Essays Books

Book SynopsisAmmonius, who taught most of the leading sixth-century Neoplatonists, introduced the methods of his own teacher, Proclus, from Athens to Alexandria. These are exemplified in his commentaries: for instance, in the set of ten introductory questions prefixed to this commentary, which became standard. The commentary is interesting for the light it sheds on the religious situation in Alexandria. It used to be said that the Alexandrian Neoplatonist school was allowed to remain open after the Athenian school closed because Ammonius has agreed with the Christian authorities to keep quiet about his religious views. On the contrary, as this commentary shows he freely declared his belief in the Neoplatonist deities. The philosophical problems considered by Ammonius offer a unique insight into Aristotle's Categories. They exercise the mind and deepen understanding of the subject matter. Modern readers would do well to put the same questions to themselves.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Textual Emendations TRANSLATION Notes Bibliography English-Greek Glossary Greek-English Index Index of Passages Cited Subject Index

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Book SynopsisThere has recently been considerable renewed interest in Book 7 of the Physics of Aristotle, once regarded as merely an undeveloped forerunner to Book 8. The debate surrounding the importance of the text is not new to modern scholarship: for example, in the fourth century BC Eudemus, the Peripatetic philosopher associate of Aristotle, left it out of his treatment of the Physics. Now, for the first time, Charles Hagen's lucid translation gives the English reader access to Simplicius' commentary on Book 7, an indispensable tool for understanding the text. Its particular interest lies in its explanation of how the chapters of Book 7 fit together and its reference to a more extensive second version of Aristotle's text than the one which survives today.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Textual Emendations TRANSLATION Notes Bibliography English-Greek Glossary Greek-English Index Index of Passages Cited Subject Index

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Book SynopsisIs there such a thing as three-dimensional space? Is space inert or dynamic? Is the division of time into past, present and future real? Does the whole of time exist all at once? Does it progress smoothly or by discontinuous leaps? Simplicius surveys ideas about place and time from the preceding thousand years of Greek Philosophy and reveals the extraordinary ingenuity of the late Neoplatonist theories, which he regards as marking a substantial advance on all previous ideas.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Textual Emendations TRANSLATION Notes Bibliography English-Greek Glossary Greek-English Index Index of Passages Cited Subject Index

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Book SynopsisAristotle's Metaphysics 2 consists of two chapters on methodology flanking an important discussion of the impossibility of infinite causal chains. The subject is vital for scientific method and for theological belief in a first cause and in a beginning of the universe. Philoponus later attacked Aristotle on this last point, but Alexander presents Aristotle's view in a most favourable light. In Metaphysics 3, Aristotle sets out what he sees as the central problems of metaphysics. Alexander's commentary was subsequently used by the Neoplatonists, two of whom have left their own commentaries, so that Alexander's Aristotelian interpretation can be compared with its rivals.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Textual Emendations TRANSLATION Notes Bibliography English-Greek Glossary Greek-English Index Index of Passages Cited Subject Index

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Book SynopsisAlexander of Aphrodisias, who flourished c. 200AD, was the leading Peripatetic philosopher of his age. Most of his philosophical energies were spent in commenting upon Aristotle: his commentary on the Prior Analytics remains one of the most thorough and helpful guides to this difficult work; in addition, the commentary preserves invaluable information about various aspects of Stoic logic, and it also presents a picture of categorical syllogistic at a turning point in its historical development. This volume contains a translation of the first third of the commentary - the part dealing with non-modal syllogistic. The translation is preceded by a substantial introduction which discusses Alexander's place in the commentatorial tradition and his use of logical terminology. The book is completed by a translation of the pertinent part of the Prior Analytics, a summary account of categorical syllogistic, and a set of indexes.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Textual Emendations TRANSLATION Notes Bibliography English-Greek Glossary Greek-English Index Index of Passages Cited Subject Index

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Book SynopsisThe commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias on Aristotle's Prior Analytics 1.8-22 is the main ancient commentary, by the 'greatest' commentator, on the chapters of the Prior Analytics in which Aristotle invented modal logic - the logic of propositions about what is necessary or contingent (possible). In this volume, which covers chapters 1.8-13, Alexander of Aphrodisias reaches the chapter in which Aristotle discusses the notion of contingency. Also included in this volume is Alexander's commentary on that part of Prior Analytics 1.17 which explains the conversion of contingent propositions (the rest of 1.17 is included in the second volume of Mueller's translation). Aristotle also invented the syllogism, a style of argument involving two premises and a conclusion. Modal propositions can be deployed in syllogism, and in the chapters included in this volume Aristotle discusses syllogisms consisting of two necessary propositions as well as the more controversial ones containing one necessary and one non-modal premiss. The discussion of syllogisms containing contingent propositions is reserved for Volume 2. In each volume, Ian Mueller provides a comprehensive explanation of Alexander's commentary on modal logic as a whole.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Textual Emendations TRANSLATION Notes Bibliography English-Greek Glossary Greek-English Index Index of Passages Cited Subject Index

