Showing results by publisher "Tantor Media" in Ancient, Classical & Medieval Literature

Acclaimed classicist James Romm translates surviving pieces of timeless wisdom from the lost plays of ancient Athens. "The truly happy man ought to stay at home." "Hunger, and lack of coin, put a stop to love." "Hades, alone of the gods, does not enjoy bribes." These quotes―and hundreds of...

We are all classicists - we come into touch with the classics on a daily basis: in our culture, politics, medicine, architecture, language, and literature. What are the true roots of these influences, however, and how do our interpretations of these aspects of the classics differ from their original reality? 

Llewelyn Morgan explores Ovid's immense influence on later literature and art, spanning from Shakespeare to Bernini. Throughout, Ovid's poetry is revealed as enduringly scintillating, his personal story compelling, and the issues his life and poetry raise of continuing relevance and interest.

David Weir explores the conflicting attitudes towards modernity present in decadent culture by examining the difference between aesthetic decadence - the excess of artifice - and social decadence, which involves excess in a variety of forms, whether perversely pleasurable or gratuitously cruel. Such contrariness between aesthetic and social decadence led some of its practitioners to substitute art for life and to stress the importance of taste over morality, a maneuver with far-reaching consequences. 

This Very Short Introduction introduces the life, work, and influence of one of the greatest dramatists of all time, Sophocles the Athenian. Placing his plays within their historical context, and explaining the conventions of ancient Greek tragic theatre, Edith Hall spotlights their distinctive features—tight plots, titanic personalities, lucid style, sympathetic women, exquisite poetry, and stagecraft. This analysis is followed by an account of how and why Sophoclean dramas have survived to be read and widely performed into the twenty-first century.