K. J. Dover - Böcker

This historical survey of Greek literature from 700 BC to 550 AD concentrates on the principal authors and quotes many passages from their work in translation, to allow the reader to form his own impression of its quality, including Homer, Plato, Aristophanes, and Euripides. Attention is drawn both to the elements in Greek literature and attitudes to life which are unfamiliar to us, and to the elements which appeal most powerfully to succeeding generations. Although it is recognized that this appeal lies above all in the most creative and inventive period (700-300 BC), an account is given of the eight hundred years which followed, which saw the impact of earlier inspirations. Poetry, tragedy, comedy, history, science, philosophy, and oratory are all examined through the available literature. This new edition has been revised to take account of recent scholarship, such as the influence of oriental traditions of Greek literature, and includes several new translations and a thoroughly updated bibliography.

An Historical Commentary on Thucydides Volume 4. Books V(25)-VII

An Historical Commentary on Thucydides Volume 5. Book VIII

Greek text with introduction and commentary

Lysias, a resident alien at Athens in the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C.E., acted as a consultant for clients involved in litigation and put into circulation written versions of the speeches that he composed for them. In the early Hellenistic period, a corpus of more than four hundred speeches was ascribed to him; however, literary critics in the first century C.E. formed the opinion that scarcely more than half that number were correctly ascribed. In late Roman times, a small selection of speeches was made without regard for the opinions of critics on authenticity, and that selection has survived. Our knowledge of the remainder is fragmentary and indirect.  K. J. Dover examines the extent to which, and the means by which, the work of the individual Lysias can be distinguished within the total corpus ascribed to him. One part of the examination is an attempt to reconstruct the entire process of transmission, from the making of the late Roman selection through the internal arrangement of the corpus in ancient editions to the relation between client and consultant at the time of writing. The other part evaluates the criteria used to establish authenticity: chronology, ideology, and style.  Dover concludes that any demand for a clear division of the speeches into two categories, authentic and spurious, is unreasonable and methodologically unsound. Instead, we must content ourselves with degrees of probability and treat the corpus as presenting us not with an individual but with certain aspects of Athenian art and society.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

Lysias, a resident alien at Athens in the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C.E., acted as a consultant for clients involved in litigation and put into circulation written versions of the speeches that he composed for them. In the early Hellenistic period, a corpus of more than four hundred speeches was ascribed to him; however, literary critics in the first century C.E. formed the opinion that scarcely more than half that number were correctly ascribed. In late Roman times, a small selection of speeches was made without regard for the opinions of critics on authenticity, and that selection has survived. Our knowledge of the remainder is fragmentary and indirect.  K. J. Dover examines the extent to which, and the means by which, the work of the individual Lysias can be distinguished within the total corpus ascribed to him. One part of the examination is an attempt to reconstruct the entire process of transmission, from the making of the late Roman selection through the internal arrangement of the corpus in ancient editions to the relation between client and consultant at the time of writing. The other part evaluates the criteria used to establish authenticity: chronology, ideology, and style.  Dover concludes that any demand for a clear division of the speeches into two categories, authentic and spurious, is unreasonable and methodologically unsound. Instead, we must content ourselves with degrees of probability and treat the corpus as presenting us not with an individual but with certain aspects of Athenian art and society.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

Plato's Symposium is the most literary of all his works and one which all students of classics are likely to want to read whether or not they are studying Plato's philosophy. But the reader does need help in appreciating both the artistry and the arguments, and in comprehending the social and cultural background against which the 'praise of love' is delivered. Sir Kenneth Dover provides here a sympathetic and modern edition of the kind that is long overdue. It consists of an introduction, the Greek text accompanied by a very abbreviated critical apparatus, and a commentary on the text which is intended to elucidate the Greek, to make the philosophical argument intelligible, and to relate the content of what is said to the concepts and assumptions of contemporary morality and society. An edition for students of Greek in universities and the upper forms of schools.

