R.O.A.M. Lyne
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199203963
- eISBN:
- 9780191708237
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199203963.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This paper presents the classic treatment of this loose grouping of poets in the middle of the first century BC, exploring their interrelationship and common poetic themes and forms (especially the ...
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This paper presents the classic treatment of this loose grouping of poets in the middle of the first century BC, exploring their interrelationship and common poetic themes and forms (especially the epyllion).Less
This paper presents the classic treatment of this loose grouping of poets in the middle of the first century BC, exploring their interrelationship and common poetic themes and forms (especially the epyllion).
S.J. Harrison
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199203581
- eISBN:
- 9780191708176
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199203581.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Clearly transitional between the Eclogues and the Aeneid, this poem shows generic strain in its second half, especially in the proem to Book 3 with its anticipation of martial epic, and in the ...
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Clearly transitional between the Eclogues and the Aeneid, this poem shows generic strain in its second half, especially in the proem to Book 3 with its anticipation of martial epic, and in the Aristaeus section at the end of Book 4, where the interplay of questions of literary form and political commitment is brilliantly explored (Homeric, neoteric, Hesiodic, Hellenistic).Less
Clearly transitional between the Eclogues and the Aeneid, this poem shows generic strain in its second half, especially in the proem to Book 3 with its anticipation of martial epic, and in the Aristaeus section at the end of Book 4, where the interplay of questions of literary form and political commitment is brilliantly explored (Homeric, neoteric, Hesiodic, Hellenistic).
Maggie Kilgour
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199589432
- eISBN:
- 9780191738500
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199589432.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The first chapter shows that Milton became familiar with Ovid at an early age through practices of translation and imitation. Noting close parallels with and specific verbal echoes of Ovid's writing, ...
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The first chapter shows that Milton became familiar with Ovid at an early age through practices of translation and imitation. Noting close parallels with and specific verbal echoes of Ovid's writing, it demonstrates that the young Milton has a surprisingly keen grasp also of the broader patterns and concerns of Ovid's works. It suggests further, moreover, that Milton became increasingly attentive to revisions of Ovid by earlier writers. Beginning with some of the Ovidian elements in the early Latin works it turns to Milton's first English poem, ‘On the Death of a fair Infant dying of a Cough’, and ends with a discussion of his masque Comus. As he moves into English, Milton's reading of Ovid responds also to the adaptations of the Elizabethans, most notably Spenser and Shakespeare, but also the epyllion writers and Marlowe who are especially drawn to the stories of Daphne and Venus and Adonis.Less
The first chapter shows that Milton became familiar with Ovid at an early age through practices of translation and imitation. Noting close parallels with and specific verbal echoes of Ovid's writing, it demonstrates that the young Milton has a surprisingly keen grasp also of the broader patterns and concerns of Ovid's works. It suggests further, moreover, that Milton became increasingly attentive to revisions of Ovid by earlier writers. Beginning with some of the Ovidian elements in the early Latin works it turns to Milton's first English poem, ‘On the Death of a fair Infant dying of a Cough’, and ends with a discussion of his masque Comus. As he moves into English, Milton's reading of Ovid responds also to the adaptations of the Elizabethans, most notably Spenser and Shakespeare, but also the epyllion writers and Marlowe who are especially drawn to the stories of Daphne and Venus and Adonis.
Eric Langley
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199541232
- eISBN:
- 9780191716072
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199541232.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
The subjects of this book are the subjects whose subjects are themselves. Narcissus so himself himself forsook, And died to kiss his shadow in the brook. In accusing the introspective Adonis of ...
