William Barker, Xenophon's 'Cyropædia'

William Barker, Xenophon's 'Cyropædia' PDF Author: Jane Grogan
Publisher: MHRA
ISBN: 1781889821
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
William Barker’s translation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia is the first substantial translation from Greek directly to English in Tudor England. It presents to its English readers an extraordinarily important text for humanists across Europe: a semi-fictional biography of the ancient Persian emperor, Cyrus the Great, so generically rich that it became (in England as well as Europe) a popular authority and model in the very different fields of educational, political and literary theory, as well as in literature by Sidney, Spenser and others. This edition, for the first time, identifies its translator as a hitherto overlooked figure from the circle of Sir John Cheke at St John’s College, Cambridge, locus of an important and influential revival of Greek scholarship. A prolific translator from Greek and Italian, Barker was a Catholic, and spent most of his career working as secretary to Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk. What little notoriety he eventually gained was as the ‘Italianified Englishman’ who told of Howard’s involvement in the Ridolfi plot. But even here, this edition shows, Barker’s intellectual patronage by Cheke and friends, and their enduring support of him, his translations and the Chekeian agenda, can be discerned.

William Barker, Xenophon's 'Cyropædia'

William Barker, Xenophon's 'Cyropædia' PDF Author: Jane Grogan
Publisher: MHRA
ISBN: 1781889821
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Get Book Here

Book Description
William Barker’s translation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia is the first substantial translation from Greek directly to English in Tudor England. It presents to its English readers an extraordinarily important text for humanists across Europe: a semi-fictional biography of the ancient Persian emperor, Cyrus the Great, so generically rich that it became (in England as well as Europe) a popular authority and model in the very different fields of educational, political and literary theory, as well as in literature by Sidney, Spenser and others. This edition, for the first time, identifies its translator as a hitherto overlooked figure from the circle of Sir John Cheke at St John’s College, Cambridge, locus of an important and influential revival of Greek scholarship. A prolific translator from Greek and Italian, Barker was a Catholic, and spent most of his career working as secretary to Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk. What little notoriety he eventually gained was as the ‘Italianified Englishman’ who told of Howard’s involvement in the Ridolfi plot. But even here, this edition shows, Barker’s intellectual patronage by Cheke and friends, and their enduring support of him, his translations and the Chekeian agenda, can be discerned.

Memories of Socrates

Memories of Socrates PDF Author: Xenophon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192598279
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
'Who would you say knows himself?' In 399 BCE Socrates was tried in Athens on charges of irreligion and corruption of the young, convicted, and sentenced to death. Like Plato, an almost exact contemporary, in his youth Xenophon (c. 430-c. 354 BCE) was one of the circle of mainly upper-class young Athenians attracted to Socrates' teaching. His Memorabilia is both a passionate defence of Socrates against those charges, and a kaleidoscopic picture of the man he knew, painted in a series of mini-dialogues and shorter vignettes, with a varied and deftly characterized cast—entitled and ambitious young men, atheists and hedonists, artists and artisans, Socrates' own stroppy teenage son Lamprocles, the glamorous courtesan Theodote. Topics given Socrates' characteristic questioning treatment include education, law, justice, government, political and military leadership, democracy and tyranny, friendship, care of the body and the soul, and concepts of the divine. Xenophon sees Socrates as above all a supreme moral educator, coaxing and challenging his associates to make themselves better people, not least by the example of how he lived his own life. Self-knowledge, leading to a reasoned self-control, was for Socrates the essential first step on the path to virtue, and some found it uncomfortable. The Apology is a moving account of Socrates' behaviour and bearing in his last days, immediately before, during, and after his trial.

The School of Cyrus

The School of Cyrus PDF Author: James Tatum
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000696596
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Originally published in 1987, this book is a translation of Xenophon's Cyropaedeia (The Education of Cyprus), first published in 1567.

Exemplary Spenser

Exemplary Spenser PDF Author: Jane Grogan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351937871
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
Exemplary Spenser analyses the didactic poetics of The Faerie Queene, renewing attention to its avowed attempt to "fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline" and examining how Spenser mobilises his pedagogic concerns through the reading experience of the poem. Grogan's investigation shows how Spenser transacts the public life of the nation heuristically, prompting a reflective reading experience that compels engagement with other readers, other texts and other political communities. Negotiating between competing pedagogical traditions, she shows how Spenser's epic challenges the more conservative prevailing impulses of humanist pedagogy to espouse a radical didacticism capable of inventing a more active and responsible reader. To this end, Grogan examines a wide variety of Spenser's techniques and sources, including Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy and the powerful visually-couched epistemological paradigms of early modern culture, ekphrasis among them. Importantly, Grogan examines how Spenser's didactic poetics was crucially shaped by readings of the Greek historian Xenophon's Cyropaedia, a text and influence previously overlooked by critics. Grogan concludes by reading the last book of The Faerie Queene, the Legend of Courtesy, as an attempt to reconcile his own didactic sources and poetics with the more recent tastes of his contemporaries for a courtesy theory less concerned with "vertuous and gentle discipline". Returning to the early modern reading experience, Grogan shows the sophisticated intertextual dexterity that goes into reading Spenser, where Spenserian pedagogy lies not simply in the textual body of the poem, but also in the act of reading it.

