Il Mondo Antico In 20 Stratagemmi

Il cavallo di Troia, le terre di Didone, il ratto delle Sabine, il tappeto di Cleopatra… La storia antica è costellata di fatti e vicende in cui la soluzione di problemi e la vittoria sui concorrenti si ottengono grazie a un guizzo di intelligenza. Imbrogli, trucchi e raggiri che ci raccontano le sorprendenti sfaccettature del carattere e del mondo dei nostri antenati. I Greci presero Troia; Ramses II sconfisse gli Ittiti; Didone fondò Cartagine; Romolo fece rapire le Sabine; Temistocle vinse a Salamina; Annibale tenne in scacco l'esercito romano. Cosa accomuna questi e altri episodi della storia antica, greca, romana e non solo? Il ricorso a imbrogli, trucchi, raggiri: in una parola, stratagemmi. Anche se lasciavano credere che fossero sempre e solo i nemici a perpetrare le astuzie più ambigue ai loro danni, in realtà i popoli antichi non si fecero mai scrupoli a utilizzare mezzi subdoli e ingannevoli. Ritenevano l'intelligenza l'arma più efficace, affidabile e pronta per superare difficoltà, vincere nemici, imporsi sulla scena politica. I protagonisti di questo libro sono personaggi noti e meno noti della storia antica. Alcuni leggendari, come Ulisse, Pericle, Alessandro Magno, Annibale, Cleopatra. Altri meno familiari, ma ugualmente significativi per l'entità delle loro gesta. Tutti emergono vincenti da contesti competitivi o escono indenni da situazioni di disagio. Tutti mostrano come l'intelligenza, nelle sue diverse declinazioni – e tra queste, soprattutto l'astuzia –, sia la chiave per imporsi, o anche solo per sopravvivere, in ogni occasione.

This book identifies eight key mechanisms that can transform a set of ideas into a psychological flytrap. The author suggests that, like the black holes of outer space, from which nothing, not even light, can escape, our contemporary cultural landscape contains numerous intellectual black-holes—belief systems constructed in such a way that unwary passers-by can similarly find themselves drawn in. While such self-sealing bubbles of belief will most easily trap the gullible or poorly educated, even the most intelligent and educated of us are potentially vulnerable. Some of the world’s greatest thinkers have fallen in, never to escape. This witty, insightful critique will help immunize readers against the wiles of cultists, religious and political zealots, conspiracy theorists, promoters of flaky alternative medicines, and others by clearly setting out the tricks of the trade by which such insidious belief systems are created and maintained.

In a time of acute crisis when our societies face a complex series of challenges (race, gender, inclusivity, changing pedagogical needs and a global pandemic) we urgently need to re-access the nature of our engagement with the Classical World. This edited collection argues that we need to discover new ways to draw on our discipline and the material it studies to engage in meaningful ways with these new academic and societal challenges. The chapters included in the collection interrogate the very processes of reception and continue the work of destabilising the concept of a pure source text or point of origin. Our aim is to break through the boundaries that still divide our ancient texts and material culture from their reception, and interpretive communities. Our contributors engage with these questions theoretically and/or through the close examination of cultural artefacts. They problematise the concept of a Western, elitist canon and actively push the geographical boundaries of reception as both a local and a global phenomenon. Individually and cumulatively, they actively engage with the question of how to marshal the classical past in our efforts to respond to the challenges of our mutable contemporary world.

This volume tackles the role of smell, under-explored in relation to the other senses, in the modern rejection, reappraisal and idealisation of antiquity. Among the senses olfaction in particular has often been overlooked in classical reception studies due to its evanescent nature, which makes this sense difficult to apprehend in its past instantiations. And yet, the smells associated with a given figure or social group convey a rich imagery which in turn connotes specific values: perfumes, scents and foul odours both reflect and mould the ways in which a society thinks or acts. Smells also help to distinguish between male and female, citizens and strangers, and play an important role during rituals. The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination focuses on the representation of ancient smells - both enticing and repugnant - in the visual and performative arts from the late 18th century up to the 21st century. The individual contributions explore painting, sculpture, literature and film, but also theatrical performance, museum exhibitions, advertising, television series, historical reenactment and graphic novels, which have all played a part in reshaping modern audiences' perceptions and experiences of the antique.

Italians adhering to Protestantism or other forms of heterodoxy mostly had to leave their country after ca. 1550 due to Rome ́s pressure. The connectivities with Central Europe (not only Germany) as destination of that movement have been often neglected.

This book explores how public space in Republican Rome was an unstable category marked, experienced, and defined by multiple actors and audiences.

This volume is the final output of a project started in 2013 on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Scandinavian Section of the University of Milan. A group of scholars working on different European and non-European cultural and literary traditions come together here to discuss the relationships between their areas of study and the Nordic countries. The range of the contributions expands over time and space, from the Middle Ages to the present day, from Poland in the east to the United States in the west, across various European countries. Through various kinds of expertise and different perspectives, this intercultural discourse deals with diverse themes, including the perception of Nordic culture(s) by foreign writers as well as the image of other cultures in Scandinavian works. In particular, the literary and cultural interchange of models and ideas between the North and other areas is investigated in a number of essays devoted to numerous authors, including, among others, Klaus Böldl, Carmen de Burgos, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Gerhart Hauptmann, Henrik Ibsen, Stieg Larsson, Carl von Linné, Rainer Maria Rilke, J.D. Salinger, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Mme de Staël, August Strindberg, and Tomas Tranströmer