Cavafy S Hellenistic Antiquities

This book reinterprets C. P. Cavafy’s historical and archaeological poetics by correlating his work to major cultural, political and sexualized receptions of antiquity that marked the turn of the 20th century. Focusing on selected poems which stage readings of Hellenistic and late ancient texts and material objects, this study probes the poet's personal library and archive to trace his scholarly sources and scrutinize their contribution to his creative practice. A new understanding of Cavafy's historicism emerges by comparing his poetics to a broad array of discourses and intellectual pursuits of his time; these range from antiquarianism, physiognomy and Egyptomania to cultural appropriations of the classics which sought to legitimate British colonial rule as well as homoerotic desire. As this volume demonstrates, Cavafy embraced antiquarianism as an empathetic and passionate way of relating to the past and shaped it into a method that allowed his poetry to render modern meanings to Hellenistic antiquities.

"Eastern Questions: Hellenism and Orientalism in the Writings of E.M. Forster and C.P. Cavafy makes use of unpublished documents, newly edited unfinished poetry (here made available for the first time to an English readership), and lesser-known texts, both fictional and nonfictional. The exchange between literary and nonliterary texts, prose and poetry, focuses the ideological center of Forster's lifelong engagement with Greece and India and identifies the essence of Cavafy's prolonged fixation on matters Hellenic. In the process Jeffreys's New Historicist study applies contemporary critical trends in modern Greek studies to Forster criticism, producing a fresh reading of the relationship and the Cavafy and Forster canons."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Cavafy's Historical Poems is the first volume of a four-book set constituting a study of the life and opus of this fascinating poet. The secoCavafy's Historical Poems is the first volume of a four-book set constituting a study of the life and opus of this fascinating poet. The second volume is an anecdotal life detailing Cavafy's home and its atmosphere: the man, the poet, and his lifestyle; the odes of his compatriot partisans; the praises of his foreign admirers; the barbs and insults of his critics and revilers; the poet as a critical ironist; and the last part of his life. More than one hundred commentators are quoted, and just as many of his poems are used where it seemed appropriate. A third volume consists of erratic commentaries containing the author's evaluation and criticism of the main contributions to Cavafy's poetry. That is these of George Seferis, Sir Maurice Bowra, Robert Liddel, Edmund Keeley, Grigorios Xenopoulos, Timos Malanos, Stratis Tsirkas, John Sareyiannis, and others. These follow an opening chapter on Hellenization and a second chapter on the controversial subject of the dates of composition of Cavafy's poems. The fourth volume, The Canon, is a verse translation of the 150 poems Cavafy accepted as his mature opus, including the original Greek verses, accompanied by detailed examination of the poet's craft and style. That is to say the meter, length of verse, wedging, rhyme, enjambment, titles, organization, punctuation, the absences, lyricism, periphrasis, description, narrative, suggestive image, abstractions, transmission, maturity, content, language, irony, intellectuality, etc. nd volume is An Anectodal Life detailing Cavafy's home and its atmosphere: the man, the poet and his lifestyle; the odes of his compatriot partizans; the praises of his foreign admirers; the barbs and insults of his critics and revilers; the poet as a critical ironist, and the last part of his life. More than one hundred commentarors are quoted and just as many of his poems are used where it seemed appropriate. A third volume consists of Erratic Commentaries containing the author's evaluation and criticism of the main contributions to Cavafy's poetry. That is these of George Seferis, Sir Maurice Bowra, Robert Liddel, Edmund Keeley, Grigorios Xenopoulos, Timos Malanos, Stratis Tsirkas, John Sareyiannis, and others. These follow an opening chapter on Hellenization and an second chapter on the controversial subject of the dates of composition of Cavafy's poems. The fourth volume, The Canon, is a verse translation of the 150 poems Cavafy accepted as his mature opus, including the original Greek verses, accompanied by detailed examination of the poet's craft and style. That is to say, the meter, length of verse, wedging, rhyme, enjambment, titles, organization, punctuation, the absences, lyricism, periphrasis, description, narrative, suggestive image, abstractions, transmission, maturity, content, language, irony, intellectuality, etc.

