Diego Gambetta
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199276998
- eISBN:
- 9780191707735
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199276998.003.0008
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
This chapter begins by reviewing the variety and uniformity of features found in suicide missions (SMs) and among their organizers. It then reviews what is known about the perpetrators, arguing that ...
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This chapter begins by reviewing the variety and uniformity of features found in suicide missions (SMs) and among their organizers. It then reviews what is known about the perpetrators, arguing that the persons who die in SMs and the conditions that promote their self-sacrifice are fairly uniform, and although they are rare they are not historically or psychologically abnormal. This raises the further question of how different suicide attackers really are from other people who sacrifice their lives for a cause. To answer it, the similarities and differences between modern SMs on the one hand, and both heroism and some cases of proto-SMs on the other are explored. It is shown that despite the diversity of their purposes, the modern progeny of SMs shares the same roots, which emerged during an extraordinarily violent period in Lebanon. Despite the rapid spread of SMs across the world since 1981, the limits to their further spread are discussed, showing among other things that religious beliefs can both encourage and discourage SMs.Less
This chapter begins by reviewing the variety and uniformity of features found in suicide missions (SMs) and among their organizers. It then reviews what is known about the perpetrators, arguing that the persons who die in SMs and the conditions that promote their self-sacrifice are fairly uniform, and although they are rare they are not historically or psychologically abnormal. This raises the further question of how different suicide attackers really are from other people who sacrifice their lives for a cause. To answer it, the similarities and differences between modern SMs on the one hand, and both heroism and some cases of proto-SMs on the other are explored. It is shown that despite the diversity of their purposes, the modern progeny of SMs shares the same roots, which emerged during an extraordinarily violent period in Lebanon. Despite the rapid spread of SMs across the world since 1981, the limits to their further spread are discussed, showing among other things that religious beliefs can both encourage and discourage SMs.
Malcolm Hebron
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198186205
- eISBN:
- 9780191674440
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186205.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Sieges were a popular subject in medieval romances. Tales of the Crusades featured champions of Christianity capturing towns in the Holy Land or mounting heroic defences. The fall of a great city ...
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Sieges were a popular subject in medieval romances. Tales of the Crusades featured champions of Christianity capturing towns in the Holy Land or mounting heroic defences. The fall of a great city such as Troy, Thebes, or Jerusalem provided opportunities for the recreation of ancient chivalry and for reflections on historical change. Images of the siege in romances also point to other forms, such as drama and love allegory, where it represents the trial of the soul or the pursuit of the beloved. This book is the first full-length study of this important theme in medieval literature. Close reading of selected Middle English shows how writers used descriptions of sieges to explore such subjects as military strategy, heroism, chivalry, and attitudes to the past. This study also draws on a wide range of writings in several languages, to set the romances in a broad context. When they are seen against a background of military manuals, patristic commentary, pageantry, and love poetry, the sieges of romance take on deeper resonances of meaning and reflect the vitality of the theme in medieval culture as a whole.Less
Sieges were a popular subject in medieval romances. Tales of the Crusades featured champions of Christianity capturing towns in the Holy Land or mounting heroic defences. The fall of a great city such as Troy, Thebes, or Jerusalem provided opportunities for the recreation of ancient chivalry and for reflections on historical change. Images of the siege in romances also point to other forms, such as drama and love allegory, where it represents the trial of the soul or the pursuit of the beloved. This book is the first full-length study of this important theme in medieval literature. Close reading of selected Middle English shows how writers used descriptions of sieges to explore such subjects as military strategy, heroism, chivalry, and attitudes to the past. This study also draws on a wide range of writings in several languages, to set the romances in a broad context. When they are seen against a background of military manuals, patristic commentary, pageantry, and love poetry, the sieges of romance take on deeper resonances of meaning and reflect the vitality of the theme in medieval culture as a whole.
Katharine Hodgson
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197262894
- eISBN:
- 9780191734977
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197262894.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This book is an examination of a poet whose career offers a case study in the complexities facing Soviet writers in the Stalin era. Ol′ga Berggol′ts (1910–1975) was a prominent Russian Soviet poet, ...
