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Aristophanes: Peace (Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions)
by Ian C. StoreyThis is the first volume dedicated to Aristophanes' comedy Peace that analyses the play for a student audience and assumes no knowledge of Greek. It launches a much-needed new series of books each discussing a comedy that survives from the ancient world. Six chapters highlight the play's context, themes, staging and legacy including its response to contemporary wartime politics and the possible staging options for flying. It is ideal for students, but helpful also for scholars wanting a quick introduction to the play.Peace was first performed in 421 BC, perhaps only days before the signing of a peace treaty that ended ten years of fighting between Athens and Sparta (the Archidamian War). Aristophanes celebrates this prospect with an imaginative fantasy involving his hero's flight on a gigantic dung-beetle to Olympus, the rescue of the goddess Peace from her imprisonment in a cave, and her return to a Greece weary of ten years of war. Like most of the poet's comedies, this play is heavy on fantasy and imagination, light on formal structure, being an exuberant farce that champions the opponents of War and celebrates the delights of the return to country life with its smells, food and drink, its many pleasures and none of the complications that war brings in its wake.
Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres (Arethusa Books)
by Charles PlatterThe comedies of Aristophanes are known not only for their boldly imaginative plots but for the ways in which they incorporate and orchestrate a wide variety of literary genres and speech styles. Unlike the writers of tragedy, who prefer a uniformly elevated tone, Aristophanes articulates his dramatic dialogue with striking literary and linguistic juxtapositions, producing a carnivalesque medley of genres that continually forces both audience and reader to readjust their perspectives. In this energetic and original study, Charles Platter interprets the complexities of Aristophanes' work through the lens of Mikhail Bakhtin's critical writing.This book charts a new course for Aristophanic comedy, taking its lead from the work of Bakhtin. Bakhtin describes the way multiple voices—vocabularies, tones, and styles of language originating in different social classes and contexts—appear and interact within literary texts. He argues that the dynamic quality of literature arises from the dialogic relations that exist among these voices. Although Bakhtin applied his theory primarily to the epic and the novel, Platter finds in his work profound implications for Aristophanic comedy, where stylistic heterogeneity is the genre's lifeblood.
Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy: Affect, Aesthetics, and the Canon
by Mario TelòThe Greek playwright Aristophanes (active 427–386 BCE) is often portrayed as the poet who brought stability, discipline, and sophistication to the rowdy theatrical genre of Old Comedy. In this groundbreaking book, situated within the affective turn in the humanities, Mario Telò explores a vital yet understudied question: how did this view of Aristophanes arise, and why did his popularity eventually eclipse that of his rivals? Telò boldly traces Aristophanes’s rise, ironically, to the defeat of his play Clouds at the Great Dionysia of 423 BCE. Close readings of his revised Clouds and other works, such as Wasps, uncover references to the earlier Clouds, presented by Aristophanes as his failed attempt to heal the audience, who are reflected in the plays as a kind of dysfunctional father. In this proto-canonical narrative of failure, grounded in the distinctive feelings of different comic modes, Aristophanic comedy becomes cast as a prestigious object, a soft, protective cloak meant to shield viewers from the debilitating effects of competitors’ comedies and restore a sense of paternal responsibility and authority. Associations between afflicted fathers and healing sons, between audience and poet, are shown to be at the center of the discourse that has shaped Aristophanes’s canonical dominance ever since.
Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy: Affect, Aesthetics, and the Canon
by Mario TelòThe Greek playwright Aristophanes (active 427–386 BCE) is often portrayed as the poet who brought stability, discipline, and sophistication to the rowdy theatrical genre of Old Comedy. In this groundbreaking book, situated within the affective turn in the humanities, Mario Telò explores a vital yet understudied question: how did this view of Aristophanes arise, and why did his popularity eventually eclipse that of his rivals? Telò boldly traces Aristophanes’s rise, ironically, to the defeat of his play Clouds at the Great Dionysia of 423 BCE. Close readings of his revised Clouds and other works, such as Wasps, uncover references to the earlier Clouds, presented by Aristophanes as his failed attempt to heal the audience, who are reflected in the plays as a kind of dysfunctional father. In this proto-canonical narrative of failure, grounded in the distinctive feelings of different comic modes, Aristophanic comedy becomes cast as a prestigious object, a soft, protective cloak meant to shield viewers from the debilitating effects of competitors’ comedies and restore a sense of paternal responsibility and authority. Associations between afflicted fathers and healing sons, between audience and poet, are shown to be at the center of the discourse that has shaped Aristophanes’s canonical dominance ever since.
Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy: Affect, Aesthetics, and the Canon
by Mario TelòThe Greek playwright Aristophanes (active 427–386 BCE) is often portrayed as the poet who brought stability, discipline, and sophistication to the rowdy theatrical genre of Old Comedy. In this groundbreaking book, situated within the affective turn in the humanities, Mario Telò explores a vital yet understudied question: how did this view of Aristophanes arise, and why did his popularity eventually eclipse that of his rivals? Telò boldly traces Aristophanes’s rise, ironically, to the defeat of his play Clouds at the Great Dionysia of 423 BCE. Close readings of his revised Clouds and other works, such as Wasps, uncover references to the earlier Clouds, presented by Aristophanes as his failed attempt to heal the audience, who are reflected in the plays as a kind of dysfunctional father. In this proto-canonical narrative of failure, grounded in the distinctive feelings of different comic modes, Aristophanic comedy becomes cast as a prestigious object, a soft, protective cloak meant to shield viewers from the debilitating effects of competitors’ comedies and restore a sense of paternal responsibility and authority. Associations between afflicted fathers and healing sons, between audience and poet, are shown to be at the center of the discourse that has shaped Aristophanes’s canonical dominance ever since.
Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy: Affect, Aesthetics, and the Canon
by Mario TelòThe Greek playwright Aristophanes (active 427–386 BCE) is often portrayed as the poet who brought stability, discipline, and sophistication to the rowdy theatrical genre of Old Comedy. In this groundbreaking book, situated within the affective turn in the humanities, Mario Telò explores a vital yet understudied question: how did this view of Aristophanes arise, and why did his popularity eventually eclipse that of his rivals? Telò boldly traces Aristophanes’s rise, ironically, to the defeat of his play Clouds at the Great Dionysia of 423 BCE. Close readings of his revised Clouds and other works, such as Wasps, uncover references to the earlier Clouds, presented by Aristophanes as his failed attempt to heal the audience, who are reflected in the plays as a kind of dysfunctional father. In this proto-canonical narrative of failure, grounded in the distinctive feelings of different comic modes, Aristophanic comedy becomes cast as a prestigious object, a soft, protective cloak meant to shield viewers from the debilitating effects of competitors’ comedies and restore a sense of paternal responsibility and authority. Associations between afflicted fathers and healing sons, between audience and poet, are shown to be at the center of the discourse that has shaped Aristophanes’s canonical dominance ever since.
Aristophanes and Women (Routledge Revivals)
by Lauren K. TaaffeAristophanes and Women, first published in 1993, investigates the workings of the great Athenian comedian’s ‘women plays’ in an attempt to discern why they were in fact probably quite funny to their original audiences. It is argued that modern students, scholars, and dramatists need to consider much more closely the conditions of the plays’ ancient productions when evaluating their ostensible themes. Three plays are focused upon: Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae, and Ecclesiazusae. All seem to speak quite eloquently to contemporary concerns about women’s rights, the value of women’s work, and the relationships between women and war, literary representation and politics. On the one hand, Professor Taaffe tries to retrieve what an ancient Athenian audience may have l appreciated about these plays and what their central theses may have meant within that culture. On the other hand, Aristophanes is discussed from the perspective of a late twentieth-century, specifically female, reader.
