Studia Graeca et Latina Lundensia – serie

Kunskaper i antik grekiska ger en unik inblick i den antika grekiska kulturen som har haft en avgörande betydelse för Västerlandets utveckling och självförståelse. Grekiska för nybörjare vänder sig till dig som vill lära dig grunderna i antik grekiska. Tonvikten ligger främst på den klassiska och hellenistiska litteraturens språk. Boken bygger på kompendier som har använts vid Lunds universitet under ett antal år. Materialet består av tre delar: Läroboken med formlära, något om den spännande syntaxen och språkprover ur grekiska originaltexter, Grekisk-svensk ordlista samt Övningsbok.

Earlier research has treated the metaphors and similes in Seneca’s Epistulae Morales too much as separate units. In this study, Dr Aron Sjöblad argues that we rather ought to concentrate on the way they interact with each other. In the fi rst chapter, Sjöblad demonstrates that a single source domain, the human body, unites many of the metaphors that have been treated as distinct groups in earlier research. In chapter two, it is showed that the Stoic idea of a psychological defence wall around the human soul is closely connected to the metaphors where Seneca makes use of theatre, slavery, and money. In chapter three, Sjöblad explores the intricate relation between the iter vitae and the iter ad sapientiam metaphors and makes it plain that new meaning emerges when we study the interplay between them.

This dissertation is a study of metaphors of emotion in rebétiko song texts. Rebétiko is a major popular-music style of modern Greece, consisting of melancholic songs full of sorrow, disappointment, and misfortune, as well as passion and romance, but also of cheerful songs of revelry and a carefree attitude to life. The genre developed in the Greek-speaking world and its diaspora in the early twentieth century. Its roots can be traced to mainland Greece, Asia Minor, and the Greek islands, but the musical form has been broadly influenced by many different cultures and other musical traditions. The enduring popularity that rebétiko enjoys among successive generations of Greek-speakers suggests that it expresses what might be termed ‘the Greek spirit and Greek mentality’ to a significant extent. The basic thesis advanced and documented here is that the lyrics of rebétiko songs are highly metaphorical and that the character of their metaphors is distinctly emotional. Metaphors of emotion in rebétiko are examined in the light of the theories of conceptual metaphor developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson from 1980 onwards and subsequently elaborated in respect of emotion metaphors by Zóltan Kövecses. In the theories of the latter, emotions are perceived as forces. This dissertation tests the applicability of these theories to metaphors of emotion commonly encountered in rebétiko song texts. It investigates the interpretation of certain frequently recurring words and phrases as literal or as metaphorical. The analysis examines whether the various metaphors encountered are conventional or creative, and universal or culture-specific. The corpus of rebétiko song texts analysed in this dissertation was compiled specifically for this purpose from sources representing various time periods and thematic subcategories. Words and phrases were collected from multiple contexts, in order to observe their typical behaviour, and categorised into metaphorical source domains involving force.This dissertation thus confirms that metaphors of emotion are of crucial significance to the poetry of the emotionally charged genre which is rebétiko.

Johannes Magnus (1488–1544), the last Catholic archbishop of Uppsala to hold residence in Sweden, was the author of a monumental work about Swedish history, in the form of biographies of over 200 kings, from the grandsons of Noah to Gustavus Vasa. The work is entitled Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque regibus, the ‘History of all the Kings of the Goths and the Swedes’, and was published posthumously in Rome in 1554. Johannes’ work gained spectacular importance in the 17th century, when the dominions of Sweden were increased through the bellicose efforts of King Gustavus II Adolphus and his successors: it became the ideological basis for Swedish patriotism and was translated into Swedish by order of the king. But when historians eventually began to ask questions about the factual accuracy of the work, they found it doubtful. Johannes was claimed to have used his imagination to invent his history, instead of having subjected his sources to critical evaluation in order to find out about the past, as was demanded by later historians. In short, the work was seen as full of invented people and events.

Were Ovid’s Heroides inspired by the contemporary practice in oratory at schools? The similarity of the poems to the rhetorical exercise ethopoeia has made scholars believe so for many centuries. However, there are very few studies into the matter, and the comparison has been controversial. In this thesis, the author explores the concept of ethopoeia, arguing that it needs to be reassessed and that the term can be successfully applied to Ovid’s famous poems. This discovery provides new perspectives on ancient literary composition and the influence of rhetorical training on the Heroides.

King Eric XIV of Sweden (1533–1577) has gone down in history as bad and mad. He is reputed to have been killed with arsenic in a bowl of pea soup on the orders of his brother and successor John III. John III deposed his older brother, imprisoned him, and painted him in the darkest colours possible to justify his own accession. Eric’s dramatic life tends to overshadow the fact that he was also a very learned Renaissance king. It is his learning that is the focus of the present study. He owned a library of over 200 volumes, and of these, four are still extant. There are two works of history, Johannes Magnus’ Historia de regibus and Sabellico’s Enneades, one of geography, Strabo’s Geographia, and one of astronomy, Stadius’ Ephemerides, known to have been in Eric’s possession. The works contain marginalia, mainly in the form of little images in the king’s hand. Through this study, it has been possible to establish that Eric XIV had devised a system of images, referred to as symbols in this study. Their function was marking material that was of interest to him in his role as king, as military commander, and as a learned man, and to make it easily retrievable. King Eric also left a few comments in writing. Taken together, the symbols and comments form what might be referred to as an intellectual biography of the unfortunate king.

This volume collects eleven studies that investigate different aspects of the teaching and learning of Greek in early modern northern Europe (c. 1500–1750), from France in the west to Lithuania in the east. They give important insights that advance our understanding of the homogeneity despite diversity in the complex developments of classical reception, the study of Greek, its significance, and the practice of Greek in the various religious, cultural, and socio-political environments of the complicated spatio-temporal and geopolitical realities of Europe.