Modern And Ancient Literary Theories

This book provides students and scholars of classical literature with a practical guide to modern literary theory and criticism. Using a clear and concise approach, it navigates readers through various theoretical approaches, including Russian Formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, gender studies, and New Historicism. Applies theoretical approaches to examples from ancient literature Extensive bibliographies and index make it a valuable resource for scholars in the field

The Gospels continue to defy efforts to fix 'generic' boundaries for determining their meanings. This volume discloses new stirrings and sightings of broader, more heuristically promising literary, rhetorical, and cultural registers which intersect in ancient narrative . The contributors seek to build upon or vigorously critique current generic hypotheses (biography, history, tragedy); to introduce recent insights and developments in genre theory; to probe ancient reception of the Gospels as works of literature; and to illuminate the relations between the literary characteristics of the Gospels and methodological advances in narratology, social memory, intertextuality, and performance.

Perhaps best known for his widely acclaimed translations of the Greek tragedies and Herodotus's History, as well as his edition of Hobbes's Thucydides, David Grene has also had a major impact as a teacher and interpreter of texts both ancient and modern. In this book, distinguished colleagues and former students explore the imaginative force of literature and history in articulating and illuminating the human condition. Ranging as widely as Grene's own interests in Greek and Roman antiquity, in drama, poetry, and the novel, in the art of translation, and in English history, these essays include discussions of the Odyssey and Ulysses, the Metamorphoses of Ovid and Apuleius, Mallarmé's English and T. S. Eliot's religion, and the mutually antipathetic minds of Edmund Burke and Thomas Jefferson. The introduction by Todd Breyfogle sketches for the first time the contours of Grene's own thought. Classicists, political theorists, intellectual historians, philosophers, and students of literature will all find much of value in the individual essays here and in the juxtaposition of their themes. Contributors: Saul Bellow, Seth Benardete, Todd Breyfogle, Amirthanayagam P. David, Wendy Doniger, Mary Douglas, Joseph N. Frank, Victor Gourevitch, Nicholas Grene, W. R. Johnson, Brendan Kennelly, Edwin McClellan, Françoise Meltzer, Stephanie Nelson, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Ostwald, Robert B. Pippin, James Redfield, Sandra F. Siegel, Norma Thompson, and David Tracy

Yun Lee Too offers a sustained reading of the social function of the body of texts we identify as 'ancient literary criticism' with major implications for how we understand this discourse and also modern criticism and literary theory. The author argues that when Greek and Roman authors discuss what and how to read in works, they are attempting to create and maintain the political community and its identity by regulating the languages available to it. Literary criticism is a process of discrimination between competing discourses, serving as a strategy by which certain forms of speech or writing may be pronounced legitimate at the expense of others. The volume traces ancient criticism from its origins in archaic Greek poetry through to the early Christian era. As well as reading the familiar texts of ancient criticism - Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Poetics, [Longinus] On the Sublime, amongst others - it shows how ancient law, history, and rhetoric participate in the critical process.

As breathing is essential for our life to sustain so is criticism for all types of literature to flourish. It regulates and controls quality production of the literary activities. It links the creators of literature to the readers. It is of various types say for instance theoretical criticism, practical criticism, eco criticism and so on. Critics of the different languages of the world have been contributing to the domain of criticism over a wide span of time period say from BC. to AD. They have set the yard sticks or the principles or parameters or the rules of evaluation of literature and collection of such rules is called as literary theories. The present edition Modern and Ancient Literary Theories is an exhaustive critical commentary on the chosen critics of the world level. We know the writers have been creating literature in almost every language which is written and read but who would keep an account of its worth. It may or may not be up to the standard of quality reading and appreciation so it comes to share of critics to shoulder this responsibility to allow fine quality literature to flourish and worth less literature to sink down and for this process to administer the critics need the literary theories which this book supplies in short, concise and appropriate form. Besides the community of critics, the collection of the literary theories is needed by the young aspirants of literary studies who want to be story writers, poets, dramatists, novelists and the writers of the tales. These guidelines of literary criticism tell them of the basic requirements with the help of which these literary genres can be composed. These critical standards also sharpen their literary craftsmanship and intellectuality. Every year so many college and university students prepare for their examination and they have to lay their hand on different books on literary theories but in this book sincere efforts have been done to induct the study material at one place to minimize the inconvenience that is caused to the community of the students. This book is self-sufficient and self- explanatory to deal with the critical standards of the various critics and it will help those readers pursuing studies in the principles of criticism or literary theories. The author would like to express his sincere thanks to the Publisher HORIZON BOOKS (A DIVISION OF IGNITED MINDS EDUTECH PVT LTD and his friend Mr. Maman Chand for motivating him to write this book and Mr. Sunil Saini and Mr. Nandan Singh for assisting him in the computer work to design this book. Special thanks are also due to the members of the author’s family who fully helped him to write this book. Dr. P. C. Cambodia

In the Greek world under the Roman Empire, the tradition of rhetorical learning reached its heyday in the second century A.D., with the cultural movement named as “Second Sophistic”. Despite the emphasis on rhetoric, literary culture lato senso was was also part of it, granting a special place to poetics and literary criticism. In the wake of this hermeneutical and interdisciplinary approach, the papers assembled in this volume explore signi cant issues, which are linked to the narrative structure of the ancient novel and to the tradition of rhetorical training, both envisaged as a web of well-constructed narrative devices.

In recent decades the study of literature in Europe and the Americas has been profoundly influenced by modern critical theory in its various forms, whether Structuralism or Deconstructionism, Hermeneutics, Reader-Response Theory or Rezeptionsästhetik, Semiotics or Narratology, Marxist, feminist, neo-historical, psychoanalytical or other perspectives. Whilst the value and validity of such approaches to literature is still a matter of some dispute, not least among classical scholars, they have had a substantial impact on the study both of classical literatures and of the mentalité of Greece and Rome. In an attempt to clarify issues in the debate, the eleven contributors to this volume were asked to produce a representative collection of essays to illustrate the applicability of some of the new approaches to Greek and Latin authors or literary forms and problems. The scope of the volume was deliberately limited to literary investigation, broadly construed, of Greek and Roman authors. Broader areas of the history and culture of the ancient world impinge in the essays, but are not their central focus. The volume also contains a separate bibliography, offering for the first time a complete bibliography of classical studies which incorporate modern critical theory.