Download or read book The Best of the Achaeans written by Gregory Nagy and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite widespread interest in the Greek hero as a cult figure, little was written about the relationship between the cult practices and the portrayals of the hero in poetry. The first edition of The Best of the Achaeans bridged that gap, raising new questions about what could be known or conjectured about Greek heroes. In this revised edition, which features a new preface by the author, Gregory Nagy reconsiders his conclusions in the light of the subsequent debate and resumes his discussion of the special status of heroes in ancient Greek life and poetry. His book remains an engaging introduction both to the concept of the hero in Hellenic civilization and to the poetic forms through which the hero is defined: the Iliad and Odyssey in particular and archaic Greek poetry in general.
Download or read book Menelaus in the Archaic Period written by Anna R. Stelow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-06 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there have been many studies devoted to the major heroes and heroines of Homeric epic, among them Achilles, Odysseus, and Helen, the figure of Menelaus has remained notably overlooked in this strand of scholarship. Menelaus in the Archaic Period is the first book-length study of the Homeric character, taking a multidisciplinary approach to his depiction in archaic Greek poetry, art, and cult through detailed analysis of ancient literary, visual, and material evidence. The volume is divided into two parts, the first of which examines the portrayal of Menelaus in the Homeric poems as a unique 'personality' with an integral role to play in each narrative, as depicted through typical patterns of speech and action and through intertextual allusion. The second part explores his representation both in other poetry of the archaic period - including lyric poetry and Simonides' 'Plataea elegy ' - and also archaic art and local Sparta cult, drawing on the literary, archaeological, and inscriptional evidence for the cult of Menelaus with Helen at Therapne. The depiction of Menelaus in archaic art is a particular focal point: Chapter 4 provides a methodology for the interpretation of heroic narrative on archaic Greek vases through iconography and inscriptions and establishes his conventional visual 'identity' on black figure Athenian vases, while an annotated catalogue of images details those that fall outside the 'norm'. Menelaus emerges from this comprehensive study as a unique and likeable character whose relationship with Helen was a popular theme in both epic poetry and vase painting, but one whose portrayal evinced a significant narrative range, with an array of continuities and differences in how he was represented by the Greeks, not only within the archaic period but also in comparison to classical Athens.
Download or read book The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours written by Gregory Nagy and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-10 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be a hero? The ancient Greeks who gave us Achilles and Odysseus had a very different understanding of the term than we do today. Based on the legendary Harvard course that Gregory Nagy has taught for well over thirty years, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours explores the roots of Western civilization and offers a masterclass in classical Greek literature. We meet the epic heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but Nagy also considers the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the songs of Sappho and Pindar, and the dialogues of Plato. Herodotus once said that to read Homer was to be a civilized person. To discover Nagy’s Homer is to be twice civilized. “Fascinating, often ingenious... A valuable synthesis of research finessed over thirty years.” —Times Literary Supplement “Nagy exuberantly reminds his readers that heroes—mortal strivers against fate, against monsters, and...against death itself—form the heart of Greek literature... [He brings] in every variation on the Greek hero, from the wily Theseus to the brawny Hercules to the ‘monolithic’ Achilles to the valiantly conflicted Oedipus.” —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly
Download or read book Homer written by Homer and published by . This book was released on 1878 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Anger of Achilles written by Leonard Charles Muellner and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonard Muellner's goal is to restore the Greek word for the anger of Achilles, menis, to its social, mythical, and poetic contexts. His point of departure is the anthropology of emotions. He believes that notions of anger vary between cultures and that the particular meaning of a word such as menis needs to emerge from a close study of Greek epic. Menis means more than an individual's emotional response. On the basis of the epic exemplifications of the word, Muellner defines the term as a cosmic sanction against behavior that violates the most basic rules of human society. Virtually absent from the Odyssey, the term menis appears in the Iliad in conjunction with the enforcement of social rules, especially the rules of reciprocal exchange. To understand the way menis functions, Muellner invokes the concept of tabu developed by Mary Douglas, stressing both the power and the danger that accrue to a person who violates such rules. Transgressive behavior has both a creative and a destructive aspect. Muellner draws on the method of mythical analysis developed by Pierre-Yves Jacopin. He applies the restructured definition of menis to the anger of Achilles in the narrative of the Iliad, tracing the moral issues that motivate cosmic anger and, finally, exploring the transformation of menis into the social term that is explicitly named as its opposite: philotes, or friendship.
