Literary Criticism : Ancient & Classical

Troja ist gefallen, alle Männer erschlagen und ihre Frauen auf dem Weg in die Sklaverei. Polyxene, Tochter der Königin Hekabe, wird auf dem Grab des Achilleus geopfert, nachdem ihre Mutter vergeblich versucht hat, ihr Leben zu retten. Polydoros, jüngster Sohn des Königs Priamos, war von den Eltern mit einem Goldschatz bei dem Thrakerkönig Polymestor in Sicherheit gebracht worden, doch nach dem Fall der Stadt tötete der König das Kind und eignete sich das Gold an. Als die leidgeprüfte Hekabe dies erfährt, lockt sie ihn zu sich, blendet ihn und tötet seine beiden Söhne. Das Menschenopfer, die grausame Blutrache und die Düsterkeit der hier dargestellten Welt, aus der sich die Götter anscheinend zurückgezogen haben, mögen den modernen Zuschauer und Leser befremden. Man kann aber zu einem historisch angemesseneren Verständnis dieses "schwärzesten Stückes des Euripides" gelangen, wenn man versucht, es mit den Augen der Zeitgenossen zu sehen. more...

Price: $67.00

This book demonstrates the importance of Greek medical thought in the work of Euripides. Part I shows the significance of the healing figure in Euripidean drama; Part II analyzes the role of traditional and rationalist remedies in the construction of Euripidean plots and arguments. more...

Price: $136.00

By considering the works of Herodotus against a background of late archaic and early classical Greek culture and society, these new essays by an international team of experts make a thought-provoking contribution to the ongoing debates concerning literacy and oral culture. - ;The origins and development of Greek historiography cannot be properly understood unless early historical writings are situated in the framework of late archaic and early classical Greek culture and society. Contextualization opens up new perspectives on the subject in The Historian's Craft in the Age of Herodotus. At the same time, such writings offer significant insights into how works of Herodotus reflect the attitude of fifth-century Greeks towards the transmission and. manipulation of knowledge about the past. Essays by an international range of experts explore all aspects of the topic and, at the same time, make a thought-provoking contribution to the ongoing debates concerning literacy and oral culture. - more...

Price: $55.00

In this thoughtful and penetrating study, Sara Raup Johnson investigates the creation of historical fictions in a wide range of Hellenistic Jewish texts. Surveying so-called Jewish novels, including the Letter of Aristeas, 2 Maccabees, Esther, Daniel, Judith, Tobit, Josephus's account of Alexander's visit to Jerusalem and of the Tobiads, Artapanus, and Joseph and Aseneth, she demonstrates that the use of historical fiction in these texts does not constitute a uniform genre. Instead it cuts across all boundaries of language, provenance, genre, and even purpose. Johnson argues that each author uses historical fiction to construct a particular model of Hellenistic Jewish identity through the reinvention of the past. The models of identity differ, but all seek to explore relations between Jews and the wider non-Jewish world. The author goes on to present a focal in-depth analysis of one text, Third Maccabees. Maintaining that this is a late Hellenistic, not a Roman, work Johnson traces important themes in Third Maccabees within a broader literary context. She evaluates the evidence for the authorship, audience, and purpose of the work and analyzes the historicity of the persecution described in the narrative. Illustrating how the author reinvents history in order to construct his own model for life in the diaspora, Johnson weighs the attitudes and stances, from defiance to assimilation, of this crucial period. more...

Price: $15.95

Abbreviations and Bibliography I. Abbreviations II. Bibliography Introduction I. The Historical Background II. The Rhetorical Background III. Hyperides' Funeral Oration IV. The Text and Translation Text and Translation Commentary Appendixes I. Papyrological Notes II. Critical Conjectures Indexes I. General II. Greek Words more...

Price: $60.00