New Antiquity – serie

The lyric poems of Horace and Housman are two enigmatic bodies of work that have much in common, and a close reading of each poet's writings can illuminate the other's. This is the first book to provide a detailed, critical comparison between these two poets, and also the first to make use of Housman's unpublished lectures on Horace.

This ground-breaking book applies trauma studies to the drama and literature of the ancient Greeks. Diverse essays explore how the Greeks responded to war and if what we now term "combat trauma," "post-traumatic stress," or "combat stress injury" can be discerned in ancient Greek culture.

Lucretius's long shadow falls across the disciplines of literary history and criticism, philosophy, religious studies, classics, political philosophy, and the history of science. The best recent example is Stephen Greenblatt's popular account of the Roman poet's De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) rediscovery by Poggio Bracciolini, and of its reception in early modernity, winner of both a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Despite the poem's newfound influence and visibility, very little cross-disciplinary conversation has taken place. This edited collection brings together essays by distinguished scholars to examine the relationship between Lucretius and modernity. Key questions weave this book's ideas and arguments together: What is the relation between literary form and philosophical argument? How does the text of De rerum natura allow itself to be used, at different historical moments and to different ends? What counts as reason for Lucretius? Together, these essays present a nuanced, skeptical, passionate, historically sensitive, and complicated account of what is at stake when we claim Lucretius for modernity.

Lucretius's long shadow falls across the disciplines of literary history and criticism, philosophy, religious studies, classics, political philosophy, and the history of science. The best recent example is Stephen Greenblatt's popular account of the Roman poet's De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) rediscovery by Poggio Bracciolini, and of its reception in early modernity, winner of both a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Despite the poem's newfound influence and visibility, very little cross-disciplinary conversation has taken place. This edited collection brings together essays by distinguished scholars to examine the relationship between Lucretius and modernity. Key questions weave this book's ideas and arguments together: What is the relation between literary form and philosophical argument? How does the text of De rerum natura allow itself to be used, at different historical moments and to different ends? What counts as reason for Lucretius? Together, these essays present a nuanced, skeptical, passionate, historically sensitive, and complicated account of what is at stake when we claim Lucretius for modernity.

The lyric poems of Horace and Housman are two enigmatic bodies of work that have much in common, and a close reading of each poet's writings can illuminate the other's. This is the first book to provide a detailed, critical comparison between these two poets, and also the first to make use of Housman's unpublished lectures on Horace.

This ground-breaking book applies trauma studies to the drama and literature of the ancient Greeks. Diverse essays explore how the Greeks responded to war and if what we now term "combat trauma," "post-traumatic stress," or "combat stress injury" can be discerned in ancient Greek culture.

This volume explores film and television sources in problematic conversation with classical antiquity, to better understand the nature of artistic reception and classical reception in particular. Drawing inspiration from well-theorized fields like adaptation studies, comparative literature, and film, the essays in this collection raise questions fundamental to the future of reception studies. The first section, ‘Beyond Fidelity’, deals with idiosyncratic adaptations of ancient sources; the second section, ‘Beyond Influence’, discusses modern works purporting to adapt ancient figures or themes that are less straightforwardly ancient than they may at first appear; while the last section, ‘Beyond Original’, uses films that lack even these murky connections to antiquity to challenge the notion that studying reception requires establishing historical connections between works. As questions of audience, interpretation, and subjectivity are central to most contemporary fields of study, this is a collection that is of interest to a wide variety of readers in the humanities.

This book explores the body’s physical limits and the ways in which the confines of the body are delineated, transgressed, or controlled in literary and philosophical texts. Drawing on classics, philosophy, religious studies, medieval studies, and critical theory and examining material ranging from Homer to Game of Thrones, this volume facilitates an interdisciplinary investigation into how the boundaries of the body define the human form in language. This volume’s essays suggest that the body’s meaning is perhaps never more evident than in the violation of its wholeness. The boundaries of the body are areas of transition between states and are therefore vulnerable. As individuals find themselves isolated from their world and one another, their bodies regularly allow for physical interactions, incur transgressions and violations, and undergo profound transformations. Thus sympathy, sexuality, disease, and violence are among the main themes of the volume, which, ultimately, reexamines the place of the body in our understanding of what it means to be human.