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Book SynopsisPorphyry's On Abstinence from Killing Animals is one of the most interesting books from Greek antiquity for both philosophers and historians. In it, Porphyry relates the arguments for eating or sacrificing animals and then goes on to argue that an understanding of humans and gods shows such sacrifice to be inappropriate, that an understanding of animals shows it to be unjust, and that a knowledge of non-Greeks shows it to be unnecessary. There are no Neoplatonist commentaries on Aristotle's Ethics from the period AD 250-600. Thus, although this work is not a commentary on Aristotle, it fills a gap in this series by going to the heart of ethical debates among Neoplatonists around AD 300, and revealing one ascetic Neoplatonist's view of the ideal way of life. It also records rival positions taken on the treatment of animals by Greek philosophers over the previous six hundred years.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Textual Emendations TRANSLATION Notes Bibliography English-Greek Glossary Greek-English Index Index of Passages Cited Subject Index

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Book SynopsisThe latest no-f**ks-given guide from July 2017 New York Times bestselling author of the international sensation The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k, Get Your Sh*t Together, and You Do YouDo you waste time overthinking things you can't do anything about? Do you freak out when things don't go to plan? Does anxiety get in the way of you living your best life? When life hands you a big fat f**king lemon, Calm the F**k Down gives you practical ways to manage the situation, not to mention your anxiety about the situation. One hundred per cent practical and zero percent Pollyanna-ish, this is a book that acknowledges all the bad shit that can and probably will happen to you - from break ups and breakdowns to floods, family feuds and France running out of butter - and shows you what you can realistically do about it so you can get on with your life, stop worrying and wallowing, and start bouncing back.Think of Calm the F**k Down as the friend who, instead of reassuring you that 'everything's going to be okay,' actually shows you how to make it so.Trade ReviewCalm the F**k Down is a jam-packed guide full of practical and realistic ways to manage anxiety when, let's just say, things don't go as planned (sigh). This audio book doesn't hold back in brutally stating that bad situations can, and most probably will, happen to us but paradoxically, tells us how to blatantly just get on with it - to stop wallowing in self-pity and become your best, true self.This audio book is so uplifting it'll have you singing: 'I just gotta get through this, I just gotta get through this' next time life throws you an obstacle (oh, how we do love those). * Mint Velvet Newsletter *

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Book Synopsis''A rare writer with the courage to tell Britain some home truths about itself and where it''s headed. A much needed book''. - Ian Dunt''What Britain needs at the moment is not to be talked up or talked down, but simply a sense of itself that''s underpinned by clarity and honesty... This is exactly what Michael Peel provides in this persuasive, good-humoured book.'' - Jonathan Coe''A wake-up call for those still under the illusion that Great Britain plc punches above its weight''. - Chris Mullin, author of A Very British Coup''Entertaining and smart.'' - Geoff Norcott''Michael Peel is a top class thinker and writer. This is a necessary book as well as an extremely entertaining one.'' - Simon Kuper''Sharp, witty and eye-opening. As Peel convincingly argues, we can do so much better.'' - Matthew Parker, author of One Fine Day: Britain''s Empire On the Brink''Li