Aristophanes: Cavalry (Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions)
by Professor Robert TordoffOffering for the first time a student introduction to Aristophanes' most explosive political satire, this volume is an essential guide to the context, themes and later reception of Cavalry. The ancient comedy is a fascinating insight into demagoguery and political rhetoric in classical Athens. These are subjects that resonate with a modern audience more now than ever before.Originally performed in 424 BCE, Cavalry was the first play Aristophanes directed himself and it was awarded first prize. It targets the Athenian demagogue, Cleon, who had risen to prominence since the death of Pericles and to pre-eminence after an audacious victory over Sparta in 425 BCE. In Cavalry, Aristophanes attacks Cleon's popularity with the masses, but also criticises the democracy itself as guilty of gullibility, self-interest and political shortsightedness. As the play shows, the only hope of escape from the crisis is for Athens to find a leader even more popular Cleon. And who better to be more foul-mouthed, depraved and shameless than a sausage-seller, if only because he turns out in the end to have a good heart and a true love of traditional Athenian values?
Aristophanes: Cavalry (Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions)
by Professor Robert TordoffOffering for the first time a student introduction to Aristophanes' most explosive political satire, this volume is an essential guide to the context, themes and later reception of Cavalry. The ancient comedy is a fascinating insight into demagoguery and political rhetoric in classical Athens. These are subjects that resonate with a modern audience more now than ever before.Originally performed in 424 BCE, Cavalry was the first play Aristophanes directed himself and it was awarded first prize. It targets the Athenian demagogue, Cleon, who had risen to prominence since the death of Pericles and to pre-eminence after an audacious victory over Sparta in 425 BCE. In Cavalry, Aristophanes attacks Cleon's popularity with the masses, but also criticises the democracy itself as guilty of gullibility, self-interest and political shortsightedness. As the play shows, the only hope of escape from the crisis is for Athens to find a leader even more popular Cleon. And who better to be more foul-mouthed, depraved and shameless than a sausage-seller, if only because he turns out in the end to have a good heart and a true love of traditional Athenian values?
Aristophanes: Frogs (Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions)
by C. W. MarshallA comedy about tragedy and a play about playmaking, Aristophanes' Frogs (405 BCE) is perhaps the most popular of ancient comedies. This new introduction guides students through the play, its themes and contemporary contexts, and its reception history. Frogs offers sustained engagement with the Athenian literary scene, with the politics of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War, and with the religious understanding of the fifth-century city. It presents the earliest direct criticism of theatre and a detailed description of the Underworld, and also dramatizes the place of Mystery cults in the religious life of Athens and shows the political concerns that galvanized the citizens. It is also genuinely funny, showcasing a range of comic techniques, including literary and musical parody, political invective, grotesque distortion, wordplay, prop comedy, and funny costumes. Frogs has inspired literary works by Henry Fielding, George Bernard Shaw, and Tom Stoppard. This book explores all of these features in a series of short chapters designed to be accessible to a new reader of ancient comedy. It proceeds linearly through the play, addressing a range of issues, but paying particular attention to stagecraft and performance. It also offers a bold new interpretation of the play, suggesting that the action of Frogs was not the first time Euripides and Aeschylus had competed against each other.
Aristophanes: Frogs (Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions)
by C. W. MarshallA comedy about tragedy and a play about playmaking, Aristophanes' Frogs (405 BCE) is perhaps the most popular of ancient comedies. This new introduction guides students through the play, its themes and contemporary contexts, and its reception history. Frogs offers sustained engagement with the Athenian literary scene, with the politics of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War, and with the religious understanding of the fifth-century city. It presents the earliest direct criticism of theatre and a detailed description of the Underworld, and also dramatizes the place of Mystery cults in the religious life of Athens and shows the political concerns that galvanized the citizens. It is also genuinely funny, showcasing a range of comic techniques, including literary and musical parody, political invective, grotesque distortion, wordplay, prop comedy, and funny costumes. Frogs has inspired literary works by Henry Fielding, George Bernard Shaw, and Tom Stoppard. This book explores all of these features in a series of short chapters designed to be accessible to a new reader of ancient comedy. It proceeds linearly through the play, addressing a range of issues, but paying particular attention to stagecraft and performance. It also offers a bold new interpretation of the play, suggesting that the action of Frogs was not the first time Euripides and Aeschylus had competed against each other.