This book explores the body’s physical limits and the ways in which the confines of the body are delineated, transgressed, or controlled in literary and philosophical texts. Drawing on classics, philosophy, religious studies, medieval studies, and critical theory and examining material ranging from Homer to Game of Thrones, this volume facilitates an interdisciplinary investigation into how the boundaries of the body define the human form in language. This volume’s essays suggest that the body’s meaning is perhaps never more evident than in the violation of its wholeness. The boundaries of the body are areas of transition between states and are therefore vulnerable. As individuals find themselves isolated from their world and one another, their bodies regularly allow for physical interactions, incur transgressions and violations, and undergo profound transformations. Thus sympathy, sexuality, disease, and violence are among the main themes of the volume, which, ultimately, reexamines the place of the body in our understanding of what it means to be human.

This book demonstrates the way in which William Blake aligned his idiosyncratic concept of the Selfhood – the lens through which the despiritualised subject beholds the material world – with the atomistic materialism of the Epicurean school as it was transmitted through the first-century BC Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. By addressing this philosophical debt, this study sets out a threefold re-evaluation of Blake’s work: to clarify the classical stream of Blake’s philosophical heritage through Lucretius; to return Blake to his historical moment, a thirty-year period from 1790 to 1820 which has been described as the second Lucretian moment in England; and to employ a new exegetical model for understanding the phenomenological parameters and epistemological frameworks of Blake’s mythopoeia. Accordingly, it is revealed that Blake was not only aware of classical atomistic cosmogony and sense-based epistemology but that he systematically mapped postlapsarian existence onto an Epicurean framework.

This book demonstrates the way in which William Blake aligned his idiosyncratic concept of the Selfhood – the lens through which the despiritualised subject beholds the material world – with the atomistic materialism of the Epicurean school as it was transmitted through the first-century BC Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. By addressing this philosophical debt, this study sets out a threefold re-evaluation of Blake’s work: to clarify the classical stream of Blake’s philosophical heritage through Lucretius; to return Blake to his historical moment, a thirty-year period from 1790 to 1820 which has been described as the second Lucretian moment in England; and to employ a new exegetical model for understanding the phenomenological parameters and epistemological frameworks of Blake’s mythopoeia. Accordingly, it is revealed that Blake was not only aware of classical atomistic cosmogony and sense-based epistemology but that he systematically mapped postlapsarian existence onto an Epicurean framework.

This book explores Roman love elegy from postcolonial perspectives, arguing that the tropes, conventions, and discourses of the Augustan genre serve to reinforce the imperial identity of its elite, metropolitan audience. Love elegy presents the phenomena and discourses of Roman imperialism—in terms of visual spectacle (the military triumph), literary genre (epic in relation to elegy), material culture (art and luxury goods), and geographic space—as intersecting with ancient norms of gender and sexuality in a way that reinforces Rome’s dominance in the Mediterranean. The introductory chapter lays out the postcolonial frame, drawing from the work of Edward Said among other theorists, and situates love elegy in relation to Roman Hellenism and the varied Roman responses to Greece and its cultural influences. Four of the six subsequent chapters focus on the rhetorical ambivalence that characterizes love elegy’s treatment of Greek influence: the representation of the domina or mistress assimultaneously a figure for ‘captive Greece’ and a trope for Roman imperialism; the motif of the elegiac triumph, with varying figures playing the triumphator, as suggestive of Greco-Roman cultural rivalry; Rome’s competing visions of an Attic and an Asiatic Hellenism. The second and the final chapter focus on the figures of Osiris and Isis, respectively, as emblematic of Rome’s colonialist and ambivalent representation of Egypt, with the conclusion offering a deconstructive reading of elegy’s rhetoric of orientalism.