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Book SynopsisWhat do you do with death and dying when they can no longer be pushed to the outer limits of your lived experience or dismissed from your conscious mind? How do you live with death or rather how do you ‘live death’ when death comes too close, seeming to enter the very air you breathe? The Plague is a collection of essays guiding us from the Covid-19 pandemic through to the war in Ukraine in order to imagine a world in which a radical respect for death might exist alongside a fairer distribution of the earth’s wealth. ‘Living death’ will appear as something of a refrain, a reminder that to think of death as an avoidable intruder into how we order our lives, especially in the West, is an act of defiance that is doomed to fail. In the thought of the philosopher Simone Weil, who plays a key role in the book, only if we admit the limits of the human, will we stop vaunting the brute illusion of earthly power.Trade Review‘The vitality of these valuable essays on death, war and Simone Weil keeps on giving long after the last page has been turned.’ — Deborah Levy, Guardian'Rose cements her place at the summit of Anglo literary culture. The book is also testament to the essay as the most exhilarating form through which to confront the history of the present … Rose never tries to have the last word or entomb her subjects in cast-iron conclusions about their life and thought. She invites us to do our own thinking, to grapple with the violence and paradoxes of existence.' — Gavin Jacobson, New Statesman‘This is a brief but beautifully written book, full of memorable insights into life, death, and politics. In particular, the final essay on Weil is a wonderfully moving mix of biographical, philosophical and political analysis…In Weil’s writings, Rose finds a glimmer of hope in dark times: “against race, class and national affiliations, Weil’s heart is beating right across the globe”.’ — P.D. Smith, Guardian‘It’s really hard for me to overestimate how important [Rose’s] work has been for me... I don’t feel like that about very many writers.’ — Maggie Nelson‘Jacqueline Rose has no peer among critics of her generation. The brilliance of her literary insight, the lucidity of her prose, and the subtlety of her analyses are simply breathtaking.’ — Edward Said‘A surfeit of elegance and intelligence.’ — Ali Smith‘One of the most original and intellectually sophisticated minds at work today.’ — Eimear McBride‘As a literary scholar and psychoanalytic thinker, Rose has long insisted that we pay close attention to the subterranean fears, fantasies, and narratives that structure our most pressing sociopolitical problems.’ — Merve Emre, The Nation‘To read Rose is to understand that there is no border between us and the world; it is an invitation to a radical kind of responsibility.’ — Parul Sehgal, New York Times‘[Rose’s] work remains surprising and original ... The more I read her, the more I see the world through her questions ... Her real power, what makes her necessary as well as unique, may be how she teaches readers to ask probing questions on their own.’ — Christine Smallwood, New York Review of Books‘Instead of avoiding that foregone conclusion, these essays — which touch on everything from the pandemic to the war in Ukraine — encourage a radical respect of death as, if nothing else, a reminder of our equality as humans, which feels especially important in a world that grows less equal by the day.’ Róisin Lanigan, i-D‘It’s a profound take on creating a more just world in the wake of the pandemic.’ — Publishers Weekly‘This book, is …startingly up-to-date in ways that other explorations of the pandemic are perhaps not, set as it is on reminding the reader that, while we may be some way out of the woods, there remains a discomforting after-effect. So, despite dealing explicitly with the pandemic, Rose establishes a formulation within a period bookended by two key events: the beginning of UK lockdown and the invasion of Ukraine, yoking them together in accordance with Albert Camus’ assertion that “the two realities of history which to date people have never been prepared for [are] plagues and wars,” and an understanding that, often, one disaster bleeds into the next. This stands in quiet structural defiance to the usual narrative rolled out by news outlets, in which each constituent tragedy stands isolated and disconnected from the other.’ — Lia Rockey, The Arts Desk

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Book SynopsisAn illustrated collection of the author's regular weekly column on the back page of the "Church Times", where, with a poet's eye, he observes the comings and goings of the rural world he sees from his ancient farmhouse in Constable country.

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Book SynopsisThis book is concerned with the complex and uncertain nature of twentieth century poetry and poetics. Dealing with such major figures as Lorca, Rilke, Pound, Stevens, Moore, Niedecker, Duncan and Oppen and of more contemporary poets and poetry in the modernist and post-modernist lineage of Pound and Williams, the essays explore the work of these poets to see how it embodies our contemporary skepticism concerning language, representation and reality, showing that even as the poems depict or create values, they appear to be haunted by the possibility of inadequacy. Thus one of the book's major themes concerns how contemporary poets embody uncertainties, yet manage, in virtually the same breath, in the same line or stanza, to articulate both affirmation and doubt. Questions of form and meaning are discussed in the essays covering individual poets and their poems as well as in those which deal with contemporary avant garde movements, Jewish and post-Holocaust poetry, poetics and considerations of the act of writing itself. As well, these essays try to say something about the literary environment of contemporary poetry.Poetry today is, for the most part, inflected by the American experimentalism of Walt Whitman, the "make it new" of innovators such as Pound and Williams and by infusions of European dada and surrealism into the poetic psyche. More recently, in avant-garde poetic movements, as in contemporary criticism, structuralist and post-structuralist thought have had much influence. These availabilities, this book hopes to show, have produced an unparalleled richness of poetry and thought about poetry, offering not only a reflection of our uneasiness but also an active shaping force which, through the power of poetic language, provides the hope of meaning for both history and experience.

