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Author: Stephen J. Rojcewicz, Jr.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000480747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 179
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Book Description
This book delineates how Thornton Wilder (1897–1975), a learned playwright and novelist, embeds himself within the classical tradition, integrating Greek and Roman motifs with a wide range of sources to produce heart-breaking masterpieces such as Our Town and comedy sensations such as Dolly Levi. Through this study of archival sources and close reading, readers will understand Wilder’s avant-garde staging and innovative time sequences not as a break with the past, but as a response to the classics. The author traces the genesis of unforgettable characters like Dolly Levi in The Matchmaker, Emily Webb in Our Town, and George Antrobus in The Skin of Our Teeth. Vergil’s expression, "Here are the tears of the world, and human matters touch the heart" haunts Wilder’s oeuvre. Understanding Vergil’s phrase as "tears for the beauty of the world," Wilder utilizes scenes depicting the beauty of the world and the sorrow when individuals recognize this too late. Wilder exhorts us to observe lovingly, alert to the wonder of the everyday. This work will appeal to actors and directors, professors and students in classics and in American literature, those fascinated by modern drama and performance studies, and non-specialists, theatre-goers, and readers in the general public.
Author: Stephen J. Rojcewicz, Jr.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000480747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 179
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book delineates how Thornton Wilder (1897–1975), a learned playwright and novelist, embeds himself within the classical tradition, integrating Greek and Roman motifs with a wide range of sources to produce heart-breaking masterpieces such as Our Town and comedy sensations such as Dolly Levi. Through this study of archival sources and close reading, readers will understand Wilder’s avant-garde staging and innovative time sequences not as a break with the past, but as a response to the classics. The author traces the genesis of unforgettable characters like Dolly Levi in The Matchmaker, Emily Webb in Our Town, and George Antrobus in The Skin of Our Teeth. Vergil’s expression, "Here are the tears of the world, and human matters touch the heart" haunts Wilder’s oeuvre. Understanding Vergil’s phrase as "tears for the beauty of the world," Wilder utilizes scenes depicting the beauty of the world and the sorrow when individuals recognize this too late. Wilder exhorts us to observe lovingly, alert to the wonder of the everyday. This work will appeal to actors and directors, professors and students in classics and in American literature, those fascinated by modern drama and performance studies, and non-specialists, theatre-goers, and readers in the general public.
Author: Caillan Davenport
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192695975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351
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Book Description
Roman emperors have long functioned—and continue to function—in the western imagination as paradigms of imperial leadership to be emulated or avoided. This innovative volume brings together an international team of experts to examine the literary and artistic representations of Roman emperors across more than two thousand years of history. In doing so, it breaks down traditional disciplinary boundaries that have separated the study of emperors in antiquity from their representation in later periods. The individual chapters offer close readings of different texts, media, and contexts, ranging from the Annals of Tacitus, Roman lamps, and triumphal statues to medieval legends, early modern philosophical tracts, twentieth-century novels, and museum exhibitions. Collectively they explore the creative impulses and political agendas that have shaped how we understand Roman emperors today.
Author: Quentin J. Broughall
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000620514
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 215
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Book Description
This book examines Gore Vidal’s lifelong engagement with the ancient world. Incorporating material from his novels, essays, screenplays and plays, it argues that his interaction with antiquity was central to the way in which he viewed himself, his writing, and his world. Divided between the three primary subjects of his writing – sex, politics, and religion – this book traces the lengthy dialogue between Vidal and antiquity over the course of his sixty-year career. Broughall analyses Vidal’s portrayals of the ancient past in novels such as Julian (1964), Creation (1981) and Live from Golgotha (1992). He also shows how classical literature inspired Vidal’s other fiction, such as The City and the Pillar (1948), Myra Breckinridge (1968), and his Narratives of Empire (1967–2000) novels. Beyond his fiction, Broughall examines the ways in which antiquity influenced Vidal’s careers as a playwright, an essayist and a satirist, and evaluates the influence of classical authors and their works upon him. Of interest to students and scholars in classical studies, reception studies, American politics and literature, and the work of Gore Vidal, this volume presents an original perspective on one of the most provocative writers and intellectuals in post-war American letters. It offers new insights into Vidal’s attitudes, influences, and beliefs, and throws fresh light upon his patrician self-fashioning and his mercurial output.