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The subjects of this book are the subjects whose subjects are themselves. Narcissus so himself himself forsook, And died to kiss his shadow in the brook. In accusing the introspective Adonis of narcissistic self‐absorption, Shakespeare's Venus employs a geminative construction—‘himself himself’—that provides a keynote for this study of Renaissance reflexive subjectivity. Through close analysis of a number of Shakespearean texts—including Venus and Adonis, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Othello— this book illustrates how radical self‐reflection is expressed on the Renaissance page and stage, and how representations of the two seemingly extreme figures of the narcissist and self‐slaughterer are indicative of early modern attitudes to introspection. Encompassing a broad range of philosophical, theological, poetic, and dramatic texts, this study examines period descriptions of the early modern subject characterized by the rhetoric of reciprocation and reflection. The narcissist and the self‐slaughter provide models of dialogic but self‐destructive identity where private interiority is articulated in terms of self‐response, but where this geminative isolation is understood as self‐defeating, both selfish and suicidal. The study includes work on Renaissance revisions of Ovid, classical attitudes to suicide, the rhetoric of friendship literature, discussion of early modern conceptions of vision, and an extended discussion of narcissism in the epyllion tradition. Sustained textual analysis offers new readings of major Shakespearean texts, allowing familiar works of literature to be seen from the unusual and anti‐social perspectives of their narcissistic and suicidal protagonists.Less
The subjects of this book are the subjects whose subjects are themselves. Narcissus so himself himself forsook, And died to kiss his shadow in the brook. In accusing the introspective Adonis of narcissistic self‐absorption, Shakespeare's Venus employs a geminative construction—‘himself himself’—that provides a keynote for this study of Renaissance reflexive subjectivity. Through close analysis of a number of Shakespearean texts—including Venus and Adonis, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Othello— this book illustrates how radical self‐reflection is expressed on the Renaissance page and stage, and how representations of the two seemingly extreme figures of the narcissist and self‐slaughterer are indicative of early modern attitudes to introspection. Encompassing a broad range of philosophical, theological, poetic, and dramatic texts, this study examines period descriptions of the early modern subject characterized by the rhetoric of reciprocation and reflection. The narcissist and the self‐slaughter provide models of dialogic but self‐destructive identity where private interiority is articulated in terms of self‐response, but where this geminative isolation is understood as self‐defeating, both selfish and suicidal. The study includes work on Renaissance revisions of Ovid, classical attitudes to suicide, the rhetoric of friendship literature, discussion of early modern conceptions of vision, and an extended discussion of narcissism in the epyllion tradition. Sustained textual analysis offers new readings of major Shakespearean texts, allowing familiar works of literature to be seen from the unusual and anti‐social perspectives of their narcissistic and suicidal protagonists.
REBECCA ARMSTRONG
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199284030
- eISBN:
- 9780191712500
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199284030.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter focuses on the depiction of Ariadne in Catullus 64. Catullus' sixty-fourth poem is an extraordinary work, which takes the form of the Hellenistic epyllion, already a subtly sophisticated ...
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This chapter focuses on the depiction of Ariadne in Catullus 64. Catullus' sixty-fourth poem is an extraordinary work, which takes the form of the Hellenistic epyllion, already a subtly sophisticated sub-genre, and pushes it to its limits. In this poem, Catullus inverts again a genre characterized by inversion to make contact once more with conventionally epic elements through his treatment of the myth of the Argonauts, whilst preserving neoteric contact with the feminine in the form of the Ariadne ecphrasis. This 213-line section (which takes up just over half of the poem) is also one of the most important, and most sensitive, treatments of the story of Ariadne in classical literature. It was recognized as a formative influence by later Latin poets not only for their own versions of Ariadne's story, but even for their portrayal of other characters, such as Vergil's Dido and Ovid's Scylla.Less
This chapter focuses on the depiction of Ariadne in Catullus 64. Catullus' sixty-fourth poem is an extraordinary work, which takes the form of the Hellenistic epyllion, already a subtly sophisticated sub-genre, and pushes it to its limits. In this poem, Catullus inverts again a genre characterized by inversion to make contact once more with conventionally epic elements through his treatment of the myth of the Argonauts, whilst preserving neoteric contact with the feminine in the form of the Ariadne ecphrasis. This 213-line section (which takes up just over half of the poem) is also one of the most important, and most sensitive, treatments of the story of Ariadne in classical literature. It was recognized as a formative influence by later Latin poets not only for their own versions of Ariadne's story, but even for their portrayal of other characters, such as Vergil's Dido and Ovid's Scylla.