To what extent and in what ways was homosexuality approved by the ancient Greeks? An eminent classicist examines the evidence—vase paintings, archaic and classical poetry, the dialogues of Plato, speeches in the law courts, the comedies of Aristophanes—and reaches provocative conclusions. A discussion of female homosexuality is included.

Marginal Comment, which attracted keen and widespread interest on its original publication in 1994, is the remarkable memoir of one of the most distinguished classical scholars of the modern era. Its author, Sir Kenneth Dover, whose academic publications included the pathbreaking book Greek Homosexuality (1978, reissued by Bloomsbury in 2016), conceived of it as an ‘experimental’ autobiography – ruthlessly candid in retracing the full range of the author’s experiences, both private and public, and unflinching in its attempt to analyse the entanglements between the life of the mind and the life of the body.Dover’s distinguished career involved not only an influential series of writings about the ancient Greeks but also a number of prominent positions of leadership, including the presidencies of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and the British Academy. It was in those positions that he became involved in several high-profile controversies, including the blocking of an honorary degree for Margaret Thatcher from Oxford University, and a bitter debate in the British Academy over the fellowship of Anthony Blunt after his exposure as a former Soviet spy. This edition of Marginal Comment is much more than a reissue: it includes an introduction which frames the book in relation to its author’s life and work, as well as annotations based in part on materials originally excluded by Dover but left in his personal papers on this death. Now newly available, the memoir provides not only the self-portrait of an exceptional individual but a rich case-study in the intersections between an intellectual life and its social contexts.

Marginal Comment, which attracted keen and widespread interest on its original publication in 1994, is the remarkable memoir of one of the most distinguished classical scholars of the modern era. Its author, Sir Kenneth Dover, whose academic publications included the pathbreaking book Greek Homosexuality (1978, reissued by Bloomsbury in 2016), conceived of it as an ‘experimental’ autobiography – ruthlessly candid in retracing the full range of the author’s experiences, both private and public, and unflinching in its attempt to analyse the entanglements between the life of the mind and the life of the body.Dover’s distinguished career involved not only an influential series of writings about the ancient Greeks but also a number of prominent positions of leadership, including the presidencies of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and the British Academy. It was in those positions that he became involved in several high-profile controversies, including the blocking of an honorary degree for Margaret Thatcher from Oxford University, and a bitter debate in the British Academy over the fellowship of Anthony Blunt after his exposure as a former Soviet spy. This edition of Marginal Comment is much more than a reissue: it includes an introduction which frames the book in relation to its author’s life and work, as well as annotations based in part on materials originally excluded by Dover but left in his personal papers on this death. Now newly available, the memoir provides not only the self-portrait of an exceptional individual but a rich case-study in the intersections between an intellectual life and its social contexts.

Hailed as magisterial when it first appeared, Greek Homosexuality remains an academic milestone and continues to be of major importance for students and scholars of gender studies. Kenneth Dover explores the understanding of homosexuality in ancient Greece, examining a vast array of material and textual evidence that leads him to provocative conclusions. This new release of the 1989 second edition, for which Dover wrote an epilogue reflecting on the impact of his book, includes two specially commissioned forewords assessing the author’s legacy and the place of his text within modern studies of gender in the ancient world.

This revised edition incorporates additional examples from the original author in conjunction with K.J. Dover's own material. In presenting the first (1934) edition, Denniston set himself to cut down the etymological discussion which characterised his German predecessors in the field. He was concerned to illustrate how particles work and how they nuance Greek language within the corpus of surviving work. His primary aim was "literary, not grammatical or etymological". With this in mind he regarded exemplification as the key, citing much more than his predecessors in the belief that "the reader should be enabled to bathe in examples". When Denniston died (1949) he left copious notes - additional examples, changes of mind in the light of fresh material; these were incorporated by K.J. Dover in the second edition (1950) with new material of his own and the addition of indexes.