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This book is an examination of a poet whose career offers a case study in the complexities facing Soviet writers in the Stalin era. Ol′ga Berggol′ts (1910–1975) was a prominent Russian Soviet poet, whose accounts of heroism in wartime Leningrad brought her fame. This book addresses her position as a writer whose Party loyalties were frequently in conflict with the demands of artistic and personal integrity. Writers who pursued their careers under the restrictions of the Stalin era have been categorized as ‘official’ figures whose work is assumed to be drab, inept and opportunistic; but such assumptions impose a uniformity on the work of Soviet writers that the censors and the Writers Union could not achieve. An exploration of Berggol′ts's work shows that the borders between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ literature were in fact permeable and shifting. This book draws on unpublished sources such as diaries and notebooks to reveal the range and scope of her work, and to show how conflict and ambiguity functioned as a creative structuring principle. The text discusses how Berggol′ts's lyric poetry constructs the subject from multiple, conflicting discourses, and examines the poet's treatment of genres such as narrative verse, verse tragedy and prose in the changing cultural context of the 1950s. Berggol′ts's use of inter-textual, and especially intra-textual, reference is also investigated; the intensively self-referential nature of her work creates a web of allusion that connects texts of different genres, ‘official’ as well as ‘unofficial’ writing.Less
This book is an examination of a poet whose career offers a case study in the complexities facing Soviet writers in the Stalin era. Ol′ga Berggol′ts (1910–1975) was a prominent Russian Soviet poet, whose accounts of heroism in wartime Leningrad brought her fame. This book addresses her position as a writer whose Party loyalties were frequently in conflict with the demands of artistic and personal integrity. Writers who pursued their careers under the restrictions of the Stalin era have been categorized as ‘official’ figures whose work is assumed to be drab, inept and opportunistic; but such assumptions impose a uniformity on the work of Soviet writers that the censors and the Writers Union could not achieve. An exploration of Berggol′ts's work shows that the borders between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ literature were in fact permeable and shifting. This book draws on unpublished sources such as diaries and notebooks to reveal the range and scope of her work, and to show how conflict and ambiguity functioned as a creative structuring principle. The text discusses how Berggol′ts's lyric poetry constructs the subject from multiple, conflicting discourses, and examines the poet's treatment of genres such as narrative verse, verse tragedy and prose in the changing cultural context of the 1950s. Berggol′ts's use of inter-textual, and especially intra-textual, reference is also investigated; the intensively self-referential nature of her work creates a web of allusion that connects texts of different genres, ‘official’ as well as ‘unofficial’ writing.
Kathleen Riley
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199534487
- eISBN:
- 9780191715945
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199534487.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This book is the first to examine the reception and performance history of Euripides' Herakles from the fifth century BC to AD 2006. Its primary interest lies in changing ideas of Heraklean madness, ...
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This book is the first to examine the reception and performance history of Euripides' Herakles from the fifth century BC to AD 2006. Its primary interest lies in changing ideas of Heraklean madness, of its causes, its consequences, and its therapy. Writers subsequent to Euripides have tried to ‘reason’ or make sense of the madness, often in accordance with contemporary thinking on mental illness. Diagnoses of Herakles' condition have included melancholy, epilepsy, hysteria, manic depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, and have been informed by a range of theories from humoral pathology to psychoanalysis and beyond. The study's concurrent focus is how these attempts to reason the madness have, in the process, necessarily entailed redefining Herakles' heroism. The book also demonstrates that, in spite, of its relatively infrequent staging, the Herakles has always surfaced in historically charged circumstance – Nero's Rome, Shakespeare's England, Freud's Vienna, Cold-War and post-9/11 America – and has had an undeniable impact on the history of ideas. As an analysis of heroism in crisis, a tragedy about the greatest of heroes facing an abyss of despair but ultimately finding redemption through human love and friendship, the play resonates powerfully with individuals and communities at historical and ethical crossroads.Less
This book is the first to examine the reception and performance history of Euripides' Herakles from the fifth century BC to AD 2006. Its primary interest lies in changing ideas of Heraklean madness, of its causes, its consequences, and its therapy. Writers subsequent to Euripides have tried to ‘reason’ or make sense of the madness, often in accordance with contemporary thinking on mental illness. Diagnoses of Herakles' condition have included melancholy, epilepsy, hysteria, manic depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, and have been informed by a range of theories from humoral pathology to psychoanalysis and beyond. The study's concurrent focus is how these attempts to reason the madness have, in the process, necessarily entailed redefining Herakles' heroism. The book also demonstrates that, in spite, of its relatively infrequent staging, the Herakles has always surfaced in historically charged circumstance – Nero's Rome, Shakespeare's England, Freud's Vienna, Cold-War and post-9/11 America – and has had an undeniable impact on the history of ideas. As an analysis of heroism in crisis, a tragedy about the greatest of heroes facing an abyss of despair but ultimately finding redemption through human love and friendship, the play resonates powerfully with individuals and communities at historical and ethical crossroads.
Marco Fantuzzi
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199603626
- eISBN:
- 9780191746321
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199603626.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The Iliad is a poem whose events revolve around the “anger” of Achilles, and his personal fierceness and pursuit of glory remain, despite different and more complex nuances, the prevailing features ...