Aristophanes in Britain: Old Comedy in the Nineteenth Century (Classical Presences)
by Peter SwallowIn this lively and wide-ranging study, Peter Swallow explores the reception of Aristophanes in Britain throughout the long-nineteenth century, setting it in the broader context of Victorian Classicism and, more specifically, the period's reception of Greek tragedy. Swallow shows the surprising extent to which Aristophanes was repurposed across an array of mediums in Victorian Britain, and demonstrates that Aristophanic reception in the period was always a process of speaking to contemporary issues—making Old Comedy new. The book examines two strands of Aristophanic reception: the political and the aesthetic. From the start of the long-nineteenth century, the British reception of Aristophanes tied into contemporary political debate, as historians, translators and commentators, and even the burlesque writer J.R. Planché activated Aristophanes in support of their own political positions. But each writer's conceptualisation of Aristophanes was as different as their political outlooks. While many writers who appropriated Aristophanes for their cause were Tories, a notable outlier is Percy Shelley, whose Aristophanic drama Swellfoot the Tyrant activated Old Comedy to argue for democratic republicanism—what we would now call a left-wing political revolution. The second strand of Aristophanic reception, which developed from around the middle of the nineteenth century, actively depoliticised Old Comedy and instead received it through an aesthetic lens. The aesthetics of Aristophanes—with an emphasis on the beautiful and the archaeological—also lay behind school and university productions of Old Comedy during this period. These strands of nineteenth-century Aristophanic reception find synthesis towards the book's conclusion. Edwardian women's receptions of Aristophanes show how activists used his plays to argue for equal educational opportunities and the right to vote. In the final chapter, Gilbert Murray and George Bernard Shaw's receptions reveal both the political and artistic potential of Aristophanes.
Aristophanes in Britain: Old Comedy in the Nineteenth Century (Classical Presences)
by Peter SwallowIn this lively and wide-ranging study, Peter Swallow explores the reception of Aristophanes in Britain throughout the long-nineteenth century, setting it in the broader context of Victorian Classicism and, more specifically, the period's reception of Greek tragedy. Swallow shows the surprising extent to which Aristophanes was repurposed across an array of mediums in Victorian Britain, and demonstrates that Aristophanic reception in the period was always a process of speaking to contemporary issues—making Old Comedy new. The book examines two strands of Aristophanic reception: the political and the aesthetic. From the start of the long-nineteenth century, the British reception of Aristophanes tied into contemporary political debate, as historians, translators and commentators, and even the burlesque writer J.R. Planché activated Aristophanes in support of their own political positions. But each writer's conceptualisation of Aristophanes was as different as their political outlooks. While many writers who appropriated Aristophanes for their cause were Tories, a notable outlier is Percy Shelley, whose Aristophanic drama Swellfoot the Tyrant activated Old Comedy to argue for democratic republicanism—what we would now call a left-wing political revolution. The second strand of Aristophanic reception, which developed from around the middle of the nineteenth century, actively depoliticised Old Comedy and instead received it through an aesthetic lens. The aesthetics of Aristophanes—with an emphasis on the beautiful and the archaeological—also lay behind school and university productions of Old Comedy during this period. These strands of nineteenth-century Aristophanic reception find synthesis towards the book's conclusion. Edwardian women's receptions of Aristophanes show how activists used his plays to argue for equal educational opportunities and the right to vote. In the final chapter, Gilbert Murray and George Bernard Shaw's receptions reveal both the political and artistic potential of Aristophanes.
Aristophanes: Lysistrata (Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions)
by James RobsonLysistrata is the most notorious of Aristophanes' comedies. First staged in 411 BCE, its action famously revolves around a sex strike launched by the women of Greece in an attempt to force their husbands to end the war. With its risqué humour, vibrant battle of the sexes, and themes of war and peace, Lysistrata remains as daring and thought-provoking today as it would have been for its original audience in Classical Athens. Aristophanes: Lysistrata is a lively and engaging introduction to this play aimed at students and scholars of classical drama alike. It sets Lysistrata in its social and historical context, looking at key themes such as politics, religion and its provocative portrayal of women, as well as the play's language, humour and personalities, including the formidable and trailblazing Lysistrata herself. Lysistrata has often been translated, adapted and performed in the modern era and this book also traces the ways in which it has been re-imagined and re-presented to new audiences. As this reception history reveals, Lysistrata's appeal in the modern world lies not only in its racy subject matter, but also in its potential to be recast as a feminist, pacifist or otherwise subversive play that openly challenges the political and social status quo.