This book explores Roman love elegy from postcolonial perspectives, arguing that the tropes, conventions, and discourses of the Augustan genre serve to reinforce the imperial identity of its elite, metropolitan audience. Love elegy presents the phenomena and discourses of Roman imperialism—in terms of visual spectacle (the military triumph), literary genre (epic in relation to elegy), material culture (art and luxury goods), and geographic space—as intersecting with ancient norms of gender and sexuality in a way that reinforces Rome’s dominance in the Mediterranean. The introductory chapter lays out the postcolonial frame, drawing from the work of Edward Said among other theorists, and situates love elegy in relation to Roman Hellenism and the varied Roman responses to Greece and its cultural influences. Four of the six subsequent chapters focus on the rhetorical ambivalence that characterizes love elegy’s treatment of Greek influence: the representation of the domina or mistress assimultaneously a figure for ‘captive Greece’ and a trope for Roman imperialism; the motif of the elegiac triumph, with varying figures playing the triumphator, as suggestive of Greco-Roman cultural rivalry; Rome’s competing visions of an Attic and an Asiatic Hellenism. The second and the final chapter focus on the figures of Osiris and Isis, respectively, as emblematic of Rome’s colonialist and ambivalent representation of Egypt, with the conclusion offering a deconstructive reading of elegy’s rhetoric of orientalism.

This book is the first collection of essays dedicated to the work of C. H. Sisson (1915-2003), a major English poet, critic and translator. The collection aims to offer an overall guide to his work for new readers, while also encouraging established readers of one aspect (such as his well-known classical translations) to explore others. It champions in particular the quality of his original poetry. The book brings together contributions from scholars and critics working in a wide range of fields, including classical reception, translation studies and early modern literature as well as modern English poetry, and concludes with a more personal essay on Sisson’s work by Michael Schmidt, his publisher.

This book is the first collection of essays dedicated to the work of C. H. Sisson (1915-2003), a major English poet, critic and translator. The collection aims to offer an overall guide to his work for new readers, while also encouraging established readers of one aspect (such as his well-known classical translations) to explore others. It champions in particular the quality of his original poetry. The book brings together contributions from scholars and critics working in a wide range of fields, including classical reception, translation studies and early modern literature as well as modern English poetry, and concludes with a more personal essay on Sisson’s work by Michael Schmidt, his publisher.

This book reinterprets C. P. Cavafy’s historical and archaeological poetics by correlating his work to major cultural, political and sexualized receptions of antiquity that marked the turn of the 20th century. Focusing on selected poems which stage readings of Hellenistic and late ancient texts and material objects, this study probes the poet's personal library and archive to trace his scholarly sources and scrutinize their contribution to his creative practice. A new understanding of Cavafy's historicism emerges by comparing his poetics to a broad array of discourses and intellectual pursuits of his time; these range from antiquarianism, physiognomy and Egyptomania to cultural appropriations of the classics which sought to legitimate British colonial rule as well as homoerotic desire. As this volume demonstrates, Cavafy embraced antiquarianism as an empathetic and passionate way of relating to the past and shaped it into a method that allowed his poetry to render modern meanings to Hellenistic antiquities.

This book reinterprets C. P. Cavafy’s historical and archaeological poetics by correlating his work to major cultural, political and sexualized receptions of antiquity that marked the turn of the 20th century. Focusing on selected poems which stage readings of Hellenistic and late ancient texts and material objects, this study probes the poet's personal library and archive to trace his scholarly sources and scrutinize their contribution to his creative practice. A new understanding of Cavafy's historicism emerges by comparing his poetics to a broad array of discourses and intellectual pursuits of his time; these range from antiquarianism, physiognomy and Egyptomania to cultural appropriations of the classics which sought to legitimate British colonial rule as well as homoerotic desire. As this volume demonstrates, Cavafy embraced antiquarianism as an empathetic and passionate way of relating to the past and shaped it into a method that allowed his poetry to render modern meanings to Hellenistic antiquities.