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The Iliad is a poem whose events revolve around the “anger” of Achilles, and his personal fierceness and pursuit of glory remain, despite different and more complex nuances, the prevailing features of his characterization. This book proposes to investigate how different literary authors and visual artists at different periods responded to Achilles' “erotic life”, an aspect about which the Iliadwas almost completely silent. Achilles' loves expose a crack in the usually self-assured attitude of the hero, demonstrating the limits of epic heroism and the epic vision of the world. As such, these moments of erotic “weakness” became perfect manifestos for reuse in other genres, such as tragedy and the various forms of love poetry, in which themes of love and passion were more customary than in heroic epic.Less
The Iliad is a poem whose events revolve around the “anger” of Achilles, and his personal fierceness and pursuit of glory remain, despite different and more complex nuances, the prevailing features of his characterization. This book proposes to investigate how different literary authors and visual artists at different periods responded to Achilles' “erotic life”, an aspect about which the Iliadwas almost completely silent. Achilles' loves expose a crack in the usually self-assured attitude of the hero, demonstrating the limits of epic heroism and the epic vision of the world. As such, these moments of erotic “weakness” became perfect manifestos for reuse in other genres, such as tragedy and the various forms of love poetry, in which themes of love and passion were more customary than in heroic epic.
Bihani Sarkar
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780197266106
- eISBN:
- 9780191865213
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266106.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
This book tells the story of Durgā, the buffalo-demon-slaying deity dear to Indic rulers, between the 3rd and the 12th centuries CE, as she transformed from a Vaiṣṇava, to a Śaiva and finally to a ...
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This book tells the story of Durgā, the buffalo-demon-slaying deity dear to Indic rulers, between the 3rd and the 12th centuries CE, as she transformed from a Vaiṣṇava, to a Śaiva and finally to a supreme deity, a concentrated power-source Śakti, in whom all divinities and dualities were thought to inhere and also to transcend. Reconstructed through mythology, liturgy, the belles lettres, ritual instructions, epigraphy, local legends of kingship, sculptural evidence and anthropological studies, the stages of this story illuminate an entire belief system concerning political power: warrior-centric goddess worship called heroic Śāktism in the book. The belief that a good king and a true warrior must worship the goddess Durgā, the form and substance of kingship, heroic Śāktism formed the bedrock of ancient Indian practices of cultivating political power. Wildly dangerous and serenely benevolent at one and the same time, the goddess's charismatic split nature promised rewards for a hero and king and success in risky ventures.
Fundamentally, the slow development of this deity cannot be disentangled from the narrative of the state in pre-modern India. Heroic Śāktism unfolded within a social landscape of conquest and competition, dependent on a monsoon economy in which harvests were unreliable and the appeasement of gods in control of environmental crises, foremost among whom was the goddess, was paramount. Its emergence is imbricated with the imperatives of state: military expansion, especially after the demise of the Gupta empire, the rise of local lineages, the assertion of regional cultic identities, the authorization of territorial ownership and the development of the regular ritual life of kingdoms. All these political processes involved Durgā at their very core. She was the prime symbol that communities used to articulate the shifts they underwent during the fluctuations of expansion and consolidation.
This story of the Goddess and political power is shown in three discrete but related parts. The first ‘Beginnings’ tracks a historical process by plotting the development of her cult from its early form in the Gupta period to its mature phase in the 11th century CE, when it had secured more robust patronage, and by showing the sectarian appropriations and consequent conceptual and ritualistic amplifications in the understanding of the deity along the way. In the second part, ‘Synthesis’, focused on the 12th century CE, Heroic Śāktism is seen as a social phenomenon representing diversified state-power, arising when the single monolithic Durgā transformed into a deity incorporating regional authorities that partook of her larger identity in order to consolidate and integrate themselves into a pan-Indic network. In the third part, ‘Belief Systems and rituals’, Heroic Śāktism is explored through its matrix of ideas, beliefs and stories, and the ritual enactments, coalescing during the Navarātra, during which this idea-matrix was enlivened through hymn, offering and prayer, whereby the cult acquired meaning and purpose in society and culture. For without ritual, without the enmeshing of goddess into relationships with people, the cult and its notion of power were incomplete and without effective connection to the world.
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This book tells the story of Durgā, the buffalo-demon-slaying deity dear to Indic rulers, between the 3rd and the 12th centuries CE, as she transformed from a Vaiṣṇava, to a Śaiva and finally to a supreme deity, a concentrated power-source Śakti, in whom all divinities and dualities were thought to inhere and also to transcend. Reconstructed through mythology, liturgy, the belles lettres, ritual instructions, epigraphy, local legends of kingship, sculptural evidence and anthropological studies, the stages of this story illuminate an entire belief system concerning political power: warrior-centric goddess worship called heroic Śāktism in the book. The belief that a good king and a true warrior must worship the goddess Durgā, the form and substance of kingship, heroic Śāktism formed the bedrock of ancient Indian practices of cultivating political power. Wildly dangerous and serenely benevolent at one and the same time, the goddess's charismatic split nature promised rewards for a hero and king and success in risky ventures.
Fundamentally, the slow development of this deity cannot be disentangled from the narrative of the state in pre-modern India. Heroic Śāktism unfolded within a social landscape of conquest and competition, dependent on a monsoon economy in which harvests were unreliable and the appeasement of gods in control of environmental crises, foremost among whom was the goddess, was paramount. Its emergence is imbricated with the imperatives of state: military expansion, especially after the demise of the Gupta empire, the rise of local lineages, the assertion of regional cultic identities, the authorization of territorial ownership and the development of the regular ritual life of kingdoms. All these political processes involved Durgā at their very core. She was the prime symbol that communities used to articulate the shifts they underwent during the fluctuations of expansion and consolidation.