Aristophanes: Lysistrata (Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions)
by James RobsonLysistrata is the most notorious of Aristophanes' comedies. First staged in 411 BCE, its action famously revolves around a sex strike launched by the women of Greece in an attempt to force their husbands to end the war. With its risqué humour, vibrant battle of the sexes, and themes of war and peace, Lysistrata remains as daring and thought-provoking today as it would have been for its original audience in Classical Athens. Aristophanes: Lysistrata is a lively and engaging introduction to this play aimed at students and scholars of classical drama alike. It sets Lysistrata in its social and historical context, looking at key themes such as politics, religion and its provocative portrayal of women, as well as the play's language, humour and personalities, including the formidable and trailblazing Lysistrata herself. Lysistrata has often been translated, adapted and performed in the modern era and this book also traces the ways in which it has been re-imagined and re-presented to new audiences. As this reception history reveals, Lysistrata's appeal in the modern world lies not only in its racy subject matter, but also in its potential to be recast as a feminist, pacifist or otherwise subversive play that openly challenges the political and social status quo.
Aristophanes' Old-and-New Comedy: Volume I: Six Essays in Perspective
by Kenneth J. ReckfordThis startling and original study emerged from Kenneth Rockford's wish to vindicate Aristophanes' Clouds against detractors. As a result of years of rereading and teaching Aristophanes, he realized that the Clouds could not be defended in an analysis of that play in isolation. A better approach, he decided, would be to define a comic perspective within which Aristophanes' comedies in general as well as the Clouds in particular could be appreciated.This first volume of Reckford's defense examines the comedies as a whole in a series of defining essays, each with its own dominant concern and method of approach. The author begins by exploring not the usual questions of Aristophanes' political attitudes and his place in the development of comedy, but rather the festive, celebratory, and Dionysian nature of Old Comedy. Here and throughout the book Reckford illustrates Aristophanes' form of comedy with analogies to Rabelais, Shakespeare, Charlie Chaplin, Alice in Wonderland, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.In the remaining essays Reckford goes beyond the usual Freudian approaches, reinterpreting the comic catharsis as a clarification of wishing and hoping. He also explores the growth of plays from comic idea to comic performance, in ways reflected in Tom Stoppard's plays today. Only then are Aristophanes' basic political loyalties described, as well as the place of his old- and-new comedy within the history of the genre.In a book that is as much about comedy generally as it is about Aristophanes specifically, some plays are treated more fully than others. Reckford discusses the Wasps at length, comparing the symbolic transformations and comic recognitions in the play with dream experience and dream interpretation. He also analyzes the Peace, the Acharians, the Birds, and the Frogs. Reckford's vindication of the Clouds will appear in the second volume of his defense, Clouds of Glory.Reckford's playful translations preserve the puns and anachronisms of Aristophanes, maintaining the playwright's comic feeling and tone. Combining traditional classical scholarship with a variety of literary, psychological, and anthropological approaches, he has written a study that will appeal to both the academic audience and the general reader who cares about comedy.Originally published in 1987.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Aristophanic Humour: Theory and Practice
by Edited by Peter Swallow Edith HallThis volume sets out to discuss a crucial question for ancient comedy – what makes Aristophanes funny? Too often Aristophanes' humour is taken for granted as merely a tool for the delivery of political and social commentary. But Greek Old Comedy was above all else designed to amuse people, to win the dramatic competition by making the audience laugh the hardest. Any discussion of Aristophanes therefore needs to take into account the ways in which his humour actually works.This question is addressed in two ways. The first half of the volume offers an in-depth discussion of humour theory – a field heretofore largely overlooked by classicists and Aristophanists – examining various theoretical models within the specific context of Aristophanes' eleven extant plays. In the second half, contributors explore Aristophanic humour more practically, examining how specific linguistic techniques and performative choices affect the reception of humour, and exploring the range of subjects Aristophanes tackles as vectors for his comedy. A focus on performance shapes the narrative, since humour lives or dies on the stage – it is never wholly comprehensible on the page alone.
