The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy


Martha C. Nussbaum - 1986
    The Greeks made a profound contribution to these questions, yet neither the problems nor the Greek views of them have received the attention they deserve. This updated edition contains a new preface.

Literature and Evil


Georges Bataille - 1957
    “It is guilty and should admit itself so.” The word, the flesh, and the devil are explored by this extraordinary intellect in the work of eight outstanding authors: Emily Bronte, Baudelaire, Blake, Michelet, Kafka, Proust, Genet and De Sade.Born in France in 1897, Georges Bataille was a radical philosopher, novelist, and critic whose writings continue to exert a vital influence on today's literature and thought.

The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours


Gregory Nagy - 2013
    Despite their mortality, heroes, like the gods, were objects of cult worship. Nagy examines this distinctively religious notion of the hero in its many dimensions, in texts spanning the eighth to fourth centuries bce: the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey; tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; songs of Sappho and Pindar; and dialogues of Plato. All works are presented in English translation, with attention to the subtleties of the original Greek, and are often further illuminated by illustrations taken from Athenian vase paintings.The fifth-century bce historian Herodotus said that to read Homer is to be a civilized person. In twenty-four installments, based on the Harvard University course Nagy has taught and refined since the late 1970s, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours offers an exploration of civilization s roots in the Homeric epics and other Classical literature, a lineage that continues to challenge and inspire us today.

The Enneads


Plotinus
    The Enneads bring together Neoplatonism--mystic passion and ideas from Greek philosophy--together with striking variants of the Trinity and other central Christian doctrines, to produce a highly original synthesis.

Leucippe and Clitophon


Achilles Tatius
    Stretching the capacity of the genre to its limits, Achilles' narrative covers adultery, violence, disembowelment, pederasty, virginity-testing, and a conveniently happy ending. Ingenious and sophisticated in conception, Leucippe and Clitophon is at once subtle, stylish, moving, brash, tasteless, and obscene. This new translation aims to capture Achilles' writing in all its exuberant variety.

The Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology


Pierre Grimal - 1951
    It is the ideal reference tool for anyone with an interest in the Classics or those seeking to explore the many allusions to its mythology that abound in later literature.

The Literature Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained


James Canton - 2016
    Around 100 crystal-clear articles explore landmark novels, short stories, plays, and poetry that reinvented the art of writing in their time, whether Ancient Greece, post-classical Europe, or modern-day Korea.As part of DK's award-winning Big Ideas Simply Explained series, The Literature Book uses infographics and images to explain key ideas and themes. Biographies of important authors offer insight into their lives and other writings, and a section on Further Reading details more than 150 additional works to explore.Discover masterpieces from the world's greatest authors, and explore the context, creative history, and literary traditions that influenced each major work of fiction with The Literature Book.Series Overview: Big Ideas Simply Explained series uses creative design and innovative graphics, along with straightforward and engaging writing, to make complex subjects easier to understand. These award-winning books provide just the information needed for students, families, or anyone interested in concise, thought-provoking refreshers on a single subject.

Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Aristotle


C.D.C. Reeve - 1995
    Republic is also featured in its entirety.

The Fall of Troy


Quintus Smyrnaeus
    Some of the major tales in the 'Fall of Troy' are: how the Amazonian Queen, Penthesileia, died for Troy; the death of Memnon; how Apollo slayed Achilles; and the death of Paris.

Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature


L.D. Reynolds - 1974
    A note on how to interpret the information given in an apparatus criticus is also included.

Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides


Anne Carson
    Writing with a pitch and heat that gets to the heart of the unforgiving classical world, Carson, a poet and classicist, translates four of the eighteen surviving plays by Euripides.Includes Heracles, Hecuba, Hippolytus, Alcestis.

The Student's Catullus


Daniel H. Garrison - 1989
    Garrison makes these famous poems more accessible than ever to students of Latin. A standard college textbook as well as a comprehensive reference, the book includes a brief introduction about the poet’s life and the character of his poems, a fresh recension of all 113 poems, and a commentary in English on each poem, explaining difficult points of Latin, features of Catullus’ artistry, and background information. The notes to each poem also illuminate the meaning of Catullus’ language, with explanations of word choice, word order, sound effects, and meter. Additional aids to the reader are a Who’s Who of the most important people in Catullus’ poems, an introduction to Catullan meters, a glossary of literary terms used in the commentary, a complete Latin-English Catullan vocabulary, and six maps.Rather than promoting specific literary judgments or theories, The Student’s Catullus provides readers of this important Latin poet with the information necessary to read the poet’s own language intelligently and to make fresh appraisals of their own.

The Greek Way


Edith Hamilton - 1930
    Athens had entered upon her brief and magnificent flowering of genius which so molded the world of mind and of spirit that our mind and spirit today are different... What was then produced of art and of thought has never been surpasses and very rarely equalled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art and all the thought of the Western world."A perennial favorite in many different editions, Edith Hamilton's best-selling The Greek Way captures the spirit and achievements of Greece in the fifth century B.C. A retired headmistress when she began her writing career in the 1930s, Hamilton immediately demonstrated a remarkable ability to bring the world of ancient Greece to life, introducing that world to the twentieth century. The New York Times called The Greek Way a "book of both cultural and critical importance."

European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages


Ernst Robert Curtius - 1948
    Eliot), Ernst Robert Curtius (1886-1956), one of the foremost literary scholars of this century, examines the continuity of European literature from Homer to Goethe, with particular emphasis on the Latin Middle Ages. In an extensive new epilogue, drawing on hitherto unpublished material, Peter Godman, Professor of Medieval Latin at the University of Tubingen, analyzes the intellectual and political context and character of Curtius's ideas.

Poems and Fragments


Sappho
    late 7th and early 6th centuries B.C.E.), whose work is said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria some 500 years after her death. The surviving texts consist of a lamentably small and fragmented body of lyric poetry--among them, poems of invocation, desire, spite, celebration, resignation, and remembrance--that nevertheless enables us to hear the living voice of the poet Plato called the tenth Muse.Stanley Lombardo's translations give us a virtuoso embodiment of Sappho's voice, whose telltale charm, authority, immediacy, directness, intensity, and sudden changes of tone are among the hallmarks of his masterly translation.Pamela Gordon introduces us to the world of Sappho, discusses questions surrounding the transmission of her manuscripts, offers advice on reading these texts, and concludes with an enlightening discussion of same-sex desire in Sappho.