Showing results for "edith hall"

This book explores the questions of when, where, how and why Aristotle has appeared in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales since the Restoration in 1660, through to Irish Independence in 1922.The primary focus is on ethics and politics, natural science, and rhetoric and the arts. Chapters explore the impact of specific events in the history of Aristotelian reception over this period, taking the reader thematically on a journey through Aristotle’s diverse academic interests. The authors ar...

From renowned classicist Edith Hall, ARISTOTLE'S WAY is an examination of one of history's greatest philosophers, showing us how to lead happy, fulfilled, and meaningful livesAristotle was the first philosopher to inquire into subjective happiness, and he understood its essence better and more clearly than anyone since. According to Aristotle, happiness is not about well-being, but instead a lasting state of contentment, which should be the ultimate goal of human l...

An urgent study of Homer’s Iliad, exposing the beginnings of the ecological disaster we now face and facilitating our understanding of its historyThe roots of today’s environmental catastrophe run deep into humanity’s past. Through this unprecedented reading of Homer’s Iliad, the award-winning classicist Edith Hall examines how this foundational text both documents the environmental practices of the ancient Greeks and betrays an awareness of the d...

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring 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 i...

An award-winning classicist turns to Greek tragedies for the wisdom to understand the damage caused by suicide and help those who are contemplating suicide themselvesIn Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the Tyrant, a messenger arrives to report that Jocasta, queen of Thebes, has killed herself. To prepare listeners for this terrible news, he announces, “The tragedies that hurt the most are those that sufferers have chosen for themselves.” Edith Hall, whose own li...

The story of Medea, a maligned and misunderstood woman of Greek mythology, from one of Britain’s foremost classicistsMothers who kill their children are universally abhorred but perennially fascinating. In this book, the award-winning scholar Edith Hall explores the possibility that Medea, mythology’s archetypal murderous mother, could be based on a historical figure who migrated to Greece in the late Bronze Age.Medea has appeared in countless works of art—...

The 24 essays collected in this book address the complex interactions between concepts of time, grammatical tense, and type of genre of prose or poetry in ancient Greek literature. The chronological scope stretches across nearly a millennium from archaic epic to the Second Sophistic, from the emotional intensity of Homer to Plutarch and the playfulness of Lucian, tracing patterns, developments, contrasts, and intertextual allusiveness across diverse texts and authors. These include dramati...

Hecuba The Trojan Women Andromache In the three great war plays contained in this volume Euripides subjects the sufferings of Troy's survivors to a harrowing examination. The horrific brutality which both women and children undergo evokes a response of unparalleled intensity in the playwright whom Aristotle called the most tragic of the poets. Yet the new battleground of the aftermath of war is one in which the women of Troy evince an overwhelming greatness of spirit. We weep for the aged ...

A People’s History of Classics explores the influence of the classical past on the lives of working-class people, whose voices have been almost completely excluded from previous histories of classical scholarship and pedagogy, in Britain and Ireland from the late 17th to the early 20th century.This volume challenges the prevailing scholarly and public assumption that the intimate link between the exclusive intellectual culture of British elites and the study of the ancient...

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 drama...

This is the first book to explore the history of ancient Greek and Roman influences and reception in England’s North East, topics which have often transcended social boundaries dictated by working identity, class, religion, gender, and ethnicity.Together, the chapters cover a broad range of themes and topics from architecture, theatre, working-class education, poetry, post-war novels and Hadrian's Wall. Each section, taken as a whole, views the specific topic from complementary soc...

Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform presents an original and carefully argued case for the importance of classical ideas, education and self-education in the personal development and activities of British social reformers in the 19th and first six decades of the 20th century. Usually drawn from the lower echelons of the middle class and the most aspirational artisanal and working-class circles, the prominent reformers, revolutionaries, feminists and ...