Repetition, Communication, and Meaning in the Ancient World

Repetition, Communication, and Meaning in the Ancient World
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2021-09-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004466665

This volume features an international group of experts on the literature, philosophy, and religion of the ancient Mediterranean world. Each paper makes a unique contribution, and together, the papers draw an engaging portrait of the idea of “repetition.”

An Anthology of Neo-Latin Poetry by Classical Scholars

An Anthology of Neo-Latin Poetry by Classical Scholars
Author: Stephen Harrison
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2024-01-11
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1350379468

Presenting a range of Neo-Latin poems written by distinguished classical scholars across Europe from c. 1490 to c. 1900, this anthology includes a selection of celebrated names in the history of scholarship. Individual chapters present the Neo-Latin poems alongside new English translations (usually the first) and accompanying introductions and commentaries that annotate these verses for a modern readership, and contextualise them within the careers of their authors and the history of classical scholarship in the Renaissance and early modern period. An appealing feature of Renaissance and early modern Latinity is the composition of fine Neo-Latin poetry by major classical scholars, and the interface between this creative work and their scholarly research. In some cases, the two are actually combined in the same work. In others, the creative composition and scholarship accompany each other along parallel tracks, when scholars are moved to write their own verse in the style of the subjects of their academic endeavours. In still further cases, early modern scholars produced fine Latin verse as a result of the act of translation, as they attempted to render ancient Greek poetry in a fitting poetic form for their contemporary readers of Latin.

Homer and the Epic Cycle

Homer and the Epic Cycle
Author: Andrew Porter
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2022-01-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004455558

How can the ancient relationship between Homer and the Epic Cycle be recovered? Using the most significant research in the field, Andrew Porter questions many ancient and modern assumptions and offers alternative perspectives better aligned with ancient epic performance realities and modern epic studies.

The Transmission of the Pentateuch

The Transmission of the Pentateuch
Author: Hila Dayfani
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2023-09-05
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 311098136X

The volume focuses on variants between the Masoretic Text and the Samaritan Pentateuch prompted by graphic similarities between letters. As a phenomenon that occurs during the transmission of ancient texts, an in-depth study of the linguistic and paleographic background of these variants provides fruitful ground for the exploration of the Pentateuch transmission. This volume gathers all the relevant variants from the Masoretic Text and the Samaritan Pentateuch, comparing them to further witnesses, primarily the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint. Each case is examined independently through a linguistic analysis of the variants, their process of development and an evaluation of which version is preferable (when possible). It then presents a statistical analysis of the data. Moreover, the volume offers a paleographic analysis of the interchanging letters in the three relevant scripts – Hebrew, Jewish, and Samaritan script. Through this process it determines the script in which the variants have occurred and estimates the chronological framework of the variants. This study has implications for the textual history of the Samaritan Pentateuch and, more broadly, for the distribution of the Pentateuch and the extent of its transmission in the late Second Temple period.

Scribal Memory and Word Selection

Scribal Memory and Word Selection
Author: Raymond F. Person Jr.
Publisher: SBL Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2023-07-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1628373342

What were ancient scribes doing when they copied a manuscript of a literary work? This question is especially problematic when we realize that ancient scribes preserved different versions of the same literary texts. In Scribal Memory and Word Selection: Text Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Raymond F. Person Jr. draws from studies of how words are selected in everyday conversation to illustrate that the same word-selection mechanisms were at work in scribal memory. Using examples from manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, Person provides new ways of understanding the cognitive-linguistic mechanisms at work during the composition/transmission of texts. Person reveals that, while our modern perspective may consider textual variants to be different literary texts, from the perspective of the ancient scribes and their audiences, these variants could still be understood as the same literary text.

Rethinking Orality I

Rethinking Orality I
Author: Andrea Ercolani
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2022-04-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110751984

The volume deals with the mechanisms of the oral communication in the ancient Greek culture. Considering the critical debate about orality, the analysis of the communicative system in a predominantly oral-aural ancient society implies a reassessment and a deep reconsideration of the traces which orality embedded in the texts transmitted to us. In particular, the focus is on the 'cultural message', a set of information which is processed and transmitted vertically as well as horizontally by a living being, so to be differently from a genetically encoded information, a culturally defined process. The survey intertwines different approaches: the methodologies of cognitivism, biology, ethology, to analyze the embrional processes of the cultural messages, and the tools of historical and literary analysis, to highlight the development of the cultural messages in the traditional knowledge, their codification, transmission, and evolutions in the dialectics between orality and writing. The reconstructed pattern of the mechanisms of cultural messages in a prevailing oral-aural system cast a light on a shadowy aspect of a sophisticated communication system that has long influenced European culture.

Exploring Writing Systems and Practices in the Bronze Age Aegean

Exploring Writing Systems and Practices in the Bronze Age Aegean
Author: Philippa M. Steele
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2023-11-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1789259029

Writing does not begin and end with the encoding of an idea into a group of symbols. It is practiced by people who have learnt its principles and acquired the tools and skills for doing it, in a particular context that affects what they do and how they do it. Nor are these practices static, as those involved exploit opportunities to adapt old features and develop new ones. The act of writing then has tangible and visible consequences not only for the writers but also for those encountering what has been produced, whether they can read its content or not – with potential for a wider social visibility that can in turn affect the success and longevity of the writing system itself. With a focus on the syllabic systems of the Bronze Age Aegean, this book attempts to bring together different perspectives to create an innovative interdisciplinary outlook on what is involved in writing: from structuralist views of writing as systems of signs with their linguistic values, to archaeological and anthropological approaches to writing as a socially grounded practice. The main chapters focus on the concepts of script adoption and adaptation; different methods of logographic writing; and the vitality of writing traditions, with repercussions for the modern world. Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.

Recent Trends and Findings in Latin Linguistics

Recent Trends and Findings in Latin Linguistics
Author: Concepción Cabrillana
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 718
Release: 2024-05-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110722194

These volumes contain a selection of contributions first presented at the 21st International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, held in Santiago de Compostela (2022). They cover essential topics in Latin linguistics from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. The first volume includes papers on Latin Syntax and Semantics, Latin Syntax and Pragmatics, Greek-Latin language, and Digital Linguistics. The contributions report on the latest research into very relevant issues in specific areas such as definiteness, casual syntax, sentence structure, word order, etc.; in addition, the most recent methodological advances using a variety of databases, a key tool in contemporary research, are presented. The second volume includes papers on Semantics and Lexicography, Etymology, Discourse strategies, and a special section devoted to the analysis of Conversation and Dialogue. The contributions report on the latest research into highly relevant issues in specific areas such as nominal and adjectival lexicology from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspectives, the use of Greek words as a vehicle for the expression of philosophical concepts, the choice and rendering of various linguistic strategies in direct and indirect discourse, etc. A particularly innovative section deals with various aspects of conversational language in a number of text types, as well as the use of different devices that contribute to the expression of (im)politeness by participants in the speech act. A knowledge of the work collected in these volumes is essential for all those involved in research in the field of Latin linguistics.

The Stories of Similes in Greek and Roman Epic

The Stories of Similes in Greek and Roman Epic
Author: Deborah Beck
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2023-07-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108481795

Similes create a distinctive world of embodied experiences that partner with the mythological story to shape epic narrative.