Author: Claude-Emmanuelle Centlivres Challet
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000485811
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
Beyond the institution of marriage, its norms, and rules, what was life like for married couples in Greco-Roman antiquity? This volume explores a wide range of sources over seven centuries to uncover possible answers to this question. On tombstones, curse or oracular tablets, in contracts, petitions, letters, treatises, biographies, novels, and poems, throughout Egypt, Greece, and Rome, 107 couples express themselves or are given life by their contemporaries and share their experiences of, and views on, marital relationships and their practical and emotional consequences. Renowned scholars and the next generation of experts explore seven centuries of source material to uncover the dynamics of the married life of metropolitan and provincial, famous and unknown, young and old couples. Men’s and women’s hopes, fears, traumas, joys, endeavours, and needs are analysed and reveal an array of interactions and behaviours that enlighten us on gender roles, social expectations, and intimate dealings in antiquity. Known texts are revisited, new evidence is put forward, and novel interpretations and concepts are offered which highlight local and chronological specificities as well as transhistorical commonalities. The analysis of married life in Greco-Roman antiquity, from ongoing vetting process to place where to find security, reveals the fundamental yearning to be included and loved and how the tensions created by the sometimes contradictory demands of traditional ideals and individual realities can be resolved, furthering our knowledge of social and cultural mechanisms. Married Life in Greco-Roman Antiquity will provide valuable resources of interest to scholars and students of Classical studies as well as social history, gender studies, family history, the history of emotions, and microhistory.
Author: J.R. O'Neill
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000538826
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
This collection of essays from a diverse group of scholars represents a multidisciplinary redeployment of the Aeneid that aims to illuminate its importance to our present moment. It provides a rigorous and multifaceted answer to the question, "Why should we still think about the Aeneid?" The book contains chapters detailing previously undocumented modern literary receptions of Vergil’s epic, addressing the Aeneid’s relevance to understanding modern political discourse, explaining how the Aeneid assists in making sense of the pressing current issues of trauma and damage to one’s sense of identity, and even looking at how the epic can shape our future. The chapters build upon and extend beyond reception studies to provide the most current and complete answer to the question of the epic’s current relevance. The primary audiences for this collection are undergraduate students, graduate students, and professional academics from all disciplines. This collection should be of interest to readers whose academic interests include textual and cultural studies, classics, comparative literature, pedagogy, medical humanities, veterans studies, trauma studies, immigration studies, young adult fiction, world literature, communication and political discourse, citizenship studies, and ethnic studies.
Author: Anna Kouremenos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000540227
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 538
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Book Description
The Province of Achaea in the 2nd Century CE explores the conception and utilization of the Greek past in the Roman province of Achaea in the 2nd century CE, and the reception of the artistic, cultural, and intellectual outputs of this century in later periods. Achaea, often defined by international scholars as "old Greece", was the only Roman province located entirely within the confines of the Modern Greek state. In many ways, Achaea in the 2nd century CE witnessed a second Golden Age, one based on collective historical nostalgia under Roman imperial protection and innovation. The papers in this volume are holistic in scope, with special emphasis on Roman imperial relations with the people of Achaea and their conceptualizations of their past. Material culture, monumental and domestic spaces, and artistic representations are discussed, as well as the literary output of individuals like Plutarch, Herodes Atticus, Aelius Aristides, and others. The debate over Roman influence in various Hellenic cities and the significance of collective historical nostalgia also feature in this volume, as does the utilization of Achaea’s past in the Roman present within the wider empire. As this century has produced the highest percentage of archaeological and literary material from the Roman period in the province under consideration, the time is ripe to position it more firmly in the academic discourse of studies of the Roman Empire. The Province of Achaea in the 2nd Century CE will appeal to scholars, students, and other individuals who are interested in the history, archaeology, art, and literature of the Graeco-Roman world and its reception.