James Uden
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199586462
- eISBN:
- 9780191724961
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199586462.003.0014
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The Perseus and Andromeda episode in Manilius’ Astronomica (5.538-613) is an anomalous epyllion, downplaying the amatory themes prominent in the epyllion form and in other retellings of the myth. ...
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The Perseus and Andromeda episode in Manilius’ Astronomica (5.538-613) is an anomalous epyllion, downplaying the amatory themes prominent in the epyllion form and in other retellings of the myth. Manilius replaces human or mythological characters with elements from the personified natural world. The resulting vision of a powerful and sympathetic natural world acts as an imaginative counterpoint to Manilius’ account in the work as a whole of the universe that surrounds and controls us. Moreover, phrases and images from Manilius’ description of stars in the Perseus-Andromeda constellation group reappear in the epyllion, though often in an oblique and riddling way. Through this network of intratextual connection, the stars seem to exert their influences within the fabric of the poem itself, though, as always in astrology, this influence is not straightforward, but winding and oblique.Less
The Perseus and Andromeda episode in Manilius’ Astronomica (5.538-613) is an anomalous epyllion, downplaying the amatory themes prominent in the epyllion form and in other retellings of the myth. Manilius replaces human or mythological characters with elements from the personified natural world. The resulting vision of a powerful and sympathetic natural world acts as an imaginative counterpoint to Manilius’ account in the work as a whole of the universe that surrounds and controls us. Moreover, phrases and images from Manilius’ description of stars in the Perseus-Andromeda constellation group reappear in the epyllion, though often in an oblique and riddling way. Through this network of intratextual connection, the stars seem to exert their influences within the fabric of the poem itself, though, as always in astrology, this influence is not straightforward, but winding and oblique.
T. P. Wiseman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198718352
- eISBN:
- 9780191787645
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198718352.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The book proposes the following hypothesis: that non-technical literature in the Roman world, both poetry and prose, was composed in the first instance for oral delivery to a large public audience, ...
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The book proposes the following hypothesis: that non-technical literature in the Roman world, both poetry and prose, was composed in the first instance for oral delivery to a large public audience, and that the copying and circulation of written texts was only a secondary stage in the ‘publication’ process. The hypothesis is tested by a systematic survey of the evidence for a thousand years of Roman history, from the formation of Rome as a city-state (late seventh century BC) to the final establishment of a Christian culture (late fourth century AD). For the first four centuries of this period the contemporary evidence is necessarily indirect, by analogy with archaic Greek society and by inference from the iconography of terracotta reliefs, painted pottery and engraved bronzes; but once literary texts become available about 200 BC, close reading provides increasingly reliable information about the circumstances of literary production and dissemination. Particular attention is paid to the annual ‘stage-games’ (ludi scaenici), which enabled authors to reach an audience notionally coextensive with the Roman People. No clear distinction should be drawn between literature and drama, and some literary genres, in particular satire and ‘epyllion’, are best understood as part of a performance tradition involving actors and dancers. The whole argument treats literary history as part of the political and social realities of Roman popular culture, and examines the effect of the creation of large permanent theatres in Rome in the first century BC.Less
The book proposes the following hypothesis: that non-technical literature in the Roman world, both poetry and prose, was composed in the first instance for oral delivery to a large public audience, and that the copying and circulation of written texts was only a secondary stage in the ‘publication’ process. The hypothesis is tested by a systematic survey of the evidence for a thousand years of Roman history, from the formation of Rome as a city-state (late seventh century BC) to the final establishment of a Christian culture (late fourth century AD). For the first four centuries of this period the contemporary evidence is necessarily indirect, by analogy with archaic Greek society and by inference from the iconography of terracotta reliefs, painted pottery and engraved bronzes; but once literary texts become available about 200 BC, close reading provides increasingly reliable information about the circumstances of literary production and dissemination. Particular attention is paid to the annual ‘stage-games’ (ludi scaenici), which enabled authors to reach an audience notionally coextensive with the Roman People. No clear distinction should be drawn between literature and drama, and some literary genres, in particular satire and ‘epyllion’, are best understood as part of a performance tradition involving actors and dancers. The whole argument treats literary history as part of the political and social realities of Roman popular culture, and examines the effect of the creation of large permanent theatres in Rome in the first century BC.