Aristophanic Humour: Theory and Practice
This volume sets out to discuss a crucial question for ancient comedy – what makes Aristophanes funny? Too often Aristophanes' humour is taken for granted as merely a tool for the delivery of political and social commentary. But Greek Old Comedy was above all else designed to amuse people, to win the dramatic competition by making the audience laugh the hardest. Any discussion of Aristophanes therefore needs to take into account the ways in which his humour actually works.This question is addressed in two ways. The first half of the volume offers an in-depth discussion of humour theory – a field heretofore largely overlooked by classicists and Aristophanists – examining various theoretical models within the specific context of Aristophanes' eleven extant plays. In the second half, contributors explore Aristophanic humour more practically, examining how specific linguistic techniques and performative choices affect the reception of humour, and exploring the range of subjects Aristophanes tackles as vectors for his comedy. A focus on performance shapes the narrative, since humour lives or dies on the stage – it is never wholly comprehensible on the page alone.
The Aristotelian Mechanics: Text and Diagrams (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science #316)
by Joyce van LeeuwenThis book examines the transmission processes of the Aristotelian Mechanics. It does so to enable readers to appreciate the value of the treatise based on solid knowledge of the principles of the text. In addition, the book’s critical examination helps clear up many of the current misunderstandings about the transmission of the text and the diagrams. The first part of the book sets out the Greek manuscript tradition of the Mechanics, resulting in a newly established stemma codicum that illustrates the affiliations of the manuscripts. This research has led to new insights into the transmission of the treatise, most importantly, it also demonstrates an urgent need for a new text. A first critical edition of the diagrams contained in the Greek manuscripts of the treatise is also presented. These diagrams are not only significant for a reconstruction of the text but can also be considered as a commentary on the text. Diagrams are thus revealed to be a powerful tool in studying processes of the transfer and transformation of knowledge. This becomes especially relevant when the manuscript diagrams are compared with those in the printed editions and in commentaries from the early modern period. The final part of the book shows that these early modern diagrams and images reflect the altered scope of the mechanical discipline in the sixteenth century.
Aristotelian Subjectivism: Francisco Suárez’s Philosophy of Perception (Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind #28)
by Daniel HeiderThis monograph presents new material on Francisco Suárez’s comprehensive theory of sense perception. The core theme is perceptual intentionality in Suárez’s theory of the senses, external and internal, as presented in his Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in libros Aristotelis De anima published in 1621. The author targets the question of the multistage genesis of perceptual acts by considering the ontological “items” involved in the procession of sensory information. However, the structural issue is not left aside, and the nature of the relationship due to which our perceptions are mental representations of this or that object is also considered. The heuristic historiographical background includes not only the theories of classical authors, such as Aristotle and Aquinas, but also those of late medieval authors of the fourteenth century. These are headed by John Duns Scotus, John of Jandun, Peter Auriol and Peter John Olivi. Readers will discover the differences between Suárez’s and Aquinas’s views, as well as other sources that may have served as positive inspiration for the Jesuit’s theory. By considering the late medieval philosophy of the fourteenth century, this book helps, to a certain extent, to fill a gap in the historiography of philosophy regarding the link between late medieval and early modern scholasticism. In the first part of the book, the metaphysics of the soul and powers is considered. Chapters on the external senses follow, covering topics such as the sensible species, the causes of sensation, self-awareness, and the ordering of the external senses. A further chapter is devoted to the internal senses and the author argues that by reducing the number and functional scope of the interior senses Suárez deepens the gap between the external senses and the intellect, but he reduces it through emphasizing the unifying efficacy of the soul.This book brings a synthetic and unifying perspective to contemporary research and will particularly appeal to graduate students and researchers in theology and philosophy, especially philosophy of mind.
