Tag: Literary criticism
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Of Pirates and Persians: Chariton of Aphrodisias’ Callirhoe
“O treacherous beauty, you are the cause of all my woes!” – Callirhoe (Book 6.5) As threatened, I’ve been reading what might be the first western historical fiction novel, Chariton of Aphrodisias’ Callirhoe, and when I intimated that it sounded like the more far-fetched of Shakespeare’s comedies (I’m thinking The Winter’s Tale or Pericles), it has more lived up to that […]
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Dream Girls: The Jinling Beauties and the Many Illusions of Dream of the Red Chamber
The office jack’s career is blighted, The rich man’s fortune now all vanished, The kind with life have been requited, The cruel exemplarily punished; The one who owed a life is dead, The tears one owed have all been shed. Wrongs suffered have the wrongs done expiated; The couplings and the sundering were fated. Untimely […]
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Carthāgō iterum dēlenda est: Salammbô and The Mercenary War
“The brazen arms were working more quickly. They paused no longer. Every time that a child was placed in them the priests of Moloch spread out their hands upon him to burden him with the crimes of the people, vociferating: ‘They are not men but oxen!’ and the multitude round about repeated: ‘Oxen! oxen!’ The […]
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Love Consumes All: Mary Herbert’s Antonius & Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra
“The less her wrong, the less should be my woe;/ Nor she should pain, nor I complain me so.” – Antony, Antonius (III, line 229-30) [couplet by Mary Herbert added to the Garnier text] Back in November, I made you all listen to me natter on about Mary Wroth’s Urania and in the course of that discussion, I introduced […]
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Curses, Corpses, and Cheops: The Surprisingly Feminine Origins of Mummy Literature
“He saw it rise gradually—he heard the dry, bony fingers rattle as it drew them forth—he felt its tremendous grip—human nature could bear no more—his senses were rapidly deserting him; he felt, however, the fixed steadfast eyes of Cheops still glowing upon his failing orbs, as the lamp gave a sudden flash, and then all […]
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Jacobean Gossip Girl: Mary Wroth’s Urania
“[2/5 stars] I died and seriously started contemplating why I’m in the English program.” – Goodreads reviewer “I don’t think I want you to pass that one along to me.” – my mom One day I might use this space to talk about popular Renaissance literature, but today is apparently not that day. But in […]
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“That Best of Men”: Virgil, Horace, and a Friendship in Verse
As usual, I spent most of the past couple of days being completely stymied as to what to talk about this week, but then I remembered that today (October 15th) is Virgil’s birthday (he’s turning 2,091). So in his honor, I thought we’d talk a little about ancient Rome’s most famous poet. But since Virgil […]
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More Gods Behaving Badly: Ancient Mythology & Cultural Narrative (Part 2)
Last week, we talked about myths as half-remembered histories and cultural origin stories through the lens of Egyptian myth. This week we’re going to shift more thoroughly to the Greeks and dissect Plato’s idea that myths-as-stories that are based on the gods having passions and struggles — what he calls false myths — and try […]
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Gods Behaving Badly: Ancient Mythology & Cultural Narrative (Part 1)
Because I spend too much time (i.e., any time) lurking on classical-centric social media, and in this case, especially Twitter, I’ve been thinking a lot about mythology, third-wave feminism, and contemporary scholarship. Mostly, I love the direction of modern academia in the classical world and history in general, where it’s moving towards being more inclusive […]
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Greek Tragedy, Courtly Love, and Renaissance Satire: The Changing Face of Troilus & Cressida
“Lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery! Nothing else holds fashion.” — Thersites, Troilus & Cressida Before we start this week, I want to apologize to all of you for a very stupid blunder on my part. Mainly that all of my notifications for this blog were being sent to a filler email account to which I […]
Sarah Holz 