Geoffrey Miles - Böcker

Shakespeare's Romans are intensely concerned with being `constant'. But, as Geoffrey Miles shows, that virtue is far more ambiguous than is often recognized.Miles begins by showing how the Stoic principle of being `always the same' was shaped by two Roman writers into very different ideals: Cicero's Roman actor, playing an appropriate role with consistent decorum, and Seneca's Stoic hero, unmoved as a rock despite having been battered by adversity. Miles then traces the controversial history of these ideals through the Renaissance, focusing on the complex relationship between constancy and knowledge. Montaigne's sympathetic but devastating critique of Stoicism is examined in detail. Building on this genealogy of constancy, the final chapters read Shakespeare's Roman plays as his reworking of a triptych of figures found in Plutarch: the constant Brutus, the inconstant Antony, and the obstinate Coriolanus. The tragedies of these characters, Miles demonstrates, act out the attractions, flaws, and self-contradictions of constancy, and the tragi-comic failure of the Roman hope that `were man/But constant, he were perfect'.

Classical Mythology in English Literature brings together a range of English versions of three classical myths. It allows students to explore the ways in which they have been reinterpreted and reinvented by writers throughout history. Beginning with a concise introduction to the principle Greco-Roman gods and heroes, the anthology then focuses on three stories:* Orpheus, the great musician and his quest to free his wife Eurydice from death* Venus and Adonis, the love goddess and the beautiful youth she loved* Pygmalion, the master sculptor who fell in love with his creation.Each section begins with the classical sources and ends with contemporary versions, showing how each myth has been used/abused or appropriated since its origins