Download or read book Polyhymnia written by Gregson Davis and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horace's Odes have a surface translucency that belies their rhetorical sophistication. Gregson Davis brings together recent trends in the study of Augustan poetry and critical theory and deftly applies them to individual poems. Exploring four rhetorical strategies—what he calls modes of assimilation, authentication, consolation, and praise and dispraise—Davis produces enlightening, new interpretations of this classic work. Polyhymnia, named after one of the Muses invoked in Horace's opening poem, revises the common image of Horace as a complacent, uncomplicated, and basically superficial singer. Focusing on the artistic persona—the lyric "self" that is constituted in the text—Davis explores how the lyric speaker constructs subtle "arguments" whose building-blocks are topoi, recurrent motifs, and generic conventions. By examining the substructure of lyric argument in groupings of poems sharing similar strategies, the author discloses the major principles that inform Horatian lyric composition.
Download or read book Rhetorical Action in Ancient Athens written by James Fredal and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-eight illustrations are included."--Jacket.
Download or read book The Iliad written by Homer and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Gemini and the Sacred written by Kimberley C. Patton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-06 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do twins remain uncanny to those born alone-in other words, most of us? Even with the rise of IVF and an increase in multiple births, why do we still do “a double take” when we encounter twins? Why has this been a near-universal response throughout human history, and how has it played out in religion and myth? Through the work of leading scholars in religion, folklore and mythology, history, anthropology, and archaeology, Gemini and the Sacred explores how twinship has long been imagined, especially in the complex relationship of sacred twin traditions to “twins on the ground” in biology and lived experience. The book considers the multiple ways in which the “doubling” of a human being may be interpreted as auspicious and powerful-or suppressed as unstable and dangerous. Why has this been so and how does it affect living twins today? Treating both famous and lesser-known twins-including supernatural animal twins-in the ancient Near Eastern and classical Mediterranean worlds; early Christianity and Gnosticism; Vedic, Hindu, West African, Black Atlantic, and native American traditions; ancient Mesoamerica, Celtic Roman Britain, and Scandinavia; and in the special, fraught bond shared by all twins, the book offers a variety of perspectives on this topic of great cultural significance.
Download or read book Homer on Life and Death written by Jasper Griffin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1980 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates how Homeric poetry manages to confer significance on persons and actions, interpreting the world and the lives of the people who inhabit it. Taking central themes like characterization, death, and the gods, the author argues that current ideas of the limitations of "oral poetry" are unreal, and that Homer embodies a view of the world both unique and profound.
Download or read book The Iliad of Homer written by Homer and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint of the original, first published in 1865. Translated into English Verse in the Spenserian Stanza.
Download or read book Redesigning Achilles written by Sophia Papaioannou and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2007 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biographical note: Sophia Papaioannou, The National and Capodistrian University of Athens, Greece.
