ancient world, from minute matters of language and structure to the larger thematic and philosophical concerns.
"Outstanding individuals have the whole world as their memorial."--PericlesThe influence of ancient Greek civilization has been felt throughout modern Western history. Greek ideas can be found in the laws that govern our lives, the buildings in which we live, the books we read, and the vocabulary we use every day. Because these ideas have become so much a part of our daily life, we tend to forget that they originated more than 2,500 years ago.Ancient Greeks chronicles the lives and accomplishments of Greek figures whose influence continues to be felt today. We read about Greeks from all walks of life, including one of the greatest physicians who ever lived, the father of logic, and a brilliant mathematician who once said, "Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum strong enough, and I will single-handedly move the world." And move the world he did, but with his ideas, not a mighty fulcrum.In 42 essays, authors Rosalie and Charles Baker explore the lives of many personalities, from the most famous Greeks to people who are usually overlooked, including:Aesop, author of timeless fables that continue to provide lessons todayLycurgus, the legendary ruler of SpartaPlato, the great philosopher who established the Academy in AthensPhidippides, a courier and long-distance runner whose run from Marathon to Athens became the basis of the modern marathonSappho, one of the best female poets of classical antiquityHippocrates, one of the greatest physicians who ever livedAlcibiades, a patriot-turned-traitor who was exiled from GreeceIctinus, the architect responsible for the design of the ParthenonAristotle, the father of logic who tutored the teenage Alexander the GreatAlexander the Great, who ruled Greece, defeated the great Persian empire, conquered lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea, including Egypt, and won control of lands stretching into India (and all that before his 33rd birthday)Zeno, founder of the philosophy known as StoicismThe biographies span the years 700 B.C. to 200 B.C., from Homer, the master of epic poetry and the author of the Iliad, to Eratosthenes, a brilliant mathematician who was the first to calculate the earth's circumference. A handy fact box that lists birth and death dates and the major accomplishments of each person profiled, abundant photographs and specially commissioned maps, a timeline, a glossary of Greek terms, an index of Greeks by profession, a pronunciation guide, and suggestions for further reading all add to the usefulness of this exceptional reference. With figures from fields as diverse as literature, mathematics, politics, the military, philosophy, and science, Ancient Greeks provides a comprehensive examination of the origins of modern civilization.
In The Mirror of Antiquity, Caroline Winterer uncovers the lost world of American women's classicism during its glory days from the eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Overturning the widely held belief that classical learning and political ideals were relevant only to men, she follows the lives of four generations of American women through their diaries, letters, books, needlework, and drawings, demonstrating how classicism was at the center of their experience as mothers, daughters, and wives. Importantly, she pays equal attention to women from the North and from the South, and to the ways that classicism shaped the lives of black women in slavery and freedom.In a strikingly innovative use of both texts and material culture, Winterer exposes the neoclassical world of furnishings, art, and fashion created in part through networks dominated by elite women. Many of these women were at the center of the national experience. Here readers will find Abigail Adams, teaching her children Latin and signing her letters as Portia, the wife of the Roman senator Brutus; the Massachusetts slave Phillis Wheatley, writing poems in imitation of her favorite books, Alexander Pope's Iliad and Odyssey; Dolley Madison, giving advice on Greek taste and style to the U.S. Capitol's architect, Benjamin Latrobe; and the abolitionist and feminist Lydia Maria Child, who showed Americans that modern slavery had its roots in the slave societies of Greece and Rome. Thoroughly embedded in the major ideas and events of the time—the American Revolution, slavery and abolitionism, the rise of a consumer society—this original book is a major contribution to American cultural and intellectual history.