This story of the Goddess and political power is shown in three discrete but related parts. The first ‘Beginnings’ tracks a historical process by plotting the development of her cult from its early form in the Gupta period to its mature phase in the 11th century CE, when it had secured more robust patronage, and by showing the sectarian appropriations and consequent conceptual and ritualistic amplifications in the understanding of the deity along the way. In the second part, ‘Synthesis’, focused on the 12th century CE, Heroic Śāktism is seen as a social phenomenon representing diversified state-power, arising when the single monolithic Durgā transformed into a deity incorporating regional authorities that partook of her larger identity in order to consolidate and integrate themselves into a pan-Indic network. In the third part, ‘Belief Systems and rituals’, Heroic Śāktism is explored through its matrix of ideas, beliefs and stories, and the ritual enactments, coalescing during the Navarātra, during which this idea-matrix was enlivened through hymn, offering and prayer, whereby the cult acquired meaning and purpose in society and culture. For without ritual, without the enmeshing of goddess into relationships with people, the cult and its notion of power were incomplete and without effective connection to the world.
David Quint
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691161914
- eISBN:
- 9781400850488
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691161914.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter places the reconciliation of Adam and Eve in book 10 against the preceding first two-thirds of book 10, which have described the building by Sin and Death of their bridge over Chaos and ...
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This chapter places the reconciliation of Adam and Eve in book 10 against the preceding first two-thirds of book 10, which have described the building by Sin and Death of their bridge over Chaos and Satan's return to hell. Each of these appears to be a “triumphal act,” allusively associated with the triumph of Augustus depicted on the shield of Aeneas in Aeneid 8, the chronological “ending” of Virgil's poem. However, allusion equally returns both demonic acts to the beginning of the Aeneid, the storm and shipwreck off of Carthage, and suggests the recursive shape of evil in the larger book 10—a book in which the narrative sequence of events seems to run in a loop. Therefore, these satanic acts of heroism are now understood as mock-triumphs that parody the real triumphs of the Son—true endings that foreshadow apocalyptic ones—at the respective ends of books 6 and 7.Less
This chapter places the reconciliation of Adam and Eve in book 10 against the preceding first two-thirds of book 10, which have described the building by Sin and Death of their bridge over Chaos and Satan's return to hell. Each of these appears to be a “triumphal act,” allusively associated with the triumph of Augustus depicted on the shield of Aeneas in Aeneid 8, the chronological “ending” of Virgil's poem. However, allusion equally returns both demonic acts to the beginning of the Aeneid, the storm and shipwreck off of Carthage, and suggests the recursive shape of evil in the larger book 10—a book in which the narrative sequence of events seems to run in a loop. Therefore, these satanic acts of heroism are now understood as mock-triumphs that parody the real triumphs of the Son—true endings that foreshadow apocalyptic ones—at the respective ends of books 6 and 7.
Priya Satia
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195331417
- eISBN:
- 9780199868070
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331417.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter describes the cultural legacy of the Middle Eastern campaigns. It argues that they offered the hope of some continuity with the past, undercutting the sense of total rupture produced by ...
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This chapter describes the cultural legacy of the Middle Eastern campaigns. It argues that they offered the hope of some continuity with the past, undercutting the sense of total rupture produced by the Western front. They offered a vision of a glamorous, biblical, Arabian‐Nights theater in which the old, adventurous, mobile sort of warfare still worked. The Kut disaster of the Mesopotamia campaign produced a redemptive vision of empire as a tool of colonial development. This helped package the new Middle East empire as a selfless endeavor in the increasingly anti‐imperialist postwar world. Central in the romantic image of these campaigns were the heroic figures that participated in them, including Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, and others, who acquired positions of enormous political and cultural influence after the war. Their celebrity was a product of an increasingly democratic public sphere fascinated with Arabia and struggling with changing notions of Englishness.Less
This chapter describes the cultural legacy of the Middle Eastern campaigns. It argues that they offered the hope of some continuity with the past, undercutting the sense of total rupture produced by the Western front. They offered a vision of a glamorous, biblical, Arabian‐Nights theater in which the old, adventurous, mobile sort of warfare still worked. The Kut disaster of the Mesopotamia campaign produced a redemptive vision of empire as a tool of colonial development. This helped package the new Middle East empire as a selfless endeavor in the increasingly anti‐imperialist postwar world. Central in the romantic image of these campaigns were the heroic figures that participated in them, including Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, and others, who acquired positions of enormous political and cultural influence after the war. Their celebrity was a product of an increasingly democratic public sphere fascinated with Arabia and struggling with changing notions of Englishness.