Elizabeth Marie Young
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226279916
- eISBN:
- 9780226280080
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226280080.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter argues that Catullus’s poem 64 (a miniature epic or epyllion), though original by modern standards, is shot through with forms of translation that were common at Rome, in particular what ...
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This chapter argues that Catullus’s poem 64 (a miniature epic or epyllion), though original by modern standards, is shot through with forms of translation that were common at Rome, in particular what we might call generic translation. Frequently the narrative flow of this long poem is paused to lavish attention on items associated with the transfer of culture from East to West. It is argued that these descriptions are self-reflexive moments where the poem probes its own unsettling status as a translation of the Alexandrian epyllion into Latin form. But even as this metapoetic subtext voices apprehension about the poem’s imported status, it poses the poet-translator as a contemporary hero in a belated world where all great deeds have already been done and all great texts have already been written.Less
This chapter argues that Catullus’s poem 64 (a miniature epic or epyllion), though original by modern standards, is shot through with forms of translation that were common at Rome, in particular what we might call generic translation. Frequently the narrative flow of this long poem is paused to lavish attention on items associated with the transfer of culture from East to West. It is argued that these descriptions are self-reflexive moments where the poem probes its own unsettling status as a translation of the Alexandrian epyllion into Latin form. But even as this metapoetic subtext voices apprehension about the poem’s imported status, it poses the poet-translator as a contemporary hero in a belated world where all great deeds have already been done and all great texts have already been written.
Jennifer Ingleheart
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199689729
- eISBN:
- 9780191814044
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199689729.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter discusses the reception in the Renaissance of the episode of Orpheus found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and argues that the Ovidian Orpheus, who rejects women and teaches the love of boys to ...
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This chapter discusses the reception in the Renaissance of the episode of Orpheus found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and argues that the Ovidian Orpheus, who rejects women and teaches the love of boys to his fellow Thracians, is a figure of anxiety in the English Renaissance, largely because his authorial persona combines misogyny with the teaching of pederasty and because of the homosocial environment of the Inns of Court, in which many Orphic poems were composed. After analysing attempts to suppress or moralize away Orpheus’ preferences in authors such as Arthur Golding, it provides an in-depth study of Orpheus’ reception in two poems in the epyllion genre. The first, attributed to Richard Barnfield, does not openly portray Orpheus’ homosexual preferences but paints his attraction for other husbands, and contains homoerotic hints, whereas the other, anonymous work condemns Orpheus as a sodomite, albeit not without ambiguity.Less
This chapter discusses the reception in the Renaissance of the episode of Orpheus found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and argues that the Ovidian Orpheus, who rejects women and teaches the love of boys to his fellow Thracians, is a figure of anxiety in the English Renaissance, largely because his authorial persona combines misogyny with the teaching of pederasty and because of the homosocial environment of the Inns of Court, in which many Orphic poems were composed. After analysing attempts to suppress or moralize away Orpheus’ preferences in authors such as Arthur Golding, it provides an in-depth study of Orpheus’ reception in two poems in the epyllion genre. The first, attributed to Richard Barnfield, does not openly portray Orpheus’ homosexual preferences but paints his attraction for other husbands, and contains homoerotic hints, whereas the other, anonymous work condemns Orpheus as a sodomite, albeit not without ambiguity.
Basil Dufallo
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199735877
- eISBN:
- 9780199332458
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199735877.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Chapter 2 focuses on Catullus’s poem 64, his “epyllion” (“miniature epic”) on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, with its great central ecphrasis of a tapestry depicting the myth of Ariadne and ...