Hellenism and the Postcolonial Imagination: Yeats, Cavafy, Walcott follows the careers of three major poets of the European and North American periphery as they engage one of the master tropes of Western civilization. As colonial subjects, they inherited an Anglicized version of Hellenism whose borders might easily have excluded them as civilizational "others." The book describes the diverse strategies they used--from Bloomian kenosis to Afro-Caribbean "signifyin(g)"--to make Hellenism their own. Their use of Greek material, the book argues, is closely tied to their need as members of colonial minorities--Irish Protestant, Greek-Egyptian, and "part-white and Methodist"--to define themselves against mainstream metropolitan culture on the one hand, and nationalist constructions of the post-colonial homeland on the other. Their Hellenisms participate in the dialectic of local and global, as the poets at once indigenize the Universal Greek, and re-deploy him to hybridize national culture. The result is a triangulated dynamic that challenges established notions of the postcolonial. Among works discussed are Tennyson's "Ulysses," Yeats's "No Second Troy," C.P. Cavafy's "Waiting for the Barbarians," and Walcott's Omeros. Martin McKinsey is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire.

Hellenism is the living culture of the Greek-speaking peoples and has a continuing history of more than 3,500 years. The Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition contains approximately 900 entries devoted to people, places, periods, events, and themes, examining every aspect of that culture from the Bronze Age to the present day. The focus throughout is on the Greeks themselves, and the continuities within their own cultural tradition. Language and religion are perhaps the most obvious vehicles of continuity; but there have been many others--law, taxation, gardens, music, magic, education, shipping, and countless other elements have all played their part in maintaining this unique culture. Today, Greek arts have blossomed again; Greece has taken its place in the European Union; Greeks control a substantial proportion of the world's merchant marine; and Greek communities in the United States, Australia, and South Africa have carried the Hellenic tradition throughout the world. This is the first reference work to embrace all aspects of that tradition in every period of its existence.

People, A Global Agenda discusses the social impact of global transformations. A collaborative effort of more than fifty thinkers from countries throughout the world, the book contains specific proposals intended to address several of the major problems afflicting virtually every country today. The crises confronted by the contributors include poverty, unemployment, and social disintegration. Part One examines the need for a shift in our understanding of security from a political to a human sense of the term. Contributors devise strategies for improving human living conditions, and propose new frameworks of development cooperation and new patterns of global governance in order to enhance human security. Part Two highlights the impact of poverty in political, economic, social, and environmental terms. The character of unemployment, under-employment, low-productive employment, and the new phenomenon of jobless growth at the turn of the 21st century forms the heart of Part Three. The selections seek to delineate measures, at both the state and market level, for the expansion of productive employment and sustainable livelihoods, and for the role of new technology in this endeavor. Part Four examines the causes and impacts of the world's social disintegration and inequality, and advocates means by which social cohesion and justice can be enhanced.

In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests in the late fourth century B.C., Greek garrisons and settlements were established across Central Asia, through Bactria (modern-day Afghanistan) and into India. Over the next three hundred years, these settlements evolved into multiethnic, multilingual communities as much Greek as they were indigenous. To explore the lives and identities of the inhabitants of the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms, Rachel Mairs marshals a variety of evidence, from archaeology, to coins, to documentary and historical texts. Looking particularly at the great city of Ai Khanoum, the only extensively excavated Hellenistic period urban site in Central Asia, Mairs explores how these ancient people lived, communicated, and understood themselves. Significant and original, The Hellenistic Far East will highlight Bactrian studies as an important part of our understanding of the ancient world.

Hellenistic and Roman Terracottas is a collective volume presenting newly excavated material, as well as diverse and innovative approaches in the study the iconography, function and technology of ancient terracottas.