One of the most influential books in the field of English Renaissance studies in the last 30 years has been Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt, the leading light of the school of “new historicism” and a professor of English literature at the University of California, Berkeley. [Read more…]
In this reading, Julian the Apostate crosses the Tigris, then burns his boats and marches deep into enemy territory. The Persians fall back, scorching the earth as they flee before the forces of Julian. The Roman army soon runs short of food and supplies and are misled by the treachery [Read more…]
Here is the first of what I hope will be a series of recordings from Sir Edward Gibbon‘s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which I have been reading over the last couple of years with my private student, Dr M, as part of our “History in English” class. [Read more…]
One of my favourite books on Niccolo Machiavelli is Machiavelli’s Virtue by the Havard University Professor of Government, Harvey C. Mansfield. Machiavelli’s Virtue is unlike any other book in its field. Virtually every page has something to offer by way of arresting comment or unique insight. In a nutshell, Harvey [Read more…]
My old quaffing partner Andreas Pedelevis recently recommended that I read Moonwalking with Einstein, the Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer. The book is both an overview of the role and importance of the art of memory in ancient Greece and Rome, the middle ages and the [Read more…]
Here is a loose translation of Catullus iii, Lament for Lesbia’s Pet Sparrow, in the form of a sonnet, submitted by guest blogger Patrick Leighton Forse. Catullus‘ poem has 18 lines, but a sonnet has only 14 lines, so some compression has obviously been necessary. The sonnet retains the three [Read more…]
The most famous poem of Catullus is one of his shortest, Odi et amo, quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. Here is Ezra Pound‘s translation: I hate and love. Why? You may ask but It beats me. I feel it done to me, and ache. [Read more…]
What happens when Butler’s 1912 Loeb translation of the second elegy of the third book of Propertius, the one that Pound managed to mangle with a Marcian vintage, is declaimed in an approximation of the Poundian delivery? Meanwhile let us return to our wonted round of song; let the heart [Read more…]
When Ezra Pound’s Homage To Sextus Propertius was published in Poetry in March 1919 it was badly received by several leading classical scholars of the day for its infelicities and errors of translation. The most notorious response came in the form of a letter written by William Gardner Hale to [Read more…]
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