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Book SynopsisIn 1993, say, the term Performance Writing, if used at all, suggested simply writing for performance. By 2011, when the author of this collection became the first Professor of Performance Writing, it had attained a much wider-indeed international-currency in discussions of contemporary writing, and had entered the curriculum of a range of courses well beyond its intense first conceptual and pedagogic development at the adventurous Dartington College of Arts. The task-and indeed the task of many of these essays-had been to fill out the terms for an approach to writing that looked beyond and beside literature for its sources, references and material practices. These other frames included: the rapid changes taking place within the technologies for producing, circulating and receiving text; a 'turn to writing' within other cultural practices, especially perhaps its integral presence within visual and sonic culture; the increasing textuality of the shared environment (words in public places, for example); and finally, philosophical preoccupations with the idea of performativity and its entailment with language.

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Book SynopsisThis companion volume to On Performance Writing, with implicated readings, brings together most of the essays-taking a deliberately broad view of that term so as to include, for example, two single-page visual essays and one sonnet-on the reading and writing of poetry by the poet and teacher, John Hall. The collection is in two parts. The first, starting with the often cited 'Writing and Not Writing', takes on, in the spirit of poetics, current issues for the category of poetry, considered both formally and contextually, and with particular interest in reading as a practice in which poems are actions and events rather than capturable things. The longer second part develops these thoughts through readings of specific, mostly contemporary, poems: the poets whose work is read are not intended to represent a proposed new canon. They have all, though, contributed significantly to a growing body of work in recent decades that brings together the social and bodily pleasures (and displeasures) of poetry with the ethical demands of truthfulness. They include Andrea Brady, Kelvin Corcoran, Allen Fisher, Harry Guest, Lee Harwood, Peter Hughes, John James, Nicholas Johnson, R.F. Langley, Karen Mac Cormack, Peter Middleton, Geraldine Monk, Alice Notley, Douglas Oliver, F.T. Prince, J.H. Prynne, John Riley, Peter Riley and John Wieners.

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Book SynopsisThe Dance at Mociu brings together some thirty 'stories' of Transylvania, a part of the world that has fascinated the author for many years, and which he and his wife visited frequently around the turn of millennium. These pieces are not stories in the conventional sense, but range from meditation to epiphany, from observation to recordings of an old world that seems threatened - the world of 'Old Europe', that Central Europe whose borders were flexible in the extreme, whose populations found themselves changing nationalities with alarming frequency in the 20th century, and whose cultures survived all the vicissitudes of war and rampant nationalisms only to face an uncertain future in the post-communist present. This is an expanded version of the 2003 edition, presented in a larger format.

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Book SynopsisAn illustrated collection of the author's regular weekly column on the back page of the "Church Times", where, with a poet's eye, he observes the comings and goings of the rural world he sees from his ancient farmhouse in Constable country.

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Book SynopsisThis series of "Companions" is designed for readers who approach the authors of the ancient world with little or no knowledge of Latin or Greek, or of the classical world. The commentaries accompany readily available translations, and the series should be of value to students of Classical Civilization Studies for GCSE and A Level and at university. Students of ancient history should also find useful the commentary on some of their source materials. Each volume in the series includes the following: an introduction to the author and his work, with reference to scholarly views; a commentary providing explanation of detail, historical background, and a discussion of difficult or key passages; and periodic summaries of situation or content. This book provides a line-by-line commentary on Homer's "Odyssey" that explains the factual details, mythological allusions, and Homeric conventions that a student or general reader could not be expected to bring to an initial encounter with the "Odyssey". It also illuminates epic style, Homer's methods of composition, the structure of work, and his characterization. An introduction describes the features of oral poetry and looks at the history of the text of the "Odyssey".Table of ContentsPreface Abbreviations and terms List of illustrations General introduction Commentary Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisSir Kenneth Dover is Professor Emeritus of Greek at the University of St Andrews, UK.Simon Tremewan teaches Classics formerly at Epsom College, Surrey, and Sherbourne, UK.

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Book SynopsisWith its savage indictment of the horrors of war as they affect women and children on the losing side, Euripides Troades has been one of the most regularly read, performed and adapted of Greek tragedies. It was first produced in 415 BC just after the Athenians slaughter of the male population of Melos and at the point where they were sending out the ambitious Sicilian expedition. It therefore has major contemporary political significance. Like Aeschylus Eumenides, it was performed as the third play in a thematically linked trilogy and, though the other two plays survive only in fragments, important inferences can be drawn about our interpretation of the surviving play and Euripides use of the trilogy form. Lee’s edition, first published in the famous "red Macmillan" series in 1976, is the most recent scholarly edition in English. The detailed commentary discusses text, language, interpretation and metre; there is a full introduction and for this paperback edition there is an additional up-to-date bibliography.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Contents FIRST PRODUCTION OF THE PLAY - THE TRILOGY- THE TROADES THE TEXT - The Manuscript V - The Manuscript P – Harleianus 5743 (Q) - Hazmiensis 417-Neapolitanus II F 9- Papyri-Indirect Sources - NOTES TO INTRODUCTION TEXT Apparatus Criticus List Of Abbreviations COMMENTARY Notes On Metrical Analyses Addenda Bibliography Bibliographical Postscript Indexes

