Ora Canonica

ora canonica - the hour of prayers, the hour of meeting, the hour leading to a rite of passage. Laurel Marenas latest literary work, a two-act psychological play, begins as seven characters, one by one, enter into a dark place, each one receiving a lit candle. The scene is set for them to challenge issues of morality in light of their own life experiences. Each must follow his own quest for truth; one may find emerging belief reflected in the aspect of a fellow traveller, while another may find revelation deep within himself. There exists a belief amongst some of the most elevated that they need occupy no time, nor manifest any concern with the pedestrian doubts of lesser mortals. Only six of these people, one by one, will exit by a passage to the unknown. One will stand alone, in darkness.

Bryan Reardon (1928-2009) was one of the most important and influential figures in the revival of scholarly interest in the Greek novel and ancient fiction in the last quarter of the twentieth century. His organisation of the first International Conference on the Ancient Novel (ICAN) at Bangor, North Wales, in 1976 was a landmark in the field and an inspiration to the organisers of subsequent ICANs, from which Ancient Narrative itself sprang. As editor of Collected Ancient Greek Novels (University of California Press 1989; second edition 2008), he made the Greek novels accessible to a wider readership and won a place for them in university syllabuses across the English-speaking world. This volume contains twenty essays by leading scholars of ancient fiction, who were all pupils, colleagues or close friends of Bryan Reardon, in memory of his scholarship, energy, guidance and humanity. They cover a range of topics including ancient literary theory and the conceptualisation of fiction, discussion of individual novels (Chariton, Longus, Iamblichus, Achilles Tatius, and Apuleius) and novelistic texts (a papyrus fragment of a lost novel, and Philostratus' Life of Apollonius), the afterlife of the ancient novel (in a Renaissance commentary on Roman law, in a seventeenth-century essay on the origin of the novel, and in a seventeenth-century series of paintings in a French château), and a speculative reconstruction of the morning after the end of Heliodorus' novel. The title of the volume commemorates two of Bryan Reardon's most important books: Courants littéraires grecs des IIe et IIIe siècles après J.-C. (Paris 1971) and The Form of Greek Romance (Princeton 1991); and the photograph of Aphrodisias on the front cover is a tribute to his critical edition of Chariton (2004).

Sulla tomba paterna, il giovane e impetuoso Edgar Ravenswood giura vendetta contro sir William Ashton, guardasigilli di Scozia, che aveva espropriato la sua famiglia di tutti i possedimenti, compresi il castello e le terre. Sul punto di punire l'usurpatore, Edgar si innamora perdutamente di una giovane donna, Lucia, la quale altri non è che la figlia del suo acerrimo nemico. Per amore della fanciulla, Edgar decide di rinunciare ai suoi propositi di vendetta. Ma la terribile e orgogliosa Lady Ashton, madre di Lucia, è determinata a impedire con ogni mezzo la loro unione. Donna altera, perfida e manipolatrice, Lady Ashton ricorre all’aiuto di una veggente cieca, che suggestiona la ragazza col racconto di antiche leggende e profezie sinistre sulla famiglia Ravenswood. Lucia, fragile e influenzabile, cede alla fine alla volontà materna e acconsente a un matrimonio di interesse. Ma sul suo capo aleggia minaccioso lo spettro della follia. Ambientata nel paesaggio selvatico delle Highlands, nei primi anni del XVIII secolo, questa appassionante vicenda d’amore e morte dai toni shakespeariani mescola sapientemente elementi da tragedia romantica a quelli gotici e tenebrosi attinti dalle leggende popolari dell'antica Scozia. Fonti insanguinate e maledette, torri in rovina, magia, leggende, apparizioni sovrannaturali, accompagnano l’evoluzione della storia d’amore tra i due sventurati amanti e fanno da sapiente contraltare agli eventi storici e politici. Pubblicata nel 1819, la vicenda della sposa di Lammermoor ispirò a Donizetti una delle sue opere più famose e suggestive.

This text provides an overview of the history of the mechanical clock and its effects on European society from the late Middle Ages to the industrial revolution. The book provides a discussion of how mechanical clocks functioned in cities and dispels many

Intersubjectivity and usage play central roles in figurative language and are pivotal notions for a cognitively realistic research on figures of thought, speech, and communication. This volume brings together thirteen studies that explore the relationship between figurativity, intersubjectivity and usage from the Cognitive Linguistics perspective. The studies explore the impact of figurativity on areas of lexicon and grammar, on real discourse, and across different semiotic systems. Some studies focus on the psychological processes of the comprehension of figurativity; other studies address the ways in which figures of thought and language are socially shared and the variation of figures through time and space. Moreover, some contributions are established on advanced corpus-based techniques and experimental methods. There are studies about metaphor, metonymy, irony and puns; about related processes, such as humor, empathy and ambiguation; and about the interaction between figures. Overall, this volume offers the advantages and the opportunities of an interactional and usage-based perspective of figurativity, embracing both the psychological and the intersubjective reality of figurative thought and language and empirically emphasizing the multidimensional character of figurativity, its central function in thought, and its impact on everyday communication.