Search results for ""Author David Konstan""

"In the Greek romances," writes David Konstan, "sighs, tears, and suicide attempts are as characteristic of the male as of the female in distress; ruses, disguises, and outright violence in defense of one's chastity are as much the part of the female as of the male." Exploring how erotic love is represented in ancient amatory literature, Konstan points to the symmetry in the passion of the hero and heroine as a unique feature of the Greek novel: they fall mutually in love, they are of approximately the same age and social class, and their reciprocal attachment ends in marriage. He shows how the plots of the novels are perfectly adapted to expressing this symmetry and how, because of their structure, they differ from classical epic, elegy, comedy, tragedy, and other genres, including modern novels ranging from Sidney to Harlequin romances. Using works like Chaereas and Callirhoe and Daphnis and Chloe, Konstan examines such issues as pederasty, the role of eros in both marital and nonmarital love, and the ancient Greek concept of fidelity. He reveals how the novelistic formula of sexual symmetry reverses the pattern of all other ancient genres, where erotic desire appears one-sided and unequal and is often viewed as either a weakness or an aggressive, conquering power. Konstan's approach draws upon theories concerning the nature of sexuality in the ancient world, reflected in the work of Michel Foucault, David Halperin, and John Winkler. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Read more less

There is more to classical literature than just the classics. Here David Slavitt expands the canon by presenting vivid, graceful, and amusing translations of two neglected fragmentary works of Latin literature. The first is Publius Papinius Statius's first-century epic Achilleid, an extraordinary fusion of epic and New Comedy sentiments and humor that may represent the earliest literary imagining of the charm of adolescence. It relates the story of the education of Achilles under the centaur Chiron, his adopting the disguise of a girl during his sojourn at the court of Lycomedes in Scyros, his love affair with Deidamia, his detection by Ulysses and Diomedes, and his departure for Troy. The second work is Claudius Claudianus's unfinished fourth-century epic version of the rape of Proserpine. The two works together make a delightful pair. The afterword by David Konstan explores the traditions in which—and against which—Statius and Claudian composed their versions of these well-known stories.

Read more less

This book explores the social institutions, the prevailing social values, and the ideology of the ancient city-state as revealed in Roman Comedy. "The very essence of comedy is social," writes David Konstan, "and in the complex movement of its plots we may be able to discern the lineaments and contradictions of the reigning ideas of an age." David Konstan looks closely at eight plays: Plautus's Aulularia, Asinaria, Captivi, Rudens, Cistellaria, and Truculentus, and Terence's Phormio and Hecyra. Offering new interpretations of each, he develops a "typology of plot forms" by analyzing structural features and patterns of conventional behavior in the plays, and he relates the results of his literary analysis to contemporary social conditions. He argues that the plays address tensions that were potentially disruptive to the ancient city-state, and that they tended to resolve these tensions in ways that affirmed traditional values. Roman Comedy is an innovative and challenging book that will be welcomed by students of classical literature, ancient social history, the history of the theater, and comedy as a genre.

Read more less

Where did the idea of sin arise from? In this meticulously argued book, David Konstan takes a close look at classical Greek and Roman texts, as well as the Bible and early Judaic and Christian writings, and argues that the fundamental idea of "sin" arose in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, although this original meaning was obscured in later Jewish and Christian interpretations. Through close philological examination of the words for "sin," in particular the Hebrew hata' and the Greek hamartia, he traces their uses over the centuries in four chapters, and concludes that the common modern definition of sin as a violation of divine law indeed has antecedents in classical Greco-Roman conceptions, but acquired a wholly different sense in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.

Read more less

This collection of original essays examines innovations in both the theory and practice of classical philology. The chapters address interdisciplinary methods in a variety of ways. Some apply theoretical insights derived from other disciplines, such as folklore studies, performance theory, feminist criticism, and the like, to classical texts. Others examine the relationships between classics and cultural studies, popular literature, film, art history, and other related disciplines. Others, again, look to the evolution of theoretical methods within the discipline of classics. Taken together, the essays offer a spectrum of new approaches in the classics and their place within the profession.

Read more less

With contributions from leading scholars, this is a unique cross-cultural comparison of historical epics across a wide range of cultures and time periods, which presents crucial insights into how history is treated in narrative poetry. The first book to gain new insights into the topic of ‘epic and history’ through in-depth cross-cultural comparisons Covers epic traditions across the globe and across a wide range of time periods Brings together leading specialists in the field, and is edited by two internationally regarded scholars An important reference for scholars and students interested in history and literature across a broad range of disciplines

Read more less

Aside from the well-known plays of Aristophanes, many of the comedies of ancient Greece are known only through fragments and references written in Greek. Now a group of distinguished scholars brings these nearly lost works to modern readers with lively English translations of the surviving texts. The Birth of Comedy brings together a wealth of information on the first three generations of Western comedy. The translations, presented in chronological order, are based on the universally praised scholarly edition in Greek, Poetae Comici Graeci, by R. Kassel and C. A. Austin. Additional chapters contain translations of texts relating to comedy at dramatic festivals, staging, audience, and ancient writers on comedy. The main text is supplemented by an introduction assessing the fragments' contributions to the political, social, and theatrical history of classical Athens and more than forty illustrations of comic scenes, costumes, and masks. A glossary of komoidoumenoi-the ancient word for "people mentioned in comedies"-provides background information on the most notorious comic victims. A full index includes not only authors, play titles, and persons mentioned, but themes from the whole Greek comic sphere (including politics, literature and philosophy, celebrities and social scandals, cookery and wine, sex, and wealth).

Read more less

Several decades of scholarship have demonstrated that Roman thinkers developed in new and stimulating directions the systems of thought they inherited from the Greeks, and that, taken together, they offer many perspectives that are of philosophical interest in their own right. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy explores a range of such Roman philosophical perspectives through thirty-four newly commissioned essays. Where Roman philosophy has long been considered a mere extension of Hellenistic systems of thought, this volume moves beyond the search for sources and parallels and situates Roman philosophy in its distinctive cultural context. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy emphasizes four features of Roman philosophy: aspects of translation, social context, philosophical import, and literary style. The authors adopt an inclusive approach, treating not just systematic thinkers such as Cicero and Augustine, but also poets and historians. Topics covered include ethnicity, cultural identity, literary originality, the environment, Roman philosophical figures, epistemology, and ethics.

Read more less