Robert Shorrock – författare

The Telegraph kicked off the 2006-07 academic year with the declaration “Nota bene: Latin is back”. Arguably, it never really went away. Despite lower levels of compulsory Latin in schools today, the language remains prolific in many areas of our daily life. Medical, legal and literary texts are littered with Latin phrases that embody a meaning English simply can’t articulate. The essence of Latin is irreplaceable and the benefits of learning this wonderful language are unequivocal. The Penguin Latin Dictionary is a brand new, comprehensive dictionary that includes Latin to English, English to Latin, notes on grammar and pronunciation plus the historical context of this classical language. The Latin-English section has been extensively researched and designed to meet the specific needs of students and professionals today. Vivat crescat floreat!

Traditional and still prevalent accounts of late antique literature draw a clear distinction between ‘pagan’ and ‘Christian’ forms of poetry: whereas Christian poetry is taken seriously in terms its contribution to culture and society at large, so-called pagan or secular poetry is largely ignored, as though it has no meaningful part to play within the late antique world. The Myth of Paganism sets out to deconstruct this view of two contrasting poetic traditions and proposes in its place a new integrated model for the understanding of late antique poetry. As the book argues, the poet of Christ and the poet of the Muses were drawn together into an active, often provocative, dialogue about the relationship between Christianity and the Classical tradition and, ultimately, about the meaning of late antiquity itself. An analysis of the poetry of Nonnus of Panopolis, author of both a ‘pagan’ epic about Dionysus and a Christian translation of St John’s Gospel, helps to illustrate this complex dialectic between pagan and Christian voices.

Traditional and still prevalent accounts of late antique literature draw a clear distinction between ''pagan'' and ''Christian'' forms of poetry: whereas Christian poetry is taken seriously in terms its contribution to culture and society at large, so-called pagan or secular poetry is largely ignored, as though it has no meaningful part to play within the late antique world. The Myth of Paganism sets out to deconstruct this view of two contrasting poetic traditions and proposes in its place a new integrated model for the understanding of late antique poetry. As the book argues, the poet of Christ and the poet of the Muses were drawn together into an active, often provocative, dialogue about the relationship between Christianity and the Classical tradition and, ultimately, about the meaning of late antiquity itself. An analysis of the poetry of Nonnus of Panopolis, author of both a ''pagan'' epic about Dionysus and a Christian translation of St John''s Gospel, helps to illustrate this complex dialectic between pagan and Christian voices.