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Chapter 2 focuses on Catullus’s poem 64, his “epyllion” (“miniature epic”) on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, with its great central ecphrasis of a tapestry depicting the myth of Ariadne and Theseus. Adopting an immensely allusive technique typical of the Hellenistic Greek poetry of Alexandria, Catullus here puts forward an inconsistent narrator who laments moral decline from archaic Greece to contemporary Rome while expressing a highly ambivalent and idiosyncratic receptivity to the heroic Greek past. Catullus thus encourages his audience to enter as Romans into an archaic Greek world seen in part through Alexandrian eyes, while pressing this audience to reflect on the broader phenomenon of elite philhellenism as it existed in the late Republic. Assimilated to the lover’s persona familiar from Catullus’s lyric and elegiac poetry, the narrator treats the Greek past itself as an eroticized object both eminently desirable and ultimately disappointing. With this problematic invitation beyond the here-and-now Catullus 64 offers both ironic and sympathetic commentary upon a culture of viewing like that implied by the illusionistic tableaux of contemporary Second Style wall painting.Less
Chapter 2 focuses on Catullus’s poem 64, his “epyllion” (“miniature epic”) on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, with its great central ecphrasis of a tapestry depicting the myth of Ariadne and Theseus. Adopting an immensely allusive technique typical of the Hellenistic Greek poetry of Alexandria, Catullus here puts forward an inconsistent narrator who laments moral decline from archaic Greece to contemporary Rome while expressing a highly ambivalent and idiosyncratic receptivity to the heroic Greek past. Catullus thus encourages his audience to enter as Romans into an archaic Greek world seen in part through Alexandrian eyes, while pressing this audience to reflect on the broader phenomenon of elite philhellenism as it existed in the late Republic. Assimilated to the lover’s persona familiar from Catullus’s lyric and elegiac poetry, the narrator treats the Greek past itself as an eroticized object both eminently desirable and ultimately disappointing. With this problematic invitation beyond the here-and-now Catullus 64 offers both ironic and sympathetic commentary upon a culture of viewing like that implied by the illusionistic tableaux of contemporary Second Style wall painting.
Rachel Eisendrath
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226516585
- eISBN:
- 9780226516752
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226516752.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Marlowe’s 1593 Hero and Leander is often treated as “fetishistic” because of the way it combines an erotic story with a unique obsession with objects, an obsession most evident in the three ...
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Marlowe’s 1593 Hero and Leander is often treated as “fetishistic” because of the way it combines an erotic story with a unique obsession with objects, an obsession most evident in the three consecutive ekphrases (of Hero’s clothing, Leander’s body, and the Temple of Venus) with which the poem begins. But Marlowe’s work is more dynamic than such an approach would suggest. By analyzing stylistic correspondences between Marlowe’s work and the largely neglected literature of post-Augustan antiquity, especially the Greek romances of the Second Sophistic, this chapter shows that Marlowe’s poem has absorbed into itself the ekphrastic style of this earlier literature in order to undo its fetishized aestheticism from within. In the end, Hero and Leander critiques literary history by introducing an awareness of the historical brutalities that previous aestheticism excludes.Less
Marlowe’s 1593 Hero and Leander is often treated as “fetishistic” because of the way it combines an erotic story with a unique obsession with objects, an obsession most evident in the three consecutive ekphrases (of Hero’s clothing, Leander’s body, and the Temple of Venus) with which the poem begins. But Marlowe’s work is more dynamic than such an approach would suggest. By analyzing stylistic correspondences between Marlowe’s work and the largely neglected literature of post-Augustan antiquity, especially the Greek romances of the Second Sophistic, this chapter shows that Marlowe’s poem has absorbed into itself the ekphrastic style of this earlier literature in order to undo its fetishized aestheticism from within. In the end, Hero and Leander critiques literary history by introducing an awareness of the historical brutalities that previous aestheticism excludes.
Shirley Chew and Alistair Stead (eds)
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853236740
- eISBN:
- 9781846314285
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846314285
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book examines topics from the Renaissance to the present in the context of apt exploration of the translation process, invoking both restricted and extended senses of translation. The book ...