Andrew Kahn
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199234745
- eISBN:
- 9780191715747
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199234745.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is Russia's greatest poet, a ‘ founding father’ of modern Russian literature, and a major figure in world literature. His poetry and prose changed the course of Russian ...
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Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is Russia's greatest poet, a ‘ founding father’ of modern Russian literature, and a major figure in world literature. His poetry and prose changed the course of Russian culture, and his works inspired operas by Musorgsky and Tchaikovsky (as well as Peter Shaffer's Amadeus). This book's title refers to Pushkin's capacity to transform philosophical and aesthetic ideas into poetry. Arguing that Pushkin's poetry has often been misunderstood as transparently simple, this book traces the interrelation between his writing and the influences of English and European literature and cultural movements on his understanding of the creative process and the aims of art. The book approaches Pushkin's poetic texts through the history of ideas, and argues that in his poetry the clashes that matter are not about stylistic innovation and genre, as has often been suggested. Instead, the poems are shown to articulate a range of positions on key topics of the period, including the meaning of originality, the imagination, the status of the poet, the role of commercial success, the definition of genius, representation of nature, the definition of the hero, and the immortality of the soul. The book addresses how theories of inspiration informed Pushkin's thinking about classicism and Romanticism in the 1820s and 1830s. It looks at the intersection of Pushkin's knowledge of important ideas and artistic trends with poems about the creative imagination, psychology, sex and the body, heroism and the ethical life, and death.Less
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is Russia's greatest poet, a ‘ founding father’ of modern Russian literature, and a major figure in world literature. His poetry and prose changed the course of Russian culture, and his works inspired operas by Musorgsky and Tchaikovsky (as well as Peter Shaffer's Amadeus). This book's title refers to Pushkin's capacity to transform philosophical and aesthetic ideas into poetry. Arguing that Pushkin's poetry has often been misunderstood as transparently simple, this book traces the interrelation between his writing and the influences of English and European literature and cultural movements on his understanding of the creative process and the aims of art. The book approaches Pushkin's poetic texts through the history of ideas, and argues that in his poetry the clashes that matter are not about stylistic innovation and genre, as has often been suggested. Instead, the poems are shown to articulate a range of positions on key topics of the period, including the meaning of originality, the imagination, the status of the poet, the role of commercial success, the definition of genius, representation of nature, the definition of the hero, and the immortality of the soul. The book addresses how theories of inspiration informed Pushkin's thinking about classicism and Romanticism in the 1820s and 1830s. It looks at the intersection of Pushkin's knowledge of important ideas and artistic trends with poems about the creative imagination, psychology, sex and the body, heroism and the ethical life, and death.
Kathleen Riley
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199534487
- eISBN:
- 9780191715945
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199534487.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The Introduction begins with an acknowledgement of the play's relative obscurity and disturbing subject matter, and then offers an explanation for its perceived ‘untouchability’. The book's two main ...
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The Introduction begins with an acknowledgement of the play's relative obscurity and disturbing subject matter, and then offers an explanation for its perceived ‘untouchability’. The book's two main lines of enquiry are set out: first, how writers subsequent to Euripides have tried to ‘reason’ or make sense of Herakles' madness, and, secondly, how these attempts have necessarily entailed redefining Herakles' heroism. Each of the major receptions is then summarized in relation to these focal investigative points. The Introduction also considers the book's place within classical reception studies and relates the present study to current reception theory and methodology.Less
The Introduction begins with an acknowledgement of the play's relative obscurity and disturbing subject matter, and then offers an explanation for its perceived ‘untouchability’. The book's two main lines of enquiry are set out: first, how writers subsequent to Euripides have tried to ‘reason’ or make sense of Herakles' madness, and, secondly, how these attempts have necessarily entailed redefining Herakles' heroism. Each of the major receptions is then summarized in relation to these focal investigative points. The Introduction also considers the book's place within classical reception studies and relates the present study to current reception theory and methodology.
Ben Tipping
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199550111
- eISBN:
- 9780191720611
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199550111.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter summarizes the arguments presented in the book. The book began with the assertion that the Punica should be the Roman epic. In so doing, it provided an instance of a text taken to ...
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This chapter summarizes the arguments presented in the book. The book began with the assertion that the Punica should be the Roman epic. In so doing, it provided an instance of a text taken to exemplify a literary tradition. In the ensuing exploration of patterns of paradigmatic heroism, it identified instances of example as theme in literature. The central contentions have been that heroization of exemplary Romans by reference to Herculean heroism or Punic otherness operates less straightforwardly in the Punica than might at first appear, and that even those Roman heroes whose example seems unquestionably protreptic in Silius' poem are, on examination, significantly flawed. Such a reading of the Punica is more sensitive to complex intertextuality and correspondingly complex levels of signification than one according to which Silius as epicist simply labours to rehabilitate Rome by reference to exemplary heroes of the past.Less
This chapter summarizes the arguments presented in the book. The book began with the assertion that the Punica should be the Roman epic. In so doing, it provided an instance of a text taken to exemplify a literary tradition. In the ensuing exploration of patterns of paradigmatic heroism, it identified instances of example as theme in literature. The central contentions have been that heroization of exemplary Romans by reference to Herculean heroism or Punic otherness operates less straightforwardly in the Punica than might at first appear, and that even those Roman heroes whose example seems unquestionably protreptic in Silius' poem are, on examination, significantly flawed. Such a reading of the Punica is more sensitive to complex intertextuality and correspondingly complex levels of signification than one according to which Silius as epicist simply labours to rehabilitate Rome by reference to exemplary heroes of the past.