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Book SynopsisChekhov's Dama s sobachkoy (1899) is perhaps the most celebrated example of his shorter prose and one of the most famous stories in Russian literature. The tale of an adulterous liaison, set in Yalta, it shows to greatest effect Chekhov's propensity for the conjuring of mood and atmosphere. The tale's modernity is displayed too in its anticlimactic conclusion of poignant open-endedness: ' ...and it was clear to both that the end was still far, far off and that the most complicated and difficult part was only beginning.'

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Book SynopsisThis edition of the fourteenth book of Tacitus’ Annals remains one of the most thorough editions of any book of Tacitus for use by school adn undergraduate students. Its meticulous commentary and vocabulary are supplemented by over fifity pages of introduction, covering Tacitus himself, a succinct but comprehensive account of his sytle and syntax. It also contains sections on the main themes of the book: the deterioration of nero’s reign internally contrasted with the external successes of Domitus Corbulo in Armenia, and Suetonius Paulinus in Britain (the defeat of Boudicca). Also available: Tacitus, Annals I; and Tacitus, Annals XV, both edited by N. Miller Tacitus, Annals 14: A companion to the Penguin translation, edited by N. Miller Suetonius, Nero, edited by B.H. WarmingtonTable of ContentsIntroduction I. Life and Works of Tacitus Ii. Tacitus as an Historian Lll. Style And Syntax Iv. The Reign of Nero V. Corbulo in Armenia Vi. The Romans in Britain Text Notes Index to Notes Index of Proper Names

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Book SynopsisFrank Beetham taught classics at Blackpool Grammar School, and adult language learning at the Universities of Warwick and Birmingham. He was Senior Education Officer in Warwickshire, responsible for Secondary, Further and Adult Education.

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Book SynopsisFrom the author of MASTER AND MARGARITA, BLACK SNOW and DIABOLIAD, a novel which features a Moscow professor who befriends a stray dog and transplants into it the testicles and pituitary gland of a dead man, unleashing a human dog which turns the professor's life into a nightmare beyond endurance.

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Book SynopsisThis edition, one of the BCP Classics Companion Series, provides a translation and detailed commentary of the Greek and Macedonian narrative of Diodorus Book XVI. An outstanding general, statesman and diplomat, Philip II inherited a kingdom near collapse and transformed it into the greatest power in the Mediterranean world. But for all its significance, his reign is badly served by the surviving writers of Greek literature. The loss of the major contemporary historians has left us dependent for our knowledge on the speeches of the Attic orators, especially the hostile Demosthenes, and on the 16th Book of Diodorus Siculus, who though he lived some 300 years later, has bequeathed the only detailed account of Philip's reign in Macedonia and the Greek mainland.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction 1 The Life and Works of Diodorus 1 2 Diodorus' Purpose in Writing 3 3 Diodorus' Chronological Scheme 8 4 The Sources of Diodorus in the Sixteenth Book 8 5 Diodoius' Portrait of Philip 14 6 Inaccuracies in Diodorus 16 16 Book Sixteen: Greek and Macedonian Narrative 19 Commentary on the Text 61 Appendix A: Philip ll and the Transformation of Macedonia 182 Appendix B: The Death of Philip 189 Bibliography

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Book SynopsisA title in the Bristol Classical Press Latin texts series, in Latin with English notes, vocabulary and introduction. Titus Livius lived from 59 BC to AD 17 and was a native of the northern Italian town of Patavium. It is generally agreed that he settled in Rome at about the age of 30, and spent the last forty years of his life in the composition of his great history. In writing the history of Rome, Livy sought to emphasize the traits in the national character that had made Rome great, and to impress upon his readers that Rome had developed into a great empire under their guidance and leadership. Livy has been praised for the power of his graphic descriptions, his dramatic contrivance, his imaginative skill in the composition of his speeches, his details of character, and finally his language. He is simultaneously historian, poet and rhetorician. This edition should prove useful to students and undergraduates.

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Book SynopsisThis work by German novelist, Heinrich Mann, is part of the Bristol Classical Press German Texts series. The series is designed to meet the needs of the fast-growing A Level and undergraduate market for texts in the German language. Each text comes with English notes and vocabulary, and with an introduction by an editor with an expert knowledge both of the work and of its literary and cultural context.

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