Xenophon's Imperial Fiction

Xenophon's Imperial Fiction PDF Author: James Tatum
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400860032
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
"If you inquire into the origins of the novel long enough," writes James Tatum in the preface to this work, ". . . you will come to the fourth century before our era and Xenophon's Education of Cyrus, or the Cyropaedia." The Cyrus in question is Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire celebrated in the Book of Ezra as the liberator of Israel, and the Cyropaedia, written to instruct future rulers by his example, became not only an inspiration to poets and novelists but a profoundly influential political work. With Alexander as its earliest student, and Elizabeth I of England one of its later pupils, it was the founding text for the tradition of "mirrors for princes" in the West, including Machiavelli's Prince. Xenophon's masterpiece has been overlooked in recent years: Tatum's goal is to make it fully meaningful for the twentieth-century reader. To accomplish this aim, he uses reception study, philological and historical criticism, and an intertextual and structural analysis of the narrative. Engaging the fictional and the political in a single reading, he explains how the form of the work allowed Xenophon to transcend the limitations of historical writing, although in the end the historian's passion for truth forced him to subvert the work in a controversial epilogue. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Xenophon's Imperial Fiction

Xenophon's Imperial Fiction PDF Author: James Tatum
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400860032
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book

Book Description
"If you inquire into the origins of the novel long enough," writes James Tatum in the preface to this work, ". . . you will come to the fourth century before our era and Xenophon's Education of Cyrus, or the Cyropaedia." The Cyrus in question is Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire celebrated in the Book of Ezra as the liberator of Israel, and the Cyropaedia, written to instruct future rulers by his example, became not only an inspiration to poets and novelists but a profoundly influential political work. With Alexander as its earliest student, and Elizabeth I of England one of its later pupils, it was the founding text for the tradition of "mirrors for princes" in the West, including Machiavelli's Prince. Xenophon's masterpiece has been overlooked in recent years: Tatum's goal is to make it fully meaningful for the twentieth-century reader. To accomplish this aim, he uses reception study, philological and historical criticism, and an intertextual and structural analysis of the narrative. Engaging the fictional and the political in a single reading, he explains how the form of the work allowed Xenophon to transcend the limitations of historical writing, although in the end the historian's passion for truth forced him to subvert the work in a controversial epilogue. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Arts of Rule

The Arts of Rule PDF Author: Sharon R. Krause
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739119710
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
The arts of rule cover the exercise of power by princes and popular sovereigns, but they range beyond the domain of government itself, extending to civil associations, political parties, and religious institutions. Making full use of political philosophy from a range of backgrounds, this festschrift for Harvey Mansfield recognizes that although the arts of rule are comprehensive, the best government is a limited one.

The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity

The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity PDF Author: Benjamin Isaac
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140084956X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
There was racism in the ancient world, after all. This groundbreaking book refutes the common belief that the ancient Greeks and Romans harbored "ethnic and cultural," but not racial, prejudice. It does so by comprehensively tracing the intellectual origins of racism back to classical antiquity. Benjamin Isaac's systematic analysis of ancient social prejudices and stereotypes reveals that some of those represent prototypes of racism--or proto-racism--which in turn inspired the early modern authors who developed the more familiar racist ideas. He considers the literature from classical Greece to late antiquity in a quest for the various forms of the discriminatory stereotypes and social hatred that have played such an important role in recent history and continue to do so in modern society. Magisterial in scope and scholarship, and engagingly written, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity further suggests that an understanding of ancient attitudes toward other peoples sheds light not only on Greco-Roman imperialism and the ideology of enslavement (and the concomitant integration or non-integration) of foreigners in those societies, but also on the disintegration of the Roman Empire and on more recent imperialism as well. The first part considers general themes in the history of discrimination; the second provides a detailed analysis of proto-racism and prejudices toward particular groups of foreigners in the Greco-Roman world. The last chapter concerns Jews in the ancient world, thus placing anti-Semitism in a broader context.

Xenophon’s Theory of Moral Education

Xenophon’s Theory of Moral Education PDF Author: Houliang Lu
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443871397
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Xenophon the Athenian, who is well known both as a historian and as a witness of Socratic philosophy, developed his own systematic thought on moral education from a social and mainly political perspective in his extant works. His discourse on moral education represents the view of an unusual historical figure; an innovative thinker, as well as a man of action, a mercenary general and a world citizen in his age. As such, it is therefore different from the discourse of contemporary pure philoso...

Philosophy, Literature, and Politics

Philosophy, Literature, and Politics PDF Author: Ellis Sandoz
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826264786
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
"Festschrift honoring Ellis Sandoz, director of the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies and editor of Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Essays explore philosophy, literature, and politics, and focus on Xenophon, Natsume, Freud, Robert Penn Warren, and George Santayana"--Provided by publisher.

