Search Results

The heart of this book is a reading of the letters of Paulinus of Nola, aristocratic convert to Christianity of the late fourth‐century, and his correspondents, most notably St Augustine of Hippo. We begin with an analysis of letter writing in late antiquity; we investigate the letters as traces of fuller historical events, emphasize the importance of the letter carriers, and conclude that the letters have a sacramental function. The notion of spiritual community created and sustained by the letters is explored through discussions of Christian friendship, and of the patterns of imagistic thought which facilitate the spiritual interpretation of mundane events. Finally, we demonstrate how Paulinus’ notion of spiritual community leads to a novel conception of the self as truly relational. The impact of these letters, and of the epistolary mode, on the formation of Christian ways of life and thought is extraordinary.

This book brings together twelve originally independent articles dealing with various aspects of 2 Corinthians which were published between 1985 and 1993. The articles deal with (a) co‐authorship in 2 Cor; (b) the connection between 2 Cor 2:13 and 14; (c) the problems envisaged by 2 Cor 3:1‐6; (d) a comparison between the ‘new covenant’ in Paul and in the Dead Sea Scrolls; (e) the effort to drive a wedge between the resident pneumatikoi and the intruding Judaizers in 2 Cor 2:14‐4:6; (f) what ‘resurrection’ in 2 Cor 4:13‐14 means; (g) 2 Cor 5:6b as a Corinthian slogan; (h) how 2 Cor 6:14‐7:1 fits into its context; (i) the parallels to Philo in 2 Cor 6:14‐7:1; (j) a synthetic presentation of the problems created by the pneumatikoi in 1‐2 Cor; (k) the identification of 2 Cor 10‐13 as ‘the sorrowful/severe letter’ (2 Cor 2:4); (l) what Paul means when he uses ‘Jesus’ unqualified.

The surviving body of ancient letters offers the reader a stunning variety of material, ranging from the everyday letters preserved among the Oxyrhynchus papyri to imperial rescripts, New Testament Epistles, fictional or pseudepigraphical letters and a wealth of missives on almost every conceivable subject. They offer us a unique insight into ancient practices in the fields of politics, literature, philosophy, medicine, and many other areas. This collection presents a series of case studies in ancient letters, asking how each letter writer manipulates the epistolary tradition, why he chose the letter form over any other, and what effect the publication of volumes of collected letters might have had upon a reader's engagement with epistolary works. This volume brings together both well-established and new scholars currently working in the fields of ancient literature, history, philosophy, and medicine to engage in a shared debate about this most adaptable and ‘interdisciplinary’ of genres.

For over two hundred years of narrative culture, when female characters try to get together, crazy things happen. Indeed, the greater the means at women’s disposal, the more severe and twisted is the anxious reaction. But behind this broad anxiety lurks a powerful ideal of sympathetic and strategic female networks, an ideal that takes its intimate shape from the expectations of communications media, and that underwrites the very culture that would deny it. The book examines novelistic culture from the British novel to Hollywood film as a series of responses to the threat and promise of female networks. In texts from Clarissa, Emma, and The Portrait of a Lady to Sorry, Wrong Number, Vertigo, and You’ve Got Mail, it argues that a recurring gothic nightmare haunts plots of courtship and marriage, and that the concept of female networks illuminates the exits, for culture and criticism alike. And while this study must of necessity visit an uncanny realm of lost messages and false suitors, telepathy and artificial intelligence, locked rooms and time-traveling stalkers, these occult concerns only confirm the power at stake in the most basic modes of female communication, in gossip, letters, and phones.

The purpose of this book is to reveal the personality of Paul of Tarsus. Too long considered merely as a fountain of theological ideas, the Apostle of the Gentiles is brought to life by a strong narrative line, which reconstructs the events of his life in chronological order and in sufficient detail to give it consistency and colour. Historical imagination is tightly controlled by skilful exploitation of the evidence provided by ancient texts and monuments. His letters are seen to grow from the concrete circumstances of changing situations. His theology is born out of history.