This volume draws readers into the exciting world of the Dead Sea Scrolls – around 930 manuscripts which were discovered in caves near the ancient settlement of Qumran between 1947 and 1956, and which transformed scholarship of the Bible, Judaism and Christianity. Ten scholars working at the forefront of their field address big-picture issues in relation to the scroll fragments, including their preservation and conservation; their availability electronically; and their relation to Rabbinic literature. The book also looks at the archaeology of Qumran, and the history and identity of the community; ancient writing systems; the scrolls in relation to the wider world of the time – the practice of magic and demonology, prayer, and colonial violence and power – as well as representations of them in popular media. The volume situates Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship within broader conversations in the study of the ancient world: Biblical Studies, Religious Studies, Classics, Archaeology, Jewish Studies, and Ancient History.

This volume draws readers into the exciting world of the Dead Sea Scrolls – around 930 manuscripts which were discovered in caves near the ancient settlement of Qumran between 1947 and 1956, and which transformed scholarship of the Bible, Judaism and Christianity. Ten scholars working at the forefront of their field address big-picture issues in relation to the scroll fragments, including their preservation and conservation; their availability electronically; and their relation to Rabbinic literature. The book also looks at the archaeology of Qumran, and the history and identity of the community; ancient writing systems; the scrolls in relation to the wider world of the time – the practice of magic and demonology, prayer, and colonial violence and power – as well as representations of them in popular media. The volume situates Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship within broader conversations in the study of the ancient world: Biblical Studies, Religious Studies, Classics, Archaeology, Jewish Studies, and Ancient History.

This book sheds new light on labor and laboring in the Roman world. It starts with the individual laborer and works up, emphasizing their agency in navigating, transforming, and transcending the systems and structures around them. Taking advantage of the broad applicability of notions of work and labor to human lives at every rung of Roman society, the volume also offers numerous overlapping frameworks for thinking comparatively between many different kinds of work, whether in agriculture, craft, trade, politics, art, or literature. The book is organized around the ‘typical’ work-life experience of the modern 9-to-5 and provides a means of thinking in a rigorous way about how the working lives of scholars of Rome are caught up in ancient discourse and practices.

This book sheds new light on labor and laboring in the Roman world. It starts with the individual laborer and works up, emphasizing their agency in navigating, transforming, and transcending the systems and structures around them. Taking advantage of the broad applicability of notions of work and labor to human lives at every rung of Roman society, the volume also offers numerous overlapping frameworks for thinking comparatively between many different kinds of work, whether in agriculture, craft, trade, politics, art, or literature. The book is organized around the ‘typical’ work-life experience of the modern 9-to-5 and provides a means of thinking in a rigorous way about how the working lives of scholars of Rome are caught up in ancient discourse and practices.

This book reconsiders Iamblichus’ Response to Porphyry, Late Antiquity’s seminal work on theurgy, which is often referred to as De Mysteriis. Was this text intended to be more than just a defence of ritualism or a philosophical crossing of metaphysical wits between Porphyry and Iamblichus? This volume examines whether De Mysteriis constituted a manifesto of restoration, a call to resignify and revive a religion that Iamblichus felt was spiralling into barren traditionalism.Through a nuanced examination of Iamblichus’ theurgy, this book shows the emergence of a sophisticated philosophico-ritualistic system, one designed to reform religious practice through divine epiphanies and direct communication with the gods. Using a thorough textual analysis, this book uncovers crucial distinctions between theurgy and magic and explores the mechanics of divine illumination during theurgic rituals in the context of Iamblichus' intricate hierarchy of spiritual beings. In this system, this book demonstrates, material objects could become vessels of divine power and humans could become interlocutors with the divine itself.