Corinne Ondine Pache
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195339369
- eISBN:
- 9780199867134
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195339369.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Ancient Religions
It is a commonplace to say that the heroes of Homeric epic have close bonds with gods and goddesses. Yet the degree to which goddesses are preoccupied with heroes is striking, and this concern is ...
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It is a commonplace to say that the heroes of Homeric epic have close bonds with gods and goddesses. Yet the degree to which goddesses are preoccupied with heroes is striking, and this concern is consistently expressed in terms of erotic love. Chapter 4 focuses on the motif of the goddess in love in the Odyssey, a poem structured around a series of encounters between Odysseus and several goddesses. The poem offers three Odyssean versions of the goddess-in-love motif. Odysseus’s rejection of Calypso’s love and offer of immortality is unique: Odysseus is the only Greek hero who rejects a goddess’s advances and survives the experience, a choice and outcome that are central to his status of epic hero. The hero’s relationship with Athene includes nympholeptic aspects and comes close to the ideal marriage described by Odysseus to Nausicaa in Odyssey 6. Finally, the Ithacan sanctuary of the nymphs inspires reminiscences of the cultic and folklore versions of nympholepsy. Each Odyssean version thus highlights different features of the nympholeptic pattern, which in turn help define Odysseus’s distinct form of heroism.Less
It is a commonplace to say that the heroes of Homeric epic have close bonds with gods and goddesses. Yet the degree to which goddesses are preoccupied with heroes is striking, and this concern is consistently expressed in terms of erotic love. Chapter 4 focuses on the motif of the goddess in love in the Odyssey, a poem structured around a series of encounters between Odysseus and several goddesses. The poem offers three Odyssean versions of the goddess-in-love motif. Odysseus’s rejection of Calypso’s love and offer of immortality is unique: Odysseus is the only Greek hero who rejects a goddess’s advances and survives the experience, a choice and outcome that are central to his status of epic hero. The hero’s relationship with Athene includes nympholeptic aspects and comes close to the ideal marriage described by Odysseus to Nausicaa in Odyssey 6. Finally, the Ithacan sanctuary of the nymphs inspires reminiscences of the cultic and folklore versions of nympholepsy. Each Odyssean version thus highlights different features of the nympholeptic pattern, which in turn help define Odysseus’s distinct form of heroism.
Kristin Shrader‐Frechette
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195152036
- eISBN:
- 9780199833665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195152034.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Using case studies focusing on how developed nations impose environmental risks on developing countries, the chapter reveals how the U.S. and other nations ship banned pesticides or hazardous waste ...
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Using case studies focusing on how developed nations impose environmental risks on developing countries, the chapter reveals how the U.S. and other nations ship banned pesticides or hazardous waste to developing nations. The chapter analyzes the concepts of equal protection and moral heroism or supererogation. It argues that most indigenous people do not give genuine informed consent to such risks and that it is not paternalistic to protect native people. Extending and developing arguments of Peter Singer, the chapter also argues that ordinary citizens have duties (that are not heroic) to help protect innocent victims from first‐world exploitation, even though there are many economic incentives that lead nations to exploit the poor of the world.Less
Using case studies focusing on how developed nations impose environmental risks on developing countries, the chapter reveals how the U.S. and other nations ship banned pesticides or hazardous waste to developing nations. The chapter analyzes the concepts of equal protection and moral heroism or supererogation. It argues that most indigenous people do not give genuine informed consent to such risks and that it is not paternalistic to protect native people. Extending and developing arguments of Peter Singer, the chapter also argues that ordinary citizens have duties (that are not heroic) to help protect innocent victims from first‐world exploitation, even though there are many economic incentives that lead nations to exploit the poor of the world.
Mark Philp and Z. A. Pelczynski
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199645060
- eISBN:
- 9780191741616
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199645060.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Does Machiavelli operate with a different standard for the public (virtue) than or the private sphere (goodness)? What is his understanding of virtue and immorality? Plamenatz argues that the double ...