Author: Maggie L. Popkin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000515559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Future Thinking in Roman Culture is the first volume dedicated to the exploration of prospective memory and future thinking in the Roman world, integrating cutting edge research in cognitive sciences and theory with approaches to historiography, epigraphy, and material culture. This volume opens a new avenue of investigation for Roman memory studies in presenting multiple case studies of memory and commemoration as future-thinking phenomena. It breaks new ground by bringing classical studies into direct dialogue with recent research on cognitive processes of future thinking. The thematically linked but methodologically diverse contributions, all by leading scholars who have published significant work in memory studies of antiquity, both cultural and cognitive, make the volume well suited for classical studies scholars and students seeking to explore cognitive science and philosophy of mind in ancient contexts, with special appeal to those sharing the growing interest in investigating Roman conceptions of futurity and time. The chapters all deliberately coalesce around the central theme of prospection and future thinking and their impact on our understanding of Roman ritual and religion, politics, and individual motivation and intention. This volume will be an invaluable resource to undergraduate and postgraduate students of classics, art history, archaeology, history, and religious studies, as well as scholars and students of memory studies, historical and cultural cognitive studies, psychology, and philosophy.
Author: Claudia Zatta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000533891
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
With a novel approach to Aristotle’s zoology, this study looks at animals as creatures of nature (physis) and reveals a scientific discourse that, in response to his predecessors, exiles logos as reason and pursues the logos intrinsic to animals’ bodies, empowering them to sense the world and live. The volume explores Aristotle’s conception of animals through a discussion of his ad hoc methodology to study them, including the pertinence of the soul to such a study, and the rise of zoology as a branch of natural philosophy. For Aristotle, animal life stems from the body in the space of existence and revolves around sensation, which is entwined with pleasure, pain, and desire. Lack of human reason is irrelevant to an understanding of the richness of animal life and cognition. In sum, the reader will acquire knowledge of the "animal as such," which lay at the core of Aristotle’s agenda and required a study of its own, separate from plants and the elements. This book is intended for students of the history of science, ancient biology, and philosophy and all those who, from different fields, are interested in animal studies and the human-animal relation.
Author: Jackson R. Bryer
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527523640
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 389
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Book Description
The essays in this volume evolved from papers presented at the Second International Thornton Wilder Conference, held at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, in June 2015. They examine Wilder’s work as both playwright and novelist, focusing upon how he drew on the collaborative mode of creativity required in the theatre, when writing both drama and fiction. The book’s authors use the term “collaboration” in its broadest sense, at times in response to Wilder’s critics who faulted him for “borrowing” from other, earlier, literary works rather than recognizing these “borrowings” as central to the artistic process of collaboration. In exploring Wilder’s collaborative efforts of different kinds, the essays not only consider how Wilder worked with and revised earlier literary texts and the ideas central to those texts, but also analyze how Wilder worked with and inspired other creative individuals and how recent productions of Wilder’s plays, both in the US and abroad, have been the products of unique forms of collaboration.
Author: Thornton Wilder
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 150407324X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 126
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Book Description
A young American in Rome encounters a mysterious cohort of aristocrats in the Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s debut novel. In love with all things classical, the narrator of Thornton Wilder’s The Cabala is entranced by the timeless city of Rome. With the Great War finally over, he’s spending a year among Rome’s salons and cafes. But he only comes to understand the grand and crumbling metropolis when a friend introduces him to a secret society of intellectuals known as the Cabala. Charmed by the young American, the elegant and idiosyncratic members of the Cabala give him the nickname Samuele. He soon becomes their confidant and go-between, privy to their intimate dramas, scandals, and insecurities. As living embodiments of ancient gods, these peculiar characters impress upon Samuele that nothing in life is truly eternal. The Cabala is a semiautobiographical novel based on Thornton Wilder’s time at the American Academy in Rome during the 1920s. First published in 1926, it launched his reputation as one of his generation’s finest storytellers.
