There is no region more central to the ancient Greek romance novel than the thousand or so miles stretching from Alexandria to ancient Ethiopia that comprise the Nile River Valley. Yet, for all its importance, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Greek Novel: Between Representation and Resistance is the first book-length study of how this region is depicted in a literary genre whose fictional tales of love, travel, separation, and reunion flourished during the Roman imperial period. Employing approaches from Literary Studies, Classics, and Egyptology, Robert Cioffi explores the Nile River Valley in the ancient Greek romance novel through two fundamentally related concepts: representation and resistance. On the one hand, these novels develop an image of Egypt and Ethiopia that is in close dialogue with the Greco-Roman ethnographic tradition, characterized by extraordinary marvels such as grand cities, ancient religious rites, and a dizzying array of animals—some real, some imaginary, and some so incredible as to seem make-believe. On the other hand, this depiction often figures Egypt and Ethiopia as sites of resistance, revolt, and rebellion against—or political, cultural, and religious alternatives to—an array of dominant imperial powers in the region, from the Persians to the Romans. This dual reading enriches our understanding of these texts' relationship with the real and imagined frontiers of Roman political, military, and intellectual power. It also raises a broader set of questions—some literary, some cultural-historical—about the interrelation of humans, their environment, and the topographies of cultural identity in the Roman empire.

The Greek romance was for the Roman period what epic was for the Archaic period or drama for the Classical: the central literary vehicle for articulating ideas about the relationship between self and community. This book offers a reading of the romance both as a distinctive narrative form (using a range of narrative theories) and as a paradigmatic expression of identity (social, sexual and cultural). At the same time it emphasises the elasticity of romance narrative and its ability to accommodate both conservative and transformative models of identity. This elasticity manifests itself partly in the variation in practice between different romancers, some of whom are traditionally Hellenocentric while others are more challenging. Ultimately, however, it is argued that it reflects a tension in all romance narrative, which characteristically balances centrifugal against centripetal dynamics. This book will interest classicists, historians of the novel and students of narrative theory.

Twenty essays by renowned scholars explore contact between Greece and the Ancient Near East through the medium of prose fiction.

The essays in this collection explore various various models of representing temporality in ancient Greek and Roman literature to elucidate how structures of time communicate meaning, as well as the way that the cultural impact of measured time is reflected in ancient texts. This collection serves as a meditation on the different ways that cosmological and experiential time are construed, measured, and manipulated in Greek and Latin literature. It explores both the kinds of time deemed worthy of measurement, as well as time that escapes notice. Likewise, it interrogates how linear time and its representation become politicized and leveraged in the service of emerging and dominant power structures. These essays showcase various contemporary theoretical approaches to temporality in order to build bridges and expose chasms between ancient and modern ideologies of time. Some of the areas explored include the philosophical and social implications of time that is not measured, the insights and limitations provided by queer theory for an investigation of the way sex and gender relate to time, the relationship of time to power, the extent to which temporal discourses intersect with spatial constructs, and finally an exploration of experiences that exceed the boundaries of time. Making Time for Greek and Roman Literature is of interest to scholars of time and temporality in the ancient world, as well as those working on time and temporality in English literature, comparative literature, history, sociology, and gender and sexuality. It is also suitable for those working on Greek and Roman literature and culture more broadly.

The Greek and Roman novels of Petronius, Apuleius, Longus, Heliodorus and others have been cherished for millennia, but never more so than now. The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel contains nineteen original essays by an international cast of experts in the field. The emphasis is upon the critical interpretation of the texts within historical settings, both in antiquity and in the later generations that have been and continue to be inspired by them. All the central issues of current scholarship are addressed: sexuality, cultural identity, class, religion, politics, narrative, style, readership and much more. Four sections cover cultural context of the novels, their contents, literary form, and their reception in classical antiquity and beyond. Each chapter includes guidance on further reading. This collection will be essential for scholars and students, as well as for others who want an up-to-date, accessible introduction into this exhilarating material.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the major Romantic poets, and wrote what is critically recognised as some of the finest lyric poetry in the English language. This is the third volume of the five-volume The Poems of Shelley, which presents all of Shelley’s poems in chronological order and with full annotation. Date and circumstances of composition are provided for each poem and all manuscript and printed sources relevant to establishing an authoritative text are freshly examined and assessed. Headnotes and footnotes furnish the personal, literary, historical and scientific information necessary to an informed reading of Shelley’s varied and allusive verse. Most of the poems in the present volume were composed between autumn 1819 and autumn 1820. The poems written in response to the political crisis in England following the ‘Peterloo’ massacre in August 1819 feature largely, among them The Mask of Anarchy and 'An Ode (Arise, arise, arise!)'. The popular songs, which Shelley intended to gather into a volume to inspire reformers from the labouring classes, several accompanied by significantly new textual material recovered from draft manuscripts, are included, as are the important political works 'Ode to Liberty', 'Ode to Naples' and Oedipus Tyrannus, Shelley's burlesque Greek tragedy on the Queen Caroline affair. Other major poems featured include 'The Sensitive-Plant', 'Ode to the West Wind', 'Letter to Maria Gisborne', an exuberant translation from the ancient Greek of the Homeric 'Hymn to Mercury', and the brilliantly inventive 'The Witch of Atlas'. In addition to accompanying commentaries, there are extensive bibliographies, a chronology of Shelley’s life, and indexes to titles and first lines. Leigh Hunt's informative Preface of 1832 to The Mask of Anarchy is also included as an Appendix. The volumes of The Poems of Shelley form the most comprehensive edition of Shelley's poetry available to students and scholars.

Nine complete stories are included here as well as ten others, encompassing the whole range of classical themes: ideal romance, travel adventure, historical fiction, and comic parody. A new foreword examines the enormous impact this collection has had on our understanding of classical thought and our concept of the novel.

Egyptomania takes us on a historical journey to unearth the Egypt of the imagination, a land of strange gods, mysterious magic, secret knowledge, monumental pyramids, enigmatic sphinxes, and immense wealth. Egypt has always exerted a powerful attraction on the Western mind, and an array of figures have been drawn to the idea of Egypt. Even the practical-minded Napoleon dreamed of Egyptian glory and helped open the antique land to explorers. Ronald H. Fritze goes beyond art and architecture to reveal Egyptomania’s impact on religion, philosophy, historical study, literature, travel, science, and popular culture. All those who remain captivated by the ongoing phenomenon of Egyptomania will revel in the mysteries uncovered in this book.

From classics and history to Jewish rabbinic narratives and the canonical and noncanonical gospels of earliest Christianity, the relevance of studying the novel of the later classical periods of Greek and Rome is widely endorsed. Ancient novels contain insights beyond literary theories and philosophical musings to new sources for understanding the popular culture of antiquity. Some scholars, in fact, refer to ancient novels as “alternative histories,” for they tell history implicitly rather than with the intentional biases of the historian. The Novel in the Ancient World surveys the new approaches and insights to the ancient novel and wrestles with issues such as the development, transformation, and christianization of the novel (Spirit-inspired versus inspired by the Muses). This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

Uncovers African influences on the Western imagination during the eighteenth century, paying particular attention to the ways Ethiopia inspired and shaped the work of Samuel Johnson.