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Does Machiavelli operate with a different standard for the public (virtue) than or the private sphere (goodness)? What is his understanding of virtue and immorality? Plamenatz argues that the double standard is widespread. He examines Machiavelli’s ‘magnificent crimes’ and his condoning or excusing of them, and the underlying philosophy, which values lasting fame and reputation. He identifies a number of heroic virtues in Machiavelli, which may be displayed in morally good or morally bad ways.Less
Does Machiavelli operate with a different standard for the public (virtue) than or the private sphere (goodness)? What is his understanding of virtue and immorality? Plamenatz argues that the double standard is widespread. He examines Machiavelli’s ‘magnificent crimes’ and his condoning or excusing of them, and the underlying philosophy, which values lasting fame and reputation. He identifies a number of heroic virtues in Machiavelli, which may be displayed in morally good or morally bad ways.
Colin Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117940
- eISBN:
- 9780191671135
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117940.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book presents a comprehensive view of the epic tradition from Homer, through Virgil, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and the host of minor writers who helped create the idiom within which these writers ...
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This book presents a comprehensive view of the epic tradition from Homer, through Virgil, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and the host of minor writers who helped create the idiom within which these writers worked, to the idiom within which these writers worked, to the individual authors in historical context link to develop a powerful explanation of how and why the epic changed from Homer to Milton. The book shows how the romance hero, whose prime motives are love and pity, emerged from a sequence of reinterpretations of Homer that runs from Virgil's Aeneid and its medieval redactions to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Relating the emergence of the romance hero to the digressive, decentred form of romance, the book explores how later writers sought to control the digressive energies of the romance hero and to create a language and form of heroism more like those of classical epic. This analysis leads to a fresh account of the way in which Renaissance writers responded to, and moved tentatively towards, the writing of the past. Arguing against the view that Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and Milton were engaged in a battle for mastery over their predecessors, the book reveals how they transformed interpretations of past epic in order to draw closer to the narrative forms of their classical forebears.Less
This book presents a comprehensive view of the epic tradition from Homer, through Virgil, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and the host of minor writers who helped create the idiom within which these writers worked, to the idiom within which these writers worked, to the individual authors in historical context link to develop a powerful explanation of how and why the epic changed from Homer to Milton. The book shows how the romance hero, whose prime motives are love and pity, emerged from a sequence of reinterpretations of Homer that runs from Virgil's Aeneid and its medieval redactions to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Relating the emergence of the romance hero to the digressive, decentred form of romance, the book explores how later writers sought to control the digressive energies of the romance hero and to create a language and form of heroism more like those of classical epic. This analysis leads to a fresh account of the way in which Renaissance writers responded to, and moved tentatively towards, the writing of the past. Arguing against the view that Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and Milton were engaged in a battle for mastery over their predecessors, the book reveals how they transformed interpretations of past epic in order to draw closer to the narrative forms of their classical forebears.
David Clark
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199558155
- eISBN:
- 9780191721342
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199558155.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, Anglo-Saxon / Old English Literature
Chapter 7 focuses on the construction of homosocial bonds, looking first at heroic male relations in Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon. It argues that the Beowulf‐poet here as in other matters remains ...
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Chapter 7 focuses on the construction of homosocial bonds, looking first at heroic male relations in Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon. It argues that the Beowulf‐poet here as in other matters remains ambivalent, but that the Maldon‐poet opposes what he sees as correct homosocial bonds to a cowardice stigmatized by associations with effeminacy and sexual passivity. It then contrasts the radical revaluation of masculinity and heroic passivity in The Dream of the Rood, paving the way for the later chapters' further analyses of vernacular religious texts which re‐envision gender roles and homosocial bonds.Less
Chapter 7 focuses on the construction of homosocial bonds, looking first at heroic male relations in Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon. It argues that the Beowulf‐poet here as in other matters remains ambivalent, but that the Maldon‐poet opposes what he sees as correct homosocial bonds to a cowardice stigmatized by associations with effeminacy and sexual passivity. It then contrasts the radical revaluation of masculinity and heroic passivity in The Dream of the Rood, paving the way for the later chapters' further analyses of vernacular religious texts which re‐envision gender roles and homosocial bonds.
Miles Geoffrey
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117711
- eISBN:
- 9780191671050
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117711.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Critical attention to constancy in the Roman plays is part of a general interest over the last three decades in Shakespeare and the classical world. One sign of this interest is the tendency to read ...
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Critical attention to constancy in the Roman plays is part of a general interest over the last three decades in Shakespeare and the classical world. One sign of this interest is the tendency to read the Roman plays as plays about Rome. A related trend, not limited to the Roman plays, is the exploration of classical influences on Shakespeare, especially the influence of classical concepts of virtue and heroism. A key figure in such explorations has been Seneca. Previous discussions of constancy may have underestimated the ambiguity and complexity of the concept. In particular, by focusing on Senecan Stoicism, they have overlooked an equally significant but rather different concept of constancy in Cicero. This chapter argues that it is to a large extent out of the tensions between these two kinds of constancy, and within each of them, that Shakespeare constructs the moral and political conflicts of the Roman plays.Less
Critical attention to constancy in the Roman plays is part of a general interest over the last three decades in Shakespeare and the classical world. One sign of this interest is the tendency to read the Roman plays as plays about Rome. A related trend, not limited to the Roman plays, is the exploration of classical influences on Shakespeare, especially the influence of classical concepts of virtue and heroism. A key figure in such explorations has been Seneca. Previous discussions of constancy may have underestimated the ambiguity and complexity of the concept. In particular, by focusing on Senecan Stoicism, they have overlooked an equally significant but rather different concept of constancy in Cicero. This chapter argues that it is to a large extent out of the tensions between these two kinds of constancy, and within each of them, that Shakespeare constructs the moral and political conflicts of the Roman plays.