Aristotle and The Philosophy of Law: Theory, Practice and Justice (Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice)
by Liesbeth Huppes-Cluysenaer and Nuno M.M.S. CoelhoThe book presents a new focus on the legal philosophical texts of Aristotle, which offers a much richer frame for the understanding of practical thought, legal reasoning and political experience. It allows understanding how human beings interact in a complex world, and how extensive the complexity is which results from humans’ own power of self-construction and autonomy. The Aristotelian approach recognizes the limits of rationality and the inevitable and constitutive contingency in Law. All this offers a helpful instrument to understand the changes globalisation imposes to legal experience today.The contributions in this collection do not merely pay attention to private virtues, but focus primarily on public virtues. They deal with the fact that law is dependent on political power and that a person can never be sure about the facts of a case or about the right way to act. They explore the assumption that a detailed knowledge of Aristotle's epistemology is necessary, because of the direct connection between Enlightened reasoning and legal positivism. They pay attention to the concept of proportionality, which can be seen as a precondition to discuss liberalism.
Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence
by Richard SorabjiThis book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators. First published in 1990, the collection is now brought up to date with a new introduction by Richard Sorabji. New generations of scholars will benefit from this reissuing of classic essays, including seminal works by major scholars, and the volume gives a comprehensive background to the work of the project on the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, which has published over 100 volumes of translations since 1987 and has disseminated these crucial texts to scholars worldwide.The importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of ancient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence – uncovered in some of the chapters of this book – that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only did they preserve anti-Aristotelian material which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they present Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers.
Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence
by Richard SorabjiThis book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators. First published in 1990, the collection is now brought up to date with a new introduction by Richard Sorabji. New generations of scholars will benefit from this reissuing of classic essays, including seminal works by major scholars, and the volume gives a comprehensive background to the work of the project on the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, which has published over 100 volumes of translations since 1987 and has disseminated these crucial texts to scholars worldwide.The importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of ancient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence – uncovered in some of the chapters of this book – that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only did they preserve anti-Aristotelian material which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they present Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers.
Aristotle's "Art of Rhetoric"
by AristotleFor more than two thousand years. Aristotle’s “Art of Rhetoric” has shaped thought on the theory and practice of rhetoric, the art of persuasive speech. In three sections, Aristotle discusses what rhetoric is, as well as the three kinds of rhetoric (deliberative, judicial, and epideictic), the three rhetorical modes of persuasion, and the diction, style, and necessary parts of a successful speech. Throughout, Aristotle defends rhetoric as an art and a crucial tool for deliberative politics while also recognizing its capacity to be misused by unscrupulous politicians to mislead or illegitimately persuade others. Here Robert C. Bartlett offers a literal, yet easily readable, new translation of Aristotle’s “Art of Rhetoric,” one that takes into account important alternatives in the manuscript and is fully annotated to explain historical, literary, and other allusions. Bartlett’s translation is also accompanied by an outline of the argument of each book; copious indexes, including subjects, proper names, and literary citations; a glossary of key terms; and a substantial interpretive essay.
Aristotle's "Art of Rhetoric"
by AristotleFor more than two thousand years. Aristotle’s “Art of Rhetoric” has shaped thought on the theory and practice of rhetoric, the art of persuasive speech. In three sections, Aristotle discusses what rhetoric is, as well as the three kinds of rhetoric (deliberative, judicial, and epideictic), the three rhetorical modes of persuasion, and the diction, style, and necessary parts of a successful speech. Throughout, Aristotle defends rhetoric as an art and a crucial tool for deliberative politics while also recognizing its capacity to be misused by unscrupulous politicians to mislead or illegitimately persuade others. Here Robert C. Bartlett offers a literal, yet easily readable, new translation of Aristotle’s “Art of Rhetoric,” one that takes into account important alternatives in the manuscript and is fully annotated to explain historical, literary, and other allusions. Bartlett’s translation is also accompanied by an outline of the argument of each book; copious indexes, including subjects, proper names, and literary citations; a glossary of key terms; and a substantial interpretive essay.