Martin M. Winkler argues for a new approach to various creative affinities between ancient verbal and modern visual narratives. He examines screen adaptations of classical epic, tragedy, comedy, myth, and history, exploring, for example, how ancient rhetorical principles regarding the emotions apply to moving images and how Aristotle's perspective on thrilling plot-turns can recur on screen. He also interprets several popular films, such as 300 and Nero, and analyzes works by international directors, among them Pier Paolo Pasolini (Oedipus Rex, Medea), Jean Cocteau (The Testament of Orpheus), Mai Zetterling (The Girls), Lars von Trier (Medea), Arturo Ripstein (Such Is Life), John Ford (westerns), Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho), and Spike Lee (Chi-Raq). The book demonstrates the undiminished vitality of classical myth and literature in our visual media, as with screen portrayals of Helen of Troy. It is important for all classicists and scholars and students of film, literature, and history.

Classical Literature on Screen: Affinities of Imagination

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Natural Knowledge and Aristotelianism at Early Modern Protestant Universities

This article examines the relationship between the Querelle des anciens et des modernes and the Querelle des femmes as it was articulated in 'Le Parnasse reconnoissant, ou, Le triomphe de Madame Des-Houlieres' by Marie-Jeanne L'Heritier Published in 1694 as a riposte to Boileau's misogynist Satire X , the text contributes to the tradition of defences of women However, L'Heritier deliberately inserts her rejoinder into the Querelle des anciens et des modernes ; in so doing, she responds to another work by Boileau, the Dialogue des heros de roman  After establishing how different quarrels and concerns combine in Boileau's two texts, this article argues that L'Heritier consciously exploited the platform of 'Ancients and Moderns' to discuss women's cultural practice While this confirms the critical view that the two quarrels were interlinked, it also reveals a hierarchy of quarrels in which the Querelle des anciens et des modernes had greater capital; as such it proved useful for a woman entering the literary field L'Heritier's strategies demonstrate the complexities of being a Modern woman writer, despite the typical alignment of these identities, and invite us to examine how this contemporary hierarchization of quarrels has shaped their recent reception

Ancients, moderns, gender: Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier’s Le Parnasse reconnoissant ou le triomphe de Madame Des-Houlières

Course Description: Effective music criticism – criticism that places a song or album within the appropriate social, political, personal, and aesthetic contexts – can be as enthralling and moving as the music it engages. In this advanced writing course, we will explore different ways of writing about music, from the record review to the personal essay. We’ll consider the evolving tradition of pop music criticism (How are MP3 blogs and websites challenging print media? How is the critic’s role changing?) and the mysterious practice of translating sound into ideas (How do we train ourselves to be better and more thoughtful listeners?). Through reading, writing, and class discussion, we’ll contemplate the mysterious circuitry that causes people to embrace (or require) music – from Bob Dylan to Lil’ Wayne – and how best to explore that connection on the page.

Writing about Popular Music

In this book, Robert Doran offers the first in-depth treatment of the major theories of the sublime, from the ancient Greek treatise On the Sublime (attributed to 'Longinus') and its reception in early modern literary theory to the philosophical accounts of Burke and Kant. Doran explains how and why the sublime became a key concept of modern thought and shows how the various theories of sublimity are united by a common structure - the paradoxical experience of being at once overwhelmed and exalted - and a common concern: the preservation of a notion of transcendence in the face of the secularization of modern culture. Combining intellectual history with literary theory and philosophical analysis, his book provides a new, searching and multilayered account of a concept that continues to stimulate thought about our responses to art, nature and human events.

The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant

The cultural battle known as the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns has most often been depicted as pitting antiquarian conservatives against the insurgent critics of established authority. One of the most public controversies of early modern Europe, the Quarrel served as a sly cover for more deeply opposed views about the value of literature and the arts. "The Shock of the Ancient" turns the canonical vision of those events on its head by demonstrating how the defenders of Greek literature - rather than clinging to an outmoded tradition - celebrated the radically different practices of the ancient world. At a time when the constraints of decorum and the politics of French absolutism quashed the expression of cultural differences, the ancient world presented a disturbing face of otherness. Larry F. Norman explores how the authoritative status of ancient Greek texts allowed them to justify literary depictions of the scandalous. "The Shock of the Ancient" surveys the diverse array of aesthetic models presented in these ancient works and considers how they both helped to undermine the rigid codes of neoclassicism and pave the way for the innovative philosophies of the Enlightenment. Broadly appealing to students of European literature, art history, and philosophy, this book is an important contribution to early modern literary and cultural debates.

The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France

Though much beloved and widely produced, Moliere's satirical comedies pose a problem for those reading or staging his works today: how can a genre associated with biting caricature and castigation deliver engaging theatre? Instead of simply dismissing social satire as a foundation for Moliere's theatre, Larry F. Norman takes seriously Moliere's claim that his satires are first and foremost effective theatre. Pairing close readings of Moliere's comedies with accounts of French social history and aesthetics, Norman shows how Moliere perceived satire as a "public mirror" provoking dynamic exchange and conflict with audience members obsessed with their own images. Drawing on these tensions, Moliere portrays characters satirizing one another on stage, with their reactions providing dramatic conflict and propelling comic dialogue. By laying bare his society's system of imagining itself, Moliere's satires both enthralled and enraged his original audience and provide us with a crucial key to the classical culture of representation.

The Public Mirror: Moliere and the Social Commerce of Depiction

The late 16th and 17th centuries are frequently labelled the age of theatre. Throughout western Europe, the dramatic arts attained new heights of cultural prestige, political importance and commercial success. This series of essays investigates the dialogue between the newly invigorated theatre and the plastic arts. Discussed are the interactions between spectator and spectacle, social performance and the staging of the individual, the shaping of space and time, and the debates over the relationship that visual and theatrical representations have to the objects they portray.

The theatrical Baroque

Le sublime est peut-etre le mode de la sensibility artistique qui caracterise la modemitfi. Un paradoxe est qu'il a ete presente a la discussion des lettres et d^fendu avec energie par l'ecrivain franfais que l'his toire litteraire range parmi les d6fenseurs les plus acham6s du classicisme des Anciens. En 1674, Boileau publie son Art pottique, mais aussi sa traduction, ou sa transcription du Peri tou hupsou, Du Sublime.

Larry F. Norman

Papers

The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France

The Public Mirror: Moliere and the Social Commerce of Depiction

The theatrical Baroque

Historiciser le sublime, ou le classicisme entre modernité et antiquité

The Pagan Menace