The Politics of Latin Literature

The Politics of Latin Literature
Author: Thomas N. Habinek
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2001-11-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400822513
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This is the first book to describe the intimate relationship between Latin literature and the politics of ancient Rome. Until now, most scholars have viewed classical Latin literature as a product of aesthetic concerns. Thomas Habinek shows, however, that literature was also a cultural practice that emerged from and intervened in the political and social struggles at the heart of the Roman world. Habinek considers major works by such authors as Cato, Cicero, Horace, Ovid, and Seneca. He shows that, from its beginnings in the late third century b.c. to its eclipse by Christian literature six hundred years later, classical literature served the evolving interests of Roman and, more particularly, aristocratic power. It fostered a prestige dialect, for example; it appropriated the cultural resources of dominated and colonized communities; and it helped to defuse potentially explosive challenges to prevailing values and authority. Literature also drew upon and enhanced other forms of social authority, such as patriarchy, religious ritual, cultural identity, and the aristocratic procedure of self-scrutiny, or existimatio. Habinek's analysis of the relationship between language and power in classical Rome breaks from the long Romantic tradition of viewing Roman authors as world-weary figures, aloof from mundane political concerns--a view, he shows, that usually reflects how scholars have seen themselves. The Politics of Latin Literature will stimulate new interest in the historical context of Latin literature and help to integrate classical studies into ongoing debates about the sociology of writing.

Between East and West

Between East and West
Author: Izabela Kalinowska
Publisher: University Rochester Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781580461726
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A comparison between Russian and Polish texts of travels to the Orient in the Nineteenth-Century. This study analyzes and compares Polish and Russian texts of travel to the Romantic and Biblical Orient and situates Polish and Russian Orientalism within the broader context of contemporary post-colonial studies. At the same time, it elucidates the shortcomings that arise when such theories are applied whole cloth to the Polish and Russian cases. In the nineteenth century, scholarly and literary Orientalism enjoyed great popularity in Eastern Europe, in part because the 'East Europeans' desired to participate as equals in the intellectual life of Europe as a whole. Historically, both the Polish and Russian nations had always existed in close proximity to the Muslim world, and each of them had experienced extensive exposure to a fusion of Western and Eastern cultural traditions. But while the two cultures shared the intersection of Western and native cultural traditions that in turn played a determinative role in their encounters with the East, the growing political empowerment of Russia and the disenfranchisement of Poland differentiated the Polish and Russian perspectives. It is precisely this striking and fascinating power disparity between the two Slavic nations that has inspired this study's juxtaposition of Polish and Russian texts. The records of individual Oriental voyages provided in Polish and Russian works of literary Orientalism document a quest for cultural self-definition. This is the case with Adam Mickiewicz's 'Crimean Sonnets, ' Aleksandr Pushkin's Caucasian poetry, and with other nineteenth-century accounts that, in spite of their original popularity, subsequently underwent marginalization. East European records of travel constitute a work of interpretation and translation on several levels. As such they provide us with a fascinating repository of the authors' attempts to locate their own cultures in the intermediary space between the East and the West. Izabela Kalinowska is an assistant professor of Slavic literatures and cultures at Stony Brook University.

Bits of Table Talk on Pushkin, Mickiewicz Goethe, Turgenev and Sienkiewicz

Bits of Table Talk on Pushkin, Mickiewicz Goethe, Turgenev and Sienkiewicz
Author: Waclaw Lednicki
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2013-03-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9401529086
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Table Talk was the title Pushkin gave, following the example of William Hazlitt or Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the collection of historical anecdotes jotted down in the years 1830-1836. Pushkin had in his library the T able Talk of both Hazlitt and Coleridge. The question which book prompted his own title has been much discussed. There can be no doubt that Coleridge occupies a very important position in the list of literary sources which Puskhin utilized. It is curious that in the fall of 1830 at Boldino, hence at the period of his greatest literary activity, when he composed a number of his most splendid masterpieces, Puskhin had Coleridge's works with him; not only had his works, but read them anew. Among the Boldino master pieces was also, as we know, the famous "little tragedy" Mozart and Salieri, of which the ultimate psychological-moral peripeteia revolves about Mozart's remark that "genius and crime are two incompati ble things"--"geny i zlodeystvo dve veschi nesovmestnye ..." When I looked through Coleridge's Table Talk I was struck with the following observation, under the date of the 29th of August, 1827: "genius may co-exist with wildness, idleness, folly, even with crime: but not long, believe me, with selfishness, and the indulgence of an envious disposition. Envy is kdkistos kai dikai6tatos the6s, as I once saw expressed some where in a page of Stobaeus: it dwarfs and withers its worshippers.

A Bibliography of Alexander Pushkin in English

A Bibliography of Alexander Pushkin in English
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 354
Release: 1999
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:
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A Bibliography of Anton Chekhov in English: Studies, Translations, Reviews and Notes is offered in three appropriate parts. Part One, Studies, comprises sections for book-length bio-literary studies and bio-literary articles; introductions; comparative studies; Russian and foreign memoirs; popular studies; general and individual studies of Chekhov's plays and short stories; studies of his non-fiction, letters, notes, and diaries; and special categories: film, language and stylistics, documents and documentation, translation studies, dissertations, bibliography, and collections. Part Two, Translations, is divided into general collections, drama collections, individual dramas, story collections, individual stories; non-fiction, letters, notes, and diaries; and film. Part Three, Critical Reviews, provides a comprehensive selection of the most significant reviews in major English-language newspapers and journals through the year 1993. It is not possible to provide a comprehensive selection of an estimated 350,000 reviews of Chekhov plays, 1994-2003, but an attempt has been made to provide a representative sampling of reviews in major newspapers and current periodicals. Citations throughout this Bibliography are full and unabbreviated, the intent being to provide access to each work in every appropriate category without complicating the search process with confusing cross-listings. Entries for collections are accompanied by listings of contents in the order given in tables of contents or alphabetically. Entries for collections provide a base for subsequent listings of individual major works for addition of subsequent editions, reprints, and re-publications. Translations of plays are categorized by their most commonly known English titles and cited within categories by the English title given for a particular translation. English titles of stories have not been rationalized in this way because the large number of Chekhov's stories would require division of the section on individual stories into virtually hundreds of sub-sections. Instead, stories are listed in alphabetical order by the various English titles given for a particular translation.

Reference Guide to World Literature

Reference Guide to World Literature
Author: Lesley Henderson
Publisher: Saint James Press
Total Pages: 808
Release: 1995
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:
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Overviews of writers and works from the ancient Greeks through the 20th century, written by subject experts. Each author entry provides a detailed overview of the writer's life and works. Work entries cover a particular piece of world literature in detail.