Download or read book How to Think Like Shakespeare written by Scott Newstok and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book offers a short, spirited defense of rhetoric and the liberal arts as catalysts for precision, invention, and empathy in today's world. The author, a professor of Shakespeare studies at a liberal arts college and a parent of school-age children, argues that high-stakes testing and a culture of assessment have altered how and what students are taught, as courses across the arts, humanities, and sciences increasingly are set aside to make room for joyless, mechanical reading and math instruction. Students have been robbed of a complete education, their imaginations stunted by this myopic focus on bare literacy and numeracy. Education is about thinking, Newstok argues, rather than the mastery of a set of rigidly defined skills, and the seemingly rigid pedagogy of the English Renaissance produced some of the most compelling and influential examples of liberated thinking. Each of the fourteen chapters explores an essential element of Shakespeare's world and work, aligns it with the ideas of other thinkers and writers in modern times, and suggests opportunities for further reading. Chapters on craft, technology, attention, freedom, and related topics combine past and present ideas about education to build a case for the value of the past, the pleasure of thinking, and the limitations of modern educational practices and prejudices"--
Download or read book Greek Mythology and Poetics written by Gregory Nagy and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gregory Nagy here provides a far-reaching assessment of the relationship between myth and ritual in ancient Greek society. Nagy illuminates in particular the forces of interaction and change that transformed the Indo-European linguistic and cultural heritage into distinctly Greek social institutions between the eighth and the fifth centuries B.C. Included in the volume are thirteen of Nagy's major essays—all extensively revised for book publication—on various aspects of the Hellenization of Indo-European poetics, myth and ritual, and social ideology. The primary aim of this book is to examine the Greek language as a reflection of society, with special attention to its function as a vehicle for transmitting mythology and poetics. Nagy's emphasis on the language of the Greeks, and on its comparison with the testimony of related Indo-European languages such as Latin, Indic, and Hittite, reflects his long-standing interest in Indo-European linguistics. The individual chapters examine the development of Hellenic poetics in the traditions of Homer and Hesiod; the Hellenization of Indo-European myths and rituals, including myths of the afterlife, rituals of fire, and symbols in the Greek lyric; and the Hellenization of Indo-European social ideology, with reference to such cultural institutions as the concept of the city-state. A path-breaking application of the principles of social anthropology, comparative mythology, historical linguistics, and oral poetry theory to the study of classics, Greek Mythology and Poetics will be an invaluable resource for classicists and other scholars of linguistics and literary theory.
Download or read book Menelaus in the Archaic Period written by Anna R. Stelow and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The figure of Menelaus has remained notably overlooked in the scholarship on the major heroes and heroines of Homeric epic This book studies the Homeric character through a multidisciplinary approach to his depiction in archaic Greek poetry art and cult providing a detailed analysis of ancient literary visual and material evidence It first examines the portrayal of Menelaus in the Homeric poems as a unique 'personality' with an integral role to play in each narrative as depicted through typical patterns of speech and action and through intertextual allusion The book then explores his representation both in other poetry of the archaic period and also archaic art and local Sparta cult Ultimately Menelaus emerges as a unique and likeable character whose relationship with Helen was a popular theme in both epic poetry and vase painting but one whose portrayal evinced a significant narrative range with an array of continuities and differences in how he was represented by the Greeks not only within the archaic period but also in comparison to classical Athens
Download or read book The Birth of Hedonism written by Kurt Lampe and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to Xenophon, Socrates tried to persuade his associate Aristippus to moderate his excessive indulgence in wine, women, and food, arguing that only hard work can bring happiness. Aristippus wasn't convinced. Instead, he and his followers espoused the most radical form of hedonism in ancient Western philosophy. Before the rise of the better known but comparatively ascetic Epicureans, the Cyrenaics pursued a way of life in which moments of pleasure, particularly bodily pleasure, held the highest value. In The Birth of Hedonism, Kurt Lampe provides the most comprehensive account in any language of Cyrenaic ideas and behavior, revolutionizing the understanding of this neglected but important school of philosophy. The Birth of Hedonism thoroughly and sympathetically reconstructs the doctrines and practices of the Cyrenaics, who were active between the fourth and third centuries BCE. The book examines not only Aristippus and the mainstream Cyrenaics, but also Hegesias, Anniceris, and Theodorus. Contrary to recent scholarship, the book shows that the Cyrenaics, despite giving primary value to discrete pleasurable experiences, accepted the dominant Greek philosophical belief that life-long happiness and the virtues that sustain it are the principal concerns of ethics. The book also offers the first in-depth effort to understand Theodorus's atheism and Hegesias's pessimism, both of which are extremely unusual in ancient Greek philosophy and which raise the interesting question of hedonism's relationship to pessimism and atheism. Finally, the book explores the "new Cyrenaicism" of the nineteenth-century writer and classicist Walter Pater, who drew out the enduring philosophical interest of Cyrenaic hedonism more than any other modern thinker.
Download or read book The Twenty second Book of the Iliad written by Homer and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