Patrick Hayes
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199587957
- eISBN:
- 9780191723292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587957.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
One of the questions that serious readers must pose of literary fiction—especially fiction as politically charged as Coetzee's—is whether it is telling the truth. This chapter explores what it means ...
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One of the questions that serious readers must pose of literary fiction—especially fiction as politically charged as Coetzee's—is whether it is telling the truth. This chapter explores what it means for literature to speak truth to power, focusing in particular on the presentation of heroism in Life & Times of Michael K, and upon the political debate that has aggregated around that text. I will argue that Coetzee draws upon an understanding of literary truth inspired by Kafka and Blanchot as part of his broader attempt to steer between two different ways of understanding how literature addresses politics: that is to say, between a high‐culturalist view, which he describes as ‘rivalry’, and a view that collapses culture into politics, which he calls ‘supplementarity’.Less
One of the questions that serious readers must pose of literary fiction—especially fiction as politically charged as Coetzee's—is whether it is telling the truth. This chapter explores what it means for literature to speak truth to power, focusing in particular on the presentation of heroism in Life & Times of Michael K, and upon the political debate that has aggregated around that text. I will argue that Coetzee draws upon an understanding of literary truth inspired by Kafka and Blanchot as part of his broader attempt to steer between two different ways of understanding how literature addresses politics: that is to say, between a high‐culturalist view, which he describes as ‘rivalry’, and a view that collapses culture into politics, which he calls ‘supplementarity’.
Mark Rawlinson
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184560
- eISBN:
- 9780191674303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184560.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter is a study of themes individualism and social cohesion in the light of the career and posthumous reception of fighter pilot and writer Richard Hillary. Contemporary thinking about ...
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This chapter is a study of themes individualism and social cohesion in the light of the career and posthumous reception of fighter pilot and writer Richard Hillary. Contemporary thinking about heroism, selfhood, and nation is explored in the broader context of wartime developments in writing about military aviation.Less
This chapter is a study of themes individualism and social cohesion in the light of the career and posthumous reception of fighter pilot and writer Richard Hillary. Contemporary thinking about heroism, selfhood, and nation is explored in the broader context of wartime developments in writing about military aviation.
Roberto Esposito
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823276264
- eISBN:
- 9780823277001
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823276264.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This book explores the conceptual trajectories of two of the twentieth century's most vital thinkers of the political: Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil. Taking Homer's Iliad as the common origin and ...
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This book explores the conceptual trajectories of two of the twentieth century's most vital thinkers of the political: Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil. Taking Homer's Iliad as the common origin and point of departure for our understanding of Western philosophical and political traditions, the book examines the foundational relation between war and the political. Drawing actively and extensively on Arendt's and Weil's voluminous writings, but also sparring with thinkers from Marx to Heidegger, the book traverses the relation between polemos and polis, between Greece, Rome, God, force, technicity, evil, and the extension of the Christian imperial tradition, while at the same time delineating the conceptual and hermeneutic ground for the development of the notion and practice of “the impolitical.” Within the book, Arendt and Weil emerge “in the inverse of the other's thought, in the shadow of the other's light,” to “think what the thought of the other excludes not as something that is foreign, but rather as something that appears unthinkable and, for that very reason, remains to be thought.” Moving slowly toward their conceptualizations of love and heroism, the book unravels the West's illusory metaphysical dream of peace, obliging us to reevaluate ceaselessly what it means to be responsible in the wake of past and contemporary forms of war.Less
This book explores the conceptual trajectories of two of the twentieth century's most vital thinkers of the political: Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil. Taking Homer's Iliad as the common origin and point of departure for our understanding of Western philosophical and political traditions, the book examines the foundational relation between war and the political. Drawing actively and extensively on Arendt's and Weil's voluminous writings, but also sparring with thinkers from Marx to Heidegger, the book traverses the relation between polemos and polis, between Greece, Rome, God, force, technicity, evil, and the extension of the Christian imperial tradition, while at the same time delineating the conceptual and hermeneutic ground for the development of the notion and practice of “the impolitical.” Within the book, Arendt and Weil emerge “in the inverse of the other's thought, in the shadow of the other's light,” to “think what the thought of the other excludes not as something that is foreign, but rather as something that appears unthinkable and, for that very reason, remains to be thought.” Moving slowly toward their conceptualizations of love and heroism, the book unravels the West's illusory metaphysical dream of peace, obliging us to reevaluate ceaselessly what it means to be responsible in the wake of past and contemporary forms of war.