Law and Empire in English Renaissance Literature

Law and Empire in English Renaissance Literature PDF Author: Brian C. Lockey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139458574
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Early modern literature played a key role in the formation of the legal justification for imperialism. As the English colonial enterprise developed, the existing legal tradition of common law no longer solved the moral dilemmas of the new world order, in which England had become, instead of a victim of Catholic enemies, an aggressive force with its own overseas territories. Writers of romance fiction employed narrative strategies in order to resolve this difficulty and, in the process, provided a legal basis for English imperialism. Brian Lockey analyses works by such authors as Shakespeare, Spenser and Sidney in the light of these legal discourses, and uncovers new contexts for the genre of romance. Scholars of early modern literature, as well as those interested in the history of law as the British Empire emerged, will learn much from this insightful and ambitious study.

The Ancient Novel

The Ancient Novel PDF Author: Niklas Holzberg
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415107525
Category : Classical fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
This widely acclaimed text offers an introduction to the subject and presents an overview of the latest research. Substantially updated and expanded from the very successful German edition of 1986.

William Barker, Xenophon's 'Cyropædia'

William Barker, Xenophon's 'Cyropædia' PDF Author: Jane Grogan
Publisher: MHRA
ISBN: 1781889821
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
William Barker’s translation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia is the first substantial translation from Greek directly to English in Tudor England. It presents to its English readers an extraordinarily important text for humanists across Europe: a semi-fictional biography of the ancient Persian emperor, Cyrus the Great, so generically rich that it became (in England as well as Europe) a popular authority and model in the very different fields of educational, political and literary theory, as well as in literature by Sidney, Spenser and others. This edition, for the first time, identifies its translator as a hitherto overlooked figure from the circle of Sir John Cheke at St John’s College, Cambridge, locus of an important and influential revival of Greek scholarship. A prolific translator from Greek and Italian, Barker was a Catholic, and spent most of his career working as secretary to Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk. What little notoriety he eventually gained was as the ‘Italianified Englishman’ who told of Howard’s involvement in the Ridolfi plot. But even here, this edition shows, Barker’s intellectual patronage by Cheke and friends, and their enduring support of him, his translations and the Chekeian agenda, can be discerned.

Xenophon on Violence

Xenophon on Violence PDF Author: Aggelos Kapellos
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110671530
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
This volume examines the issue of violence in Xenophon’s works, who lived in circumstances of war for many years. All the papers address issues of violence from different aspects. The exclusive focus on this issue is justified, since no previous detailed study exists on the subject. Most of the chapters focus on the Hellenica, because this work records more aspects of violence than the rest of his works. The volume is more concerned with examining violence in practice rather than the theory of violence, and violent practices are more frequently recorded in the Hellenica, which is the main historical work of Xenophon.This volume attempts to provide a comprehensive study of the subject of violence in Xenophon’s works and to demonstrate the coherence and consistency of his thought on it. This work aspires to be a contribution to classical scholarship since it attempts to: (1) shed further light on the literary character of Xenophon’s oeuvre; (2) offer new interpretation of passages and themes; and (3) put emphasis on passages that scholars have not pointed out and which offer important insights to the thought of Xenophon.

Xenophon’s Ephesiaca

Xenophon’s Ephesiaca PDF Author: Aldo Tagliabue
Publisher: Barkhuis
ISBN: 9492444216
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
After many decades of neglect, the last forty years have seen a renewed scholarly appreciation of the literary value of the Greek novel. Within this renaissance of interest, four monographs have been published to date which focus on individual novels; I refer to the specialist studies of Achilles Tatius by Morales and Laplace and those of Chariton of Aphrodisias by Smith and Tilg. This book adds to this short list and takes as its singular focus Xenophon’s Ephesiaca. Among the five fully extant Greek novels, the Ephesiaca occupies the position of being an anomaly, since scholars have conventionally considered it to be either a poorly written text or an epitome of a more sophisticated lost original. This monograph challenges this view by arguing that the author of the Ephesiaca is a competent writer in artistic control of his text, insofar as his work has a coherent and emplotted focus on the protagonists’ progression in love and also includes references to earlier texts of the classical canon, not least Homer’s Odyssey and the Platonic dialogues on Love. At the same time, the Ephesiaca exhibits stylistically an overall simplicity, contains many repetitions and engages with other texts via a thematic, rather than a pointed, type of intertextuality; these and other features make this text different from the other extant Greek novels. This book explains this difference with the help of Couégnas’ view of ‘paraliterature,' a term that refers not to its status as ‘non-literature’ but rather to literature of a different kind, that is simple, action-oriented, and entertaining. By offering a definition of the Ephesiaca as a paraliterary narrative, this monograph sheds new light on this novel and its position within the Greek novelistic corpus, whilst also offering a more nuanced understanding of intertextuality and paraliterature.