Xenophon and the Graces of Power

Xenophon and the Graces of Power PDF Author: Vincent Azoulay
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
ISBN: 1910589934
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
One of classical Greece's most worldly and lucid writers, Xenophon across his many works gave a restless criticism of power: democratic, oligarchic and autocratic. From military campaigns (in which he took part), through the great powers of his day (Sparta, Persia, Athens) to modes of control within the household, he observed intimately and often with partisan passion. In this work a leading French Hellenist, Vincent Azoulay, analyses across Xenophon's diverse texts the techniques by which the Greek writer recommends that leaders should manipulate. Through gifts and personal allure, though mystique, dazzling appearance, exemplary behaviour, strategic absences - and occasional terror, Xenophon analyses ways in which a powerful few might triumphantly replace the erratic democracies and self-indulgent oligarchies of his day. First published in French (in 2004) to international acclaim, this book is here translated for the first time, revised and updated.

Common: The Development of Literary Culture in Sixteenth-Century England

Common: The Development of Literary Culture in Sixteenth-Century England PDF Author: Neil Rhodes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191009261
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
This volume explores the development of literary culture in sixteenth-century England as a whole and seeks to explain the relationship between the Reformation and the literary renaissance of the Elizabethan period. Its central theme is the 'common' in its double sense of something shared and something base, and it argues that making common the work of God is at the heart of the English Reformation just as making common the literature of antiquity and of early modern Europe is at the heart of the English Renaissance. Its central question is 'why was the Renaissance in England so late?' That question is addressed in terms of the relationship between Humanism and Protestantism and the tensions between democracy and the imagination which persist throughout the century. Part One establishes a social dimension for literary culture in the period by exploring the associations of 'commonwealth' and related terms. It addresses the role of Greek in the period before and during the Reformation in disturbing the old binary of elite Latin and common English. It also argues that the Reformation principle of making common is coupled with a hostility towards fiction, which has the effect of closing down the humanist renaissance of the earlier decades. Part Two presents translation as the link between Reformation and Renaissance, and the final part discusses the Elizabethan literary renaissance and deals in turn with poetry, short prose fiction, and the drama written for the common stage.

The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation

The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation PDF Author: Peter France
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0198183593
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 680

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Book Description
"The Guide offers both an essential reference work for students of English and comparative literature and a stimulating overview of literary translation in English."--BOOK JACKET.

John Fletcher's Rome

John Fletcher's Rome PDF Author: Domenico Lovascio
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526157373
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
John Fletcher’s Rome is the first book to explore John Fletcher’s engagement with classical antiquity. Like Shakespeare and Jonson, Fletcher wrote, alone or in collaboration, a number of Roman plays: Bonduca, Valentinian, The False One and The Prophetess. Unlike Shakespeare’s or Jonson’s, however, Fletcher’s Roman plays have seldom been the subject of critical discussion. Domenico Lovascio’s ground-breaking study examines these plays as a group for the first time, thus identifying disorientation as the unifying principle of Fletcher’s portrayal of imperial Rome. John Fletcher’s Rome argues that Fletcher’s dramatization of ancient Rome exudes a sense of detachment and scepticism as to the authority of Roman models resulting from his irreverent approach to the classics. The book sheds new light on Fletcher’s intellectual life, his vision of history, and the interconnections between these plays and the rest of his canon.

Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699

Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699 PDF Author: Chloë Houston
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031226186
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
​This book is a study of the representation of the Persian empire in English drama across the early modern period, from the 1530s to the 1690s. The wide focus of this book, encompassing thirteen dramatic entertainments, both canonical and little-known, allow it to trace the changes and developments in the dramatic use of Persia and its people across one and a half centuries. It explores what Persia signified to English playwrights and audiences in this period; the ideas and associations conjured up by mention of ‘Persia’; and where information about Persia came from. It also considers how ideas about Persia changed with the development of global travel and trade, as English people came into people with Persians for the first time. In addressing these issues, this book provides an examination not only of the representation of Persia in dramatic material, but of the broader relationship between travel, politics and the theatre in early modern England.

Roger Ascham’s Themata Theologica

Roger Ascham’s Themata Theologica PDF Author: Lucy R. Nicholas
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350267953
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Roger Ascham is often classified as 'a great mid-Tudor humanist' and he is perhaps best known for his role as tutor to Elizabeth I. His most famous works, The Scholemaster and Toxophilus, have been extensively quarried and anthologised in studies on prose style and English humanism. By contrast, his Neo-Latin works that engaged with theology and key Reformation concerns have languished in the shadows of modern scholarship. Ascham's Themata Theologica ('Theological Topics') is one of these, and its content has the potential to open up many an investigative avenue into the intellectual and religious culture of the sixteenth century. This is the first volume to offer a corresponding English translation. The Themata can be dated to the early to mid- 1540s, and was composed by Ascham while still at Cambridge University and serving as a senior fellow at St John's College. The work mainly comprises a compendium of relatively short commentaries on Scriptural verses (both Old and New Testament), many of which developed into expositions on difficult philosophical concepts, such as the notion of felix culpa (literally, 'happy fault') and some of the most intractable theological questions of the day, including the nature of sin, adiaphora ('matters of indifference'), justification and free will. This little-known text offers a rare opportunity to trace the course of Ascham's own religious maturation, but also offers fresh insights into the confessional climate at Cambridge University during one of the most turbulent periods of the Reformation in England.