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This book examines topics from the Renaissance to the present in the context of apt exploration of the translation process, invoking both restricted and extended senses of translation. The book studies in detail the theory, workings, and implications of what might be called the art of creative transposition, effective at the level of interlingual transcoding, dynamic rewriting, theatrical and cinematic adaptation, intersemiotic or intermedial translation, and cultural exchange. Many of the essays focus on aspects of intertextuality, the dialogue with text, past and present, as they bear on the issue of translation, attending to the historical, political or cultural dimensions of the practice, whether it illuminates a gendered reading of a text or a staging of cultural difference. The historic and generic range of the discussions is wide, encompassing the Elizabethan epyllion, Sensibility fiction, Victorian poetry and prose, modern and postmodern novels, but the book is dominated by dramatic or performance-related applications, with investigations into William Shakespeare (from A Midsummer Night's Dream to The Tempest) and foregrounding of acts of self-translation on stage, in the dramatic monologue and in fiction.Less
This book examines topics from the Renaissance to the present in the context of apt exploration of the translation process, invoking both restricted and extended senses of translation. The book studies in detail the theory, workings, and implications of what might be called the art of creative transposition, effective at the level of interlingual transcoding, dynamic rewriting, theatrical and cinematic adaptation, intersemiotic or intermedial translation, and cultural exchange. Many of the essays focus on aspects of intertextuality, the dialogue with text, past and present, as they bear on the issue of translation, attending to the historical, political or cultural dimensions of the practice, whether it illuminates a gendered reading of a text or a staging of cultural difference. The historic and generic range of the discussions is wide, encompassing the Elizabethan epyllion, Sensibility fiction, Victorian poetry and prose, modern and postmodern novels, but the book is dominated by dramatic or performance-related applications, with investigations into William Shakespeare (from A Midsummer Night's Dream to The Tempest) and foregrounding of acts of self-translation on stage, in the dramatic monologue and in fiction.
Daniel Moss
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- April 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780198830696
- eISBN:
- 9780191954573
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198830696.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Traditional accounts of the minor epic have emphasised alternately their emanation from the rhetorical training of the Elizabethan schoolroom and their erotic experimentalism, but the wide ...
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Traditional accounts of the minor epic have emphasised alternately their emanation from the rhetorical training of the Elizabethan schoolroom and their erotic experimentalism, but the wide variousness and peculiar constitution of the minor epic canon demand a more concerted account of where the genre fits into the career models available to the poets of the 1590s and early seventeenth century. Identifying the three primary examples by Lodge, Marlowe, and Shakespeare as immediately successful and lastingly influential, this chapter turns to less studied epyllia by Heywood, Marston, Fletcher, and Chapman to propose that secondary minor epics are best understood as calculated acts of emulation, a way for professionalising poets to map their relations to the works of their predecessors, rivals, and peers.Less
Traditional accounts of the minor epic have emphasised alternately their emanation from the rhetorical training of the Elizabethan schoolroom and their erotic experimentalism, but the wide variousness and peculiar constitution of the minor epic canon demand a more concerted account of where the genre fits into the career models available to the poets of the 1590s and early seventeenth century. Identifying the three primary examples by Lodge, Marlowe, and Shakespeare as immediately successful and lastingly influential, this chapter turns to less studied epyllia by Heywood, Marston, Fletcher, and Chapman to propose that secondary minor epics are best understood as calculated acts of emulation, a way for professionalising poets to map their relations to the works of their predecessors, rivals, and peers.
Rachel Eisendrath
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- April 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780198830696
- eISBN:
- 9780191954573
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198830696.003.0029
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Christopher Marlowe’s radicality has often been situated in his biography, in the rumours of his atheism, homosexuality, and renegade lifestyle. This chapter focuses instead on his edgy, ...
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Christopher Marlowe’s radicality has often been situated in his biography, in the rumours of his atheism, homosexuality, and renegade lifestyle. This chapter focuses instead on his edgy, recalcitrant, and defiant poetics. Surveying his major poetic works (his translations of Lucan and Ovid, his lyric poem ‘The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’, his epyllion Hero and Leander, and the blank verse of his plays), the chapter explores how Marlowe’s work resists teleological or end-driven modes of thought. His work does so in many ways: through lines of verse that seem to reach beyond their own end-stopped form, through a kind of anti-narrative poetic eddying that celebrates non-normative sexuality and play, and through a complex defiance of epic triumphalism.Less
Christopher Marlowe’s radicality has often been situated in his biography, in the rumours of his atheism, homosexuality, and renegade lifestyle. This chapter focuses instead on his edgy, recalcitrant, and defiant poetics. Surveying his major poetic works (his translations of Lucan and Ovid, his lyric poem ‘The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’, his epyllion Hero and Leander, and the blank verse of his plays), the chapter explores how Marlowe’s work resists teleological or end-driven modes of thought. His work does so in many ways: through lines of verse that seem to reach beyond their own end-stopped form, through a kind of anti-narrative poetic eddying that celebrates non-normative sexuality and play, and through a complex defiance of epic triumphalism.