Integrating the brilliant biography of Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne (953-65) and brother of Emperor Otto I, written by the otherwise obscure monk Ruotger, with the intellectual culture of Cologne Cathedral, this book provides a study of actual politics in conjunction with Ottonian ruler ethic. Our knowledge of Cologne intellectual activity in the period, apart from Ruotger, must be pieced together mainly from marginal annotations and glosses in surviving Cologne manuscripts, showing how and with what concerns some of the most important books of the Latin West were read in Bruno's and Ruotger's Cologne. These include Pope Gregory the Great's Letters, Prudentius's Psychomachia, Boethius's Arithmetic, and Martianus Capella's Marriage of Philology and Mercury. The writing in the margins of the manuscripts, besides enlarging our picture of thinking in Cologne in itself, can be drawn into comparison with the outlook of Ruotger. Exploring how distinctive Cologne was, compared with other centres, this book brings out an unexpectedly strong thread of Platonism in the 10th-century intellect. The book includes a critical edition of probably the earliest surviving, and hitherto unpublished, set of glosses to Boethius's Arithmetic, with an extensive study of their content.

This book is the first sustained study of migration as it is portrayed in African American literature, letters, music, and painting. It identifies the “migration narrative” as a dominant African American cultural tradition. Covering a period from 1923 to 1992, the book provides close readings of novels, autobiographies, songs, poetry, and painting; in so doing it carves out a framework that allows for a more inclusive reading of African American cultural forms.

The Lekhapaddhati, whose translation with full annotation is offered in this volume, is unique in the whole body of ancient Sanskrit texts. It is a collection of actual or specimen documents (lekhas) by unknown compiler, in use for public transactions, administration, rules for drafting land grants, treaties between kings, credit and banking system, mortgage deeds, creditor (dhanika/vyavahāraka) and debtor’s relations, judicial disputes, and private letters. Presumably, written as a guide for official scribes and professional letter writers, it is the sole non-epigraphic repository of grants and other public and private documents from early medieval India. These cover the eighth to the thirteenth centuries and relate to pre-Sultanate period of Gujarat. Their genuineness is shown by the fact that the texts of the royal grants or charter (patra) in this collection match closely with the texts from copper-plates. The large compass of other documents reveal many aspects of daily life, social customs which otherwise would remain obscure. Remarkable, for example, are the slavery deeds which show how much were girl slaves under the control of their masters and how caste taboos were utterly set aside where work by, or treatment of, female slaves was concerned. On what has been called ‘Indian feudalism’, the Lekhapaddhati’s evidence has been extensively used by the propounder’s of the theory as well as its critics. But it has to be remembered that the Lekhapaddhati has also much on trade, bills and drafts, land grants as a gift, and affairs of private life. Here we meet the lordly rulers, the stern officials, the gentlemen in town, the merchant, the slave master, the careless wife, and the forgetful husband. The book should appeal to those who want to look beyond the dynastic history, to the history of everyday life, private and official.

This book suggests that many linguistic, literary, and historical considerations of medieval statements on language have significantly failed to take into account the social and linguistic contexts of their production. The book explores not only medieval ideas about language but also the discursive traditions which generated them. The book draws upon a wide range of documentary evidence, including most notably the royal letters issued in 1258 prior to the Barons' War. The book also analyses the language spoken by Chaucer's pilgrims, the conversations in ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, and many other chronicles, poems, and commentaries. The book concludes with a consideration of the post-medieval history of the status of English in law, literature, and education.

This book reconsiders several of Augustine's most well-known letter exchanges, including his famously controversial correspondence with Jerome and his efforts to engage his Donatist rivals in a letter exchange. It reads these letters with close attention to conventional epistolary norms and practices, in an effort to identify innovative features of Augustine's epistolary practice. In particular, it notes and analyzes Augustine's adaptation of the traditionally friendly letter exchange to the correction of perceived error in the Christian community. In transforming the practice of letter exchange into a tool of correction, Augustine draws on both the classical philosophical tradition and also scripture. His particular innovation is his insistence that this process of correction can—and often must—be done in the potentially public form of a letter exchange rather than in the privacy of a face-to-face conversation. This is particularly true when the perceived error is one that has the potential to jeopardize the salvation of the entire Christian community. In offering epistolary correction, and requesting reciprocal correction from his correspondents, Augustine treats his practice of letter exchange as a performance of Christian caritas. Indeed, in his view, the friendliest correspondence was that which was concerned solely with preserving the salvation of the participants. In recognizing Augustine's commitment to the corrective correspondence and thus reading his letters with attention to their corrective function, we gain new insights into the complicated dynamics of Augustine's relationships with Jerome, Paulinus of Nola, the Donatists, and Pelagius.