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.
Branham expounds with sophistication and subtlety the essential ingredients of Lucian's satirical humor. He makes frequent reference to its importance for comic theory and literary history.
Branham expounds with sophistication and subtlety the essential ingredients of Lucian's satirical humor. He makes frequent reference to its importance for comic theory and literary history.
This book provides an original and rewarding context for understanding the prolific fourth-century Christian theologian John Chrysostom and the religious and social world in which he lived. Blake Leyerle analyzes two highly rhetorical treatises by this early church father attacking the phenomenon of "spiritual marriage." Spiritual marriage was an ascetic practice with a long history in which a man and a woman lived together in an intimate relationship without sex. What begins as an analysis of Chrysostom's attack on spiritual marriage becomes a broad investigation into Chrysostom's life and work, the practice of spiritual marriage itself, the role of the theater in late antique city life, and the early history of Christianity. Though thoroughly grounded in the texts themselves and in the cultural history of late antiquity, this study breaks new ground with its focus on issues of rhetoric, sexuality, and power. Leyerle argues that Chrysostom used images and tropes drawn from the theater to persuade religious men and women that spiritual marriage was wrong. In addition to her analysis of the significance of the rhetorical strategies used by Chrysostom, Leyerle gives a thorough discussion of the role of the theater in late antiquity, particularly in Antioch, one of the gems among late antique cities. She also discusses gender in the context of late antique religion, shedding new light on early Christian attitudes toward sexuality. Throughout Leyerle weaves an ongoing conversation with contemporary theory in film and gender studies that gives her study an important analytic dimension.
On the afternoon of June 23, 2017, the attendees of the twenty-seventh biannual Ezra Pound International Conference, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, gathered to listen to poets present original work influenced by the life and work of Ezra Pound. With a title playing on the small book of poems Pound produced for fellow poet Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) while the two were still young, this volume offers a selection of poems from that reading, together with images evoking other conference events and the excursions to sites important to Pound, H.D., Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams—the “Philadelphia Geniuses” of the conference’s theme. The poems and images herein help to keep the reading and the conference alive, present, and immediate for our readers. The collection includes poems by Charles Bernstein, Eloisa Bressan, Andrei Bronnikov, David Cappella, Silvia Falsaperla, J. Rhett Forman, John Gery, Jeff Grieneisen, Thomas Heffernan, Rodolfo Brandão de Proença Jaruga, Justin Kishbaugh, Mary Maxwell, Biljana D. Obradović, Matthew Porto, Mary de Rachewiltz, Patrizia de Rachewiltz, Michele Reese, and Ron Smith.
In Truly Beyond Wonders Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis investigates texts and material evidence associated with healing pilgrimage in the Roman empire during the second century AD. Her focus is upon one particular pilgrim, the famous orator Aelius Aristides, whose Sacred Tales, his fascinating account of dream visions, gruelling physical treatments, and sacred journeys, has been largely misunderstood and marginalized. Petsalis-Diomidis rehabilitates this text by placing it within the material context of the sanctuary of Asklepios at Pergamon, where the author spent two years in search of healing. The architecture, votive offerings, and ritual rules which governed the behaviour of pilgrims are used to build a picture of the experience of pilgrimage to this sanctuary. Truly Beyond Wonders ranges broadly over discourses of the body and travel and in so doing explores the place of healing pilgrimage and religion in Graeco-Roman society and culture. It is generously illustrated with more than 80 drawinsg and photographs, and four colour plates.
More than one hundred books have been written about T.E. Lawrence which explore the man and his deeds. Just about every aspect and the many incarnations of his life, his campaigns, the geo-politics of the Arab world, and the influence of the West in it, as Lawrence experienced them, have been examined. However, nobody has gone in search of the mind of the man himself – of his formation and his deep beliefs. Nobody has asked the question, What, really, is the source of the extraordinary power of this little man? – not only in terms of his incontestable qualities of leadership, but also in regard to the sheer range of his activities and accomplishments. Archaeologist, writer, guerilla warfare theorist and practitioner, diplomat, soldier and airman, Lawrence also possessed an unusual ability to cross boundaries of class, race, culture, and religion. On top of this, he demonstrated the ability to walk away from power and wealth and the accumulation of things – to change his name more than once; to begin again at the bottom of the heap in the RAF, and stay there, with only a few friends and books and a motorcycle. Lawrence – Warrior and Scholar is a quest. It examines how a slight Oxford academic combined two of the most challenging paths a man can choose. What drove and motivated this man? How was it that he could apparently out-shoot, out-ride, and out-starve the Bedouin? How is it that the US military, and others, are still studying his famous account of the Arab Revolt and his ‘27 Articles’? Drawing upon what Lawrence and those who knew him wrote, and did, and said, Bruce Leigh delves into Lawrence’s personal philosophy and practices, examining and analyzing his library, and his close relationship to the world of classical scholarship and chivalry, emphasizing that Lawrence’s views were not abstractions only, but intimately tied to his actions and deeds. Ultimately, the book argues that there is a message in Lawrence’s writings and activities – one that is against the grain of the world of self-definition by consumption. As one of his friends wrote: ‘The Man was great, the message is greater.’
Witty nicknames, crude jokes, public nudity and lavish monuments, all of these things distinguished Greek courtesans from respectable citizen women in ancient Greece. Although prostitutes appear as early as archaic Greek lyric poetry, our fullest accounts come from the late second century CE. Drawing on Book 13 of the Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae--which contains almost all known references to hetaeras from all periods of Greek literature--Laura K. McClure has created a window onto the ways ancient Greeks perceived the courtesan and the role of the courtesan in Greek life.
In Early Christians Adapting to the Roman Empire: Mutual Recognition Niko Huttunen challenges the interpretation of early Christian texts as anti-imperial documents. He presents examples of the positive relationship between early Christians and the Roman society. With the concept of “recognition” Huttunen describes a situation in which the parties can come to terms with each other without full agreement. Huttunen provides examples of non-Christian philosophers recognizing early Christians. He claims that recognition was a response to Christians who presented themselves as philosophers. Huttunen reads Romans 13 as a part of the ancient tradition of the law of the stronger. His pioneering study on early Christian soldiers uncovers the practical dimension of recognizing the empire.
Early Greek Ethics is the first volume devoted to philosophical ethics in its "formative" period. It explores contributions from the Presocratics, figures of the early Pythagorean tradition, sophists, and anonymous texts, as well as topics influential to ethical philosophical thought such as Greek medicine, music, friendship, and justice.