This book offers a novel approach to the study of the Roman imperial cult, disrupting the traditional Eurocentric narrative and tendency to relativise the cult’s religious dimension in favour of its political implications. Instead, this collection argues for understanding the imperial cult within diverse local contexts, where it evolved through intricate interactions with existing religious traditions and institutions. Consequently, this volume also contends that the often-promoted, singular narrative of the imperial cult fails to capture its complexity and multipolar nature, making it essential to speak of imperial cults in the plural. This book examines the cult’s flexibility and regional specificity through epigraphic numismatic, literary and archaeological evidence from Greece, Hispania (Baetica and Lusitania), Asia Minor, Italy, the Lower Danube region, Crete and Cyrene, Egypt and Germania, from the first century BCE to the fourth century CE. These sources reveal that the imperial cult was deeply embedded in local religious and social fabrics, while also engaging with distinct socio-political conditions and impacting various religious discourses, including those of Christian authors. By focusing on the local adaptations and religious innovations that characterised the imperial cult, the book advocates for a more nuanced and context-sensitive analysis.Chapters 1, 2 and 13 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book brings together scholars working in eleven different classical traditions – Greek, Chinese, Latin, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Pali, Hittite, Egyptian, Japanese and Sumerian – to investigate how major texts in these traditions conceptualized, mapped and categorized the sentiments, attitudes and states we think of as emotion. This volume is distinctive in its focus on foundational questions concerning the categorization and conceptualization of emotion. It is also unique in its degree of collaboration among scholars working in different disciplines and in a vast range of ancient traditions. This book aims to build on the resources of these traditions to make an intervention in how we might think about emotions today.

This book addresses the function of the classical world in the cultural imaginations of the second generation of romantic writers: Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Thomas Love Peacock, John Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the rest of their diverse circle. The younger romantics inherited impressions of the ancient world colored by the previous century, in which classical studies experienced a resurgence, the emerging field of comparative mythography investigated the relationship between Christianity and its predecessors, and scientific and archaeological discoveries began to shed unprecedented light on the ancient world. The Shelley circle embraced a specifically pagan ancient world of excess, joy, and ecstatic experiences that test the boundaries between self and other. Though dubbed the “Satanic School” by Robert Southey, this circle instead thought of itself as “Athenian” and frequently employed mythology and imagery from the classical world that was characterized not by philosophy and reason butby wildness, excess, and ecstatic experiences.

This book provides the first overview of classical presences in Anglophone Irish poetry after 1960. Featuring detailed studies of Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, and Eavan Boland, including close readings of key poems, it highlights the evolution of Irish poetic engagements with Greece and Rome in the last sixty years. It outlines the contours of a ‘movement’ which has transformed Irish poetry and accompanied its transition from a postcolonial to a transnational model, from sporadic borrowings of images and myths in the poets’ early attempts to define their own voices, to the multiplication of classical adaptations since the late 1980s -- at first at a time of personal and political crises, notably in Northern Ireland, and more recently, as manifestations of the poets’ engagements with European and other foreign literatures.

This book addresses the function of the classical world in the cultural imaginations of the second generation of romantic writers: Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Thomas Love Peacock, John Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the rest of their diverse circle. The younger romantics inherited impressions of the ancient world colored by the previous century, in which classical studies experienced a resurgence, the emerging field of comparative mythography investigated the relationship between Christianity and its predecessors, and scientific and archaeological discoveries began to shed unprecedented light on the ancient world. The Shelley circle embraced a specifically pagan ancient world of excess, joy, and ecstatic experiences that test the boundaries between self and other. Though dubbed the “Satanic School” by Robert Southey, this circle instead thought of itself as “Athenian” and frequently employed mythology and imagery from the classical world that was characterized not by philosophy and reason butby wildness, excess, and ecstatic experiences.

This book provides the first overview of classical presences in Anglophone Irish poetry after 1960. Featuring detailed studies of Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, and Eavan Boland, including close readings of key poems, it highlights the evolution of Irish poetic engagements with Greece and Rome in the last sixty years. It outlines the contours of a ‘movement’ which has transformed Irish poetry and accompanied its transition from a postcolonial to a transnational model, from sporadic borrowings of images and myths in the poets’ early attempts to define their own voices, to the multiplication of classical adaptations since the late 1980s -- at first at a time of personal and political crises, notably in Northern Ireland, and more recently, as manifestations of the poets’ engagements with European and other foreign literatures.