T. P. Wiseman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198718352
- eISBN:
- 9780191787645
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198718352.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Lucretius wanted to reach a wider public than just his patron Memmius; Philodemus and the authors he cited took it for granted that both prose and poetry were meant to be heard by a general audience. ...
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Lucretius wanted to reach a wider public than just his patron Memmius; Philodemus and the authors he cited took it for granted that both prose and poetry were meant to be heard by a general audience. Demetrius On Style treated historians as analogous to poets, and serious letter-writers to epideictic orators, implying oral delivery in each case. Caesar’s war commentaries, as annual reports to the People rather than the Senate, were probably composed to be read out in public. Catullus’ attacks on Caesar presuppose a wide audience; poems 61–3 are evidently for performance; and the genre we call ‘epyllion’ may have been intended to accompany music and dance. The ‘Greek stage’ attested at Rome in the second and first centuries BC may have influenced both Catullus and Virgil to imitate the ‘mimes’ of Theocritus.Less
Lucretius wanted to reach a wider public than just his patron Memmius; Philodemus and the authors he cited took it for granted that both prose and poetry were meant to be heard by a general audience. Demetrius On Style treated historians as analogous to poets, and serious letter-writers to epideictic orators, implying oral delivery in each case. Caesar’s war commentaries, as annual reports to the People rather than the Senate, were probably composed to be read out in public. Catullus’ attacks on Caesar presuppose a wide audience; poems 61–3 are evidently for performance; and the genre we call ‘epyllion’ may have been intended to accompany music and dance. The ‘Greek stage’ attested at Rome in the second and first centuries BC may have influenced both Catullus and Virgil to imitate the ‘mimes’ of Theocritus.
Antony Augoustakis
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- October 2020
- ISBN:
- eISBN:
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198864417.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
In this chapter, Scylla’s lament in the Ciris and its complex intertextual links with other poems of the Augustan and imperial periods are considered. The hypothesis is advanced that, if this poem is ...
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In this chapter, Scylla’s lament in the Ciris and its complex intertextual links with other poems of the Augustan and imperial periods are considered. The hypothesis is advanced that, if this poem is an intentionally anachronistic Roman fake in a post-Virgilian or post-Ovidian world, it establishes a dialogue with contemporary Neronian or Flavian poetry by remaining relevant in an imperial, rather than a Republican, landscape as a poem to which poets allude. It can be argued that the Ciris-poet wrote in the imperial period after Ovid, and was part of a general revival of neoteric epyllion under the empire; compare Persius in his first satire or Lucan’s lost Orpheus. The poet of the Ciris should not be dismissed as an inferior composer because fashions change over time; note that Ovid, Lucan, and Statius are now thought of as canonical alongside Virgil, an unimaginable notion a century or so ago.Less
In this chapter, Scylla’s lament in the Ciris and its complex intertextual links with other poems of the Augustan and imperial periods are considered. The hypothesis is advanced that, if this poem is an intentionally anachronistic Roman fake in a post-Virgilian or post-Ovidian world, it establishes a dialogue with contemporary Neronian or Flavian poetry by remaining relevant in an imperial, rather than a Republican, landscape as a poem to which poets allude. It can be argued that the Ciris-poet wrote in the imperial period after Ovid, and was part of a general revival of neoteric epyllion under the empire; compare Persius in his first satire or Lucan’s lost Orpheus. The poet of the Ciris should not be dismissed as an inferior composer because fashions change over time; note that Ovid, Lucan, and Statius are now thought of as canonical alongside Virgil, an unimaginable notion a century or so ago.