Textual Strategies In Ancient War Narrative

Download or read book Textual Strategies in Ancient War Narrative written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collected volume fourteen experts in the fields of Classics and Ancient History study the textual strategies used by Herodotus and Livy when recounting the disastrous battles at Thermopylae and Cannae. Literary, linguistic and historical approaches are used (often in combination) in order to enhance and enrich the interpretation of the accounts, which for obvious reasons confronted the authors with a special challenge. Chapters drawing a comparison with other battle narratives and with other genres help to establish genre-specific elements in ancient historiography, and draw attention to the particular techniques employed by Herodotus and Livy in their war narratives.

Download or read book Emotions and Narrative in Ancient Literature and Beyond written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-04-25 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emotions are at the core of much ancient literature, from Achilles’ heartfelt anger in Homer’s Iliad to the pangs of love of Virgil’s Dido. This volume applies a narratological approach to emotions in a wide range of texts and genres. It seeks to analyze ways in which emotions such as anger, fear, pity, joy, love and sadness are portrayed. Furthermore, using recent insights from affective narratology, it studies ways in which ancient narratives evoke emotions in their readers. The volume is dedicated to Irene de Jong for her groundbreaking research into the narratology of ancient literature.

Download or read book The Imagination of the Mind in Classical Athens written by Emily Clifford and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-14 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the imaginative processes at work in the artefacts of Classical Athens. When ancient Athenians strove to grasp ‘justice’ or ‘war’ or ‘death’, when they dreamt or deliberated, how did they do it? Did they think about what they were doing? Did they imagine an imagining mind? European histories of the imagination have often begun with thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. By contrast, this volume is premised upon the idea that imaginative activity, and especially efforts to articulate it, can take place in the absence of technical terminology. In exploring an ancient culture of imagination mediated by art and literature, the book scopes out the roots of later, more explicit, theoretical enquiry. Chapters hone in on a range of visual and verbal artefacts from the Classical period. Approaching the topic from different angles – philosophical, historical, philological, literary, and art historical – they also investigate how these artefacts stimulate affective, sensory, meditative – in short, ‘imaginative’ – encounters between imagining bodies and their world. The Imagination of the Mind in Classical Athens offers a ground-breaking reassessment of ‘imagination’ in ancient Greek culture and thought: it will be essential reading for those interested in not only philosophies of mind, but also ancient Greek image, text, and culture more broadly.

Download or read book Ambiguities of War: A Narratological Commentary on Silius Italicus’ Battle of Ticinus (Sil. 4.1-479) written by Elisabeth Schedel and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-09-19 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book lays bare the narrative form of Silius’ text. It focuses on the phenomenon of ambiguity due to the epic’s constant oscillation between fact and fiction, highlighting Roman triumph in defeat and defeat through triumph.

Download or read book Reading Greek and Hellenistic-Roman Spolia written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-11-13 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plundering and taking home precious objects from a defeated enemy was a widespread activity in the Greek and Hellenistic-Roman world. In this volume literary critics, historians and archaeologists join forces in investigating this phenomenon in terms of appropriation and cultural change. In-depth interpretations of famous ancient spoliations, like that of the Greeks after Plataea or the Romans after the capture of Jerusalem, reveal a fascinating paradox: while the material record shows an eager incorporation of new objects, the texts display abhorrence of the negative effects they were thought to bring along. As this volume demonstrates, both reactions testify to the crucial innovative impact objects from abroad may have.

Download or read book Plutarch’s Unexpected Silences written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-06-13 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines passages in Plutarch’s works that foil expectations and whose silence invites closer examination. The contributors question omissions of authors, works, people, and places, and they examine Plutarch’s reticence to comment where he usually would.

Download or read book The Politics of Viewing in Xenophon’s Historical Narratives written by Rosie Harman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-01-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers cultural identity and power relations in early fourth-century BCE Greece through a reading of Xenophon's historical narratives, the Hellenica, Anabasis and Cyropaedia. These texts depict conflicts between Greek states, conflicts between Greeks and non-Greeks, and relations between the elite individual and society. In all three texts, politically significant moments are imagined in visual terms. We witness spectacles of Spartan military victory, vistas of Asian landscape or displays of Persian imperial pomp, and historical protagonists are presented as spectators viewing and responding to events. Through this visual form of narration, the reader is encouraged imaginatively to place themselves in the position of the historical protagonists. In viewing events from different perspectives, and therefore occupying multiple, often conflicting political positions, the reader not only experiences the problems faced by historical actors, but becomes engaged in the political conflicts acted out in the narratives. The reader is prompted to take pleasure in the sight of Panhellenic achievement, but also to witness the divisions and conflicts between Greeks on class and ethnic lines. Similarly the reader is invited to identify with spectacular Greek and non-Greek figures of power as emblems of Greek imperial potential, but also to see through the eyes of those communities subjugated at their hands. The depiction of spectacles and spectators draws the reader into an active participation in the ideological contradictions of their time, in a period when Panhellenic aspiration co-existed with hegemonic competition between Greek states, and when Greeks could be both beneficiaries and victims of imperialism.